Still Falling THE BRUISE OF IT
Trays landed hard. Chairs dragged across linoleum until the noise stacked into one flat pressure over Highschool A's cafeteria. Val had the corner Christopher and John usually claimed. Today it was only Chris across from him, both hunched over a PSP like the rest of the room had stopped existing.
Chris had opinions about the Tekken roster. Val had a different read on wake-up windows and said so.
"Law's frame data is lying to you," Val said.
"Only if you can't punish on read," Chris shot back.
They went back and forth. Combo strings. Which characters were actually viable once you stopped button-mashing. What counted as a cheap win and what just meant you couldn't adapt. One line fed the next without either of them working for it.
Movement across the room. Karen, Sel, and Emily had pushed their tables into one long row. One of them waved Chris over.
Chris stood, eyes still glued to the PSP, and brief look at Val. "Come with?"
Val was on his feet before he'd thought about it. He was already moving.
They crossed the open floor together, threading between chairs and trays and people who weren't paying attention. Val was still turning something over from the Tekken argument when Emily stood up from the merged table. She didn't wait for them to reach it.
"You're not welcome here," she said. "Go away."
He looked past her. Karen and Sel were tucked in together, expressions set. Mina sat with John beside her. Nobody shifted even slightly to make room on the bench. Chris had gone still halfway between Val and the table.
Val turned to leave.
John's voice caught him halfway across the floor. "Yeah. Go back to the other girls, you ugly pedophile."
Val kept walking. He didn't turn around. His fist clenched until his nails found skin and warmth slicked his palm before he registered what it was. Blood. Small and quiet. The cafeteria kept making the same noise. People kept eating. He kept his back to all of it and didn't stop.
The further he got from the merged table, the more the noise went flat and meaningless again. He didn't text Mei. Didn't find Dawn. Didn't say anything to Xian. He didn't go back to the girls either. He drifted until he found himself in a corner of the library, earbuds in, reading a page that didn't ask anything of him.