Along the gravel path, surrounded by the remnants of tress, the shape of Universalis grew larger with every step they took. They hadn’t seen anyone else so far, figured they were all busy at this exact moment. Either that or the entirety of the looming building was as abandoned as the calderan outskirts. Once the entrance was in full view, Raime stopped. Even under the light of the Sun, the gates were still impressive. Despite that, they exuded a sense of faded glory, like they couldn’t bother to display the full extent of their bygone luster. When was the last time they ever stepped inside? They never did alone before, at least. For all of their outings around the city, the Minnow Gardens hadn’t been their most common target. The district didn’t have much to offer in terms of exploration, even at sundown the place was only good to get away from the noise of the city entirely, and Raime knew many more spots less humid for that purpose.
They had woken up late, unbothered by the lack of schedule. A side effect of the alcohol maybe, they were wholly unconcerned about much of anything. They weren’t even a tad hungover, all of their limbs feeling as responsive as ever since that day. Their mind had focused on the ceiling above their bed, finding nothing to latch onto but staying fixated nonetheless. In a decision lost in the fog of the night before, they had kept their window open, Avril’s recommendation probably. The light of the Sun pooled in to welcome them, alongside the usual traffic of noise the Hull brought to their floor. They could have stayed there, motionless, eyes lost in nothing, waiting until the Sun crept ever lower, so that they’d move to Helix. Raime struggled to place a point of morality to this choice. Sensible, patient, cautious. Cowardly, reckless, dismissive. Now that they had started questioning it, the right option seemed to avoid arguing with themselves altogether, and they rose from their bed.
And here they were, back to stillness. Even closer to the center of the campus, they still hadn’t seen any other sign of life. This didn’t motivate Raime to confidently barge in, instead they looked to their right, towards the east wing, silently standing vigil. Without giving it a second thought, they veered from their course to head towards the brick walls surrounding it. The great east wing doors were shut and locked, no card reader nor key hole left to invite an overture. Looking up, the tower on the southern angle of the building’s annex felt increasingly alluring. They had been inside the east wing, long ago now, but they had remembered, more than anything else, a perverse attraction to every place they’d been shooed away from. Locked classrooms, attics, basements, and the tall tower of the east wing. Their eyes still following the outline of the building, uncounsciously, they had done a full circle around the perimeter of the wall. Without a shred of doubt or hesitation, Raime went down, stretching their knees, and up, cracking their elbows on the way. The joints still snapped into place with a satisfying sound, reassuring them that even with the smoothness they felt throughout their limbs, their skeleton still moved as it should. With that, they looked both ways and behind, but the only witnesses would be short grass and naked trees. Raime then started to climb the brick wall.
Devoid of any more security measure other than a higher than average wall, Raime landed on the other side safely, without a cramp. They dusted off their suit, still not returned to Avril and looked around. No hidden activity, just less grass and more gravel. From the inside of the wall, they could see patches of timid ivy trying desperately to cling to the depressions in the old stones, barely hanging on to their roots, growing aimlessly. Even without obvious surveillance, Raime snuck around, their eyes shifting swiftly at everything around them. They couldn’t see any life from outside the windows, nor from the outdoor paths. All clear, just for them, they tried the first glass doors to the east wing and found no resistance. Simply opening them, slowly, the doors raised a wave of dust across the inside of the building. No complaints from anyone, as the dust unceremoniously fell down to join its peers on the ground and on veiled furniture. Everything around them was left as orderly as Raime remembered, yet every table, chair and desk had their shape covered by drapes, their colors hidden by the Sun. Its light made the density of the dust in the air act like a thin fog and Raime coughed in their fist. The particular room they’d entered had to have been a classroom, if it wasn’t the same one, it was identical to the place Raime had spent a few short years in. There wasn’t much to recall, and the place didn’t give much to remember it by. The walls were eerily clean, where Raime could still vividly replace the spots where they’d been littered in drawings and crude writing.
Raime tried another door, heading deeper inside the annex. Reaching the halls, the silence didn’t falter. The ambient melancholy moved something in their heart, crossing the empty hallways they recalled the path to the tower’s entrance. Their steps echoing those they had taken years and years ago, they saw it again, drawn across their pupils, the forbidden path. It was unassuming, hidden in plain sight, a basic wooden door in the corner of a classroom on the ground floor. With this vivid image in mind, Raime reached their old classroom and swung the door open, sending a violent volley of dust flying around. Their eyes locked onto the door, still where they remembered it being. Brimming with Confidence, they tried the turning the handle. Locked. Something was bound to fight back eventually, Raime still had somewhere to be before sundown so they turned around, decidedly intent on finding a way in quickly. On the other side of the classroom, a human was sitting behind the professor’s desk, under an empty black board. They both locked eyes in stunned silence.
