There were three rules in Class 2-A of Crescent Hall College.
First, never sit in the front row unless invited.
Second, never answer a question before she does.
Third, never, ever help the girl by the window.
Her name was Elise Derant. Daughter of Adonis Derant, the founder and current chairman of Crescent Hall, Elise's presence was something like gravity—inescapable and crushing.
She had beauty, yes—long champagne-gold hair, fine features, and eyes that sparkled with a glassy kind of contempt—but it was the kind of beauty that sucked warmth from the air.
No one liked her, but everyone obeyed her.
That morning, Elise strutted into class with the languid grace of someone who owned everything she touched.
A chorus of greetings followed her, nervous and rehearsed. She gave none in return, only a faint curl of her lips, more smirk than smile.
Her friends—three girls and one tall boy—trailed behind her like loyal pets.
"Morning, worms," she said, stretching her arms as if tired from the effort of existing. Her voice was syrup and venom.
The air stiffened.
In the last row, near the window, a girl lowered her eyes. Her name was Lira Maycroft. Small, quiet, and forgettable. The kind of girl whose presence you noticed only when it was too late.
Elise's eyes found her like a heat-seeking missile.
"You again," Elise murmured with mock sweetness, walking down the aisle. "Did you miss me, bug?"
Lira didn't answer.
"Of course you did. Don't play hard to get. It's disgusting when people like you pretend they have pride." Elise dropped her designer bag on Lira's desk with a heavy thud. "Carry this to my locker."
"I'm in the middle of studying," Lira said softly, not meeting her gaze.
Gasps echoed.
The world froze for a second.
Then came the laugh—sharp and cutting. Elise leaned closer, eyes glowing with amusement.
"Did you hear that, girls? She thinks she has a choice." Her hand lashed out, not to hit, but to flick the pen from Lira's hand. It skittered across the floor.
"Oops," Elise said with a smile. "You can pick that up after you've earned your right to study again."
One of her friends, Petra, a tall girl with braided black hair, snorted. "Maybe she needs a lesson in priorities."
They gave her one.
Lira spent the rest of that class with chewing gum smeared in her hair. No one offered her scissors.
When she tried to clean it, Elise mockingly offered her a bottle of water—only to pour it over her notes. The ink bled, the paper crumbled. Lira didn't cry. She just stared, silently.
The silence made Elise more irritated than any tears could have.
"I hate when bugs pretend to be brave," she said later that day, pressing Lira against a locker with her friends watching. "You're beneath even pity. Maybe if you were prettier, someone would stand up for you."
Nobody did.
Not the girl with her AirPods in.
Not the boy who glanced up and away, then walked faster.
Not even the teacher who passed by with a clipboard, saw Elise, and said nothing.
Because Elise Derant was untouchable.
For the next three days, it got worse.
Lira's lunch tray mysteriously spilled every afternoon. Her seat was taken whenever she entered the lecture hall.
Her name was mocked aloud when roll call was taken, followed by snickers. Elise once laughed so hard she had to wipe tears from her eyes.
Then came the 'accident' during science lab. Elise switched the burner settings when the teacher stepped out.
When Lira returned to her station, her sleeve caught fire for an instant—a flash of orange and smoke, quickly extinguished but terrifying.
She walked out with red skin and a charred cuff.
Elise blamed faulty equipment.
The staff apologized to her for the disturbance.
"Don't be mad, Lira," Elise said the next day. "You're just unlucky. Born ugly, dumb, and poor. But think of it this way—your suffering gives people something to laugh about. That's noble, in its own way."
There was laughter behind her. Lira stood like a statue.
Not once did anyone step forward. Not a voice raised in protest. Not a hand offered.
Because Elise wasn't just a student. She was power incarnate.
The threat of expulsion, harassment, or worse lingered over everyone like a guillotine.
She'd once had a lecturer fired for telling her to submit an overdue assignment. The man now worked at a rural tutoring center.
By the end of the week, Lira had stopped bringing lunch. Her eyes were hollow. Her steps—slow, resigned. She was vanishing, little by little, and no one cared.
Except Elise.
Elise loved watching her fade.
"Do you know what you are, Lira?" she whispered one morning, placing a sugar cube into Lira's open palm like a gift. "You're a story. One of those stories people remember but never talk about. A tragedy without a hero. Do you understand?"
Lira didn't answer.
But her fingers curled slightly around the sugar cube.
That night, when Elise posted a photo of her with her friends, Lira's face appeared in the background—barely visible, near a trash bin. Elise captioned it: "Trash where it belongs."
The post went viral on campus.
Lira didn't show up to class the next day.
Elise laughed when she heard.
"She'll be back. They always come back. No one escapes me. I'm the Queen here."
