Bound to a System, Six Years Too Soon
READING AGE 4+
On my twelfth birthday, I was trying to warm a dinner roll in the dorm kitchen when a voice crackled inside my head. It introduced itself as a system, announced that I had been selected for a binding, and then glitched so badly I thought I'd swallowed a radio. A moment later, it apologized and told me the activation date was wrong by six years. I had no idea what a system was supposed to do, and it had no idea what to do with a twelve-year-old. Then the old radiator beside the kitchen door burst, sending a sheet of scalding water across the floor. The system offered me my first quest: keep someone else from getting hurt. If I followed its instructions, could I protect the girls in Hawthorn Hall without losing the only place that had ever felt like mine?
Unfold
On the last night before spring break, I went back to the Hawthorn kitchen with a dinner roll and a mug of cocoa.
The radiator beside the door was warm. It made one small click, then settled into silence.
June was at the table, drawing a map of the school for a history project. She had labeled the kitchen "the scene of the birthda……
Waiting for the first comment……