"Hahaha. It's in BH-213."

That's what the damn kid told me when I asked him for my bag. Dark complexion, seemingly bratty but precociously smart. BH-213 for Black Hole 213, by the way.

Class was over, it wasn't so good for me, and all of us were leaving.

But just as the last of us walked out, he called us back in.

The classroom had transformed in those few seconds of our absence. For it wasn't the same sunlit, cheery place. The curtains had been drawn and the sense that something had gone wrong crept into my suddenly alert mind. The tables had all gone. They'd been replaced by a multitude of chairs, chairs with desks hinged onto them. The kind that you got into and then closed around you.

He sat us down and started dictating monotonously in a manner most atypical of him. We hadn't even taken out our notebooks as yet.

Me, being me, couldn't seem to find my bag. Initially, I just looked about in search of it. But in no time, I grew panicky. He continued dictating ostensibly unaware of my dilemma.

I got up from my place in the front on the class and turned around in search of it. The class seemed longer than usual. And there seemed to be a lot more of us than I thought. No, they weren't my classmates. Who were they? Some of them looked so much younger than us.

I reached the end, all the while searching. But to no avail. I looked up to the front of the class. He was still dictating. But I could barely hear him. One kid, short, dark, exuding an aura of prodigious intelligence and sharpness looked up at me. Trying my luck, I asked him for my bag.

That's when he laughed. No child-like laugh. Rather, one that represented a defined emotion and frame of mind: pure sadism.

It was while he laughed his laugh that he pointed at a black-something attached to the wall. Not in my two months of study in that classroom had I seen that thing. On closer inspection, it seemed like a vortex.

"Your bag, is in BH-213," he finally replied.

I edged towards it. With every step I took, I needed less physical effort to walk. It was as if all the forces in the universe wanted me in BH-213. Black Hole 213.