“I didn’t know when to interject,” The human spoke first, halfway mumbling.
Raime quickly looked around their periphery without moving another muscle, expecting some kind of ambush. The human was alone, pale and lanky, his gray and sad looking face rivaled theirs. The chair he sat on and the desk he sat behind were both still veiled. He wasn’t working on some kind of obvious activity, making his presence here more inexplicable than theirs.
“What are you doing here?” Raime asked, squinting.
“Bit of irony there don’t you think?” The human scoffed, cracking half a smile, “You don’t recognize me?”
“Should I?” Raime squinted further.
The reply took the human by surprise, visibly making him recoil in his chair. He didn’t protest immediately, Raime could see he was feeling conflicted in a way that seemed new to him.
“The name’s San Carlo?”
“Nice to meet you?”
Not rid of his obvious confusion, the human slightly opened his mouth, as if ready to argue, and closed it before a sound came out. Laying back against his chair, it looked like he decided to take the situation in stride.
“Sure,” San Carlo replied, “Well I’m having some time to myself, what about you?”
The tone felt slightly combative but Raime relaxed, maybe they were a teacher they had forgotten about. Asking more questions, paying the slightest bit more attention to the space taken between empty air, they were getting used to seeing faces that expected them to know who they were. Even still, if this San Carlo was someone of authority at Universalis, Raime was technically trespassing in restricted territory. Beyond if they were in the right or wrong, they didn’t feel a chill of dread of being caught in the act they would have expected their body to react with. The photo gallery came back to mind, but the Raime that stood amidst the dust now was not the same that had cowered in shadows where they didn’t belong, sheltered by the dark of night. They glanced to the locked door.
“Always wanted to climb the tower, see the view from up there, maybe it goes down? Maybe it lets you access some in between floor?” Raime looked back at San Carlo, barely repressing a grin “You wouldn’t have the key to that, by any chance.”
“Is that all you remembered from your time in school?” San Carlo said with repressed disappointment while he rummaged through his coat, finding a carabiner adorned with dozens of keys that he tossed like a fastball towards Raime, “Knock yourself out, rusted one with three points down.”
“Old school,” Raime replied, shuffling through the metal keys.
They could see San Carlo roll his eyes when they turned their back to him. Feeling the weight of what Raime assumed to be the entirety of Universalis doors in their hands made them deeply miss the punch card they had used in the underbelly. With the right key in hand, the rugged texture between their fingers, they unlocked the door and entered the tower. All that greeted them was scraps of wood and even more dust. Instinctively, Raime looked up. They were indeed at the bottom of the tower they’d seen from the outside, the same one that had teased them while they were younger. Only faint rays of light descended to them, unbroken by an absence of anything between the thin windows at the apex and Raime at the bottom. There were no more stairs, not even a ladder. Where a platform at the very top had been built, there were now only vestiges of wooden beams that no longer supported anything. The only thing the tower offered them was a unique, high pitched whistle from the wind being pushed through the interstices between the old bricks. Raime walked back inside the classroom.
“Can you lock it behind you? I’d still prefer if noone got injured with the splinters and everything.”
Raime obliged without arguing.
“Since when?”
San Carlo whistled in turn, “Three decades or so? We had the time to get rid of all the wood that collapsed, this classroom was unusable for a few years…” He looked to the window, “Back when that would be a problem.”
Raime walked to his desk, leaving the carabiner in front of him. They didn’t have any reason to think the human was lying, this meant that all the time they’d silently wished they could climb the tower, for no deeper reason than to be able to do so, it had already collapsed from the inside. Nothing had been waiting for them on the other side. They crossed eyes with San Carlo. Looking at him closer, they could see the marks of age. Compared to some of the older people Raime had seen, this one looked proper. Clean shaven, modestly dressed and a pleasant fragrance around him, the exact smell of it Raime couldn’t place.
“You’re a teacher here?”
Raime was confident in their assumption but the question still came out without restraint. It would’ve been truly strange if he could contradict them and they wanted to test the possibility.
“I was, I was,” San Carlo sighed, “If you don’t remember seeing me around nor the tower collapsing you must be even younger than I thought… You had fun? Here?”
“Didn’t stay long,” Raime shrugged, sitting themselves on a dusty desk, noticing San Carlo’s brow furrowing slightly in the process, “We were only six in this classroom.”
“Did you ever come back to Universalis on your own?”
Feeling the slightest bit ashamed, Raime shook their head.
“Not before today…”
San Carlo nodded comprehensively. It didn’t look like Raime broke any news to him, but hearing their answer still changed their expression. They looked to the window again, struggling to find something to do with their hands.
