1 - Kim Minsoo

Despite Minsoo’s best efforts, or perhaps because of it, they were about to be late for school.

How did this happen? What will you do, if anything, to try to make it in time?

And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again. I can still hear you saying, you would…

"… never break the Chain. And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again. I can still hear you saying…"

Minsoo flits this way and that to get through the crowd; never slowing her pace but determined not to start a fight on the first day back by tackling someone near the front gates on her way in.

"Watch out! Coming through!"

Fleetwood Mac blares through her headphones, as it so often did, so the young girl can’t hear how her request are received. Most likely they weren’t even heard, given that everyone was so focused on themselves on the first day of school. Their hair, their clothes, their make up. Minsoo would have liked to pretend she wasn’t within that cohort, but…

"Chaaaaaain, keep us together. Senior coming through!" she says, almost tempted to break into a run. She had spent the summer running, and listening to music. She was fast, but… No, running to the first assembly of the year would be cringe.

Still, she quickens her step, as Fleetwood Mac fades out and before another song kicks in!

Minsoo must've been very much an old soul to still have Fleetwood Mac on her playlist when her peers were likely to have moved on to Blackpink. Maybe the genre tapped her into a more real, much forgotten past. Or perhaps "Damn your love, damn your lies" somehow resonated with her at the threshhold of adulthood and what promised to lie ahead, or not.

She ran everywhere, that was her default, whether running towards, or away from. Today she found herself running to make it on time before she caught herself doing so as she legged it up the long driveway towards the arched gates at the top of the gentle incline.

"Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night…"

The bell would surely ring any second now, and Minsoo still had a ways to go! She picks up the pace a little more, easing into a run as she sees other students earnestly trying to beat the bell, too.

The last refrains of the song carried Minsoo faster than she imagined, as if her step lightened as she bounded unerringly towards Founders Hall. It wouldn't do for her to distractedly follow the wrong students elsewhere.

"Have a seat." Despite the serious formality of the title of Doctor, Veritas was generally regarded as a motherly figure amongst the staff, more youthful in appearance than one might guess her true age to be, though her chopped bob and bangs, slightly streaked in grey, gave her some kindly gravitas to match.

The counselling room was furnished with soft armchairs and a table for the counsellor, carpeted but enclosed with no natural light. A small shelf sat to one side with a tray of glasses and a water flask.

Today though the shelf was partially blocked by a third person in the room."Ms Nixon will join us today as well, as part of the school's efforts to improve our care programme." The woman looked as proper as she did yesterday, again in nearly the same shade of grey suit. In her hand was a tablet and stylus.

"How are you doing at the moment Minsoo? I am concerned about what you may have experienced at yesterday's blackout. Can you tell me a bit about what's going on with you right now? I'm ready to listen if you're willing to share." So that’s what the school was calling it, a blackout.

Her tone was gentle, but nonetheless probing..

Minsoo knew better than to let any of the sarcasm she might exhibit among her friends seep out into her interactions with staff. At least staff that she didn’t know all that well, and that didn’t know Minsoo all that well either. Like Nixon…

"The blackout?" she says, keeping polite and responsive. Her parents might hear about it otherwise, and that wasn’t worth the headache it would be after school.

"Oh! Right, when the lights went out? I think it was only a couple of seconds or something right?" she says, making a face that suggested she didn’t know what the big deal was.

"I didn’t really think about it. Figured it was all the lights being on after being off all summer. Flipped a fuse or something. That’s what dad said anyway." she says with a shrug and an innocent look at the two staff.

The same disconcerting feeling Minsoo had yesterday as her innocent eyes darted to Nixon even as she recounted her version of the affair was amplified, for the guidance counsellor from the Board of Education revealed no expression throughout, save for the occasional scribing on her tablet. This was regardless of what Minsoo said or how she said it, nothing seemed to garner a response.

Veritas was in contrast warmer and much more assuring in her manner. "Stress can sometimes make events feel distorted. I am glad you handled the situation so well Minsoo, Ashford is proud to have a senior with your maturity. Tell me what your father said. And did you talk to anyone else about it?"

But there it was. All savvy teens were alike, able to give an account to an adult to get out of trouble. The question was whether Minsoo had gone too far in trying in her version, and whether Veritas believed her at all. And why did Veritas pursue the topic of her father?

Minsoo had the feeling though that the version of the story she chose to tell was somehow important to herself personally. That it would shape how she dealt with her newly experienced reality in some way.

"Oh. You know." she starts, as if it was obvious. "We were just eating dinner. He does that stuff for work, I think." she says, teenagerly. "He hooks up electricity on the houses the company builds." she says, and looks at Veritas as if she should already know this.

She shrugs again.

"Anyone else? No, not really. Not to be funny, but there are more exciting things to talk about, you know?" she says, her tone neutral. She was a teenage girl after all… just not an average one.

