Seiryu had spent fifteen years cultivating the perfect student. Not just the grades—though those were immaculate—but the posture, the eager lean forward in his seat, the thoughtful hum before answering that made teachers glow with validation. He knew which instructors preferred coffee and which wanted tea, who needed their egos stroked with feigned ignorance and who demanded intellectual sparring. He was a prodigy, yes, but more than that, he was a strategist.
His classmates called him a suck-up behind his back. He heard them—whispers in locker rooms about how Seiryu Chen would lick any boot if it had a tenure track attached. They didn't understand. They were animals, undisciplined creatures who squandered their potential on video games and weekend intoxication. When they complained about unfair targeting, about teachers who seemed to despise them, Seiryu offered tight smiles and internal dismissal. You earn your treatment, he thought. I earned mine.
What they didn't know—what he never bothered to explain—was that his family's wealth meant nothing. He'd made his first million by fourteen, reading market patterns the way other boys read comic books. Stocks had bored him eventually; too predictable, too easy. He needed challenge. He needed the A-plus.
So when he unfolded his final exam in the empty hallway, the red letter at the top didn't register at first. His brain refused it. Then it screamed.
F.
Not a borderline failure, not a mercy D-minus. A high F, mathematically devastating, stamped beside answers he'd known, concepts he'd drilled for twenty-one days, waking before dawn to review until his vision blurred.
His hands began to shake. The paper crinkled, then crumpled as his fist closed involuntarily. His parents were home. He could see both cars from the top of the hill—his father's black Mercedes, his mother's silver Lexus, gleaming like judgment in the driveway. Three weeks of perfection, of sacrifice, and now this? Now he'd shuffle through the front door and watch his father's face shift from expectation to that hollow disappointment that cut deeper than any shouting?
He couldn't. He wouldn't.
Seiryu turned and ran. His loafers—polished that morning, as always—slapped against pavement, against linoleum as he burst back through the school doors. The building had emptied into that strange after-hours limbo, populated only by the distant shouts of basketball practice, the rhythmic thud of balls against hardwood that matched his pulse. His glasses slid down his nose, sweat gathering at his temples. He shoved them up with one knuckle, not breaking stride.
Mr. Kim's door stood ajar. A sliver of yellow light cut across the dark hallway floor.
Seiryu didn't knock. He never knocked for Mr. Kim—the man had called him his "star pupil," had written his college recommendation with such warmth that Seiryu had almost cried. They had a rapport. They had trust.
"Mr. Kim!" His voice cracked, too loud, desperate.
Silence.
The computer hummed. A jacket hung over the chair. Seiryu stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click that felt final. Wrong. Everything felt suddenly, irrationally wrong.
Then he heard it. A sound like a wounded animal, muffled and wet, coming from the supply closet.
Seiryu's hand went to his collar, loosening the tie he'd kept perfectly knotted all day.
The sound came again—a whimper, distinctly human, distinctly male. His feet moved without permission, carrying him across the room until he stood before the closet door. His hand hovered over the handle. Something in his sternum screamed at him to stop, to turn around, to run back to the hill and face his father's disappointment instead.
He pulled the door open.
Niko lay curled on the floor like discarded laundry. The strange boy from third period—always staring out windows, always doodling in margins instead of taking notes—was naked, wrists bound with what looked like ethernet cable, ankles tied with a necktie Seiryu recognized. Mr. Kim's. The gag in his mouth was paper, soaked through with saliva and something darker. Blood. It dripped from shallow, parallel cuts along his forearms, pooling beneath him. Hickeys bloomed across his chest like bruised flowers, violent purple against pale skin.
Seiryu's test paper slipped from his numb fingers. It hit the floor with a whisper, unfolding to display its red judgment.
He took one step backward. Then another. His mind, usually so sharp, so capable of processing and strategizing, had gone white and silent.
And Seiryu, who had believed himself untouchable, who had believed that excellence created immunity, understood with sudden, devastating clarity that he had never understood anything at all.
