LYLA ARC


    Lyla knew what the word “change” meant.


    It isn''t something that can be magically granted to you. It’s something that you can only obtain if you''re willing to seek it out for yourself.


    It was hopeless for someone like her. An overwhelming sense of frustration always took hold of her when she pondered on the subject for too long, and she wondered what the boiling point of that emotion would look like.


    Would it set her free, or sink her deeper into the depths of her own uselessness?


    When she was younger, physical training was something she’d try everything in her power to skip out on, and unfortunately, it was the first thing on Melanie’s agenda today. After dragging the three of them up to their feet, she led the charge as they all ran laps around the training grounds to warm up. Adrian and Neil tailed close behind her, and as Lyla expected, she was dead last.


    The muggy sensation of sweat was already creeping up on her and slowing her down as she strained herself to wipe the back of her neck. Her every stride was getting shorter and her breaths were the same, caused by a sickening dryness in her throat.


    Moments passed, and she didn’t know how much time it had been exactly, but Melanie was no longer in her sight. As the gap between her, Adrian, and Neil grew, she shifted her pathetic attempt at a jog into a regular, less painful walk.


    “There’s…no point,” she gasped, “I can''t…keep up-”


    “Sure you can!”


    She spun around, startled by Melanie’s sudden appearance. “Were you just about to lap me?”


    Feigning ignorance, she looked off to the side with a guilty look on her face, and that told Lyla all she needed to know. A solemn smile spread across her face as she turned her gaze towards the floor.


    “...I''m tired, Melanie. Just let me go inside.”


    Before she could take even a single step, Melanie grabbed on to her hand and pulled her back.


    “C''mon, you gotta push yourself. Let''s at least catch you up to the boys first.”


    Looking upon the unwavering enthusiasm reflected in Melanie''s smile, Lyla’s whole body stiffened. It was bright. So bright that it almost hurt to look at, but at the same time, she couldn’t take her eyes off of her, and couldn’t help following after her. Somehow it made the jog a little more bearable.


    “Lyla,” said Melanie after a while, “You wanna know how I pick myself up whenever I''m feeling down?”


    Lyla turned to her in shock, but quickly wiped all traces of the emotion from her face. It was silly to think that Melanie never had days where she felt down. She was human after all. “...How do you do it?”


    “I remember.” She tapped the side of her head. “I didn''t just come here on a whim. I don''t think this isn’t the kind of place you can get into ‘just because’ to begin with. I have a reason for being here that’s more important to me than anything.”


    Lyla had her reasons, of course, but hadn''t talked about them to anyone since joining the academy, for good reason. Imagining what Melanie''s reaction would be if she told her what kind of person she really was, she felt her whole body growing weaker.


    “Keep up, c''mon! You’re doing great, trust me.”


    The gap between the two girls had widened, due to her overthinking. Hyperventilating, and feeling like she could collapse at any second, Lyla pushed her body to what felt like its physical limit to reach Melanie’s side again.


    Her limbs were practically creaking with every step, but the decision to open up to her after that was perhaps the most liberating choice she''d made in her whole life.


    “...I’m not a good person,” she said, shakily, “At my old school, a lot of my classmates were always willing to do almost anything for me. Everyone just ''stuck their neck out for the pretty girl''... And I took advantage of that."


    Just speaking about the past made her physically sick. The sunlight was covered by a wall of clouds, but to her, it felt like the heat had suddenly been dialled up to eleven.


    “You can carry on,” Melanie said. There was an almost motherly tone in her voice that helped to calm Lyla down, and instil within her the composure to tell the rest of her story.


    “Written exams were hardly ever my own answers. People from other classes who did the same tests before would help me there. It was harder to cheat my way out of physical training, but I managed to scrape by with the bare minimum effort by having different people cover for me."


    “...Damn.”


    “Yeah...Remember that girl you fought at the entrance ceremony?”


    “That brunette bitch?”


