By the end of lunch, Phei's worst apprehensions hadn't merely materialised—they'd arrived in full regalia, trumpets blaring, dragging a parade of apocalyptic clowns behind them and billing him for emotional damages.

It had begun with deceptive innocence.

He entered the cafeteria radiating the kind of quiet omnipotence usually reserved for minor deities who'd just discovered compound interest and tax loopholes; Spine straight. Expression neutral. Blazer draped over one arm like a conquered standard.

He looked less like a student and more like a final boss who'd taken a wrong turn and wandered into the tutorial zone.

The lunch queue parted around him with instinctive deference.

He withdrew the obsidian-black card Melissa had given him—sleek, heavy, the financial equivalent of a firing squad—and purchased an actual meal. Protein that had once possessed a soul. Vegetables that hadn't been boiled into compliance.

A beverage not filtered through municipal despair and budgetary compromise.

Civilisation, Phei decided as he surveyed his tray, tasted suspiciously like privilege. Dangerous. Addictive. Probably carcinogenic.

Naturally, he retreated to his customary exile: the corner table by the emergency exit. Drafty. Forgotten.

Strategically distant from anything resembling happiness. For years he had ruled that patch of linoleum in splendid isolation—the ghost at the feast, watching Ashford Elite Academy's food chain with the detached interest of a necromancer observing particularly well-groomed hyenas disembowel a gazelle.

He expected solitude.

He expected the looks—furtive glances from boys and girls alike, as though he were a Rubik's Cube assembled by a sadistic god and left there to mock them. He expected whispers. He expected the residual aftershocks from his morning Moses impression.

What he did not expect was Maya Scarlett materialising opposite him with the fluid entitlement of a succubus collecting on a soul she'd prepaid centuries ago.

"Hey," she said lightly, smile sharp enough to draw blood. "Fancy meeting you here."

Phei stared.

The universe, as it appeared, has chosen violence.

He had spent all of English Literature executing advanced tactical avoidance maneuvers: back-row camouflage, notebook fixation, answers delivered in syllables short enough to qualify as war crimes. Short of faking an elaborate seizure or launching himself out a window, he had maintained strict radioactive distance.

And yet here she sits. Tray down. Legs crossed. Smiling like she's just checkmated God and was waiting for Him to notice.

"I was avoiding you," Phei said, flat as a tombstone.

"I noticed." Her smile widened, revealing teeth that could probably open sealed envelopes. "And... you're adorably terrible at it."

"I am exceptional at it. You're simply—" He gestured vaguely at her entire existence. "—relentless."

"I prefer tenacious." She leaned back, unbothered. "It sounds noble. Like a knight storming a castle. Or a disease."

Ah.

Trouble. Capital T. Bold and italicized. Underlined in blood.

He knew the archetype. The girls who treated leave me alone as foreplay. Who regarded boundaries as polite suggestions written in disappearing ink. Who would dismantle a man's carefully constructed solitude brick by brick, then stand atop the rubble asking why he looked so tired.

In his current state—early awakening, still corralling the feral remains of the Main Legacies, still teaching former apex predators how to sit—Maya Scarlett was not a complication.

She is a landmine wearing lipstick.

And yet she stayed.

She unpacked her lunch with domestic serenity, colonising his table as if it had always been hers. As if history itself were negotiable given sufficient audacity.

Splendid. Marvellous. Everything is fine. I am absolutely not spiralling.

The whispers ignited almost immediately—a Greek chorus of adolescent hysteria.

"Is that Maya Scarlett?"

"She's sitting with the scholarship corpse."

"First Sierra yesterday, now Maya? The charity case is assembling a harem of natural disasters."

"Maybe he's packing an Excalibur down there."

"Mate, that's grim."

"I'm just saying—forty-eight hours ago he was furniture. Now the two most terrifying women in the academy are circling him like sharks with trust funds."

Phei focused on his meal with the grim devotion of a condemned man savouring his last supper. He pretended Maya Scarlett wasn't three feet away, watching him with eyes that peeled back layers he hadn't known he possessed.

It didn't help.

By mid-lunch the whispers had metastasized—evolving from jokes into conspiracies, from conspiracies into prophecy.

Most were ridiculous.

He's collecting Main Legacies and Downtown Elites like limited-edition trading cards.

Gotta ruin them all.

Others were… darker.

More dangerous.