And everyone believed her.
Because Elise Derant wasn't just a bully.
She was the nightmare that woke you, even when you were wide awake.
…
By the following week, Class 2-A was no longer just quiet.
It was suffocating.
Like a room slowly filling with water, everyone breathed shallowly and moved carefully, hoping to go unnoticed.
The laughter that once trailed Elise Derant now felt more like nervous barking than mirth.
But that didn't stop her. If anything, it made her more vicious.
Lira returned.
With shorter hair, bandaged wrists, and eyes that didn't blink as often. She didn't talk. Didn't resist. She simply existed, and for Elise, that wasn't enough.
"You look different," Elise had said, tilting Lira's chin up with her fingernail like one might prod a corpse. "Trying a new look? Zombie chic? Cute."
Lira didn't flinch. She only blinked once. Elise noticed.
That blink annoyed her.
So she escalated.
It wasn't just Lira anymore.
Elise and her circle began to hunt—subtle at first, then more brazen. A freshman bumped into her accidentally.
The next day, he found his locker emptied, its contents soaked in toilet water.
A junior girl who refused to switch seats with Petra got her social media flooded with fake lewd posts—enough to make her deactivate everything and transfer out.
"Collateral damage," Elise said with a shrug. "Sometimes innocent people get hurt. That's life."
The teachers said nothing. A few had even stopped making eye contact with her.
One substitute, a middle-aged man with glasses and a spine, tried to raise a complaint after witnessing Elise mock a scholarship student to tears.
By next week, he was gone.
Rumor was, Elise's father had made one phone call. The substitute's credentials were suddenly "under review."
In Crescent Hall, the rules weren't written in the student handbook. They were written on the soles of Elise Derant's boots.
She walked on everyone.
"You're all so predictable," she whispered to her followers in the hallway, watching students avoid eye contact, give up seats, hand over snacks.
"Fear is addicting, don't you think? Once they get a taste of survival, they'll do anything to avoid the pain."
Petra laughed. "We should do another challenge. That whole 'drink-from-the-toilet' thing last year was a hit."
"How about a scavenger hunt this time?" murmured Mara, another of Elise's pets. "Make Lira collect all the torn-up pieces of her scholarship letter and tape them back together before noon."
"Winner gets her dignity back," Petra joked.
Everyone laughed.
Except one.
In the far corner of the hallway, standing with one hand in his pocket and a soda can in the other, was a boy.
He wasn't anyone special. Not by appearances, anyway. Tousled black hair, pale skin, eyes like a stormcloud.
But something about him made people step around him, even if they didn't know why. He was leaning against the wall like he owned time itself, watching Elise.
Watching with a smirk.
Not the fearful kind. Not mocking either.
It was the kind of smirk that said: I know something you don't.
Elise saw it—just a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye—and turned sharply. But by the time she looked, he was sipping from the can and walking away.
"Who the hell is that?" she muttered, frowning.
"New transfer maybe?" Mara offered. "I think. I've seen him in Mr. Coyle's class. Doesn't talk much."
Petra tilted her head. "Should we—?"
"No," Elise said quickly. "Ignore him. Losers try to look mysterious when they have nothing else going for them."
But she didn't stop thinking about the smirk.
Or the way it didn't tremble.
That afternoon, they cornered Lira again in the library. Petra "accidentally" knocked over a shelf of books.
Elise insisted Lira clean it alone—"since you're so fond of being beneath everyone." They laughed, then left her on her knees, surrounded by silence and spilled pages.
Lira didn't speak.
She simply stacked the books, one by one, eyes glassy.
It was just another day. Another wound. Another silence.
Except it wasn't.
Because from behind one of the shelves, the boy was still watching.
And this time, he was writing something in a notebook. Calmly. Patiently. Like a gardener taking notes on when the weeds were most invasive.
That night, Elise received a message in her inbox from an anonymous account.
It was a photo.
Of her. Mid-laugh. Sneering. Hand raised toward Lira in the library.
Underneath, a message typed in bold:
—How high can you climb before you forget how hard the fall is?
She stared at it for a long time. Then deleted it.
"Some freak with too much time," she muttered to herself.
But her hand trembled slightly.
Two days later, Jessica was caught cheating on an exam. Not suspected—caught. With camera footage, signed answers, and a duplicate test sheet sent to the administration.
She was expelled that evening.
And Elise found a note taped to her locker the next morning.
—One pet down. How many more?
Her breath caught.
No signature.
No trace.
She looked around, eyes scanning the hallway, but everyone averted their gaze like always. Except—there he was again.
The boy.
Sitting by the window in the cafeteria, sipping soda, eyes locked on hers.
He smiled.
Not kindly.
Not cruelly.
Just knowingly.