Even as Minsoo downplayed her account, she could tell Veritas wasn't convinced by her explanation. Her best cover was of course the nonchalance of youth, a role she had mastered very well to shrug off all manner of inquisitions. Even as she did so she caught the distant whiff of stale smoke again, and now with her newfound awareness she wondered if it was more than a metaphor for what she was covering up, or what she thought the school was covering up.

"It is good that you had a chance to talk about your day with your father." Minsoo saw Veritas make a quick note when she mentioned her father, and because of that for a brief moment she wondered whether mentioning her family had some other implication she was unaware of.

For the session then came to an end quicker than she expected after she talked about her home conversation. "You may return to class. Our next session will be about your senior year plans which Ms Nixon will helpfully take you through." A sidelong glance at the stiff, expressionless figure of Ms Nixon seated at the periphery of Minsoo's vision did not warm her up to the idea of Nixon's 'helpfulness'.

Minsoo made a polite exit, but couldn’t help but exit the meeting with her chest puffed out. Nobody wants to mess with a Tiger Dad - or worse, a Tiger Mom - and so they had backed off. She’d love to know what the school counselor had written in the notebook.

Probably something like ‘DO NOT CALL HOME’. The thought made her smirk, and she peacocks her way out of the office and back down the corridor.

Do not call home, was the echo in her head as Minsoo exited the room. Even though she didn't think she was the wittiest this time, something told her she had succeeded despite herself, something that now sounded like a proper voice in her head rather than what she thought was her usual interior monologue.

With that last bit of self-discovery still running in her head, Minsoo could swear that the distance from the track to the library building felt shorter than ever. Sure, she was trying to get to it before it closed, but she wasn't running at full sprint or anything, more like a quickened step. Even so, everything felt ... closer, and she made it with some minutes to spare. The library was a three-storey brownstone building, almost everyone referred to it as the Lower Stacks, referring to the first two floors, modernised in the last renovation. The third floor was where the office was, as well as the closed shelves and research study-areas, the Upper Stacks.

Minsoo saw Mdm Esme Silverton, head librarian, behind the check-out counter on the ground floor, presumably logging out of the system. The premises themselves would be locked by the school caretaking team who would be coming along soon. For some reason, even though it was out of fashion to do so in schools of today for students to address their teachers in that way, they called Silverton Ma'am. Perhaps it was her age, or perhaps something else. Her sharp eyes saw Minsoo come in from the main entrance.

"Good evening, Ma’am." Minsoo says, bowing ever so slightly just the moment their eyes acknowledge each other! "Sorry to swing by so late." she says, as she arrives at the desk. She drums her fingers on the counter, as Silverton looked at her through the ornate rims of the glasses she wore as a statement piece!

What to say…
What to say?…

"Uh! Coach said you might have something for me!" she said, with a smile. That was something! She couldn’t help but smile at the double speak. Busy bodies would have a tough time deciphering that double speak!

"I'm closing up Minsoo, if it's a book you're wanting you'll have to wait until tomorrow morning." Mdm Silverton had the uncanny ability of remembering the name of every student, and it is said her eidetic memory also enabled her to remember every book in the library and where they were shelved without needing to look it up in the catalogues. She had been with Ashford High for generations, and looked to be an ageless sixty-something, the vintage rims she wore a giveaway that revealed her era, which gave her a more stern expression than she actually possessed. With a history like that came fond rumours from previous batches. Those who thought well off her used to say that she knew what book a student was looking for even before the student asked for it.

Minsoo had never given much thought to these tales, the library was a school library, and the librarian simply who she was. But today the new insight she had, about her own uncanny ability to always be able to win the races that mattered, was that not a kind of blessing she also never gave much thought to. Now it was possible to wonder if they came from a more mystical source, which was what Corbin was hinting at.

But how to explain that to Silverton? It was not as if she could come right out and say, We're similar. And I need to understand how that works. Why didn't Coach just message Silverton to say Minsoo was coming to see her. That would've been so much easier.

The voice, as if reading her doubt, murmured in her head, Show her your power. Smite her. She will know your truth. Was this inner voice even cognisant of ethics and society? Smite her? Really?

"Oh, right! Sorry! I’ll…" she says, a little hesitant still to jump into all of this with two feet. She steps away from the counter, shaking her head.

She digs her heels into the thinning carpet of the well-trodden library front entrance. She wouldn’t take another step back… She just didn’t know how to take another step forward either.

She shakes her head again, at the thought of smiting the school librarian. Maybe some of the gang had that power. But Minsoo? That kind of thing didn’t seem within her skill set.

"Coach had been thinking that you could help with a… project I’ve been working on! It’s important!" she says, with slight pleading in her voice.

