Air like the aftermath of a thunderstorm waved through the open window and increased the pressure that seemed to be pulling the ceiling down.
Leon looked at Mr. Lee as soon as the thought of his family depending on him faded. "I will."
Mr. Lee held Leon's grip for a moment, grinned, and walked out without saying a word or even glancing back.
Leon sat there for a moment before walking to the wardrobe for the blue pajamas, the only trousers he wore whenever he wanted to sleep deeply. He lay on the bed, crossed his hands behind his head, and focused on the ceiling while his mind replayed Mr. Lee's grin.
When his eyes began to close a few moments after sleep slowly took over him, footsteps began echoing behind his door, while voices rose at the other side of his open window.
Outside his window, gossip, bets, and whispers of predictions flooded the hallway like bees in a beehive. Leaves drifted across the windows of rooms that were lit in the middle of the night instead of being dark.
Inside the rooms, students scrolled on their smart devices, pulling out historical records on the tournament's brutal deaths, illegal rules, and the corpses that were always left unburied just to show triumph.
At 12:25, when every place in Alchemania was usually silent, a loud pounding rattled Leon's door like a blast of dynamite and woke him from his halfway-sleep.
"Why won't they keep quiet!" Leon shouted as he grabbed the black-clothed pillow from his left side, turned his face flat on the mattress, and pressed the pillow on his head.
For a moment, the sound dulled so low that he could hear his fast-beating heart, and when he removed the pillow just to allow himself to breathe properly, the noise rose again, as if it had waited for the time he would take a breath.
"Damn it!" Leon cursed in a low voice then pushed himself off the bed. He hurled the pillow against the wall and walked toward the wardrobe for a shirt while still feeling the unresolved fatigue in his body.
Leon slammed his door shut, placed his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and walked in the hallway like a soldier who had been deprived of sleep for years.
'Where can I even get a quiet place to relax myself?' he said low in his head and thought of outside the building as the first place he could get what he wanted.
Stepping out of his hallway to the joined hallways was like a wish he wouldn't have asked for, even if it was the only option left to live with.
Almost all the hallways he entered were now full of excited students. Some were lovers who had met their partners and were enjoying themselves in the darkness, while others were those who couldn't sleep but ended up meeting their friends after they also moved out of their rooms.
Leon tried walking like a ghost but ended up catching attention with his posture.
Slowly, he moved through them, trying to be unseen. But since there were plenty of them, it was hard to be like the ghost he wished for.
Pulled by a need to escape the noise and the disgusting behavior of the lovers, Leon neglected his options and walked without direction. He just trod toward the place he thought would give him what he wanted.
Just as he turned toward the great hall, he stumbled and collided with a soft, slightly raised, boneless form.
He raised his head slowly but apologized quickly when he noticed it was a lady, and continued walking toward the old study hall.
"At long last," Leon said and sighed heavily when he approached the study hall. He slowed his steps and began looking inside through the transparent window, but the sight of two guys sitting on his favorite couch kissing made him exhale in disbelief, clenching his jaw as he turned away.
What he saw and couldn't unsee felt so gross to him that it instantly gave him the feeling of being in a world from which he was permanently exiled.
The hallway he had walked in earlier was now calm when he walked back, but not calm enough to unhear the wet sounds of the lovers at the corners. They stood in every direction Leon took as if they owned the entire Alchemania.
Leon slammed his door shut, locked it, and threw himself on the bed. 'What a waste of life,' he said low in his head and forced sleep to take him.
As if the world was on the other students' side, the horrors of the Shattered Land replayed in Leon's head immediately after he went deep into the dream state.
The poisonous air from the valley suffocated Leon's dream self so much that his body jerked, gasping, then lay back on the bed like a possessed person.
The tentacles that drew back in the crystal cave engulfed him so much that sweat began dripping from Leon's sleeping body while the gold energy within him burst out and began snaking around his skin.
The wild noise of Alchemania began to die after every passing second as if it were responding to Leon's unconscious display.
The reeling conversation in rooms halted mid-sentence when everyone began feeling the unnatural silence falling on the roofs of the buildings. But the pulsing sound in Leon's room remained the same as the moving gold energy retracted and dashed into his body like a heart attack.
Deep inside Leon's head, where darkness engulfed everything, including the very land he stood on, a vast, endless green sea came to life.
Thick and viscous vapors surged out of it like solid glass and flew around, whipping the air with a whoosh sound. There was no land, tree, or animals, only the unsettling, placid green sea that looked like death in a liquidized form.
Leon wasn't drowning as he should but instead, he was floating on the sea, which he had once heard his father speak of to an unknown caller.
"Hello. What your son is experiencing now is what every awakened person goes through. The land they see in their dreams and the things that try to kill them are all something he has to overcome and control."
His father's words, which once felt less important after he took Leon through several training sessions to unlock his latent power but failed, were now the sole force that dwelt in Leon's head. But now, here he was, standing on a primordial ocean, with no idea what could happen in the next second.
Tentatively, he took a step but ended up solidifying the part of the green with a land that rose, already bearing ancient trees.
When he paused his second step after he got stunned, the growing land also halted. "Whoa!"
A world without a ruler and a forest that could make humans vanish for years sprang from his movement, making him a creator.
As soon as the branches of the trees sprawled apart, giving them the look of long-dead mystical creatures, Leon's head snapped back.
'Nah, I'm not stepping on that,' he thought, shaking his head once. 'That can be a trap. It has to be.'
Unbeknownst to him, the supportive water beneath him vanished, and he began drowning as if dragged by something dwelling within the green waters.