[Point of View: Zachary Fair]

  My peaceful, background-character life was officially over.

  I had expected complications from my run-in with the Goddess.

  What I got instead was a massive, glowing target painted squarely on my back.

  Whenever I walked down the halls, I could feel the weight of a hundred gazes. The first-years were mostly just gossiping, calling me the luckiest guy alive for getting Senior Han's attention.

  The sophomores and seniors, however, were an entirely different story.

  They stared at me not with curiosity, but with pure, unadulterated hostility.

  “Damn. They aren't even trying to hide the killing intent, huh?” Do-Yuh, my classmate, muttered nervously as he walked between Min Joon and me on our way to the cafeteria.

  “Well, you did get singled out by the number one idol in the school,” Min Joon chuckled, though his eyes were scanning the hallway sharply.

  Just as we reached the cafeteria doors, our path was blocked. A group of seniors stepped out of the crowd, forming a semi-circle around us. More specifically, around me.

  “Honestly, it pisses me off the more I look at you,” the leader spat. He walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets, circling me like a vulture. His hair was aggressively bleached blonde—the kind that looked like dry, crispy straw.

  He stopped and glared at the top of my head. "Especially that arrogant dye job. You think you can walk around as a freshman with bleached hair trying to act tough?"

  For the record, my hair is naturally blonde. I can't tell whether he was jealous of my hair or whatever he was angry about.

  “The majority of us in this school have been ignored or rejected by her,” the blonde senior sneered, stepping closer.

  “Yet she’s going out of her way to talk to you? And that bastard Yejun?”

  Yejun? Oh right, the Main Character guy that Senior Han and the Ice Queen were supposedly fighting over.

  “Come on. Tell me how you got her attention. Spill it,” he demanded.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  Honestly, it got me thinking. How was I close to that maniac?

  She chased me down a stairwell like a horror movie villain just to blackmail me into keeping my mouth shut, practically kicking a dent into a metal locker next to my head.

  While I was busy pondering my own trauma, the senior made his move.

  He pulled his hand out of his pocket and swung a heavy, open-palm slap right at my face.

  I didn't think.

  My body just reacted.

  I took a half-step back, shifting my weight effortlessly.

  Whoosh.

  His hand caught nothing but empty air.

  “...”

  “This f*cking kid just dodged me.” The blonde senior's face flushed purple with rage.

  He jerked his head.

  Immediately, two of his massive lackeys stepped out from behind him, lunging at me.

  One reached out, aiming to grab my collar.

  Thump.

  Min Joon suddenly blurred into my peripheral vision, driving his knee squarely into the stomach of the first lackey.

  But I didn't have time to process that.

  Time seemed to slow down.

  My arm shot up on its own.

  I grabbed the wrist of the second lackey, twisted my hips, and used his own forward momentum against him.

  **

  [Point of View: Lee Min Joon]

  Pointless.

  So completely pointless.

  Ganging up on a freshman just because he talked to a pretty girl was the peak of high school stupidity.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  I had actual, classified missions to worry about, and instead, I was dealing with this crap.

  I let my mind passively brush against theirs.

  ‘How dare he talk to my goddess.’

  ‘I'm going to ruin this kid.’

  ‘I need to find out his connection to her.’

  It was a chorus of pathetic, jealous static.

  What was so special about Han Chae-Gi anyway?

  Sure, her dedication to maintaining her fake "Goddess" persona was almost respectable, but her internal thoughts were terrifyingly wicked.

  ‘Oh crap, this is hella boring. I'm going to fall asleep standing up,’ I thought, watching the blonde guy yap.

  Then, the blonde guy snapped and swung a slap at Zach's face.

  Zach simply stepped back.

  It wasn't a panicked flinch; it was a microscopic, perfectly calculated evasion.

  Woah. Is he always this sharp?

  As the blonde guy lost his temper and sent his two lackeys forward, I stepped in, driving my knee into the chest of the closest goon. It was a solid hit.

  I turned my head to check on Zach, fully expecting to have to bail him out.

  Instead, I froze.

  Zach had caught the second lackey by the wrist. In a fraction of a second, he pivoted, broke the guy's center of gravity, and slammed him into the floor tiles with terrifying, clinical efficiency.

  He was faster than me.

  Who exactly is this kid? I thought, my mind racing.

  And why can't I read a single thought in his head while he moves like that?

  Zach was staring down at the unconscious senior at his feet, his expression completely blank, as if he had no idea what his own hands had just done.

  **

  [Point of View: Zachary Fair]

  What the hell did I just do?!

  My heart pounded against my ribs. I looked at Min Joon, who was staring at me with wide eyes, then down at my own hands.

  One of the lackeys was sprawled motionless at my feet, groaning.

  I had knocked him out. And I didn't even remember deciding to do it.

