Noon.
Smallville High School.
Clark yawned as he pushed open the door to The Torch office.
The office wasn’t large.
Newspaper clippings covered three of the walls, while a long table occupied the very center of the room, piled high with back issues of the Daily Planet and an old-fashioned computer.
Chloe sat in front of the computer screen, her short blonde hair tucked behind her ears, her fingers dancing across the keyboard.
She was the only person at Smallville High who ran the school paper as if it were the Washington Post.
At sixteen, she had already displayed an investigative talent that gave the town sheriff headaches.
Clark’s good friend, Pete Ross, was curled up on the old couch in the corner.
As Chloe’s self-proclaimed chief assistant, his primary duty seemed to be destroying snacks.
“Yo,” Clark greeted, leaning against the doorframe and raising a hand.
“Clark Kent,” Chloe said without turning around.
“You were late for second period again.
Ms.
Sedgwick said if you use your family’s broken tractor as an excuse a third time, she’s going to drive out to your house herself to inspect it.”
“It really was broken,” Clark said, walking in and snatching a piece of lettuce from next to Pete’s sandwich before popping it into his mouth.
“Though next time I’ll switch it up.
Say the cows were abducted by aliens or something.”
“Hey!”
“You…”
Chloe turned around in slight frustration, but then, as if realizing something, her annoyance suddenly vanished.
“Have you checked the voting for the Homecoming King candidates?”
Clark chewed the lettuce leaf and shook his head.
“Then guess who this year’s favorite is.”
“The captain?” Clark said casually.
“He’s the favorite every year.”
Chloe shook her head.
“This year is different.
The number one favorite this year…
is a Kent.”
Clark froze.
“Me?”
“Of course not you.
Your brother.”
Chloe walked over to the campus relationship chart pinned to the wall, which she used to track school gossip.
“Ariel Kent.
Excellent academic performance, top three GPA in the grade, alternate decathlete in the Kansas High School Olympics—though everyone knows he’s just too lazy to actually compete—unofficial strategist who helped the Smallville High football team win the playoff championship, and number one in community volunteer hours for high school boys in all of Kansas.
When teachers mention him, the word they use is ‘perfect.’ When students mention him, the phrase they use is…”
“The Golden Lion of Smallville.”
The girl chanted like a bard.
Clark was somewhat bewildered.
“Are you talking about Ariel?” he asked, double-checking.
“My brother Ariel?”
“Ariel of the Kent Farm.
Your brother, Ariel.”
Chloe spread her hands.
Clark fell silent.
“He’s a complete couch potato,” Clark said, utterly incredulous.
“His daily routine at home is lying on a beaten-up lawn chair by the cornfield, soaking up the sun, refusing to budge until my mom calls him for dinner.
Every time it’s his turn to feed the chickens, he finds a way to dump the chore on me.
Last week, he spent forty minutes convincing my dad to let him skip weeding a whole row of crops.
With eloquence like that, he should be a lawyer, not Homecoming King.”
Chloe and Pete exchanged a look, shaking their heads in unison.
“Say whatever you want,” Chloe replied, turning back to type on her keyboard.
“Either way, if you want to canvas votes for him or sabotage him before the deadline, I’ve got the connections.”
“I have football practice this afternoon,” Clark said, already backing toward the door.
“You two get back to your conspiracy theories.”
“Remember to hold back your strength,” Chloe added without raising her head.
“Got it.”
Clark shrugged and pushed open the door.
Sunlight fell slantwise through the high windows in the hallway.
As Clark passed the locker area, his peripheral vision caught a figure at the far end of the corridor.
Long blonde hair, a gray hoodie.
“Joanna.” He jogged a few steps to catch up.
He matched his pace to hers until the siblings walked in rhythm.
“Where’s Ariel?” Clark asked, turning his head.
“Don’t know,” the girl replied, not even looking at him.
“Oh.”
Clark didn’t push further.
He had long grown accustomed to this mode of interaction.
After all, Joanna was like this with everyone—cold and quiet.
