The math class had settled into that strange, almost unnatural kind of quiet that only happens when a room full of teenagers is technically supposed to be paying attention, the kind of silence that looks calm from the outside but is actually filled with tiny distractions simmering beneath the surface. At the front of the classroom, the teacher stood beside the digital board slowly explaining something about calculus and integration, his voice steady and patient in the way teachers often speak when they know half the class has already mentally checked out, while rows of students sat hunched over their desks pretending to follow along, some genuinely trying to keep up with the lesson while others stared blankly at their notebooks as if the symbols written there might magically start making sense if they looked at them long enough. The afternoon sunlight streamed lazily through the tall classroom windows, spreading across the polished floor and the scratched wooden desks that had seen years of bored students tapping pencils and carving initials into their surfaces, and in that warm glow the entire room almost looked peaceful.
But the illusion didn't last long, because boredom had a way of creeping in fast during math class, and slowly, quietly, a few students began slipping their hands into their pockets or under their desks, pulling out their phones with the kind of stealthy precision that came from years of practice avoiding a teacher's glare. Within seconds several screens lit up across the room, small glowing rectangles reflecting off sleepy faces as they opened Vibe, the most addictive social platform that had taken over the lives of almost everyone under the age of twenty. On the surface it looked harmless, almost identical to the old social media apps people had used decades ago—scrolling feeds, short videos, filtered photos, the usual nonsense—but Vibe had one feature that made it dangerously irresistible: the longer you stayed on the app, the more points you earned. Screen time meant rewards, and rewards meant everything from gift cards to free meals at places like McDonald's or Burger King, even discounts on clothes or gaming subscriptions, which was enough to keep people glued to their screens longer than they probably should have been.
But those little rewards were just the bait.
The real reason people were obsessed with Vibe was the social ranking system, a feature that had quietly turned into one of the most powerful status symbols in the city. The more active you were, the higher your rank climbed, and a higher rank meant access to privileges that most people would kill for—exclusive districts of the city where only the elite crowd hung out, luxury restaurants where meals were free for top-ranked users, priority access to job placements once you graduated, even invitations to private events that most teenagers only saw in other people's feeds. It had turned popularity into something measurable, something almost official, and while the younger generation treated it like the most natural thing in the world, the teachers hated it with a quiet, simmering frustration they rarely bothered hiding. Some of them tried to ban phones entirely, others gave up and pretended not to notice the glowing screens scattered across their classrooms, and a few simply didn't care anymore, figuring it wasn't their problem if an entire generation was willingly addicted to a ranking system designed to keep them staring at their phones like lab rats chasing the next reward.
At the very back of the classroom, in the row that most teachers pretended not to notice unless something went horribly wrong, sat Ethan Walker with Lucas Reed slouched in the chair to his left and Noah Park leaning half sideways on the desk to his right, the three of them arranged like soldiers who had survived a long night battle and were now paying the price for it in the dull, merciless light of a math lecture. None of them were even pretending to stay awake anymore. Ethan's head rested heavily on his folded arms while Lucas leaned back so far in his chair it looked like gravity might win the argument at any moment, and Noah had mastered the impressive skill of sleeping with his eyes half open so that from a distance it almost looked like he was still following along with the lesson. This had become their routine ever since the release of Alien Siege 2667, a game so ridiculously addictive that the three of them had spent the past several nights pushing through level after level like obsessed maniacs determined to defeat every boss the developers had thrown at them, which meant sleep had quietly become optional and school hours had unofficially turned into recovery time.
Getting those back seats hadn't been easy either. In fact, it had required a level of negotiation that Ethan still wasn't entirely comfortable thinking about. Most students preferred the back of the classroom because it was the safest place to avoid attention, but Ethan, Lucas, and Noah had needed those seats for a very specific purpose: uninterrupted sleep. So when they couldn't convince the usual group sitting there to move, things got a little messy. Lucas and Noah had ended up making a deal with Derek Maddox, the school's unofficial heavyweight in the world of hallway intimidation and questionable activities, and that deal involved delivering a package for him every once in a while, a job Ethan had refused to take part in from the beginning because the whole thing smelled wrong in a way that made his instincts itch.
Every package looked the same—wrapped in a plain white envelope, sealed tightly with thick brown tape like someone had gone out of their way to make sure nobody could casually peek inside, and written across the front in bold marker were the same strange details: "Derek Maddox – date of the day – some random name." The name changed every time. Sometimes it was something innocent like sunflowers or roses, other times it was something weird like green apples or other harmless-looking words that didn't explain anything at all. Ethan had seen enough movies and read enough news stories to know that when something looked that suspicious, it usually meant one thing.
