Leo had always thought school was a wonderful invention.
A simple yet brilliant idea—it gathered a large number of people in one place, gave them a fixed schedule, and asked them to learn.
The only problem?
Most of the students weren’t actually there to learn.
He walked through the hallways at his usual pace, his eyes calmly moving from one face to another.
A group in the corner was laughing at something on someone’s phone—the kind of laughter that meant they were laughing at a person, not at something funny.
Two students were quietly arguing about a date they had both forgotten, each convinced that the other was at fault.
A girl was very obviously trying not to look at someone—and was looking at him exactly once every thirty seconds.
He noticed all of this in the time it took someone else to open their backpack.
That was his real problem.
He couldn’t help but notice.
And the most annoying part was that he couldn’t ignore it.
“Leo!”
He smiled before turning around.
He knew who it was just from the way his name was called—Alex was the only person in the entire school who called his name like that, as if his name itself were an urgent request for help.
He turned around.
Alex came running toward him, holding a book above his head like a flag in a battle no one else had been invited to.
“The problem!
The third step!
I don’t understand it!”
“Good morning to you too, Alex.”
“Ah—good morning.
The third step—”
“Here.”
Leo pulled a folded sheet of paper from his side pocket and handed it to him without slowing down.
Alex stopped where he was and slowly unfolded the paper.
Then he looked up at Leo with his eyes wide open.
“How did you know I was going to ask?!”
“I didn’t,” Leo replied as he continued walking.
“But you’ve been asking about the third step of every problem since the beginning of the semester.
I started writing the solutions in advance to save time.”
Alex was silent for a second.
“Is that…
helpful or insulting?”
Leo thought about it for a moment as he walked.
“Both.
Good morning, Alex.”
He found his usual seat at the back of the classroom and sat down.
The last seat had been a calculated choice from the very first day—he could see everyone, while no one could see him unless he wanted them to.
His back was protected, and he had a complete view of everything happening in the classroom.
Usually, this was called the seat of a socially withdrawn person.
Leo called it the seat of a sensible person.
A slight difference in perspective.
He opened his book and started reading two minutes before the teacher arrived.
When the teacher finally walked in, Leo had already finished the pages they would cover that day and had started reading the pages they would cover tomorrow.
In Leo’s opinion, school would be much better if they simply let students study on their own.
But he never said that to anyone.
Some opinions were better left inside their owner’s head.
During the break, he chose his usual spot beneath the distant tree.
Far from the cafeteria—good.
The noise there was enough to stop a weak heart.
Far from the football field—excellent.
Somehow, the ball always found his head whenever he sat nearby, in a way that defied every law of probability.
Far from everyone—that was the real goal, but Leo would never admit it out loud.
He sat down, rested his back against the tree, and pulled out the watch.
The intricate rings inside the watch slowly rotated beneath his fingers, while the tiny golden dots on its surface glowed in the sunlight.
The sight always made him smile, even though he didn’t entirely understand why.
Maybe because he had built it with his own hands.
Maybe because it was the only thing in his life that knew everything about him—every sleepless night he had spent working on it, every idea that had started as a blur, then became an equation, and finally became this beautiful, dangerous thing in his hand.
He looked around.
A student was eating his sandwich suspiciously fast, as if someone were about to steal it.
A group was laughing louder than necessary.
A boy was very obviously trying to look uninterested in something he was actually very interested in.
The same scene.
Every day.
“You know?” he whispered to his watch thoughtfully, “if I were a social person, I’d probably be sitting with someone right now, laughing at something on their phone.”
The intricate rings inside the watch continued to rotate.
“Yeah.
I don’t know either whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
The bell rang.
He stood up, slipped the watch back into his pocket, and put on his usual expression—cheerful enough not to raise questions, calm enough not to invite anyone to get too close.
A simple equation he had perfected over the years.
Very effective.
Sometimes, he wondered if it was more effective than it should be.
But he didn’t think about it too much.
Some thoughts were better left unexamined.
And he walked back into the classroom.
End of Chapter Two