The two stepped out of the school building.
In the distance, the artificial lake shimmered like scattered silver under the bright light.
Old trees along the shore dropped long branches that nearly touched the water’s surface.
A group of people had gathered under the trees.
Clark’s attention was drawn to the brightly colored sports uniforms.
Several members of the Smallville tennis team and cheerleaders were gathered on the grassy slope by the lake.
At the center of the crowd was Whitney Fordman, half-kneeling on one knee in front of a girl.
The girl was…
Lana Lang?
Her brownish-red hair fell over her shoulders, and a butterfly brooch was pinned to the collar of her light-pink cardigan.
When the wind blew, her skirt swayed gently.
Clark had to admit that Lana Lang was entirely qualified to be cheerleader captain; just standing there was enough to draw everyone’s gaze.
Because of this, even someone like Whitney—the tennis team captain and a top dog on campus—pulled a small box from his pocket.
The time and location he chose were clearly no coincidence.
High noon, by the lake, surrounded by teammates and cheerleaders.
He needed an audience to complete this courtship display.
“This is for you, Lana.”
Whitney opened the box.
Sunlight caught on a silver chain, set right in the middle with a green stone.
“I know you lost your old bracelet, so I found this one.”
As his words fell, a few catcalls, whistles, and knowing giggles erupted from the surrounding crowd and cheerleaders.
The corners of Lana’s mouth curled up, her eyes crinkling softly, looking happy on the surface.
But Clark could see that her shoulders were slightly tense.
She wasn’t happy.
Clark didn’t know why he could be so sure of this.
Perhaps it was because there was a visible gulf between Lana’s current smile and the way she smiled when she was truly joyful.
Last week, when she bent down in the hallway to play with a stray cat that had wandered into the school, her eyes had crinkled into complete slits.
But right now, her eyes held only discomfort.
Clark’s footsteps moved forward involuntarily.
Before he could take more than a few steps, however—
Buzz—!
The large boy suddenly staggered.
He felt his strength draining away.
Is the sun too intense?
he thought.
And in the brief interval while he hesitated between moving closer or stepping back, a crisp voice suddenly sounded.
“A gift should make people happy.
It shouldn’t feel like a hostage exchange.”
Crack!
The familiar sound of cracking sunflower seeds.
In all of Smallville, only one person enjoyed eating those particular sunflower seeds.
The lakeside fell silent for a moment before the crowd burst into whispered chatter.
“Ariel?!”
“Why is he here?”
“Now this is gonna be good!
Ariel the Lion versus Whitney the Bull—who do you guys think will win?
My money’s on Whitney.
At least he’s actually fought in real matches.”
“You bet jack shit.
Whitney’s smile froze on his face.
Pete, hearing the commotion, walked out from the direction of the school building.
Seeing the scene from afar, he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Ah…
Ariel isn’t going to fight Whitney, is he?
The voting for Homecoming King is right around the corner.”
Chloe stopped beside him, holding her interview notebook, her gaze sweeping past Ariel, who looked far more relaxed than anyone else.
“Does that matter?” she said softly.
“What?”
“Ariel doesn’t care about being King at all.” Chloe shrugged.
Pete opened his mouth, unable to refute her.
Whitney clearly felt it too.
He maintained his half-kneeling posture, the smile on his face stiffening bit by bit.
“What does this have to do with you, Kent?”
Ariel didn’t speak, simply stepping forward at his own pace.
The onlookers automatically parted to both sides.
The wall of people that had just been surrounding Whitney cleared out a pathway for Ariel.
Joanna stood on the other side of the path, watching Ariel walk toward Lana.
The girl’s lips pressed into a thin line.
She stuffed her hands into her hoodie pockets, her fists involuntarily clenching tight.
Meddling in other people’s business.
Lana has a mouth of her own.
Whitney didn’t actually hurt her.
Why does Ariel have to go over there?
Why does it have to be her?!
Could Ariel…
“Joanna…” Clark said somewhat weakly beside her, “I feel a bit sick.”