  “Oh, f*ck,” one of the spectators whispered, breaking the dead silence in the hallway.

  Before anyone else could react, a booming voice echoed from the far end of the corridor.

  “Hey! The bell rang! Why are you loitering?!”

  It was Mr. Kim, the terrifying P.E. teacher.

  Panic erupted.

  The crowd of students instantly scattered like cockroaches.

  The blonde senior looked between Mr. Kim and his unconscious friend, panicked, and bolted down the opposite hall.

  “You won't get away with this!” he shouted over his shoulder, sounding exactly like a cartoon villain.

  Min Joon, Do-Yuh, and I didn't wait around to explain.

  We dragged ourselves back to class.

  The next few hours were absolute hell. The rumors spread like a wildfire soaked in gasoline.

  My phone vibrated so violently in my pocket I had to power it off entirely.

  During every transition between classes, my classmates swarmed my desk.

  “How did you flip a guy twice your size?!”

  “Dude, the video is already on the school forum!”

  Shit. I had been caught already.

  As the final bell rang, I peeked out the classroom window.

  My stomach dropped.

  Standing right outside the main school gates was the same group of seniors, waiting like a pack of wolves.

  “Zach, let's go end this once and for—” Min Joon started, cracking his knuckles.

  Before he could finish the sentence, I was already slipping out the back door.

  I wanted absolutely zero part in a turf war. Having the entire school looking at me because of that wicked Goddess was bad enough. Getting beaten up over someone else's bruised ego was a hard pass.

  I crept through the hallways, checking the side exits. Futile. Every single door had a senior standing guard.

  I was trapped.

  I needed a place to wait them out. Somewhere no high school bully would ever willingly go.

  The library.

  I slipped inside. As expected, it was dead silent, save for the soft snoring of the elderly librarian at the front desk.

  With a heavy sigh, I dragged a chair over to a corner window that overlooked the front gates, making it my personal stakeout point.

  “Is this how I'm going to spend the rest of my high school life?” I muttered to myself.

  “What are you looking at?” a voice asked from right behind me.

  “W—Who are you?!” I flinched so hard I nearly tipped my chair over backward, scrambling to my feet. I thought one of the blonde dude's goons had found me.

  Instead, a taller guy with messy brunette hair was standing there, looking at me with mild amusement.

  “Let's see here. Short, blonde, paranoid, looking out the window at the seniors... You must be Zachary Fair, the freshman the Goddess is obsessed with.” He smiled, offering a hand to help me balance.

  I glanced at the name tag pinned to his blazer.

  [Eric Stanson]

  “Nice to meet you. I'm Eric,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I replied politely, noticing the color of his tag marked him as a second-year. “So, why are you hiding back here, Senior Stanson?”

  He pulled up a chair next to mine. For some reason, I found myself telling him exactly what happened. It was strange; I had just met this guy, but his calm, slightly detached vibe made him incredibly easy to talk to.

  He chuckled at my story. He asked a few questions about Han Chae-Gi, but I firmly kept my mouth shut to protect my own life.

  As we chatted, my eyes drifted to the notebook open on the table in front of him. It was covered in messy diagrams of wind currents and pressure dials.

  “Hey, Senior Stanson. Are you studying advanced physics or something?”

  Eric looked down at the notebook and quickly placed his hand over it.

  “Something like that. It's a personal project. I'm trying to figure out the trade-off between velocity and pressure.”

  “Oh,” I pointed at one of his scribbled formulas. “You're missing a variable. That looks like you're trying to figure out Bernoulli's principle.”

  Eric froze. “Bernoulli's... what?”

  “Bernoulli's equation,” I explained, grabbing his pencil and pointed towards one of the books that was showcasing the formula.

  “Basically, it describes the relationship between fluid pressure and velocity. In a horizontal flow, if the speed of a fluid—like air—increases, its static pressure has to decrease. You can't have high speed and high pressure at the exact same time without adding external energy.”

  Eric stared at the equation.

  His eyes widened slightly as he stared at the notebook for a good few minutes.

  “I see...” he muttered, snatching the pencil back and rapidly scribbling new calculations beneath the equation.

  I turned my head back to the window. The goons were still waiting by the gates.

  Eric suddenly stood up, packing his physics notebook into his bag.

  He looked down at me, a highly satisfied smirk playing on his lips.

  “Hey, Zach. As a thank you for the tutoring session... I promise those guys will never bother you again.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

  Eric didn't answer. He just gave me a two-finger salute and walked out of the library.

  I stayed in my chair, watching the front gates. Ten minutes later, I saw Eric walk out. I couldn't see exactly what happened from my vantage point, but suddenly, the pack of seniors scattered in absolute terror, scrambling away from the gates as if they had just seen a ghost.

  Eric's promise was true. None of those seniors ever looked my way again.

  I just had absolutely no idea how he did it.