“I can’t help but feel like I failed you all… that I should’ve tried harder, that I should’ve fought for it, impose something so that you wouldn’t all be left alone. The only thing I ended up doing was… leave the doors open. The teachers make their own schedule, the students come and go as they please. I doubt anything sticks, I can’t imagine there is any unity or progress. But I choose to not make sure, everytime I come here I stay behind this desk, I rummage over things I could do but… What use would there be for me to go enforce the old laws at this point? I don’t- I don’t want to be like her.”
Raime hadn’t expected such a downpour, San Carlo’s voice had gone progressively lower. They had sat, listening silently, as there was nothing they could say. After a brief pause, his voice picked up again, visibly displeased with how comfortable Raime had gotten.
“You should go now, there’s nothing for anyone here.”
Raime was surprised he felt bashful after saying all of that but they didn’t argue. They believed him when he said there was nothing more for them to see in the east wing. They headed for the door, stopping only halfway into the hallway. Their eyes fell close to the ground, still inside the classroom. Raime discerned a truly amateur drawing of a winged bird, half-heartedly erased, the etch in the wall still holding its shape.
“Hey, for what it’s worth,” Raime said, looking back at San Carlo, “Me and another that was in this class… we’re doing pretty good so far.”
“Do they also break into places without permission?”
“No, very distinguished, proper respectable professional.”
“Well, both of you should go to a class in the main wing while you still can, alright?” San Carlo sighed, offering a slight smile with a wave pushing Raime out of the classroom.
Raime replied with an uncommitted nod and closed the door behind them. They could’ve very well left saying nothing, their clumsy attempt at offering something between an apology and a reassurance felt hollow. Raime had nothing to apologize for, and they didn’t know what could possibly give someone that age any kind of reassurance. It wasn’t a very surprising realization, seeing other people spending most of their time waiting for time to pass, but in this place supposed to embody the antithesis of this lifestyle, San Carlo had felt more out of place than Raime had ever been. They had felt a surging compassion for the teacher, but that wouldn’t be enough to dress the disappointment of finding the elusive tower dilapidated. A precious artifact of the past, one they had kept warm in their heart, preserving its sanctity only for when Raime would be ready to face it. Following the turns Raime’s life had taken, it had felt like the perfect moment, a momentary but precious catharsis that they had been looking forward to without even knowing. All that had waited for them was dust, scraps of wood and a broken old teacher. Well, at least they still had something to look forward next.
Finding their way to the main wing, Raime tried some other doors, just in case, but the rest of them were empty, with only sheets and dust as decoration. They weren’t sure they had ever crossed the threshold between the two wings as a child. Aside from the visual imprint the place had left on their mind, those memories could’ve well been someone else’s. Raime pushed the doors leading to the still in use building, they were surprised to not find them locked, but following their gradual closure, they noticed they had been designed to only open from one side. This seemed like an odd choice of design for when the east wing was still operational, but the issue of practicality evaded them as trying to piece together how San Carlo managed to get in and out consumed Raime’s thoughts.
Juggling with the mind game, Raime wandered around the main wing. Even if the place wasn’t bustling per se, they would still cross someone’s path from time to time, and dust wasn’t clogging their nose anymore. Schedules were plastered here and there, tipping Raime to their destination, but they still dragged their feet, glancing at the Sun whenever they crossed eyes through one of the tall windows strew across the floors. Contrasting with the east wing, every room they spied into felt more grand, more serious, obviously more active. They were more akin to the atrium of City Hall than the small classroom they had known. Eventually, they reached Sihvan’s amphitheater. Sneaking an eye in, the place was more than halfway filled. Raime would have struggled to tell if this audience was as zealously focused as the Major, who they didn’t have any trouble finding, standing tall to the right, a comical circle of empty seats around him. Raime repressed a laugh, he alone would bring down the potential attendance of every class he’d be in.
At this point in time, they weren’t sure how much longer they’d have to wait for him to wrap up, so instead of sitting outside counting cracks in the walls they sneakily made their way down the alleys. Sihvan and a few students shot them a quick look, but their intrusion didn’t make any waves, and the professor didn’t interrupt himself. San Carlo was right, it looked like there were no real code of conduct to respect around the place. Still, Raime wouldn’t cause a ruckus, none of them, especially not the one they were now sitting next to, had any idea what their presence really meant. They felt the Major’s lenses glancing at them as they scooted through empty seats but Raime didn’t react, holding a content smile on their face. Now able to discern what Sihvan was saying, and keeping up with what had been written on the gigantic black board behind him, they came to the conclusion that the subject matter didn’t interest them in the slightest and promptly sunk their face on the desk in front of them, falling asleep instantaneously.