Alex woke to the touch of a potion vial being forced between his lips.
He gasped for air, twisting his head to shake away the tip of the vial that had been pressed into his mouth, but his struggles went unacknowledged.
His hands were bound behind him by Nack, and before him one of Eldric's minions was pouring liquid after liquid down Alex's throat from the vial. Each stream of liquid flowed down and filled him with energy, and he could feel himself being rejuvenated.
They were making him drink healing potion, and Alex, as if by some primal instinct, stopped struggling and let the liquid pour freely down his throat. His body was craving it and was drinking it down devouringly.
He was bruised all over, his body had been drained of its energy, and he had swollen cheeks and a battered face from Eldric's earlier punching. His body craved the liquid to revitalize itself, and so it drank without stopping.
The vial emptied and Alex's hands were freed from behind him. Alex lifted his head and saw Eldric looking down at him with a face frozen into a cold, passive expression that betrayed not a single emotion.
Eldric was looking at Alex as though Alex did not even deserve the dignity of a glance, as though he were something far beneath that. Eldric had his hands in his pockets and was merely staring back with complete indifference. There was no remorse despite how savagely Eldric had punched Alex just moments before, no acknowledgment of the pain Eldric had inflicted, pain that had been awful and all consuming. Yet Eldric did not care.
Instead of any apology, Eldric bent on his knees and lifted Alex's face to meet his own by grabbing onto Alex's chin. Alex, having regained some of his strength, immediately jerked Eldric's hand away and was about to push himself upright, but Nack and another one of Eldric's minions seized him from all sides. Alex's arms were grabbed by someone, and his waist was locked from behind by Nack's grip.
"Struggle all you want," Eldric chuckled, and a cruel smile curled onto his lips. "But if you dare snitch on us, or tell the president or anyone else about what happened today, then." Eldric did not finish his sentence but drew a slow finger across his own throat, the implication unmistakably clear.
Eldric leaned forward and brought his face close to Alex's, his black eyes gazing back at Alex the way a predator gazes at prey it fully intends to continue devouring. "Also, if you breathe a word of this to the princess, then." Eldric suddenly wrapped his hand around Alex's throat. The grip was tight, so impossibly tight that Alex's lungs screamed for air and a suffocating darkness began crawling at the edges of his vision. Eldric did not release. Eldric held on and held on, and only when the blood had fully drained from Alex's face did Eldric finally let go.
"Your life will become even more of a hell than what you experienced today," Eldric smiled, and it was a pure, agonizing smile of someone who did not consider Alex to be human at all. "So you better keep everything that happened here to yourself, bastard."
Eldric straightened up, turned on his heel and walked toward the toilet door. His minions fell in line behind him, and Nack threw one last smirk back at Alex with a low chuckle before disappearing through the door.
Alex clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles ached. He wanted to smash that smirk off Nack's face and keep on punching until there was nothing left to punch. They were not human. They were demons wearing human skin, and Alex had no desire whatsoever of ever being civil with them.
Alex pushed himself off the floor, smoothed down his clothes and turned toward the mirror. The toilet was empty now. He walked closer and stared at a face he almost did not recognize.
How could he? The boy in the mirror was a complete mess. His tie was crooked, his face bore the leftover marks of bruising, his hair had fallen in disarray across his forehead, and his eyes looked distant, hollow, like someone who had forgotten the way to live.
"Aaaaahhh!!" Alex screamed and drove his fist hard into the wall beside the mirror. The wall did not yield, but he did. Pain exploded through his knuckles and shot up through his hand, and he felt something snap inside his bones, but that was something that did not matter right now.
Alex twisted the tap on and began splashing water over his face rapidly, without stopping himself, most of the water flying behind him or spilling down the front of his uniform. He did not care. He was lost inside himself, consumed by something that had no name, and he started splashing water so furiously and so hard against his face that his own hands were slapping his cheeks with every pass, over and over, the sting of it mixing with everything else.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!" Alex cried out. "I can't live like thisssss!!!!"
Alex stopped splashing and grabbed the edges of the basin with both hands, squeezing tightly, and stared hard at the reflection gazing back at him from the mirror. His weak, wretched reflection. "Why are you so weak!!!" he screamed at it. "Why!"
"Why!"
"Why!"
Alex lowered his face directly into the running stream of water and started splashing it over himself again, as though he could wash away whatever was festering inside him. He was petrified by his own reflection, had never in his life seen such a visibly disturbed face staring back at him, and so he turned away from it, splashing and splashing without pause.
"Why am I so weak?" Alex's tears began to fall, mixing into the water on his face and disappearing. He stopped splashing and moved to the side wall, pressing his forehead against it and beginning to hammer his fist repeatedly against the surface. "Why can't I level up?" The words choked and broke apart in his throat, and his tears spilled freely down his cheeks.
Alex did not know the answer. There was no one here to give him one. He turned around, pressing his back flat against the wall instead, and his legs gave out beneath him. He slid down and landed heavily on the floor, then pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his face into them, hiding himself into his small self. And then he screamed again. He screamed and cried and let it all pour out of him in the cold toilet room, with no one watching and no one to hear.
***
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