[Point of View: Han Chae-Gi]

  My name is Han Chae-Gi. I am a second-year student at BoMoong High, and my life is a meticulously crafted performance.

  If you asked anyone in this school to describe me, they would use the word perfect.

  They would say I am the daughter every chaebol family wishes they had birthed. I have the highest grades in the cohort. I am impossibly kind to my juniors. I am well-spoken, elegant, and my smile is famous for melting even the coldest teachers' hearts.

  What they don’t know is that my "perfect" smile is practiced in front of a mirror every morning to ensure it exudes exactly 80% warmth and 20% untouchable grace. They don't know that I maintain a 95% academic average on purpose, because a flat 100% makes people resentful, while a 95% makes them feel like I’m still somewhat human.

  Perfection isn't a gift. It's a full-time job. It requires constant calculations, reading the room, and swallowing the urge to scream when an arrogant, bottom-tier nepo-baby tries to ask me out by flexing his father's bank account. And I have to do that on a daily basis.

  I am an idol on a pedestal, and honestly? The pedestal is exhausting.

  I must admit, even someone with a script as flawless as mine has a few cracks.

  And lately, the biggest crack in my pristine world has a name.

  Soh Yejun.

  On paper, the man is aggressively ordinary. His grades are fine. His background is unremarkable. He is slightly better looking than the average guy, but in a city like Vespa, that hardly matters.

  Yet, he is the only variable in my life I cannot predict.

  When he looks at me, he doesn't see the "Goddess of BoMoong High."

  He just sees... me.

  Something about his infuriatingly calm demeanor draws me in, making me want to tear away my own perfectly crafted mask just to see how he would react.

  He disrupts my calculations. He makes my chest tight.

  He makes things messy.

  And I absolutely hate things being messy.

  Because I was so distracted by my own messy feelings today, I made the amateur mistake of not checking my surroundings before blowing a fuse.

  Which brings me to the current mess standing right in front of my shoe locker: a first-year rat who had just witnessed my very private, very unhinged mental breakdown on the stairwell.

  I smiled at him, feeling a terrifyingly genuine thrill bubble up in my chest.

  Oh, I am going to wring his neck.

  **

  [Point of View: Zachary Fair]

  “So, my dearest junior. Have you seen anything you weren't supposed to see?” Senior Han asked, a terrifyingly sweet smile plastered across her face.

  Her smile was beautiful, but the killing intent was spilling out so obviously it felt like a wicked, suffocating aura was leaking from her pores.

  “You mean the part where you crashed ou—”

  WHOOSH. CRANG.

  Before I could finish the sentence, a blur flew right past my face. A sharp gust of wind grazed my cheek as Senior Han’s loafer slammed into the metal locker right next to my ear. A flawless, high-kick kabedon.

  “Would you like to try again?” she asked, tilting her head. The smile never wavered.

  ._.

  "..."

  “I did not see a single thing, my dearest, beloved Senior Han.”

  “Good. Will it stay that way, then?”

  I nodded furiously, operating on the pure survival instinct of a prey animal submitting to an apex predator.

  Satisfied, she withdrew her leg, turned, and gracefully opened her own locker.

  I exhaled a breath I didn't know I was holding and opened mine, quickly swapping my indoor slippers for my street shoes.

  We stood in silence for a moment, preparing to head toward the main gate together.

  But there was something I just had to get off my chest.

  “Senior Han…” I muttered, staring at the ground. “I just wanted you to know… if you hadn't chased me down screaming… I wouldn't have even known it was you in the stairwell.”

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Senior Han stopped dead in her tracks.

  I slowly took a few steps forward, turning around to look at her.

  Her entire face, from her cheeks to the tips of her ears, was flushed completely red. This time, it wasn't from anger. It was pure, catastrophic embarrassment.

  “...g-go.”

  “Sorry, what was that, Senior Han? I couldn't quite hear you.”

  “...Go. Before I break every bone in your body.”

  That was the cue I needed. I bolted for the gate.

  **

  The next day, my high school life proceeded as normal, pretending I didn't hold the nuclear launch codes to the school Goddess's reputation.

  The same nagging from Kurone about tardiness, the same banter with Min Joon, the same aggressively boring classes.

  It was so bad that during history, the teacher caught me sleeping and forced me to stand at the back of the class to stay awake.

  Yet, somehow, my body defied biology, and I managed to fall asleep while standing up.

  “This damn kid,” the old teacher muttered. He lined up a piece of chalk like a professional dart player and whipped his arm forward.

  Smack. Bullseye.

  The chalk bounced off my forehead, startling me so badly I slammed my face directly into the desk in front of me.

  “Pfft—HAHAHAHA!”

  The entire class erupted into laughter. Even the teacher had to cover his mouth to maintain his stern poker face.

  “Go wash your face, Zach,” Min Joon wheezed from his desk.

  Lunch rolled around, and I was dragged along by Kurone and her group of friends. As I sat at my desk chewing on a bread roll, one of the girls, Han-nul, naturally stood behind me and started braiding my hair with her hairbands, making the rest of the table giggle.

  Ah, right. The reason the girls in my class were so comfortable messing with me was mostly due to my physical specs.

  I was on the shorter end—roughly the same height as most of the girls, if not a centimeter shorter.