Drugs.
Or something worse.
Lucas and Noah insisted it wasn't their problem and that they were just delivering whatever Derek told them to deliver without asking questions, arguing that the arrangement solved their seat problem without dragging Ethan into the middle of it, which had led to more than one heated argument between them in the past week. Ethan hated it, not because he was trying to play the hero or act morally superior, but because the entire situation felt like standing too close to something that could explode at any moment, and he had made it clear more than once that he didn't want anything to do with Derek Maddox's mysterious little courier business. Eventually the argument had burned itself out the way arguments between friends usually do, leaving behind an uneasy compromise where Lucas and Noah continued running the deliveries while Ethan stepped back from the whole mess entirely, frustrated but unwilling to tear the group apart over something they insisted was harmless. Still, every time he saw another white envelope appear in Lucas's backpack, Ethan couldn't shake the feeling that sooner or later the situation was going to catch up with them, and when it did, it probably wouldn't end quietly.
Sitting a few rows ahead of them, diagonally placed so they could easily turn around without drawing too much attention, were Maya Rivera and Elena Kovacs, two people who had somehow, for reasons even they probably couldn't fully explain, taken on the unofficial responsibility of keeping Ethan, Lucas, and Noah from completely destroying their academic lives. They had been doing it for so long that it had almost become part of the daily routine—whispering warnings when a teacher started walking down the aisle, nudging desks when attendance was being called, occasionally kicking the legs of sleeping idiots behind them whenever someone's name echoed through the classroom and the risk of getting caught started rising. In a strange way they functioned like a human alarm system for the trio in the back row, making sure those three idiots managed to survive each class period without accidentally failing simply because they slept through everything.
Maya and Elena had long since grown used to the ridiculous responsibility, though Elena treated it more like an amusing side hobby while Maya sometimes acted like she had been forced into babysitting three overgrown children who never learned when to shut up and behave. The two of them sat quietly with their notebooks open, occasionally glancing back to check whether the boys were about to get themselves into trouble again, and more often than not they were the only reason Ethan, Lucas, and Noah hadn't been dragged to the principal's office a dozen times already.
The situation between Ethan and Maya, however, was a complicated mess of its own making, and most of it could be traced back to one painfully awkward moment that still lived rent-free inside Ethan's memory. A few months earlier he had somehow figured out that Maya had a crush on him—nothing dramatic, just the kind of quiet interest girls sometimes tried to hide behind casual conversations and sideways glances—but instead of handling the situation like a normal human being with basic social intelligence, Ethan had decided to confront the situation with the subtlety of a freight train.
It had happened in the school corridor near the locker area, where rows of metal lockers lined the walls and students moved back and forth between classes like a noisy river of backpacks and conversations. Maya had been standing at her locker, sliding her card across the sensor panel that unlocked it—the school had replaced old mechanical locks with digital card access years ago, each card tied directly to the student's identity and academic records—and she had been in the middle of pulling out her books when Ethan suddenly walked straight up to her without a single ounce of hesitation.
And then he said the dumbest possible thing.
"Hey… do you have a crush on me?"
Not quietly.
Not privately.
Loud enough for half the damn hallway to hear.
The effect was instant and brutal. Conversations around them slowed. A few nearby students turned their heads. Someone laughed somewhere down the corridor. Maya froze completely with a textbook halfway out of her locker while the color slowly climbed into her face in that very specific way that meant the situation had just become painfully awkward for everyone involved. Ethan stood there waiting for an answer like he had just asked her what time it was, completely unaware that he had detonated a social bomb in the middle of a crowded hallway.
Maya never really answered the question. Instead she had muttered something barely audible, slammed her locker shut, and walked away while several students nearby tried—and failed—not to laugh at the entire scene. From that day onward the dynamic between them had shifted into something strange and slightly uncomfortable, because whatever quiet interest Maya might have had before that moment had quickly evaporated under the bright spotlight of embarrassment.
And ever since then Ethan had been stuck in the slow, awkward process of trying to rebuild whatever chance he had completely destroyed in a single stupid sentence, occasionally throwing out clumsy attempts at conversation or half-hearted jokes whenever they crossed paths, hoping that maybe—just maybe—Maya Rivera would eventually forget the day he publicly asked if she had a crush on him in front of half the school.
For several quiet minutes the classroom remained in that delicate balance between attention and boredom, the teacher continuing his explanation at the front while chalk symbols and digital graphs slowly filled the board, until suddenly his voice cut across the room with the kind of sharp authority that meant someone had just been selected as the unlucky sacrifice for participation.