    “Her name is Kyrie,” Lyla chuckled, “Not everyone was cool with me. And she was one of the main ones. She hated me cuz I got all that attention for doing nothing while she was working hard and basically got nothing. She told me that right to my face." She felt her lips tremble, partly because of the pain her body was in and also due to the memories of those days resurfacing. The number one thing she hated in the world was herself from those days. "I-I actually thought I could call everyone that spoke to me back then a friend," she said, choking on her words, "but nobody ever called me out on the fact I was so lazy... I can''t consider people like that-"


    She winced in pain and tripped over herself. The soreness in her legs was becoming increasingly unbearable. Partially, she felt relieved that her body was giving up on its own. She believed that she had no intention of going against her natural stopping point.The second before she would have come to a standstill, however, Melanie, once more, yanked her upright.


    “Melanie, what are you-”


    “I''m being selfish,” she said, sternly, “But never mind me. I get the gist of your reason. You wanna change don''t you?”


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Falling victim to Melanie’s intense gaze, Lyla’s legs, again, began moving on their own. “This is my limit, though...”


    “And if you don’t go past that, then how are you ever gonna achieve anything?!”


    Lyla closed her eyes tightly in response. Melanie was right. Not once in her life had she considered herself capable of anything significant. Initially, her choice to become a spirit hunter was because of the chance to build a reputation as a "hero" if she marketed herself correctly. A life of lies like that was what she chose.


    When it came to the spirit arts, she could hardly even grasp the basics and spirit links, especially, were completely alien to her, but if there was ever a time to change herself, then that time was now.


    Adrian and Neil were just ahead of them. With her eyes blurred, and chest growing heavier by the second, she stormed onwards, prying herself free of Melanie''s grasp. All by herself. The sensation of the wind slapping against her face, and her hair flying behind her; each and every painful movement her body made was freedom incarnate.


    “Adrian! Neil!”


    The boys turned around mere moments before Lyla, out of control and full of adrenaline, crashed into them both. All three of them tumbled to the ground, getting covered from head to toe in dust.


    “What the hell,” Adrian groaned. He was clearly way too tired to say anything more, and Neil, feeling the same way, had already closed his eyes in an attempt to fall asleep.


    “Good shit, everyone!” Melanie approached and stood over the three of them, wiping the tears from her eyes as she laughed. “So, Ly, you still think you''re at your limit?”


    Lyla looked down at her hands. She had used them to break her fall so they were shaking and stinging in pain. Those marks were the proof of her effort...


    “...I-I think I can get used to this!”


    <hr>


    The satisfaction Lyla felt having finished training was one she never would have expected from herself, especially considering the fact that she lost every sparring match that she had fought after they finished running.


    Her body was sore, and she even had a few cuts on her arms and legs, but for the first time, she didn''t feel like taking herself off to the side to avoid training. It was a clumsy first step, but just being able to take it in the first place was more than enough for her.


    Exhausted, the group had trudged their way back inside the building, and upstairs to relax. Adrian and Neil resigned themselves to their rooms, while Lyla and Melanie opted to get comfortable in the dorm’s living room, dumping themselves onto one of the oversized bean bags laid on the floor.


    She wanted to close her eyes for a few minutes, but there was one thing that had been on her mind for a while.


    “Hey, Melanie?”


    “What''s up?"


    “...Back when we were jogging, you said that you were being selfish. What exactly did you mean by that?”


    “Well, first I’d have to tell you why I became a spirit hunter,” she replied, while stretching, “And that reason is because I like to fight. So if you get stronger it''s good for me too, cuz I''ll have another good sparring partner."


    Lyla should have expected a simple answer like that. No matter how inspirational she was capable of being, Melanie was still Melanie. “I’ve said it too many times, and I''ll say it again. You are not a normal person. It''s actually concerning.”


    “That''s the truth, though!” Melanie said, laughing, “But...there’s more to it than that, I guess.”


    Hearing her playful tone fade away, Lyla decided to turn off her ''anti-Melanie antics'' filter for a moment and listen to what she had to say.


