5. Water Hills #3
The Luxists had directed us here out of hope that Boyband had attended a high-end institution.
It was high end for celebrities and the one percent.
The monks might have seemed perfect in their knowledge, but they were as lost as we were.
Dokkaebi might be the head of education, but this wasn’t education.
Sure, it was a school that followed the requisite curriculum, but that just made it another sheep.
This institution didn’t aim for scholarship.
It relied on gambling parents. A few every few years would succeed, but most would become another piece in their sponsors’ corporate conglomerates.
The more I contemplated, the more I missed Sanna’s tour of the gymnasium. The more I felt the tragedy of these hopeful children and their deceived parents. I didn’t need to go down the track of athletes set up for failure.
Seeing Boyband’s persistent joy, I wondered if he knew.
This was not the school to set your child up to inherit a SocStan empire.
Did they hope that he might have some chance at success?
Finding a life of success without having to hold the burden of a business up?
Was this a hope that he might have freedom, yet not resort back to the life of the lower districts?
I didn’t know. Maybe there was something at this school that I was missing.
I didn’t want to see his parents as another rich and naive couple that thought this school entailed success, but it was hard to see otherwise.
Wanting to criticize it from the start had removed the jaded lens hopeful parents would use to view the school.
Even if it didn’t promise success for all, every parent thought their child would succeed.
Love can distort wisdom. Perhaps that was a good thing.
Regardless, I knew that even the wisest were victims to falsehoods.
Zeg, there was so much to unpack.
Who ran this school? Was this board part of some conglomerate that not only fed employees to companies, but selected new celebrities? There had to be plenty of talented kids here and there was an abundance of untalented celebrities in the world.
Who selected them?
“Alyosha?” Naoma squeezed my hand.
Was she selected to be the Neon Idol?
“Mister Ershov?” Sanna asked.
“Yes?” I laughed and shook my head. “Sorry, just remembering my school years. I think Yuze will like it here.”
Sanna raised her eyebrows and turned to Naoma.
Naoma smiled with her eyes and a slight tilt of her head. “I’m still waiting for the message from the board representative.”
Sanna cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but I assure you that is not possible at this time.”
“But you told me you sent them a message?”
“I said I would try. Unfortunately, I received an immediate rejection.”
Naoma bit her bottom lip, staring at Sanna while she let tension build. “I think it is time to consider other options for Yuze.”
“Ma’am, I assure you we can–”
“Oh, you assure me just like you did with the board representative?”
“Give me one moment, please?”
Naoma inspected her nails, then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “My patience has stretched thin.”
Sanna laughed, though she sounded as if she were unsure how much of a joke it was. She held out a finger and her eyes flashed with neurospace lights. “One moment please.”
Naoma rolled her eyes.
I smiled at Sanna, then realized she was no longer watching.
I pulled Naoma and Boyband back a few feet to whisper. Kuni continued to wander around us, playing his role of a curious child.
“Are you trying to burn our chances here by playing hardball?” I asked her. “I get that we have an in with Boyband, but it doesn’t mean–”
“Settle, du,” Boyband whispered. “Naoma, I mean Mei, works as a model, obviously–”
“Yeah, I know our story. It doesn’t–”
He held a finger up to his lips. “Are you going to let me explain?”
I glanced at Sanna, relieved to see that she was still in conversation in her neurospace.
I nodded.
“We had to make the story as convincing as possible, right? What screams wealth? A little corruption, eh? We didn’t explicitly tell Sanna why Mei came to the Republic, but we put enough hints in her path for her to figure out why.
Not to avoid the war, but to distribute Neon Essence.
With a potential way for the school to siphon Essence, Sanna isn’t going to let you all slip so easily. ”
I looked at Naoma. “You knew about this?”
Her nod matched the calmness of her whisper. “We had to make it believable. If my Alyosha didn’t know, why should you? Oh, don’t act offended. It’s all for show anyways. We would have told you after, but we figured you needed to know now before you screw things up.”
“Is she actually dumb enough to believe that a single person had access to Neon Essense while it’s taking a country’s military to obtain it?”
“The evidence Ral made was convincing enough,” Boyband said.
“She’s in on this, too?”
He nodded. “A lot of people think there are private distributors. It wouldn’t surprise me if some ex-Luxists have decided to make a profit out of their old ways.”
“But what would someone do with the Essence? How could they store it?”
“Don’t know, but you have to remember that we are only a small part of this conflict. Where there is profit, people will find a way.”
“Forgive me for the delay.” Sanna approached with trepidation.
“Well?” Naoma asked.
“I found the next best thing.”
“And that is?”
“The current head of the PTA.”