"We'll meet again."
The finality of Yano's voice left a physical chill in the air, the floorboards seemingly still vibrating from his departure. He shoved his massive hands into his pockets and stalked out, his heavy, rhythmic footfalls echoing down the linoleum corridor like a fading drumbeat of war.
Kairin didn't wait for the echo to die. She rushed to Yohan's side, her composure shattering into a mask of frantic concern. "You're not okay, are you? I warned you, Yohan! That wasn't a fight—it was a suicide attempt!"
As her hand reached out to steady him, Yohan flinched, brusquely swiping her arm away. The movement sent a fresh spike of agony through his side, but his voice remained a cold, jagged edge. "Drop it. I don't need a crutch. I'm fine."
The dismissal hit Kairin like a slap. A flicker of genuine annoyance sparked in her eyes, but she swallowed the retort.
"Fine. Be stubborn," she snapped, her voice low. "But you're in no condition to sit in a classroom. Stay here and try to breathe. I'm heading back."
Yohan let out a long, weary exhale that tasted of copper. Despite the white-hot bloom of pain in his ribs, he began to limp toward the door, his posture forced into a fragile, upright line. "No. I didn't come here to sit in a clinic. I'm going to class."
He paused, the effort of walking making a bead of sweat roll down his temple. His gaze, usually a guarded green void, suddenly sharpened with a predatory curiosity.
"One thing, Kairin," he muttered, his voice dropping an octave. "Those names. No one in this country carries handles like that. What's the angle? And what's the story with this 'Yin-Half, Yang-Half' obsession?"
Kairin caught her breath, her hand frozen on the doorframe. She looked at him—really looked at him—seeing the bruised outsider trying to decipher the lethal alphabet of a city that wanted to swallow him whole.
She glanced at the hallway, the sound of the distant school bell beginning to chime. "I'll give you the history lesson later," she called back, already moving into a quick stride. "Meet me during recess. Behind the gym. Don't be late—and don't get killed on the way there."
With that, she vanished into the morning light of the corridor, leaving Yohan alone with the silence and the stinging reminder of a power he had yet to understand.
The heavy silence of the infirmary felt like a physical pressure as Kairin left. Yohan didn't move; he stood rooted to the spot, his reflection in the distant washroom mirror a blurred, solitary shape. The momentary flicker of gratitude he might have felt was systematically dismantled, replaced by the cold, analytical machinery of his mind.
"Yano was right," he thought, his brow furrowing as he deconstructed the logic of the last ten minutes. He traced the lines of the power play he'd just witnessed—a sister of the Boss branding herself a traitor to shield a newcomer who set grudge against her own gang. In the brutal arithmetic of the streets, that kind of risk never added up to zero.
He straightened his posture, a sharp wince catching in his throat as his ribs protested. He ignored it. The vulnerability he had shown—the momentary reliance on her frantic warnings—was a weakness he couldn't afford to repeat.
"Kairin Olivera is really up to something," he mused, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the empty doorway. "I don't even need to guess the specifics. In a place governed by 'Crews' or Gangs, no one protects an outsider for free. You don't hand a stranger a lifeline unless you plan on using the other end of the rope."
If Kairin wanted to play a deeper game, he would meet her at recess. But he wouldn't be walking into that meeting as a grateful survivor; he'd be walking in as a mercenary looking for the price tag.
Yohan slowly began to take a step forward, but after only a few paces, his body doubled over. He immediately clutched his ribs, hissing through gritted teeth. "Damn... I knew this 'tough guy' act wouldn't last long. If it hurts, it hurts."
Despite the searing pain, he forced himself to stand upright again. "Breathe," he commanded himself, taking a deep, steadying breath.
As he exhaled, he repeated a single word in his mind: "Ignore."
Inhale. Exhale. Ignore.
Using this mental rhythm, he began to walk with slow, deliberate steps. Gradually, he increased his pace, pushing through the discomfort. He thought to himself, "This pain won't be that hard to endure. I just need a painkiller. One good night's sleep and I'll be recovered by morning."
The bell signaling the end of the first period had rung just moments before Yohan managed to reach his classroom. Looking at him, no one would have dared to guess that this was the same guy who had just endured a brutal exchange with Yino. He walked in appearing perfectly "fit and fine," with only the beads of sweat lining his forehead serving as a silent testament to the ordeal he'd just survived.
Ignoring the piercing glares and hushed whispers from the rest of the boys in the room, Yohan marched straight to the back of the middle row and took his seat. The teacher for the second period hadn't arrived yet, and eventually, the restless atmosphere of the class began to settle.
As the room grew quieter, Yohan's gaze instinctively drifted toward the window side. There, sitting in the second bench, was Yino.
Yino looked completely relaxed, leaning back in his seat and humming a soft tune to himself. Catching Yohan's eye, Yino turned around and flashed a subtle, mocking smirk. In that one look, everything became clear: his earlier "kindness" in the hallway was a total farce. He hadn't sent Yohan to the infirmary out of concern; he had simply wanted to stay behind to avoid the same lecture or to see Yohan struggle. His friendly gesture had been nothing more than a calculated act.
Anyway, that wasn't the main concern for Yohan at the moment. He pulled a painkiller from his bag and swallowed it with some water. He leaned his head against the desk and closed his eyes.
But a fire seemed to ignite in his veins. That familiar bitterness and envy began to surround him once again. Why? Why didn't he have someone like that—someone to protect him? Even Kairin wasn't entirely trustworthy.
With a trembling hand, he pulled his phone from his bag. He quickly opened his call logs, thinking to himself, "No, I have to call them. I have to bring them here."
Suddenly, a crumpled piece of paper hit him hard on the head. He bolted upright and realized the teacher had already entered; everyone was standing up except for him. Luckily, the teacher hadn't noticed him yet.
