You had sustained a third degree burn, but much to the school nurse's indignation, she noticed that apparently your skin was extremely not sensitive, and was already beginning to heal.

"It's like he has secret powers, or something..." you had heard her mutter not so subtly under her breath.

The news of the school lab burning whizzed around the school. To begin with, it wasn't like your reputation had been pristine thanks to it being sullied by Tanaka, but now you were known as an arsonist. Now people saw you as some deranged, crazed weirdo who had attempted to burn down the lab, or the entire school. You felt miffed mainly because you knew it wasn't your fault. Drat, if only you remembered your desk partner's name...

Your school life was already beginning to seem unfortunate, but nevertheless, still interesting. The teacher never quite looked at you in the eyes again; and neither did several students. Some went for therapy, you heard; but what was so bad about a fire? And did they not stick their hands into it? Your phone hadn't been saved, so you were also annoyed about that factor.

And as a bonus, the school called your parents about incurring damages.

"Yeah, no big deal." You told your mother, "I really don't understand why they're making such a huge fuss over all of this, honestly. It's just a burn—what? You also got burnt—oh, on a mission...you have to go for another surgery? Oh. You mean a nose job."

And there was that. Your mother sent over the accurate amount of money and because you were a scholarship student, you were let off rather easily. You suspected Daichi, or some other council member, had aided you in the process.

So in the past two days you had arrived, you had gotten a snake bite and had acquired a pet. Then the said pet had bitten your roommate and now you were roomies with a student council guy who seemed like he hated your guts; and another council member seemed to have framed you for burning the lab down.

Oh, but you would soon know who the desk partner sitting next to you was.

News said that some person called Rui recently was sent straight to the hospital for inhaling or drinking some sort of chemical—

And you briefly remembered the acetone you had dumped in his drink.

Sorry, not sorry.

"It's unbelievable," Daichi mumbled as he stood before you, "how did you manage to cause two large scale accidents in just a matter of two days? This can't be a daily thing, [Name]."

"Two different council members framed me," you said dryly. "Saito, and someone else."

His eyes widened at that, before the perfect facade that he always wore dawned on him again. Fixed smile, perfect degree of a loose, relaxed expression. The change had happened in a split second, the slightest of a moment, but you had caught it all.

"You met them?" Daichi inquired smoothly.

"I met Saito. But I'm well aware—or at least, it's a simple theory—that someone framed me and forced me into that forest. Looking back, it really seemed like a school garden. We used to have something like that in our house..." you trailed off, "point is, it wasn't my fault. I'm only paying for the damages because I seemed to have traumatized quite a few people."

"You stuck your hand into fire, [Name]." Daichi's voice was laced with exasperation.

"I feel like we see each other a lot now, don't we?" You drawled, "that's three times in two days. I suppose I'll be seeing Jun more, too. You know he's my roommate now, right?"

"So I've heard." Daichi said dryly, observing you. You didn't look like someone who had suffered greatly. Pain and misery were absent from your expression. Usually, students would be dismal even at the slightest bit of injury, but no. Even with the cuts on your face that were now patched up, even with the painful burn that had melted off layers of your skin, even with the itchy bandage on you—you looked completely unbothered.

And that bothered him. He was well aware of the current student body opinion towards you, and it was highly likely it would be extremely difficult for you to attain friends, but there was that.

"Did such accidents happen in middle school?" Daichi couldn't help but wonder aloud.

"Ah, no. I was homeschooled." You supplied readily, "my mother taught me everything essential, like, er, how to wield weapons, and um, guns—actually, ignore everything I said."

Daichi took your words lightly and allowed it to roll off his back. Homeschooled? Well, that would make sense. It wasn't exactly like you didn't have EQ—it was more like your sense of normalcy was completely warped to the point you were strange. There was no denying that from your deductions, you were intelligent; and from your written exams, you were skilful and talented...

"...You can still attend the other lessons?" Daichi prompted. "You can't skip everything. And now that I know the extent of your pain tolerance, I believe it would be better if you joined in on lessons."

"The lab is under construction."

"I meant other subjects," Daichi pinched his nose wearily, "literature, for example. You can't burn anything there, can you? And kindly keep Terry in your pocket. The lesson is tomorrow at eight."

"He loves excitement." There was an offended note on your voice.

"I can tell." Daichi muttered under his breath, before he pressed a gentle, firm hand on your forehead.

"You don't seem to have a fever, which is a good thing," he said, "but then again, I'm not surprised. Your body is unnaturally strong."

You beamed. "It's all in good genes."

Then, Daichi's phone started to ring, and he picked it up. It started off as a low, controlled murmur, before it rose up a louder sound—"sorry? Rui claimed someone spiked his drink with acetone?" Then there were more feverish whispers, and Daichi looked slightly ruffled, unlike his usual serene demeanor, before he hung up.

"[Name]." He looked straight at you.