"Lucas Reed," the teacher said, adjusting his glasses while scanning the room, "why don't you read the theory section under calculus integration on page forty-seven and explain the second principle for the class."
Unfortunately Lucas Reed was currently somewhere far away from calculus, mathematics, school, and possibly even the physical world itself because he was sleeping like a damn rock with his head tilted sideways and his mouth slightly open. The only reason he hadn't started snoring was probably because gravity hadn't yet decided which direction his head wanted to fall. From the teacher's perspective Lucas simply looked like a very relaxed student thinking deeply about mathematics, but from the back row it was painfully obvious he was completely unconscious.
Elena noticed the problem immediately.
Without turning her head too obviously she leaned back slightly and whispered under her breath, her voice barely louder than the rustle of paper.
"Lucas… hey, wake up you idiot."
Lucas didn't move.
Elena sighed, clearly used to this routine, then quietly stretched her foot backward and kicked the leg of his chair.
Hard.
Lucas jolted awake like someone had just detonated a small explosive under his seat.
"YES MA'AM I'M STILL WORKING ON QUESTION FOURTEEN," he blurted loudly, his voice echoing through the room with the absolute confidence of someone who had no idea what the hell was actually happening.
For about half a second the classroom froze.
Then the teacher slowly lowered his marker and stared at him.
"Ma'am?" the teacher repeated slowly, lowering the marker and staring at Lucas like he had just insulted his entire bloodline."Lucas… do I look like a ma'am to you?"
Lucas blinked, still trying to reboot his brain.
The teacher's voice rose slightly.
"LUCAS… I asked you to read the theory section from the book."
The entire class exploded into laughter.
Lucas looked around like a man who had just been dropped into the middle of a conversation halfway through, fumbling with his textbook while Elena leaned back again and whispered urgently without turning around.
"Page forty-seven, third paragraph, just read it before he kills you."
Lucas flipped the book open like a desperate gambler searching for the right card and began reading whatever words landed under his eyes, his voice shaky but determined as the laughter slowly died down around him. The teacher sighed in defeat and allowed it to continue because at this point salvaging the situation was easier than fighting it.
And then, like a gift from the universe itself—
The school bell rang.
The sharp metallic sound blasted through the hallways and instantly the classroom erupted into movement as chairs scraped against the floor and backpacks zipped open, students already halfway out the door before the teacher even finished speaking.
"Remember everyone, starting tomorrow there will be a one week—"
But nobody heard the rest.
The corridor outside had already turned into a wall of noise as hundreds of students poured into the hallways, voices overlapping and lockers slamming shut like a chain reaction of metal thunder.
At the back of the room Ethan, Noah, and Lucas gathered their bags slowly, still half asleep while Maya and Elena lingered near their desks pretending to organize notebooks and check their schedules even though the truth was painfully obvious—they were waiting for the three idiots to finally finish packing.
Once everyone was ready the group walked outside together toward the basketball court behind the school where rows of wooden benches and tables sat under tall trees, a common hangout spot where students usually gathered before heading home. The late afternoon sun stretched long shadows across the ground while the cool breeze carried the distant sound of bouncing basketballs and casual conversations drifting across the open yard.
They found a free table and sat down, backpacks dropped lazily on the benches.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then Noah leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and looking around the group.
"Yo… where's Neil?" he asked casually. "He didn't log in yesterday. I thought maybe playing with us would cheer him up a little."
Ethan sighed softly.
"Give him some time, man," he said. "You know what he's dealing with right now… it's not exactly something you bounce back from overnight."
Neil had been Ethan's first real friend, the kind of childhood friendship that forms when two kids discover they share the exact same strange interests. While most other kids their age had been obsessed with sports or social media, Ethan and Neil had spent years fascinated with space, NASA missions, and every documentary they could find about the universe. Their sleepovers usually involved watching old science fiction movies until two in the morning, and their all-time favorite had always been the Alien franchise created by Ridley Scott, a series they had probably rewatched more times than they could count.
But lately Neil's life had turned into something closer to a nightmare.
A few months earlier his mother had been involved in a horrific house fire that had left her entire body severely burned, so badly that even the doctors struggled to recognize her beneath the damage. The recovery had been long, painful, and uncertain, and as if that wasn't enough, Neil's father had disappeared shortly afterward when it became painfully obvious that the man had loved Neil's mother more for her appearance than for who she actually was. When the accident took that away, he simply walked out of their lives.
Since then Neil had been doing everything himself.
Cooking.
Cleaning.
Running errands.
