"You said I can come and join your club, so I'm here, and I want to join it."
The words hung in the air, a persistent echo from a conversation that felt like it belonged to a different lifetime. After John had successfully purged the lethal black fog contamination from Cissel, the girl had plummeted into an expectedly deep sleep.
John didn't linger at her bedside. With his task complete and his heart heavy, he turned and moved out of the infirmary with his core group of friends, followed closely by a bewildered and wide-eyed Ben.
The Headmaster had made a final, lingering attempt to secure a sample of the black fluid before they departed, but John had shut the request down right on the spot. Even with the rejection, the old man hadn't looked particularly offended; he had a silent intuition that more opportunities to study the substance would inevitably surface later.