  I wasn't exactly radiating threatening masculine energy.

  Han-nul even mentioned I reminded her of her little brother, which explained why she treated me like a glorified styling doll while giving the other boys in class the cold shoulder.

  Well, it wasn't like I particularly minded. Without any memories of my past, I didn't really have a sense of pride or shame to get bruised anyway.

  While I continued munching, one of my classmates practically kicked the front door open, panting excitedly.

  “The Goddess is on our floor!”

  “What?!”

  “No way!?”

  Chairs scraped against the floor as almost every student in the room rushed the doorway, craning their necks into the hallway to catch a glimpse of her.

  Everyone except me.

  I smelled trouble.

  There was zero reason for a second-year senior to come down to the first-year floor unless it was intentional.

  And that meant one thing: me.

  I slipped out of my chair and quietly moved toward the front door.

  My class was right in the middle of the hallway. By my calculations, it would take her about two minutes to wade through the crowd to get here. If I used my classmates as camouflage, I could slip out the front and escape down the opposite stairs unnoticed.

  Sorry, Senior Han. But this is my win.

  I smirked confidently, stepping out the front door—

  And nearly bumped directly into Senior Han's chest.

  “Huh?!” I let out a spectacularly dumb sound.

  She stood there, radiating her flawless ‘Goddess Mode’ aura, smiling gently.

  “Well, hello, dear Junior Fair. I was just looking for you,” she said politely.

  But her eyes—and the intense, non-verbal eye contact we were currently locked in—screamed something else entirely: ‘You can't escape me, little rat.’

  “To what do I owe the pleasure, haha…” I sweated.

  ‘How did you even find me?!’ I screamed with my eyes.

  ‘It’s not hard to predict your actions, you idiot,’ her gaze replied.

  I wasn't telepathic, but fear is a universal language.

  “Regarding what we were talking about yesterday…” she continued smoothly, her voice like honey.

  “I figured it's best if I have your contact details, so we can discuss it further.”

  ‘YOU GOT ME CAUGHT IN A TRAP!’

  ‘I’ve got you on a leash now. Ehe.’

  “...With that said, may I add your account?”

  The hallway froze.

  The girls squealed in excitement, while every single boy within a fifty-foot radius began glaring at me with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

  I had two options. Decline, or accept.

  Declining seemed like the safest bet for my survival.

  “It's okay, Senior Han, I could just—”

  “I can't have your contact details?” she interrupted, tilting her head. Her eyes widened slightly, imitating the most adorable, heartbreaking puppy-dog eyes known to mankind.

  Checkmate.

  If I rejected her now, every living creature in this school would form a mob and destroy me.

  “...With honor,” I forced out through a broken, twitching smile, pulling up my QR code.

  “Great! I'll talk to you later. Good day to you, Junior Fair,” she chimed happily, turning and leaving as elegantly as she had arrived.

  A second later, my phone buzzed in my hand.

  From: Han Chae-Gi

  [Behave well, little rat.]

  **

  [Point of View: Eric Stanson]

  Being back at school was surprisingly peaceful. Park Bo-Jun had kept his promise to stay away from me.

  Unfortunately, his goons apparently didn't get the memo. They must have assumed someone had ambushed them from behind when they mysteriously passed out in the alley.

  So, here I was, dragged out to the back of the school once again. This time, it was just the four lackeys.

  “I don't know why Bo-Jun suddenly called off the hit on you,” the lead goon sneered, cracking his knuckles.

  “But something still rubs me the wrong way about that day. So, here we are.”

  Looks like the top dog was scared, but the mutts were still barking.

  One of them lunged forward, raising his palm to smack me across the face.

  I didn't flinch.

  Over the last day, I had found something incredibly interesting about this new ability of mine.

  It felt highly scientific.

  In my mind, it operated like an imaginary dial. I could adjust the properties of the air, but there was always a trade-off.

  It relied heavily on some sort of scientific rules—when I increased the velocity of the wind, the localized pressure would drop.

  I focused my mind and dragged the imaginary dial down.

  The air right beneath the goon's feet accelerated violently, creating a high-speed slipstream with zero friction.

  His foot shot out from under him as if he had stepped on black ice.

  He hovered in the air for a fraction of a second before his head crashed hard against the concrete.

  Out cold.

  The second guy panicked but charged anyway, lunging for a tackle.

  This time, I cranked the dial up. The velocity of the air around me dropped to near-zero, drastically spiking the air pressure.

  A dense, invisible cushion of compressed air formed around my body.

  He bounced off the pressure shield, stumbling backward.

  Using the momentum, I stepped into his guard and delivered a sharp backfist to his jaw. I might have hit him too hard with the pressurized air wrapping my knuckles; the wet CRACK of bone echoed off the brick walls.

  He crumpled instantly.

  That left two.

  I stood in the center of the alley, completely unharmed, and stared at them down. They looked at their unconscious friends, then looked back at me.

  They weren't completely stupid.

  They grabbed their companions by the collars and dragged them away as fast as they could.

  I was left alone behind the school. I looked down at my hands, fee

  ling the faint, residual hum of the wind dancing between my fingers.

  These powers were confusing, but the more I used them, the more intricate they felt.

  It wasn't just magic; it was physics.

  It was time I actually went to the library to do some research.