Taking care of his mother while also trying to survive school.
For an eighteen-year-old kid, it was the kind of responsibility that could crush a person if they weren't careful.
Ethan leaned back in his chair and looked down at the table, quietly hoping that wherever Neil was at that moment, he was somehow holding things together.
Maya and Elena had mostly stayed quiet while the boys talked, occasionally exchanging small glances with each other as the conversation bounced from one topic to another the way it usually did when Ethan, Lucas, and Noah were involved. The afternoon was slowly drifting toward evening now, the sunlight beginning to soften as long shadows stretched across the basketball court and the trees surrounding the school grounds swayed gently in the breeze. It wasn't dark yet, but the sky already carried that slow shift in color that meant the day was winding down, and in another couple of hours the streets of Oakridge would be slipping into the calm quiet of night.
Eventually backpacks were lifted, chairs scraped back, and the group stood up almost at the same time, the moment having that natural feeling of friends realizing the day had finally run its course. Maya and Elena lived only a few blocks away from the school, which meant their walk home was short and easy, while the boys had a longer ride ahead of them on their bicycles.
Ethan slung his backpack over his shoulder and glanced awkwardly toward Maya, clearly trying to act normal despite the strange tension that still floated between them from the locker incident months earlier. He gave a small half-smile that looked like he was forcing his brain to cooperate with his mouth.
"Alright… I'll see you tomorrow. Bye."
Then, almost immediately realizing he had ignored Elena completely, he added quickly like someone trying to fix a social mistake before it became obvious.
"Bye Elena."
Maya gave a small nod, Elena smirked slightly like she found the whole awkward routine entertaining, and a moment later the boys were already walking away across the court toward the bike racks while the two girls turned down the sidewalk leading toward their neighborhood.
Within minutes Ethan, Lucas, and Noah were riding down the quiet suburban streets, their bicycles rolling smoothly along the pavement as the wind rushed past them.
Noah spoke first.
"Yo… we still going to the movies this weekend?"
Lucas glanced over.
"What movie?"
"The new one by Gary G," Noah said. "The one about the lawn gnomes."
Ethan laughed immediately.
"Oh yeah, that stupid shit looks amazing."
Noah started explaining the plot again as they rode.
"Apparently it's about this quiet suburban town where weird things keep happening every night—trash cans getting knocked over, people's lawn furniture moved around, garden tools disappearing—and everyone thinks it's just vandalism until they figure out the whole neighborhood is being invaded by these psycho lawn gnomes that somehow came to life."
Lucas started laughing.
"You're telling me the villain is a bunch of angry garden decorations?"
"Hundreds of them," Noah said. "Apparently they're organizing and trying to take over the neighborhood yard by yard."
Ethan nearly lost control of his bike laughing.
"Okay yeah we're definitely watching that."
Lucas hesitated slightly though.
"Well… maybe."
Both Ethan and Noah looked at him immediately.
"Maybe?" Ethan said suspiciously.
Lucas shrugged.
"I was kind of saving some money."
"For what?" Noah asked.
Lucas hesitated again.
Then Ethan's eyes widened with realization.
"Oh shit," he said slowly. "You're trying to take Elena out."
Noah immediately burst out laughing.
"Oh my god this guy is down bad."
Lucas rolled his eyes.
"Shut up."
But that was the worst possible thing he could have said because Ethan and Noah immediately started teasing him even harder, shouting dramatic encouragement while riding their bikes down the street like idiots.
"Oh look at Romeo over here trying to plan a date."
"Should we buy you flowers too?"
"Maybe write her a poem?"
"Fuck off," Lucas muttered, though he was laughing too.
After a few more minutes of riding the road eventually split into different streets leading toward their neighborhoods.
Ethan slowed his bike slightly.
"Alright, I'm heading this way."
Noah nodded.
"Later."
Lucas lifted one hand off the handlebars.
"See you tomorrow."
Within seconds the group scattered down separate streets, their bicycles disappearing one by one into the quiet suburban roads of Oakridge City, the evening settling calmly over the neighborhood as the last part of the day slowly drifted toward night.
The road leading toward Ethan's neighborhood curved gently through a quiet stretch of suburban houses where the afternoon had begun slowly fading into that peaceful hour between day and evening, the kind of calm that usually made the entire city feel safe and ordinary. The sun hung low above the rooftops, pouring warm orange light across the sidewalks while long shadows stretched beneath the trees that lined both sides of the street, their branches swaying lazily in the wind as dry leaves scraped softly across the pavement. Somewhere far down the road a car passed through an intersection with the faint hum of tires against asphalt, and the distant murmur of traffic drifted through the air like background noise from another world, quiet enough that the rhythmic clicking of Ethan's bicycle chain became the loudest sound around him.