Glancing at her weak, adoptive cousin, Joanna looked back toward Ariel.
Right.
It must be because of that green stone.
The fact that Clark was afraid of green stones was no secret among the three of them.
Ariel isn’t doing this for Lana.
He’s doing it for Clark.
Joanna repeated this sentence in her mind.
Meanwhile, as Ariel passed by Whitney, he casually pinched the green-stone bracelet out of the open box, holding it up to examine it in the sunlight for a moment.
“You’re right, it’s none of my business.”
“I just think your stone is pretty ugly.
My Will of the Overlord is making my hands itch.”
Someone in the surrounding crowd couldn’t hold it back and let out a snort of laughter.
Whitney whipped his head around, and the laughter immediately softened, though it didn’t disappear—it merely turned into suppressed snickers.
“He wouldn’t actually throw it, would he?”
“Whitney just bought that…”
Splash—!
Ariel casually flicked his wrist.
Plop.
Ripples spread across the water.
Clark once again heard the roaring thunder surging through his veins.
“You bastard—!”
Whitney spun around abruptly, rage burning up from the depths of his eyes.
“That’s Clark Kent’s brother, Whitney,” a teammate beside him said nervously.
A fresh stir instantly swept through the crowd.
“Clark’s brother?”
“The same Clark who flattened the entire veteran roster on the football team?”
“Wait, why do I remember the football guys usually hanging out with Ariel too…
Oh…
right, Ariel Kent, Clark Kent…”
Clark Kent.
The monster who had ground all the veteran players into the dirt on the very first day of tryouts.
Because of his arrival, Whitney hadn’t made the football team and was forced to join Smallville’s declining tennis program, sitting on the bench for an entire season watching his spot occupied by a damn farm boy.
And now, that farm boy’s brother was looking at him as if he were a clown.
“You think I won’t—”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Whitney’s vision blurred.
Before he could react, his collar was grabbed, and his feet left the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing to my brother?!”
“Cl…
Clark…” He stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence.
The guy lifting him was half a head taller than him with shoulders a full frame wider, and his blue eyes were glaring furiously right now.
Whitney swore he wasn’t misremembering—there was actual fire burning in those eyes!
The voices that had been shouting about the Bull versus the Lion completely vanished.
The lakeside fell so quiet that only the rustling of leaves remained.
“Get lost!”
Thud—!
The tennis team captain was dumped onto the ground just like that.
“My god…”
“Who bet on Whitney just now?”
“I bet he could last ten seconds.
Technically, I haven’t lost yet.”
“You explicitly said you wanted to watch the Kent brothers get beaten up!”
A surge of humiliation rushed straight to his head.
Whitney pushed himself up, wanting to say something to save face, but as his eyes crossed Clark’s shoulder and saw the scene behind him, his blood ran cold.
Ariel was still cracking sunflower seeds on the grassy slope, but six or seven members of the football team were standing beside him.
The big guy leading them was the running back, Derrick Fox, followed by the linebacker twins, Mike and Michael.
Whitney turned his face away and skulked off toward the parking lot with his two lackeys.
Clark let out a breath and turned around.
“Hey—Clark!”
Derrick waved to him from five or six paces away.
“For this afternoon’s practice game, are you on offense or defense?
The new coach said to let you pick.”
“Offense,” Clark said, walking over and bumping fists with his teammates as they approached.
Yet in the middle of exchanging pleasantries with them, he noticed something.
When Derrick passed by Ariel, he naturally reached out to bump fists with him as well.
“Ariel, thanks to your notes on that physics assignment last time, Ms.
Sedgwick gave me a B+!
That’s the highest grade I’ve gotten in my life.”
“Don’t celebrate too early,” Ariel said, finishing off the last few sunflower seeds.
“The scope for next week’s exam is different.”
“Huh?!”
Michael, one of the twins, stood next to Ariel.
“Ariel, how did you say we should connect the backup generator for the auditorium on Homecoming?
