"Who did this?" Klaus demanded, his voice dropping to a register that vibrated the iron bed frame.
"Mnngh... justice..."
Leo Crimson snorted, wiped a line of drool from his chin, and blinked his eyes open. He saw the looming silhouette of the roommate from hell.
Leo's senses screamed.
"ENEMY?!"
Leo vaulted out of the chair. It was a standing jump, zero to sixty in a millisecond. He landed in a perfect combat stance between Klaus and Kaizen's bed, fists raised.
"Back off!" Leo shouted, his hand instinctively reaching for a sword that wasn't there.
Klaus didn't flinch. He just stared.
Leo blinked. The adrenaline faded as recognition set in. "Oh. It's you. The neighbor."
Leo relaxed instantly. A blinding, golden retriever smile replaced the combat grimace.
"Klaus! You're here too? Did you come to visit our best friend?!"
Kaizen choked on his own spit.
'Best friend?! Since when?! We exchanged three sentences! Two of them were lies!'
Klaus ignored the Hero's blinding optimism. He narrowed his crimson eyes.
"Friend?" Klaus spat the word like it was a slur. "I am his roommate. I have contractual rights to his well-being. Did you do this to him, Leo Crimson?"
"Me?!" Leo looked offended. He placed a hand on his chest. "I would never hurt Kaizen! We have a bond! A bond forged in the fires of the Opening Ceremony!"
'It was a twenty-minute speech!' Kaizen screamed internally. 'There were no fires!'
"Then why is he in a hospital bed?" Klaus stepped forward, dark purple mana leaking from his shoulders like dry ice fog.
"Because I wasn't there to protect him sooner!" Leo stepped forward, golden mana flaring around his fists.
They stood two feet apart. Red vs. Gold. Demon vs. Human. D-Rank vs. D-Rank.
The air in the infirmary grew heavy. The pressure dropped. The windows rattled in their frames.
Kaizen, lying in the middle of this clash of titans, felt like a soda can being crushed by a hydraulic press.
[ Status: Suppressed ]
[ HP: 15 / 15 (Dropping mentally) ]
'Stop! Stop measuring your auras! I'm F-Rank! If you guys start glowing any harder, my lungs are going to collapse!'
"Guys..." Kaizen wheezed. "I'm... I'm right here..."
They ignored him. They were too busy having an intense, testosterone-fueled staring contest.
In the next bed, Goon #1, who had woken up the moment Klaus kicked the door open, was squeezing his eyes shut so tight he was seeing stars.
'Don't wake up. Don't wake up. If I wake up, the scary noble and the crazy hero will eat me alive! Just play dead.'
"Ms. Nurse?" the Goon whispered, barely moving his lips. "Are you seeing this? Call security!"
Nurse Jenny wasn't calling security.
She was leaning against the counter, clutching a tissue box to her chest. Her cheeks were flushed a bright, unhealthy pink.
Drip.
A single drop of blood fell from her nose.
"So intense..." Jenny whispered, breathing heavy. "The brooding dark prince... the golden retriever hero... fighting over the helpless, average boy... it's... it's perfect."
"Ms. Nurse?" The Goon looked at the blood dripping onto the floor. "Are you dying?"
"Never been better," Jenny breathed. She yanked a tissue and wiped her nose, her eyes glued to the standoff. Her ears were twitching rhythmically. "Look at the tension. You could cut it with a knife. Or a skewer. Just... kiss already."
"What?"
"Nothing!"
Back in the eye of the storm, Klaus finally broke the silence.
"If you didn't do it," Klaus said coldly, "then who did? He went out to procure sustenance—milk, specifically—and sometimes later, I saw this notification on my Scroll."
He held up his phone.
On the screen was the Zenith TeaScroll app—the academy's toxic gossip page.
[ BREAKING: F-Rank Student Beats Up Lance's Goon Over a Sausage?! ]
[ Comments: 502 ]
[ > LMAO, is this real? ]
[ > Corn Dog Meta is OP pls nerf. ]
[ > Who is that kid? His form is terrible but his aim is godly. ]
Kaizen's jaw dropped.
'It's on the internet?! Already?! It hasn't even been an hour! Who posted that?!'
"I saw the post," Klaus explained, pocketing the phone. "And I came to retrieve my... roommate. He is essential for my research."
"I found him first!" Leo declared proudly. "I was patrolling the streets for Villainy!"
'Cringe,' Kaizen and the Goon thought simultaneously.
"I saw a guy unconscious in an alley," Leo continued, reenacting the scene with dramatic hand gestures. "He was knocked out cold! A skewer through his thigh! Super clean! And then I followed the bloody trail…"
Leo looked at Kaizen with teary, admiring eyes.
"And there he was. Passed out amidst the garbage. A martyr for justice."
Leo grabbed Kaizen's hand.
"Kaizen! You fought bravely! You stood up to bullies! You are exactly the kind of man I want as my Best Friend!"
Kaizen tried to pull his hand away. Leo's grip was like iron.
"I... I just wanted my dinner..." Kaizen whispered. "It cost 250 crowns..."
"So humble!" Leo wept.
"He is not your friend," Klaus interjected, grabbing Kaizen's other hand. "He is my roommate. Unhand him, Leo Crimson."
"You unhand him, Klaus! He's delicate!"
"I know this human is delicate! That is why I am here!"
Leo paused. "Human? Uh, yeah? We're all humans here, Klaus. You don't have to get all Shakespearean about it."
'He doesn't know,' Kaizen realized, staring at the ceiling. 'Leo thinks Klaus is just a weird theatre kid.'
Kaizen lay there, cruciform, his arms being pulled by the two strongest students in the first year.
Nurse Jenny let out a high-pitched squeal and shoved two more tissues up her nose.
"I can't take it," Kaizen whispered to the fluorescent lights. "This is it. This is how I die. Ripped in half by a shonen trope."