It was one of those perfectly normal afternoons that felt so uneventful it almost faded into the background of memory, the kind of moment people never realized was important until something strange happened to break it apart.
Ethan rode casually down the street, one hand loosely gripping the handlebar while the other rested in the pocket of his jacket as the cool breeze brushed against his face, his mind still drifting through the conversations from earlier that day—the movie plan, Lucas being teased about Elena, the usual nonsense that filled the hours between school and home. His neighborhood wasn't far now, just a few more turns past the quiet residential blocks where identical houses sat behind trimmed lawns and wooden fences, where sprinklers ticked across grass and the smell of someone cooking dinner floated faintly through open windows.
And that was when he noticed them.
At first they barely registered in his mind, just two figures standing near the edge of the sidewalk where the road bent slightly around a cluster of trees. A man and a woman. Nothing unusual about that, people stood around neighborhoods all the time—talking, waiting for someone, checking directions. But something about them felt… wrong.
They weren't talking.
They weren't moving.
They were just standing there.
Watching.
As Ethan rolled closer the details slowly sharpened into focus, and the strange feeling in his chest began tightening slightly. Their clothes looked worn, not torn exactly but dusty in a way that suggested they had been traveling for a long time without rest. The man's jacket was faded and creased like it had been through weeks of hard weather, while the woman's hair hung loosely around her shoulders, tangled by wind and exhaustion. Their faces looked tired too, the kind of deep tired that came from more than just lack of sleep, like people who had been searching for something for far longer than they should have.
But the thing that unsettled Ethan the most was the way they were looking at him.
Not curious.
Not casual.
Intense.
The woman's eyes were locked on him as if she had just found something she had been desperately trying to locate for years, while the man stood slightly beside her, close enough that his body naturally shielded her from the road, his expression tense but hopeful at the same time.
Ethan felt a small flicker of unease crawl up the back of his neck.
Probably tourists, he thought.
Or people looking for directions.
Maybe they were lost.
He slowed slightly as he approached them but kept riding, planning to pass without stopping because the situation felt awkward enough already.
Then the woman spoke.
"Ethan."
The sound of his name sliced cleanly through the quiet street.
Ethan's hands instinctively squeezed the brakes and the bicycle stopped with a sharp screech of rubber against pavement.
For a moment he didn't move.
His heart skipped once.
Then he slowly turned his head toward them.
They were still staring at him.
Now the woman's eyes looked wet, like tears were forming but she was forcing them back, while the man beside her stared with an expression that looked halfway between disbelief and relief.
Ethan frowned.
"Do I… know you?"
The man glanced at the woman quickly, his voice barely more than a whisper when he spoke.
"It's really him."
The woman nodded slowly, her breathing uneven as if she had been holding something inside for far too long.
Ethan shifted uncomfortably beside his bicycle.
Something about the way they were looking at him made his skin crawl.
Then the woman stepped forward slightly.
Her voice trembled.
"Ethan…"
She paused.
And when she finally said the words, she said them quietly, almost gently, like someone afraid the moment might break if she spoke too loudly.
"We are your parents."
For a second Ethan just stared at her.
Then he laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was ridiculous.
"Yeah, okay," he said, shaking his head while climbing back onto the bicycle. "Nice joke. My parents are at home."
The man and woman didn't move.
They just watched him.
Ethan pushed the pedal and the bicycle began rolling forward again, the moment already starting to feel like some weird misunderstanding he didn't want to waste time thinking about.
Then the man spoke again.
And the words that came out of his mouth froze Ethan's blood.
"You were born on July fourteenth, two thousand six hundred forty-nine."
Ethan's foot slipped off the pedal.
The bicycle wobbled.
Slowly he turned his head back toward them.
The man's voice remained calm.
"We named you Ethan."
The street suddenly felt colder.
Ethan stared at them for a long moment, something dark and uneasy twisting deep inside his chest, but he said nothing. Instead he forced the bicycle forward again and began riding away, faster now, the quiet suburban road blurring past him as the wind rushed loudly through his ears.
By the time he reached his house his heart was beating far too fast for a normal ride.
He pushed the door open.
Inside everything looked completely normal.
His father sat in the living room watching television.
His mother called from the kitchen asking how school was.
Nothing felt strange.
Nothing felt wrong.
And yet as Ethan stood there in the doorway, one thought kept repeating inside his mind like a quiet echo he couldn't silence.
How the hell did those strangers know his birthday.