That diagram you drew last time was way too perfect.”
“How about this: was the diagram I drew last time in series or in parallel?”
“…Is there a difference?”
Ariel sighed, pulled a pen out from his pocket, and drew a few lines and arrows on the back of Michael’s hand.
“Like this.
Got it now?”
Dumbfounded as he watched this scene, Clark finally realized that his couch-potato brother was standing naturally at the very center of the crowd…
It was also at this moment that he suddenly recalled a perfectly ordinary memory: Jonathan, their father, had initially opposed his joining the football team.
It was Ariel who had proven on his behalf that he needed a place where he could learn to control his strength while enjoying a normal youth, which led to him joining…
“Clark!”
“Huh?”
Clark snapped back to his senses, only to find Ariel standing beside him, though he hadn’t noticed when he’d walked over.
“You also think these damsel-in-distress dramas are annoying, right?
But you might want to consider switching up your posture next time.
Holding someone upside down, for instance, has a much bigger visual impact.” The young man’s eyes carried a trace of amusement.
“…I’m not like you.
I don’t do flashy tricks.”
“Fair enough.”
Clark: “…”
He turned his head to look.
Lana was still standing in the same spot.
The empty box left behind by Whitney remained on the ground, and she was looking down at it, seemingly hesitating over something.
“I just felt like what that guy did was wrong,” Clark lowered his voice to say.
“Righteous indignation?”
“It was to begin with.”
“Right, right, right.
Driven purely by a sense of justice, nothing to do with the cheerleader captain.” Ariel shrugged.
Clark was so annoyed that he laughed instead.
His brother was always like this, taking delight in stripping his thoughts bare in the open sun and watching him squirm in embarrassment right on the spot.
Dammit, he was definitely going to steal his strawberry sundae tonight!
Is this guy thinking about doing something bad?
Listening to Clark’s gradually accelerating heartbeat, Ariel felt a touch of alertness.
“…Where’s Joanna?” He changed the topic.
“There.”
Clark pointed toward the small path leading to the parking lot.
The girl was walking away with her back turned to them, her high blonde ponytail swaying gently in the autumn wind, clearly having no intention of stopping to wait for anyone.
“Catch you later, bro,” Ariel patted Clark’s shoulder.
“We’re not bringing you along for lunch.”
Clark let out a helpless laugh, watching Ariel walk in the direction of that retreating figure.
Ariel and Joanna, the two people closest to him, were also the two people he understood the least.
Nodding to the others, Clark was about to turn around and head to the practice field.
“Clark!”
Lana, however, stepped in front of him, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
She tilted her head slightly to look up at the boy who was significantly taller than her.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Clark paused.
From his peripheral vision, he caught Derrick and the twins snickering in the distance, shoving each other as they retreated toward the practice field, giving him a thumbs-up before they left.
“……Sure.”
Lana looked left and right before leading Clark behind the large willow tree.
She lowered her eyes, looking inexplicably nervous for some reason.
“Your brother…
Ariel, right?”
“?”
“What does he…
usually do at school?
I mean, during his free time.”
Clark’s brow furrowed slightly.
“Lana, if you have something to ask, just ask it directly.”
Lana bit her lip.
“I used to have a green stone bracelet…
my mom left it to me,” she spoke a bit faster.
“And then I remembered, the day before yesterday after school, when I went to the dance studio, I bumped into Ariel standing inside…
right in front of my locker…
He…
it might just be a coincidence, but…”
“You think Ariel stole your bracelet,” Clark’s voice sank.
“I didn’t say…”
“Every word you just said adds up to exactly that.”
Lana raised her head, meeting Clark’s gaze.
The expression on the boy’s face was hard to describe, but coldness undoubtedly made up the larger part of it.
“Lana,” Clark frowned, taking a step back.
“If you have evidence, you should show me the evidence, or go straight to Principal Waddington.”
“I just wanted you to help me…”
“You have zero proof, yet you’re asking me to cooperate with you to investigate my brother.”
