To everyone else at school, the world is a wonderful place a playground where they can laugh without a care, gossip incessantly, or whine about trivial non-issues that don’t matter in the slightest.
For me, Charlotte, the world is nothing more than an exhausting theatrical performance.
And unfortunately, I’ve been cast as the lead role: the girl who must be picture-perfect at all times.
“Whoa, Charlotte! Another flawless score on your physics exam? How are you even this much of a genius?”
“Hey, Charlotte, I brought you your favorite strawberry milk. Make sure you drink it, okay?”
I curl the corners of my mouth upward, crafting the perfectly symmetrical smile I’ve practiced a thousand times in front of my bathroom mirror.
“Ah, thank you! Honestly, I just got lucky I happened to review that exact chapter last night.”
My voice comes out soft, bright, and endlessly sweet.
The crowd of boys hovering around my desk instantly flush, while the girls gaze at me with starry-eyed admiration.
They call me the “Goddess.” They think my life is an absolute fairytale: gorgeous, brilliant, popular, and effortlessly happy.
The truth?
My fairytale burned down to ashes a long time ago.
Beneath this pristine, crisply ironed uniform lies a home that is closer to hell.
The nightmare started a year ago.
My deadbeat father whom I curse with every breath I take vanished into thin air after piling up hundreds of millions of rupiah in debt.
He just walked out, leaving my mother and me to face the terror of ruthless loan sharks hammering violently at our door day after day.
And what did my mother do?
Instead of standing by me to fight through it, she took the trashiest way out.
She began sleeping around, parading a new wealthy guy every single week just to maintain her lavish lifestyle and run away from reality.
At home, there’s nothing left but the sickening stench of alcohol, selfish screaming matches, and hollow emptiness.
To her, I’m nothing more than an unwanted piece of furniture.
My tuition?
My food money?
I have to scrape together every single cent myself.
I bust my tail working the graveyard shift at a shady 24-hour café on the sketchy side of town.
I routinely stumble home at three in the morning with swollen feet and a skull-cracking headache from sleep deprivation, only to stand at the school gates a few hours later, flashing my most dazzling smile.
Why go through the agony of keeping up appearances at school?
Simple: *I refuse to be pitied.* My pride is sky-high.
I would rather choke than let people look at me with sympathetic eyes, whispering behind my back, “Poor Charlotte, her home life is a disaster.” No.
I’d rather drop dead from exhaustion than endure a single pitiful glance from them.
Yet, this afternoon, the fragile fortress I spent the last year desperately building was threatened by a single guy.
When the period bell rang, I volunteered to carry a massive stack of thick textbooks to the teachers’ lounge.
Physically, I was already hitting my breaking point.
My arms screamed in agony, and my head throbbed violently from working late into the night.
As I made my way back down the quiet hallway, lugging the heavy stack, I saw him.
Ryuu.
The weird guy who always sits in the very back corner of the classroom.
He was walking back from the restroom with his hands shoved deep into his pants pockets, sporting a blank expression and an icy aura that practically warned people to stay away.
As the resident “friendly Goddess,” my fake persona kicked in on instinct.
I plastered on my best smile as the distance between us closed.
“Oh, hey, Ryuu. Just getting back from the restroom?” I greeted, making my tone as cheerful as humanly possible.
Ryuu stopped dead in his tracks right in front of me.
He didn’t return my smile.
He didn’t even blink.
His sharp black eyes stared straight through mine.
It felt uncanny…
and deeply uncomfortable.
His gaze wasn’t full of worship like the other guys’.
His eyes felt like a surgeon’s scalpel, peeling back my lies layer by layer.
Panic surged through me, but I forced my symmetrical smile to hold.
“I’m gonna head ahead, Ryuu. Need to get these books over to the teachers’ lounge.”
“Your hands are shaking,” he cut in dryly.
His voice was completely flat, devoid of any emotion.
*THUMP.*
My heart felt like it stopped beating for a full second.
My entire body froze.
The smile plastered across my face went rigid, hard as drying concrete.
*How could he tell?!*
I darted my eyes down and damn it.
The tips of my fingers were stark white from clutching the stack for dear life, desperately trying to mask my trembling, drained muscles.
I swallowed hard, my throat completely bone-dry.
The sheer panic in my eyes had to be glaringly obvious to him now.
I felt completely stripped bare in front of this corner-seat nobody I usually treated as invisible.
“I-insane, right? These textbooks are way heavier than they look, hahah…” I tried to chuckle, but the sound came out dry and utterly pathetic to my own ears.
I scrambled to avert my eyes, unable to withstand the pressure of his piercing stare.
“Catch you later, Ryuu. Bell’s about to ring.”
I hurried past him, my heart hammering wildly in my chest from pure shock.
I was furious.
I was terrified.
I was humiliated.
Who the hell is that guy, anyway?
To be continued…