The conversation with Master Jet helped Sunny to understand what he would be doing next. Soon enough, Sunny was in his way to the academy. However, he luckily discovered what happened to him and his shadow after interacting with other shadows.
In his case the shadows allowed anyone, literally anyone to look through them and see Sunny. Something similar happened to his own shadow, contrasting without reason to the other shadows. Also, his shadow was gradually damaged. It felt like a little needle that slowly, very slowly pierced deeper in his soul.
He thought that he could endure leaving his shadow a full day in the shadows before the pain could grow unbearable. And maybe, his shadow would die at that point. Which was a really strange thought. What would happen exactly after his shadow died?
...His shadow shivered slightly.
'Not like I'm interested in finding out.'
***
Sunny was standing in front of the massive, seemingly indestructible red gates of the Awakened Academy. The Academy was, in fact, a city within the city. It was built like a fortress, with a high wall made of hard alloy, deep moat and numerous large-caliber turrets which were placed in certain positions to create a deadly air-suppression dome.
No Nightmare Creature, not even colossal titans, were supposed to be able to break through its defenses.
It was a legendary place. Actually, many of the most popular webtoons, youth dramas and novels took place right behind that wall. Adventures, rivalries and romantic entanglements of the young Awakened heroes were the mainstream theme of modern entertainment. Never in his wildest dreams did Sunny imagine actually becoming one of these heroes.
Of course, how things really were differed a lot from how it was portrayed in the media. More than that, he had only four weeks to spend here before venturing into the Dream Realm. Even if he wanted to, there was not enough time for any type of entanglement. And he definitely did not want to.
He had to learn how to survive, not waste time on such nonsense!
The snow was slowly falling to the ground. It was cold and silent in front of the Academy gates. Except for Sunny, there was only one other person — another new Sleeper, if he had to guess.
It was a tall, slender girl of around his age, with clear grey eyes and a detached look on her face. She had strange, silver-white hair that was cut short and neatly parted to the side. Just like him, she was dressed in a police-issued tracksuit and had no personal belongings with her. On her head, there was a pair of old-fashioned headphones. She was calmly listening to music while they waited.
There was a certain vibe to the silver-haired girl. It was sort of… as though she was apart from the world. She looked confident and self-sufficient, but also a bit lonely.
Sunny wasn't going to start a conversation. It was strange. He felt strangely detached from the people around him. He thought that it was something that he felt before because Master Jet was an Ascended, but it was the same with the Sleeper in front of him.
He glanced at the girl and sighed.
'Is it because of my flaw?'
Finally, the gates began to open. The giant, ridiculously thick sheet of reinforced metal slowly descended, creating a long bridge. Sunny looked ahead with grim determination.
The end of the metal bridge hit the special grooves in the ground and stopped moving after a set of loud clicks. Sunny looked ahead, wondering what kind of life he was going to be living in the next four weeks.
Keep your Flaw and Aspect secret, learn to survive in the wilderness, be nice to other Sleepers. It didn't sound too hard.
Yet, he didn't feel a need to go ahead and meet people, everything felt strangely out of place. Not like the start of a new chapter in his life, but as if the world itself was fundamentally wrong... or, in this case, Sunny must be the one fundamentally wrong to the world.
'I wonder how others see me...'
Master Jet seemed normal in her reactions, but she was an Ascended of the outskirts. Whatever hope that Sunny had of reading her was a fantasy.
Seemingly free of such concerns, the silver-haired girl walked forward and stepped on the bridge.
Sunny sighed and reluctantly followed.
The Sleeper part of the compound was relatively small and situated in the southern part of the Academy, surrounded on all sides by training fields and parks.
It was a low, modern building constructed with reinforced materials. Like the majority of buildings in the Academy, most of it was hidden below the ground, leaving only a couple of floors above it. With its white, pristine alloy walls and wide windows, it must have looked beautiful in the summer, contrasted against all the greenery around.
Inside, the building was spacious and well-lit. Sunny and the silver-haired girl were taken to a large hall where a hundred or so of young men and women — Sleepers of the same unfortunate timing as the two of them — were already waiting for the beginning of the induction ceremony. Most of them were nervous, tense and excited.
Logistics of the Academy were a constant headache for the administrators since the rate at which the Spell infected people was always chaotic. There was no way to orderly structure for batches of Sleepers to undergo any type of standardized education on a shared schedule: some of them had a full year to prepare for the Dream Realm, some only months, some even mere days.
That's why these induction ceremonies were held each month at the beginning of the year and then every week once the winter solstice began to loom near. Some of the Sleepers in the hall had to wait days to be inducted, while Sunny had lucked out and was delivered to the Academy just hours before the scheduled event.
Once inside the hall, he understood two things.
