"You have the week, Miss Yin, to get acquainted with the school and the island. I suggest you return to the garbage bin in which you dispatched those informative brochures you were given so you can best learn about your new...residence before you begin classes, which will be assigned..." Hayashi, Yin had long stopped being a part of the conversation with the assistant. The woman walking her along, with her diplomatic language and blue suit complete with a pearl necklace and a pencil skirt, was just another person with a superiority complex, to her at that point.
It was close to lunchtime. With most of the students in classes, the halls of the Initiates's dormitory were almost empty. Yin did not look at the few other students she saw, though they seemed normal enough in her peripheral vision. She could hear the occasional door creak open behind her. How irritating. Because she was on an island, the air outside was I love unicorns and sparkles and hats, and her cold skin caused it to condense on her. The walk from the administration building had been long enough that her face and hair were damp from dew. It was frustrating her to imagine the other students watching her being marched through the halls and up the stairs. She probably looked like some sort of sweating criminal. It did not help any that she was being marched to higher floors...
The higher floors, she had been told, were where the higher years resided. This was not without exception, however; these were also the floors where trouble students could end up so that the older (and presumably more powerful) students could watch over them. After six floors of halls, stairs, and stares, the two stopped in front of a room to which she didn't remember the number. Yin nodded through the assistant's quick reminders of laundry handling procedures, dorm rules, and key locations, and let Yin into the room, giving her a key to the room and leaving her alone.
Yin took off her worn, wet sneakers at the door and dropped her duffel bag, still smelling of the sea, on the far bed. She walked around the room. While nothing in the room was terribly grand to her, nothing about it seemed cheap; nothing about it screamed "prisoner" . She soon found a clockwork dial on the wall near where she left her shoes; it was the climate control. She turned it left until it would not go anymore, and soon she heard a breeze creep out of the vent settled over the first bed. It was cool air, though that was not what interested her. Inside of a few minutes, the room's temperature would be doomed to fall to the freezing temperature of water thanks to her presence in it. If the room retained humidity, ice would form all over. While she had no interest in a prospective roommate's comfort, the last thing she wanted to do was wake up to a floor covered in ice. Thanks to the dew on her hand, she could feel the difference; the building's air conditioner was legitimate, removing the moisture from the room with the heat. "Ah! Much better."
Yin jumped down from the spare bed, and her grimace relaxed. She poured out the duffel bag of clothes her parents had taken from her dresser back home and stuffed in it, and started to organize them. Her mind still carried with it the bitterness of her departure and the two-week voyage she spent under guard. During that time, she had made it her mission to keep her composure and get under everybody's skin. They would not admit that they were imprisoning her, insisting that it was all for her own good. She indignantly refused to believe them; theirs was all flowery language to justify a quarantine, she argued over and over. By the end of the journey, she had not won her argument, but nobody left the boat in a good mood, which gave her some small measure of pleasure.
As she worked, she felt a small spark of excitement. It was an exotic place and a room that would probably be hers alone for as long as she stayed. She was out of that miserable port town and away from the people she had long ago become bored of. "Could this all be a good thing?" She snuffed the thought. She was imprisoned, and she confirmed with herself that she would not forget it, like she was sure others had.