You gazed innocently back.

"You were the one who poured acetone in the student's drink."

"That's a horrible thing to accuse me of," you lied blatantly. "Even worse than the time my great great grandfather accused me of drinking vodka when I was seven."

"Don't lie," Daichi murmured. Also, vodka?

"I'm not," you fluttered your eyelashes at him, preening. "Come on. Cut me some slack. First, I have to deal with this whole burning issue that I didn't even cause, but now I have to deal with another accusation that I poisoned another student? Do you know how dastardly and disgusting that is? How cruel. I feel so sorry for..."

"His name is Rui." Daichi said softly. He sounded rather disappointed.

"See, if I didn't even know his name—ow, ow, ouch." You winced, and the president looked with alarm, "my arm really hurts."

"Are you alright?" His brow was knitted together with concern, and you felt a little guilty for lying, "do you need to—"

"I'll head to the dorm," you immediately cut him off, hobbling away for show, "ooh, it really hurts."

"I can help you—"

But before he could offer, you sprinted away, leaving him staring after you in disbelief.

You really were...

Odd.

.

.

"Hey, help me open the door." You called from the opposite side of the door, your one hand struggling to fiddle with the lock, "my hand is burnt, remember?" It wasn't exactly like you were incapable of it, but your cast was preventing you to open it.

There was a small metallic click before the door opened.

"You know there is a face detector, right?" Jun narrowed his eyes in annoyance, "I was studying for the upcoming exams."

"How depressing. And no, I didn't get my face recognition done yet," you laid on the bed the minute you entered the room, feeling the soft, plush sheets sink under you, tickling your skin. The sheets were cool to the touch and the coldness from the air conditioner nipped at your skin. Overall, it was a comforting sensation after touching fire.

"You don't seem to be doing any studying."

"I came here two days ago." Your voice was muffled as you buried your face into a pillow and inhaled the sweet scent of the freshly washed pillow cover, "I need to live laugh love first, though that isn't proving to be very easy under these conditions. Aren't exams months away?"

"Clearly, you haven't checked the schedule." Jun deadpanned, "no. It's in two weeks."

Wait, what?

"That's totally unfair!" You whined, "that literally does not make any sense at all. No sense."

"Deal with it." Jun said, and gosh, was his tone smug? Why was he such an asshole?

"How many all nighters will I have to pull..." you mourned. "Wait. Why can't I get out of the exam? I have a snake bite, a burn, and I'm bleeding. I need to be exempted. I can be exempted."

"You're really childish, you know that?"

"Everyone tells me that. Shouldn't have played with those guns my father got when I was nine. Can't remember what happened." You muttered under your breath.

Jun chose to tune out. Whenever you said random snippets of your home life, he conjured the twisted, strange image that your family was leading some crime ring underground. Your family life was nothing short of colorful and belonged to fiction. First, your mother sounded absolutely crazy—your father sounded insane, and what was with your niece, or your grandfather, or your...

"Suit yourself." Jun narrowed his eyes. Hm, maybe he could pull off something exam-related? Like making you cheat so you would get expelled? Or making you miserable by tormenting you—but how? Aiko and Saito had already tried, and both had failed miserably, thanks to your infuriatingly nonchalant behavior.

Or maybe... he didn't have to hurt you physical wise. Perhaps all he had to do was to do it emotionally. Tear people away from you. Make you a stranger; an outcast in this school. It was halfway done already, but Jun didn't see how it affected you.

Daichi was dangerous, and Jun didn't know what his motive was. Saito was doing it for the money, Aiko and Inei were seemingly doing it for entertainment, and Kaen seemed...well, Jun couldn't quite pinpoint just what Kaen was doing. If anything, he seemed interested in you.

Meanwhile, it was as plain as day for Jun himself. He had entered this challenge rather skeptically, simply going with the flow, but oh, how he disliked you. You had no perception of rules whatsoever, brushed important things off—the school really really needed to get rid of you.

He wanted to see your crushed face, just once.

He wanted to see you devastated, just once.

Jun wanted to see you crushed on the floor, begging for his forgiveness, hoping to repent.

He was so sick of your carefree attitude towards life, it served society no purpose and it was utterly useless.

"Trouble seems to follow me wherever I go, though," you yawned, "what's with all the council members? First, Daichi. Then you, then Saito. Who am I going to meet next?"

At least you were smart enough to have noticed a pattern. You would have been really dumb not to notice the links, and Jun had already noticed that you were observant.

But ignoring you, Jun plugged in his ears and stared at the piles of textbooks before him.

He had stacks and stacks of work to do; and he wasn't about to let someone like you break his record of having the top five grades in the whole level.

Jun was going to make sure he saw you suffering.

He would go to extreme lengths to make sure he saw that.

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thank you for all the love! u can comment and vote for motivation ^^ I updated twice so u can check the next chapter after this!!