Firstly, everyone was well-dressed and in possession of a suitcase, a duffel bag, or at least a backpack carrying their personal belongings. They were obviously coming prepared, most likely from home, sent off by their families.
So Sunny and the silver-haired girl, who came empty-handed and wearing simple police-issued clothes, were not a norm like he had assumed, but actually an eye-catching anomaly.
'Right. That makes sense.'
Secondly, the feeling of before was not an illusion of his. He was sure of it, the world was rejecting him and in turn he was rejecting the world.
Even worst, the feeling of wrongness was not only something that he felt towards everyone. But something that everyone felt towards him.
And how did Sunny know about this? Well, because after a full hour forcing himself to walk around, and yet lacking the intend of starting a conversation, no one talked to him. They were avoiding him.
When someone looked in his direction their instincts must have led them to focus in someone else around him or to ignore his existence, and in consequence he was a kind of outcast with no apparent reason to be... except that he was already an anomaly in the place.
...and this was a peaceful, friendly environment.
'Damnation.'
If he met people in the dream realm they could directly feel animosity towards him.
'At least they will realize that I am a person...'
Or so did he thought, until the induction ceremony led him to a terrible revelation. What Awakened Rock told them included the idea that... not everything that looked like a human in the dream realm would be one.
'Curse it! How am I supposed to survive there if even people will confuse me with some kind of Eldritch horror?'
Should he share his flaw with the world? Tell to every human citadel that that face of his was not being taken by some harrowing abomination?
...No, Master Jet must have felt the same kind of wrongness, and yet she told him that he should hide his flaw and aspect.
Or perhaps, as an Ascended she felt his flaw in a less pronounced manner?
'Why is everything so complicated?!'
Sunny was now sure of it, to understand properly his flaw he needed someone to tell him how he was perceived.
However, something like that required trust. Something that Sunny could hardly accomplish in a month. Not only because it was hard for him, but because now every time that he interacted with others he felt detached, and wrong. Same for the person interacting with him, even worst, they probably felt tense in every moment.
Which also meant... that deceiving people was now a harder task than before.
'Damnation. The world was literally rejecting him.'
What kind of blessing did he receive? This was more like a curse than a blessing!
Sunny's mind was progressively accumulating stress and he started to feel a little dizzy. He needed to calm down. He needed to prepare a step at a time, there were yet many chances for his situation to change, even if just barely.
First, he should evaluate the people around him. Someone that would benefit him the most to befriend, an- Of course! How had he not thought about that before?
What Sunny needed was not befriend his peers, he just needed them to doubt before trying to hurt him. He needed backing. And while he wasn't a legacy, he was still a master of deceit, he just needed to befriend someone important in his batch of sleeper, and the rankings would tell him exactly who.
Reinvigorated with his plan he chose the next point to consider. How much should he tell?
***
In the end, Sunny concluded a lot of things about his approach to creating allies. For the first time in his life, Sunny realized that he would need to be honest if he wanted to build trust with someone. After all, people around him would judge his everymove because of the fundamental wrongness around him.
The result? He didn't try to look weak nor strong in his interview. And because of that... he realized that he didn't knew in what his aspect was useful at, he barely knew anything at all about it, and he would not explain those parts that he knew in detail.
So... Sunny didn't expect a good result in the rankings.
'Damnation.'
How was he supposed to befriend one of the top sleepers like this?! He should have shared his true name, however... there was an unexpected issue with it.
Earlier, in the interview room, Sunny recalled his true name in his mind. He tried to give himself cheers, but in the moment that he said it in his mind... he felt as if his sense of self had been weakened.
For a few moments his mind was in blank, and the interviewer called him multiple times before he finally snapped out of it and resumed the interview. Luckily, his weak aspect made the interviewer think that he was experiencing a kind of panic attack. Not so lucky for him, after saying his true name in his mind he had not fully recovered. Even now, his memories and desires were slightly hidden in what felt as a fog or mist of shadows.
'This can't be normal...'
But again, Sunny's own aspect established that he didn't belong to the world, that he wasn't something normal in any sense of his existence. The world would retaliate to every kind of connection that Sunny shared with it.
Which meant... that his [Devoid] attribute helped him to somewhat avoid whatever would have happened if he truly belonged to the world.
The description was not fully clear, but Sunny thought that it weakened his connection to the world in many aspects. Such as fate, as [Fated] dissapearence seems to indicate.
Yet, keeping a shadow of it, if not, the world wouldn't retaliate to the possibility of interacting with others, and, in theory, [Child of Shadows] wouldn't have stayed with him. So... what else was connected to him to a level meaningful enough to experience to experience retaliation.
Sunny didn't know. Yet, after studying his memories in his room and discovering that he could share vision with his shadow, it was time to go to the cafeteria in the early morning. The rankings would be published soon...