The shimmering ripples on the lake reflected in the boy’s blue pupils, shattering into countless specks of light before slowly fading away.
“Sorry, Lana.
I can’t help you.” At this moment, Clark only felt that certain emotions in his heart were gone.
He turned around and walked away.
Lana wanted to chase after him to explain, but before she could even step forward—
Pat.
A hand slapped onto her shoulder.
“Yo.”
Smallville’s ultimate shit-stirrer was standing right behind her.
“Crying won’t help, and chasing after him won’t help either.”
“But if what you said is true, maybe we can help you.”
“A lot of theft cases have been popping up in town recently.
I’m thinking it might be connected to this, Lana,” Chloe handed over a pen.
“Start from the beginning.
When did you lose it, when was the last time you saw it before it went missing, and what places have you been to?”
Lana froze for a few seconds, but in the end, she took the pen, sat down on the bench by the lake, and began to write.
On the other side.
Ariel quickly caught up with Joanna.
After all, he had long mapped out Joanna’s usual route.
Coming out from the side door of the school building, passing through the parking lot, walking across the ash trees left bare by the autumn wind, and reaching the lawn area near the back gate.
“Hey!”
“Busy at lunch.”
Ariel blinked.
The girl’s heartbeat sounded steady; she didn’t seem to be lying.
“What could you possibly be busy with at lunch?” Amusement laced his tone.
“Mona and Elaine said they have a new discovery.” The girl turned half her face, her sky-blue eyes peering through her strands of hair.
As they spoke, they had already walked to the edge of the lawn at the end of the ash trees.
Two girls were standing not far off.
Mona Doyle, holding her books, speaking softly yet listening attentively to every word, and Elaine Belloc, who had already planned out the after-school route for the three of them, waving her hand while urging her to hurry up.
Joanna nodded and naturally stepped into the space between the two of them.
Mona leaned in close to her ear.
“…The sheriff treated the anonymous note from last time as a prank.”
“At least the stolen silverware was recovered,” Elaine corrected in a low voice.
“Let’s go,” Joanna cut off the discussion coldly.
The three figures walked farther along the path at the edge of the lawn, eventually disappearing into the oak-shaded avenue leading toward the center of town.
It looked like they were heading to Mona’s garage.
A high school girl’s circle of friends was like a medieval Freemasonry, equipped with secret codes only they understood, fixed positions, and an exclusive barrier.
Ariel had experienced this terrifying social ecosystem in his past life, but looking at the three figures shrinking into dots, he couldn’t help grinning.
Joanna had made her own friends too.
That was good.
They had even formed a detective agency.
Ariel knew about it.
Even though these three acted with absolute low-key discretion—the exact opposite of Chloe’s Torch—for Ariel, who possessed super senses, the coverage of his intelligence network in this school was second to none.
If he remembered correctly, by dropping anonymous notes into the sheriff’s office mailbox, they had helped solve four minor cases over the past six months.
Joanna was doing the right thing.
He wondered if Uncle Ben would feel a little happier knowing this.
Ariel tilted his head up, looking at the high, distant sky of Kansas.
The clouds happened to form a subtle outline in a fleeting moment, a stubble-covered face suddenly floating across the sky.
Forever remembered, live on in memory.
Alright, enough with the sentimentality.
Ariel shook his head to banish the random thoughts, turning around to walk toward the main gate of the school.
“Yo, little lion.”
The old man in the security booth greeted Ariel as he walked over.
“Mr.
Wilson, haven’t off-shifted yet?” Ariel remarked casually, his eyes drifting over.
The old man sat on a folding chair, holding a newspaper in his hands.
Smith Wilson.
His white hair was cut neat and short as a crewcut, and an eyepatch covered his left eye—a souvenir reportedly left behind from his days in the military when he was young.
“If I off-shift, who’s going to protect you kids?”
Mr.
Wilson instructed with dutiful responsibility, “When school is out, don’t wander off into isolated places.”
“I heard some unfamiliar faces have shown up in town lately.”