And somewhere in the noise, carried on the delighted breath of scandal, Phei heard the new title spreading like a particularly aggressive strain of influenza: Sierra—the Hell Bitch Queen—had issued a summons.

He wasn't sure whether to laugh or start digging his own grave.

Probably both.

Efficiency matters.

"I heard he's got something on the Legacies. Blackmail, maybe. Or photos of them sacrificing goats to their trust funds—whatever keeps the Main Legacy kids in line."

"That would explain why they're all tiptoeing around him like he's got a live grenade in his backpack."

"But what about the girls? You can't blackmail someone into sitting at your lunch table. Unless the dirt is that good—like, 'I know what you did at Daddy's yacht party' level."

"Maybe he's just hot now? Did you see him this morning? Guy had a glow-up straight from the ninth circle. Like Lucifer decided to hit the gym and swap horns for highlights."

"Glow-up doesn't explain Maya Scarlett picking him over literally anyone else in this school. Girl could have her choice of future senators, CEOs, or at least someone whose family spell 'old money' with actual gold bars."

Phei scarfed down his lunch like it was his last meal before the firing squad, muttered some half-assed excuse to Maya—who looked way too delighted by his panic—and bolted for his afternoon classes.

The rest of the day dragged on in a haze of sidelong stares and whispers that sounded suspiciously like bets being placed on his impending social execution.

Then, right as the final bell rang—like some cosmic punchline—his ancient phone buzzed in his pocket.

Phei fished it out, bracing for spam or another cryptic notification from whatever eldritch system had decided to cosplay as his fairy godmother.

Instead: a text from a number burned into his brain like a cattle brand.

Sierra Montgomery.

The Hell Bitch Queen, reigning champion of emotional terrorism.

"Music room. Now. Don't make me wait, Phei or you know what I can do for what happened yesterday."

Phei stared at the screen, a slow, razor-sharp grin creeping across his face.

The abandoned music room?

Classic.

Where else would the queen summon her former peasant for a reckoning?

That room was infamous at Ashford Elite Academy—and not because anyone ever practiced scales in there.

It was the campus equivalent of a back-alley dumpster: perfect for hookups, beatdowns, drug deals, or whatever other sins the elite didn't want on the supervised CCTV. Teachers knew. Admin knew. Nobody cared—half the kids using it had parents who could buy the school a new wing if it meant keeping little Legacies' coke habit off the record.

For Phei, though, that room was a personal circle of hell.

It was where Sierra had ambushed him more times than he could count. Where she'd pinned him against dusty pianos and hissed threats while he ghostwrote her essays, debugged her calculus homework, and basically played unpaid intern to her reign of terror.

"You're smart, right? The only thing a charity-case scholarship rat like you is good for. So be useful, creep. Unless you want the whole school to know what a pathetic little stalker you are."

The lies she'd threatened to spread. The rumors she'd actually unleashed, even after he'd jumped through every flaming hoop she set up.

And now she wanted round two.

After yesterday.

After the universe had apparently decided to hit the "invert social hierarchy" button just to watch the fallout.

Oh, Sierra. Sweet, oblivious Sierra.

You really have no idea you're about to walk into your own funeral, do you?

Phei pocketed the phone and headed for the east wing, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shirt untucked, tie hanging like a noose he'd already slipped. Two buttons undone at the collar—small rebellion, big statement.

He should've been heading home. Back to Sovereign Tower, to the penthouse condo that still felt like he'd broken into someone else's life. Back to marble counters and a view that cost more than his old neighborhood.

But Sierra had summoned.

And Phei? He'd never been good at saying no to an invitation to his own destruction.

Until now.

He rounded the final corner and there they were.

Sierra's royal guard.

Four girls posted up outside the music room door like Victoria's Secret models who'd taken a wrong turn into a mean-girls simulator. They weren't just standing—they were curated. A deliberate formation that screamed "we're bored, beautiful, and ready to ruin your day."

And Jesus hopping Christ on a pogo stick, they all look lethal.

Sierra had always collected beauty like trophies, part of the Hell Bitch Queen brand she'd trademarked since freshman year. But these four? They were the limited-edition, venom-dipped upgrade.

Uniforms, technically. But customized into weapons: skirts hiked up to "immediate detention" territory, clinging to thighs that could crush a man's skull—and probably had.

Shirts tailored so tight they looked painted on, tucked in to flaunt waists that flared into hips designed by whatever sadistic god invented teenage hormones.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.