"What project?" For a moment Minsoo wondered if Silverton could surmise what she was hemming and hawing about, but didn't know how to come right out to say it. After all, coach Corbin had led her to believe that Silverton was someone with abilities as well, and wise enough to be able to offer Minsoo guidance on this matter; that was the entire reason why Coach told her to seek the librarian. Surely Silverton could already tell why Minsoo was here and what she wanted to ask. "Important enough to look for me on the first Tuesday of the school year, at closing time?"

"....." Minsoo could sense the presence in the head getting restless, as if impatient to nudge her to take a more obvious course of action. Was the voice always going to be like this, prone to a hardline tone and imperative judgement? Would this presence ever actively intervene on her behalf? And did Minsoo want to chance it at this point?

Minsoo puts both palms down flat on the library counter top, and takes some heavy breaths. Gathering up a gulp of air, she starts:

"Something strange has been happening since, like, yesterday. Coach has been talking about it. So have the school councillors. Everyone has been talking about it really…" she goes on, in run on sentences.

"Some of us have been feeling a bit different lately, and Coach said you’d be able to help. Today, on the field…" she goes on, and explains what happened with the javelin.

And the meeting in the councillors office.
And the gym yesterday.
And the talk with Corbin just now.

Finally,

"So… that, basically. Have you got a book on that?" she says, huffing and puffing.

It seemed like it took forever to have everything come tumbling out of her, for Minsoo had not had a chance to put it all together in one aggregated thought. Heck she could hardly make sense of most of it herself, heck everything had been so intense. Silverton kept silent as the teenager spoke, and when Minsoo finally ended and looked up, it was the first time Minsoo saw past Silverton's stern spectacles to see a pair of green eyes, aged yet kindly with empathetic emotion. The eyes twinkled slightly at Minsoo's last words, even in her confused jumble the young woman had an understated sense of humour.

"Plenty." Silverton stood up from behind the counter and came round to the front where Minsoo was. "Here's one." Minsoo didn't see it, but somehow there was now a slim tome in Silverton's hand. "Although I don't think you want to read this very moment. Come, walk with me. Mordecai will be about to shoo us out any time now. And I have some flowers I want to be tending to." She placed her hand on Minsoo's arm as if she needed a bit of support to walk as they began to exit the library. "And tell your big bossy friend to give us some space. They look like they want to trip my legs over the first chance they get." She waved the book in her hand like she was trying to fan away a mosquito.

They walked slowly towards the well-landscaped shubbery behind the library, where Minsoo realised Silverton had been tending to the lovely plot of hydrangeas and crocuses, which made for a pretty sight in the sunset. Silverton might have chosen the spot also to get away from buildings and prying eyes. "You've awakened. That's what's it's called, an awakening. The more philosophically-minded mages like to describe the world as being asleep, and but some of us rouse from that. Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he was a magus you know." There was that word she used again, mage. Minsoo was a mage. "For all sort of reasons, it happens. That's what's the books will try to explain. And then others go on to tell you how you can change the world when you're awake. Some call that miracle, occult, witchery, mojo, or just simply, magic. It exists, and everything significant that happens in the world is because of it."

"And now you want to know what you should do with it." Silverton smiled as she leaned over to a row of pink and blue-hued flowers that seemed to welcome her outstretched fingers.

"Oh!" Minsoo says, genuinely taken aback when the librarian produced the thin tome. Then, when reference is made to this entity watching over her, the entity that has become more active now that Minsoo had awoken, she looks embarrassed:

"Sorry. I’m still… trying to figure that whole thing out." she says, gesturing vaguely above and behind her!

"I… I don’t know if I’m a philosophy mage…" she starts, and smothers the idea of making a pun with major. "My powers seem more… physical, I guess. And I can sense things, I think."

She listens as the librarian lists all the names for what Minsoo and the others could now do.

"And what do you call it? What do you think people should do with it?"

"Not from a book then," Silverton gazed at Minsoo a bit more intensely when Minsoo mentioned a different direction than philosophy. "Something more like this?" She directed the teen to a cluster of buds, and spoke very softly to them as Minsoo saw them bloom into a sprig of pretty pink flowers. "It's how you made sure Sarah didn't injure herself. Or like this?" Without appearing to touch the flower, Minsoo saw the petals waft towards the librarian's outstretched hand. "That's what you did with the javelin. Or physical as in oneself? Your speed."One moment Silverton was standing to the left of Minsoo, the next, she was on her right, still admiring the same shrub of flowers.

"What do I call it? Sacred magic. You're blessed. And it seems your friend agrees with me, it's why you were drawn to see me. He's an angel you know, at least that's the term for it in our language. A rather Old Testament one if you catch my meaning."

"What do we do when we're blessed with these gifts? I think you already know the answer to that." She smiled patiently, her beaming coming from Minsoo's starting self-discovery.

