Outside, Seraphina's light footsteps faded down the hallway with that winner's swagger, and then the noise from outside the building swallowed them completely.
I stayed stiff for more than thirty seconds before my back slowly peeled away from the rough wall, inch by inch, and that icy touch finally left my skin.
The ugly, cornered look on my face vanished like sand art blown apart by a breeze.
My acting worked perfectly.
She only saw what I wanted her to see.
The red at my ears, the part Seraphina thought was my pure-boy switch, faded back to the same color as my cheeks.
That was just local flushing that I triggered by tensing every muscle, holding my breath, and controlling blood pressure through my neck.
Unyielding really was too useful.
This passive skill was my most important cheating chip in the mind game with Seraphina.
With my thumb pressing hard against my pounding temple, exhaustion washed through my body.
Seraphina wasn't stupid, and I had never underestimated the saintess sitting at the top of the school food chain.
….
After that boring Jasper drama ended yesterday afternoon, it was already obvious she had locked onto me again.
Keeping the "pathetic virgin who can't even talk straight" act going had lost all meaning.
The same trick doesn't work twice on in war, and that rule applies to Seraphina too.
If things got worse, she could switch to more direct, more destructive ways to hit back, and that wasn't the result I wanted.
So I decided to do the opposite.
Since she suspected there was another face under my mask, I would reluctantly tear a slit in it and let her see.
This whole classroom setup had entered my script the moment she started watching me this morning.
Her pressure and her probing were all expected.
All I had to do was control how much of the disguise got ripped and when it happened.
First, I struggled, then I got crushed by undeniable evidence.
Then I raised my hands and surrendered, and I showed her a real self who only wants to study in peace and doesn't want trouble, someone with a bit of ability but still a soft coward at the core.
That real self had to fit her logic from what she'd seen before, but it also had to add something new that she wouldn't expect.
It had to feed her need to expose the truth, and it also had to hand her a new game target that felt harder to beat.
Every step was risky.
That woman was hard to deal with.
I closed my eyes and replayed the details in slow motion.
Her timing, her probing lines, that predator look in her eyes.
Every step was a trap, and if I made one wrong move or if I let any emotion leak out that didn't belong to a humiliated lamb, then the whole thing would crash on the spot.
Good thing my brain and reactions were fast enough.
My fingers stopped rubbing my temple.
I opened my eyes again, and a calm focus settled in my head like still water.
Stay calm, and think.
Seraphina's interest in me came down to two roots.
First was contrast.
I looked like a gloomy nerd with no presence, but I showed a calm head that could push back against violence in a way that didn't match my appearance.
That contrast broke her usual idea of what prey should be, and it hooked her curiosity.
Second was her twisted need to conquer.
She didn't enjoy the result.
She enjoyed the process.
A prey that falls into her hands too easily is worthless to her.
Only something that fights back and forces her to spend effort taming it can give her real fun and satisfaction.
It's like a cat getting bored of a yarn ball and needing a new toy that can keep its hunting instinct alive.
Her boredom comes from her privileged life, and she needs constant new toy to fill that empty space.
And I just happened to get noticed by her at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
Ever since that day when that fasto begged me for help, the gears of fate started turning.
Seraphina's goal was clear now.
She didn't care whether I was smart anymore.
She only cared about when this calm but actually pure guy would finally fall at her feet.
In that confrontation just now, she thought she found my switch and my weak spot, so she had already written the next script for me.
This girl would try again and again to hit that weak spot in different ways, and she would enjoy watching my real embarrassment under the mask of forced calm.
She thought she had my tail, but all she really got was a rope I handed right to her, and it was coated in honey.
The other end of that rope was still clenched in my hand.
This time, I'm on a higher floor.
All I needed to do was follow the script Seraphina wrote and keep acting it out.
No, not just act it out.
I needed to cooperate on purpose and speed the process up in a way that made sense.
With my finger tracing steady lines across the tabletop, I silently worked through a hard problem about people's hearts.
A full hunted process needs a few key stages.
Resistance, then wavering, then sinking, then total surrender.
Right now, I was at the end of the resistance stage.
She had already poked through my disguise, and she thought she found my weak spot.
So the next step was wavering.
I couldn't keep avoiding her and ignoring her completely.
I needed to start showing cracks again and again.
For example, during class, my eyes would lose control and drift toward her, and then the second she caught it, I would jerk my eyes away like I got startled.
Or in the hallway, when we passed each other, I would look like I wanted to avoid her, but my body would betray me and show that I wanted to get closer while I was too scared to.
After that comes sinking.
That stage needs her to see that her attacks are having real impact on me.
I would show a tiny dip in mood when she laughed with other guys.
I would accidentally reveal small, meaningless preferences about myself when she asked at the right time.
I could somehow end up standing on her side during a group task or a class activity.
And last comes total surrender.
I would make it believable that she had fully conquered me, and she would believe it was her charm and her methods that broke this high-difficulty prey.
On some special day, I would give her a gift in the most awkward way possible, and it would look cheap, but it would clearly show I spent real effort on it.
When she received that trophy, she would see me showing the same obedient, obsessed look every other guy shows when they fall for her.
Her sick need to conquer would get satisfied, and she would also decide I had become ordinary.
And when a toy stops giving her even a drop of fun, there's only one ending.
She throws it away.
Seraphina would lose all interest in me and turn to her next target.
As for me, I could go back to the safe shadow where nobody cared, and I could keep walking that hard road back home.
The plan was clean and it made sense from start to finish.
The middle part only cost me some energy and acting, and that wasn't hard for someone like me who survived on lies and masks.
I ran the plan through again and again, and I couldn't find any obvious holes.
With my hand brushing the dust off my back, I pushed the classroom's back door open a crack.
After I confirmed the hallway was empty, I put the heavy shell back on my shoulders and stepped into the long corridor dyed dark red by the last sunlight.
The game has started.
But this time, I'm my own director.