So, who threw the paper?
The paper had hit the left side of his head, meaning it came from the direction of the door. But only girls were sitting in that section!
Could it be—?
Before he could finish the thought, the teacher told everyone to take their seats. Yohan didn't even need to stand up; he just sat straight and fixed his eyes on the teacher.
Yohan unfolded the paper with a single hand, his eyes fixed forward on the teacher's chalkboard, his face a mask of perfect student discipline.
The silence of the blank paper was louder than any written warning. Yohan smoothed the scrap against his thigh, his eyes tracking the teacher's chalk as it screeched against the board, but his focus was entirely internal.
A blank page meant no trail. No handwriting to analyze, no ink to trace. It was a ghost of a gesture—an untraceable intervention.
In the brutal ecology of this school, an act of mercy was rarely an act of kindness. Yohan's mind, sharpened by years of looking for the hidden blade in every handshake, began to sift through the possibilities. If that paper hadn't jolted him awake, the second-period teacher—a man who looked like he measured his life in disciplinary referrals—would have caught him slumped over like a corpse. On a day already marked by a riot and a Headmaster's "probation," a second strike would have been the end.
Someone had saved his life—or at least his enrollment.
Yohan didn't want any more trouble. He quietly switched off his phone and stuffed it back into his bag. But just a few moments later, his world started spinning—he felt like he was seeing stars.
The teacher turned to the board and wrote: "WEEKLY TEST."
Yohan was stunned. It had only been a week since school started, and they were already facing a weekly test?
The teacher turned away from the board and began scanning the rows of students, one by one. His gaze eventually landed on Yohan, and he signaled for him to stand up.
Yohan rose to his feet.
"What is your name? and where are you from?" the teacher asked curiously.
"My name is Yohan Davis. I'm from Detroit," Yohan replied steadily.
The entire class turned to look at him. A different kind of spark lit up in the eyes of the girls in the room as they took him in.
The teacher chuckled. "Detroit! Well, well. That's quite a distance to travel for our school. Unfortunately, the test is today, and there's nothing I can do about that. But don't worry—I'll give you a pass this time since it's your first day."
Yohan didn't feel like dragging out the conversation. He simply nodded and sat back down.
However, as the questions began to appear on the board one after another at a lightning pace, Yohan's eyes widened in total shock.
The silence of the classroom was absolute, a vacuum where the only thing Yohan could hear was the frantic ticking of the wall clock and the thudding of his own pulse against his bruised ribs. He stared at the chalkboard, the complex equations swimming before his eyes like jagged, broken glass. Fifteen minutes had passed, and his paper was a graveyard of empty lines.
But the academic failure wasn't what was making his skin crawl.
From the far left, at the very last bench by the door, a girl was watching him. She had her chin resting in her palm, her gaze unblinking and heavy. Yohan didn't turn his head, but he could feel her eyes tracking the slight, pained hitch in his shoulders every time he tried to shift his weight.
Suddenly, the girl leaned in. She didn't shout; instead, she ducked her head slightly behind the shoulder of the student in front of her, her movements jerky and uncertain.
"Hey," she breathed, her voice a ghost of a whisper that barely traveled across the aisle. "Copy... copy from my paper."
Yohan froze, his pen hovering a fraction of an inch above the wood. He cut his eyes toward her.
She wasn't the picture of cool confidence he had expected. Her fingers were twisting a stray thread on her blazer, and she kept darting anxious glances toward the teacher, who was currently absorbed in a book at the front desk. Her face was pale, and there was a visible tremor in her lower lip—a sharp contrast to the bold offer she had just made.
"No one... no one will look at us," she added, her whisper cracking with a hint of desperation. "The teacher isn't paying attention. Just look over. Quickly."
She slid her notebook a few inches to the right, toward the edge of her desk, tilting it just enough so the neatly solved equations were visible to him. She looked terrified, as if she were expecting a lightning bolt to strike her down for the transgression, yet she didn't pull the paper back.
Yohan stared at the tilted notebook, then back at the girl. This wasn't the calculated, shark-like maneuver of a gang member. This was something else—a raw, impulsive risk taken by someone who looked like she might faint from the sheer stress of it.
"Why?" Yohan thought, his jaw tightening. "Why would you risk your neck for a stranger you don't even know?"
His Detroit instincts screamed that this was a trap, a way to put him in her debt. But as he looked at her shaking hands, he realized that if this was a play, she was the greatest actress he had ever met. Or, she was just as much of an outcast as he was, reaching out with a trembling hand before the sharks could catch his scent.
The girl, her ponytail swaying slightly as she shifted, kept her navy blue bell-shaped earrings in a constant, nervous jingle. She looked like she was expecting a SWAT team to burst through the door at any second, but her hand remained steady enough to keep the notebook anchored in the "cheat zone."
Yohan cut a glance at the teacher. The man was staring out the window with the glazed-over look of someone questioning every career choice he'd ever made. Seizing the window, Yohan's pen became a blur.
There was no hostility coming from her—just a strange, flickering hesitation that felt entirely out of place in this school of sharks.
He finished the last Short Answer Question exactly as the teacher's desk-bound trance broke.
"Alright, time's up," the teacher announced, his voice a dry rasp.
He moved through the aisles like a machine, harvesting papers. Yohan handed his over with the straightest face he'd ever pulled, while the girl to his left looked like she was trying to merge with the wall.
As the teacher exited and the bell chimed, the classroom air finally de-pressurized. Yohan slumped back, his ribs throbbing in rhythm with his racing heart. He had the answers, he had his "pass," and now, he had a very confusing debt to a girl with bell-shaped earrings.