    “My big brother taught me how to fight,” she said, “He was a semi-pro boxer.”


    “Oh, really?” asked Lyla, sitting upwards.


    Melanie''s eyes lit up as she spoke. “He was such a nerd about it too! It was all he ever spoke about, and his room was full of old posters ‘n’ stuff, but then…” There was a small shift in her expression, and the light in her eyes dimming ever so slightly. "...I guess he just fell out of love with it. We started training less, but I was already pretty skilled by then, so it wasn’t too bad for me. Him though… Boxing was his thing. He stopped talking about it as much, he wasn’t watching as many matches anymore, and eventually he stopped fighting all together. After everything, he just seemed less happy y’know? Do you know wanna know how that felt to watch?”


    “How?”


    She sat up and turned to face Lyla with an expression that she didn’t even know she was capable of making. For that brief moment it was like she was an entirely different person.


    "Think about it this way. If the thing you spent your whole life shaping your identity around suddenly stopped making you happy, then who would you even be anymore? It might seem crazy, but I feel like if it were me in that situation, I would say that the version of me from before was dead.”


    “That’s intense,” said Lyla, feeling goosebumps all across her arms.


    Melanie gave a light smile and rested her head back on the bean bag. “Even if you find something else that you like doing just as much as the thing before, I don’t really know if you can say that that’s still…you..."


    The conversation had shifted into territories that Lyla was completely unprepared for. She decided to lighten the mood and add a more positive spin on Melanie’s idea. “Death is a tad bit final, though,” she muttered, “I know it''s a metaphor, but if you can still find the same motivation for something else, then it''s a lot less like death and more like…evolution…?" A light bulb turned on in her head as she found the more suitable word. "It''s just a change," she chuckled.


    Melanie slowly shifted her eyes around the room, looking to seriously be considering what Lyla had said. “That is one way to look at it… But nope.” Lyla winced as her head was met with a swift karate chop. “You definitely die. Blood and guts everywhere. It gets real messy!”


    Shielding herself from the onslaught of strikes aimed at her head, Lyla cried out for mercy. “Ahh, I get it! I get it!” Their squeals and laughter faded into fleeting giggles, and after a while fell to silence. “I think it''s fine to not agree one hundred percent. I get where you''re coming from at the very least."


    “Glad to hear it,” Melanie responded, “People like Adrian came here with noble goals ‘n’ stuff. I respect him, of course, but I could never put myself in that position. Too much responsibility.”


    “Yeah, I don''t think you should ever change, Mel.”


    The living room door clicked open, and the girls both turned around to see Neil, now donning black pyjamas, walk in, yawning and rubbing the tears from his eyes.


    “You shouldn’t have gone to take a nap so early!” Melanie said, waving at him like a mad person, “You missed out on a good convo.”


    “I think I left my headphones in here,” he groaned.


    “Forget about ‘em for a sec. Tell us Mr. Neil. Why are you a spirit hunter?”


    “Hmm, no particular reason,” he replied, searching under the couches, “I’m a Donovan, so I don’t really have a say in all that.”


    Just the thought of being part of such a huge and influential family made Lyla shudder. She found it admirable that Neil and Isabelle were able to be so normal about it. “But still,” she chimed in, “Surely there’s one specific thing that motivates you. It can''t all just be obligatory.”


    “Motivation, huh? I guess I have something like that.”


    Melanie leaped up onto the couch he was searching under and peered over him from the side. “Tell us, tell us!”


    “Someone I look up to… No, that''s not fully correct.” He started slowly pacing around the room and talking to himself. “He got arrested one time. What crime did they get him for again? I think there were a few actually… Well it’s his mindset that I respect at the end of the day.”


    “U-uh, maybe you should be careful with how you pick your role models.”


    “What, no way!” Melanie exclaimed, “This mystery guy sounds badass! Who is he?!”


    “Oh yeah. It’s my uncle Sam.”