By the time Monday came around, Ryu couldn’t believe only two days had passed. Now he was back at school, doing what he did at the start of every school day: sitting at his desk while everyone else chatted.

“How was your weekend?” said a girl to Ryu’s right.

Ryu didn’t even turn his head. He knew she wasn’t talking to him, but rather the pack of girls sitting around the desk beside him.

“Um, I only went down to the mall and did some shopping. There was a really good sale at Ukiko though.”

“Oh?” The pack of girls uttered in a low howl.

Ryu knew he was practically invisible to them, though it did come with some benefits. A number of things he’d heard from the shadows had convinced him girls were just as weird as guys.

“Well, they were selling really cute panties-”

“Karen!” The group squealed.

“Everyone take a seat and get out your books.”

Ryu looked to the front of the class and crossed eyes with the devil incarnate, Livia Hopson, strolling to her desk. She always walked with her back straight, looking down on him with her chin raised.

Livia took the roll and began her class, and, as usual, Ryu looked out the window at anything that might catch his interest. Today that meant watching a boys gym class playing soccer.

“Ryu.”

Ryu knew that voice all too well, intelligent, commanding, condescending. Perhaps others couldn’t hear it since all the boys fapped to her and the girls wanted to be her (which for some also included wanting to be fapped to), but he could hear it in every word. Every movement of Livia’s lips was finely orchestrated to optimize insult, and only Ryu, who’d heard it longer than anyone, could pick it up.

“Yes?” said Ryu.

He already knew where this was going.

“I hope you studied over the weekend-”

A quick glance at the board...

“Do you want me to tell you the answer or write it down?” said Ryu.

Livia stepped to the side, a whiteboard marker held at the tips of her fingers, and a smile on her lips. “You can write it down.”

Livia smirked as Ryu took the whiteboard marker from her and stepped up to the board. He never liked writing on whiteboards, it brought out all the bad parts of his already terrible handwriting.

“No working?” said Livia, when Ryu stepped back.

“That is my working.”

For a split second Livia’s smile dropped. “So you can do this -” Livia eyes looked at the board, where an example of the question and a solution was written “- in your head?”

He could hear it, the venom may as well have been dripping from her lips. “Yeah.”

Livia snatched the whiteboard marker from Ryu’s hand and wrote down another question-

“Negative one plus or minus one-point-seven-three-two i”

Livia’s hand stopped.

“Sit down.”