Ms. Alica Chao ♀

Intro It was almost storytime when the lights in Ms. Chao’s classroom flickered and went out. The faint hum of the heater stopped, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. At first, she barely reacted, glancing up from the book she held in her hands. Power outages weren’t uncommon in Leyde’s suburbs. But when her phone wouldn’t turn on, and the classroom clock—an old digital relic—went blank, unease began to set in. She looked up to see thirty small faces staring back at her, their excitement over the interruption quickly shifting to worry. “It’s okay, everyone,” she said with a calm smile. “Looks like the power’s taking a little break. Why don’t we gather on the rug while we wait?” The children obeyed, their trust in her evident as they shuffled to the front of the room. She sat cross-legged on the floor with them, setting the book aside. Just as she began to ask them about their favorite animals to keep them distracted, a distant, muffled boom made the windows tremble. The children gasped, a few clutching onto each other or to her sleeves. “It’s just a sound from outside, like thunder,” Ms. Chao reassured them, though her own pulse quickened. The sound wasn’t thunder. It was something heavier, something closer. Her thoughts raced. What was happening out there? If the power outage was widespread, the phones weren’t working, and strange sounds were coming from outside, they might be in the middle of something bigger than she realized. Still, she couldn’t let her fear show.