The wet cotton mop head moved back and forth across the floor in steady lines.
The classroom was completely empty, and the only sound was the soft scrape of the mop pole against the tiles.
I kept repeating the motion like a machine, but my brain was stuck on something else.
Runa's random "thank you" made me dig through the useless info I'd already thrown away.
Keywords: middle school, trouble, Runa Selol.
The search hit almost immediately.
A memory file marked transaction completed, which I had already archived in the recycle bin, got pulled back out.
"So it was that thing"
The scene replayed frame by frame: the girl tearing up sheet music, the anonymous video threat, and her looking like she was about to fall apart while she still tried to act tough.
Back then, stepping in wasn't about sympathy or pity.
It was just an equal trade.
I gave an efficient solution, and I handled her crisis without crushing her pride, and in return she accepted it and automatically withdrew that "I'll make sure you can't stay in Mistvale City" threat.
So calling it helping didn't even come close.
I had already wiped that fair trade clean to save mental storage.
But she still remembered it, and she even… looked like she was mad?
I twisted the mop and wrung the dirty water back into the bucket.
Since I couldn't make sense of that emotional spike at all, I landed on one conclusion.
Even in a novel world, rich people's brains still worked in ways a bottom-tier goblin like me couldn't understand.
No point guessing.
Thinking about this stuff was a pure waste of energy.
When the cleaning was almost done, I lined up the desks, and I put the washed mop and bucket back in the corner.
Then I swung my heavy backpack on and got ready to go home.
A sharp girl's voice, squeezed tight with anger, drifted in from the far end of the hallway outside.
"Bitch! Do you have any shame? You know he's my boyfriend, but you still cling to him every day!"
Her voice cracked from rage, and it cut through the quiet like a blade.
Then another voice came, one I knew way too well, and it carried that signature sweet tone with zero emotion behind it.
"Lina, watch your mouth."
"I'm not clinging to Jasper," Seraphina said, like she was stating something that had nothing to do with her.
"We're just in the same study group, so we talk about problems sometimes."
"And your boyfriend is the one who keeps coming to me with questions," she added, still calm.
"I can't exactly reject him every single time."
Shit.
It was the psycho Seraphina.
My body stiffened, and that bad feeling crept closer.
Outside, Lina clearly got pushed over the edge by how casual Seraphina sounded.
"Talk about problems? Do you need to stand that close to talk about problems? He forgot my birthday, but he remembers what kind of drink you like!"
By the end she was basically screaming.
"Seraphina, stop acting innocent. You're a slut who flirts with every guy!"
"Oh, your boyfriend can't remember your birthday, and that's somehow my fault?" Seraphina laughed lightly, like she didn't care.
"Maybe… you should ask yourself if you're not charming enough to keep him."
"And getting this angry isn't great for your skin either."
Their shouting echoed down the empty hall, and it moved closer and closer toward Class 3's room.
My body went on alert instantly.
I walked fast to the back door so I could slip out the other way.
It was too late.
The noise hit the doorway, and the girl's yelling mixed with a guy trying to calm her down, and every word was clear.
"Stop playing innocent! If you didn't keep batting your eyes at him and bringing him water every day, would he end up like this?!"
"I smile because he helped with cleaning duty, and I gave him water because he was thirsty after basketball, and isn't that normal in our class?" Seraphina replied, steady and slow.
"Or are you the type who even wants to control your boyfriend talking to other girls?"
Her tone was patient in a way that felt like charity, and the humiliation was obvious.
"You… you're twisting everything!"
Bang!
The front door got slammed open from the outside with brute force.
The wooden door crashed into the wall, dust fell down in little bursts, and a slim blue-and-white figure stumbled into the room.
It was Seraphina.
She lost her footing and staggered a few steps into the classroom, but she didn't look panicked, and her usual smile never even dropped.
Instead, she flowed with the shove and braced a hand on the nearest desk, which bled off most of the impact.
She ended up half-leaning against the tabletop in a lazy, tempting pose, and the whole move looked effortless.
She even had time to tuck a few loose strands of hair behind her ear, like nothing embarrassing had just happened.
Elegant. Seriously elegant.
The other two came in right after her.
In front was Lina, with bloodshot eyes and a face that showed she was furious, and behind her was her boyfriend, who grabbed at her arm and tried to stop her.
"Lina, this is school."
Lina didn't even look at him.
She pointed at Seraphina and was about to spit out more, but the words stopped dead.
Because the empty classroom suddenly had an audience.
"Lilu bro…" the boy blurted out without thinking, and then his face went stiff with embarrassment.
It was Jasper, the teammate who fought alongside me in last Friday's basketball game.
So the main character in this messy love drama was him.
Three people. Three sets of eyes.
All of them noticed me at almost the same time, standing at the back of the room with one hand still frozen in the "about to open the door and run" position.
For a second, it felt like someone hit mute on the world.
Lina's rage glitched for a moment when she saw me, like she didn't expect her big confrontation to come with a live audience.
The most awkward one was Jasper.
His eyes darted around, he wouldn't meet mine, and he looked like a rat caught stealing rice.
After standing beside me as a hero teammate last week, getting dragged into a scene like this was basically a public execution.
Sera's reaction was the strangest.
When she noticed me, surprise flashed through her smiling eyes for a split second, and then a playful look took over.
She relaxed even more against the desk.
She slowly smoothed her spotless uniform, and she did it so gracefully that the stumble from earlier might as well have never happened.
A tiny, deliberate curve lifted at the corner of her mouth.
It was the kind of look that said she wanted to drag me into the mud too, and she was looking forward to it.
Trouble's here.
I stared at this stupid scene, and thought.
Seriously… why do people love fighting after school?
And why pick a classroom, of all places, like it's some sacred arena for memories and hormones?
Doesn't the campus grove, the rooftop, or literally any cheap motel outside the school have room for your little triangle drama?