As expected, news that I’d been attacked by a demon had made it around the school quickly. People stared and whispered as I passed them in the hall, some even going as far as pointing at me like I was some weird science experiment.

I sighed as I sat down in my first period class next to Stacy and Jake.

Stacy had a few bruisers from me dragging her around the mall, but was otherwise fine. She’d visited me a few times while I was stuck at home to check on me and bring me bundles of food as gifts. It was obvious that she felt guilty for what happened, but I tried to reassure her as best as I could that it wasn’t her fault. 

Everything worked out in the end, right?

“How are you feeling?” Stacy asked, concern lacing her tone.

“Pretty good, all things considered. My ribs don’t feel like crap anymore.”

The class seemed to quiet around them as we spoke. That was a first. I guess they wanted to hear more details about what happened. My nerves spiked up. I didn’t like the attention.

“You know,” Jake said, twirling a pencil around his fingers, looking at me. He had ADHD and fidgeted a lot. “It’s surprising that you could think on your feet fast enough in a situation like that. It’s not like you.”

I threw my eraser at him, smacking him in the arm.

“Better than you. Who beat you on the last math test? Me.”

He laughed. “Yeah, not much difference when we both got a D. At least you get an A in surviving a demon attack. Stacy would get an F though.”

Jake meant it as a joke, but Stacy was clearly bothered by his words. A blush spread across her cheeks and she looked down at her notebook, pretending like she hadn’t heard.

“I was terrified,” I said right as Lucius sat down near me. I ignored him and chose my next words carefully, knowing Stacy was listening, “I’d never leave a friend. But a stranger? Heck no. I’d have bailed immediately. I wasn’t being tough. Just self preservation.”

“Is that so?” Lucius said, eyeing me quizzically. I liked his voice so much that it annoyed me. It was warm and gentle. “Would you not have stopped even for a child?”

“No, never,” I said without hesitation, glaring at him. He always butted into our conversations.

“Hmm,” he said, looking surprised, “most people would not be keen on admitting that.”

“That’s because they’re liars,” I scoffed. “Most people would prioritize their lives. I saw it at the mall. Not a single person helped us.”

“Except for the Magical Girl,” Jake pointed out.

“Sure, but that doesn’t count.”

“Why not?” Lucius asked with a serious look on his face. I had to remind myself that his pretty face didn’t give him a free-pass to not annoy me.

“Because they’re strong enough to kill demons,” I said.

“So if they weren’t strong enough, would it count?” Lucius said.

I groaned and turned away from him. He was always picking a fight with me, or annoying me.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Well,” Stacy interjected, twirling a curl between two fingers, “technically, we haven’t seen any higher tier demons yet. Most sightings are tier five or four, with the occasional tier three.”

I vaguely remember Rini talking about demon tiers. The tier system was created by Valentina using some arbitrary method to assess demon strength. 

There were five tiers total, ranking the demons from the weakest tier, tier five, to the strongest tier, tier one.

“That’s what I find so weird,” I said, “how do we know that higher tiers exist if they haven’t appeared yet.”

“There are a few speculations,” Stacy said. “I think most information comes from Magical Girls themselves. If they say there are tier twos and ones, then they must exist, right?”

I wasn’t so sure. It all seemed so strange to me. Magical Girls were always in the spotlight, but they spoonfed the public the same information over and over like they were connected to some great hivemind network. It was creepy if you really thought about it.

Although Rini might disagree.

“There was a Magical Girl that died. Remember Sunfire? The flaming Magical Girl. It was all over the news,” Jake said.

Five years ago, in the first year that demons and Magical Girls appeared, a girl who named herself Sunfire ended up dying to a tier five demon. It happened on live television. At the time, there hadn’t been any Magical Girl casualties, so everyone had thought them invincible. Fear spread throughout the world after her death, and better demon countermeasures were put into place, like escape routes and demon alarms for public buildings.

“But we haven’t had any Magical Girl deaths since then. Don’t you find that strange?” I said.

“They were created to kill demons,” Jake said with a shrug. “You’re just looking for things to question.”

The bell rang, signaling for us to go to our next class. 

Maybe I’d ask Rini what she thought later.