Aria took the flashlight with a hesitant smile of her own. “Thank you. I don’t like the dark…” She whispered. As they walked through the halls she shined her flashlight everywhere, taking in the thick layer of dust that coated everything. “It wasn’t this dusty this morning, was it?” she asked Vanessa, carefully placing her feet lest her shoes skid out from under her. The sandals she wore were highly impractical. She cursed herself for having dressed up today, but then, she rather enjoyed dressing up and hadn’t had an excuse to for a while.

As they got to the front office, Aria felt like something was wrong. She shined her flashlight around the hall to see a girl curled up in a ball crying and… bleeding?

Aria dropped the flashlight, which made it turn off, and instantly lunged for it, seizing it in a death-grip and flipping it back on with trembling fingers. “Oh, my god…” she muttered. Walking closer to the girl, she shined her flashlight on the ground next to her. “Hey, are you alright?” she asked, kneeling down in the dust a couple feet away from the crying girl. “Let’s see where you’re bleeding from, okay?” The girl’s clothes were dark with blood… Hopefully it wasn’t all her own. “Hey, you’ll be okay.” And then she took a second look at the girl’s face and realized who it was. Maki, the girl from Japan, a celebrity, of sorts, unique in even such a big school as this one. Everyone knew she didn’t speak English all that well. Aria slowed her speech down, using simpler words to try to help the older girl understand. She cursed herself again, for not bothering to learn any useful language. “My… name… is… Aria. You…. Are…. Maki? I… Will… help… you.” She reached for Maki’s hands, intending to examine her for where she was bleeding from. She looked over her shoulder at Vanessa. “Vanessa, I think you’ve got better experience at bandaging people than I do.”