Minsoo almost falters under the librarians scrutiny. Here she was, turning down books… from a librarian.

"Oh, it’s just… I just mean…" she starts, but the librarian is already offering alternatives. The young girl is dizzy trying to follow the quick flurry of both magic and movement that follows. Delicate, yet accurate… unlike the harsh almost-failure of trying to stop the javelin.

"Well, I don’t know! But… as soon as we got our powers, we felt like we had to do something. Save the girl that went missing. Stop that javelin. Figure out what’s going on here at school. So… I guess we are the good guys?" she said, and looking at the librarian, she had little reason to doubt that idea.

"Especially, if… you know… Angels are watching!"

"If you were one of the bad guys your divine guardian would've let you know in no uncertain terms." The corner of Silverton's lips wrinkled in a soft smile at that last comment. "You might have been ... smitten." It was not the first time Minsoo heard the word 'smite'. "You don't have to do anything, or at least you have to learn to deal with yourself first before trying to help others." Quiet words of wisdom from the senior librarian; Minsoo could see how she looked much older in the twilight than Minsoo had thought. "You did well today Kim Minsoo, in case no one's said that yet. You saved someone, and also saved Sarah in the process."

"This business with the freshman, Emily, that's the worrying one. Someone is sowing chaos, for a reason. But that's a big thing. If you want to make a difference, start smaller. If Wren says Daniela needs help, go help. She must be feeling just as lost as you were."

"If it's your magic you want to learn more about, I'm better at pointing you to a book, or showing you through nature." The flowers Silverton touched earlier seemed to sway in agreement. "Silly Corbin, he's probably better in coaching you if you're mastering yourself."

"Start smaller." Minsoo responds with a nod. "Got it!"

And then Minsoo sensed that her time with the librarian was at an end.

"Wait, well… There’s books on all sorts of things, right? I mean… people write books about baseball."

Baseball for Dummies…

"Maybe I will take a book! It couldn’t hurt. And Coach Corbin will be around too, right?" she says, trying to have her cake and eat it.

Unless something happens to Corbin… Minsoo thought, unhappily. For a moment, she felt like they were nothing but chess pieces on a board!

Sacred Songs of the Amesha Spentas were the words on the cover that Silverton palmed over to Minsoo, the one she was holding in her hand all this while. the volume itself was a nondescript hardback, as yellowed as some library books were, and a quick flip showed a scattering of illustrations as chapter openers for the various verse compilations within. The title sounded obscure, but it was probably too much to expect a Magic for Dummies book lying around with step-by-step instructions.

"Coach will explain things in a very different way than I would, even though we might ultimately be talking about the same thing. Some call them paradigms, and for your magic to make sense to you, it must be coherent to a paradigm, otherwise it won't work. I'll elaborate..." Since they were talking about what Minsoo could learn from a book, Silverton went on to describe why a mage understanding the power of angelic song, which was the content of this book, and trying to see how it resonated with them as they expressed their magic, would be fundamentally different from a practitioner honing martial arts skills, maintaining a meditative stance for hours, and channeling their chi to produce the magic they wanted.

Silverton was patient; Minsoo could tell how much the librarian had all the time and love in the world to talk about a book, any book, as if there were always pearls of wisdom to be gleaned from its pages, one line at a time. Learning from her would be a different experience than learning from Corbin.

The afterthought Minsoo had about Corbin was like an intuitive flash. She kind of surmised that the teachers all seemed held back from openly discussing these matters of magic. This was why the group of them felt very much in the dark, not knowing who to trust. Perhaps Silverton wasn't as constrained since she was a member of staff, but not strictly teaching staff. Would Corbin get into trouble for actively seeking out herself and Jonathan earlier to nudge them towards acknowledging their powers? Minsoo thought the chess-piece idea might not just apply to the students, but to the teachers too?

Minsoo listened and absorbed as much as she could until her temples started to hum. The day had been long and the energy she had exerted or that had been exerted around her seemed to weigh on her come evening time.

She wanted to ask about the new arrivals to the school, and the interrogation she had undergone in more detail, but that would wait. The prospect of a whole secretive community both excited the girl and made her nervous. Who could she trust? Who could she share with? Who shared similar powers to her? Was it just Corbin? Were other staff members also skilled in this… stuff?

A million questions or more ran through the young woman’s mind. A million had already been answered. The felt full to bursting.

"Thank you. For this…" she says, showing the book once more. "And everything. Lots to think about. I’ll be back… probably sooner than you’d like!" she promises, laughing for the librarians benefit!

"Think about why your life has been especially blessed, and why someone is looking out for you all the time. That's your most precious gift Minsoo, think about blessing others forward." Silverton's observant parting words sounded like a benediction as Minsoo finally left school as the sun set. Another whirlwind of a day!