"He's the worst."
"Shh! He might hear you! He might call his father again!"
"Seriously, I don't care. He should just drop dead."
Mutters and whispers filled the whole cafeteria.
Arthur stood in the middle of it all.
What the hell. Just a second ago I was on my floor dying and now what?
Vexis. They're talking about Vexis.
Are they talking about me?
A bad feeling crept up the back of his neck. Not the sharp kind. The slow kind, the kind that settles in before your brain fully catches up to what your gut already knows.
He ran.
Away from the crowd, away from the bleeding kid still on the floor, away from all of it. Somehow his legs knew exactly where to go. That was the strangest part. Not the running, but the knowing. Like the directions weren't coming from his head at all. They were already there, buried somewhere deeper. A memory that wasn't his but sat in his body like it had always been.
He knew where the bathroom was. He just did.
He pushed through the door. The two boys inside took one look at him and cleared out without a word. Fast. Like he was something to avoid.
He barely noticed.
Just ahead, a large rectangular mirror ran along the wall. Arthur walked toward it slowly. One step. Then another.
What looked back at him made his eyebrow go up.
Blonde hair. The kind of blonde that was almost too bright, sitting somewhere between gold and the last light before a sunset. Eyes the same shade, reflective, like something lit from behind. He was wearing an academy uniform he recognized from the novel and a small nameplate on the chest with writing he had never seen before in his life.
He could read it anyway.
Vexis Lestilaut.
He stared.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I'm inside of a novel I genuinely hate.
Reckoning of Mages.
He raised his right arm slowly. The reflection raised its arm. He lowered it. The reflection lowered it.
And I'm the bully extra who gets murdered in the first act.
He looked at his knuckles. Still stained. He pulled his fist back and punched the side of his own jaw.
Wake up. If this is a nightmare, wake up right now.
Crap.
That hurt.
The door opened.
A green-haired guy walked in followed by a black-haired one with red eyes sharp enough to cut glass. Arthur recognized them both without meaning to. Ivan and Cael. Vexis's two lackeys. The kind of guys who stood behind the bully in every scene and didn't get much else to do.
"Vex, what's wrong?" Ivan put a hand on his shoulder. "Why did you run out like that?"
"Shut the hell up, Ivan, before I make you."
The words came out before Arthur could stop them. His mouth moved on its own, tone and all, like a reflex that belonged to someone else.
He slapped his palm over his mouth.
Ivan blinked. "Oh. Sorry man. Didn't mean to press you."
Arthur exhaled through his nose.
He turned and grabbed Ivan by the shoulder.
"Tell me." His voice came out sharper than he meant it to. "What year is it?"
Ivan looked confused. "Year 1047. Grinlaust Period."
"What's today's date."
"Ow, Vex, you're actually hurting me—"
"Just answer."
"January 20th." Ivan and Arthur said it at the same time.
Because Arthur already knew. It landed in his head the same moment Ivan's mouth opened. Like a key turning in a lock that had been waiting.
His knees went soft.
January 20th. Year 1047.
Two weeks from the start of the novel.
Cael spoke from near the door. Calm, like always. The guy was always calm. "Class starts in five minutes. Let's go."
"Go ahead," Arthur said. He turned back to the mirror. "I need to wash my hands."
He heard them leave. The door swung shut. The bathroom went quiet.
He stood there looking at Vexis's face for a long moment.
Then he tilted his head back and screamed at the ceiling.
"I'm screwed! I am absolutely screwed! Screw you, LazyTurtle! Is this your doing? You put me in this body? In this story? THIS story?! SCREW YOU!"
His voice bounced off the tiles and came back at him.
He breathed.
"Vexis Lestilaut dies in two weeks. Someone murders him. Someone murders me." He looked back at the mirror. "And if you really wanted me to fix your trash novel, you couldn't have dropped me in as the main character? Or literally anyone halfway decent? You picked the bully extra with a two week lifespan?"
He stared at his reflection a second longer.
Then he turned and walked out.
The classrooms were right next to the cafeteria, which he knew before he even thought about it. The body memory again. Filling in the gaps without asking.
He pushed open the door to Class A.
The room went quiet the instant he crossed the threshold. Every conversation, every side comment, every rustling of paper. All of it stopped. Just because he walked in. Fifteen, maybe twenty students all suddenly finding something else very interesting to look at.
He felt his skin crawl.
I am not built for this. I sat in front of a screen for years. I have never had a single room go quiet when I walked in. This is actual torture.
His eyes moved across the room out of habit.
And then he saw him.
White hair. Silky and long. Lashes that looked almost wrong on a real person, too clean, like something that belonged in an illustration. The kind of face that made you look twice not because it was trying to but because it just was.
Xavier Almonth.
The main character.
He was already looking back. Eyes steady, not flinching, not looking away. Just watching Vexis walk in like he was cataloguing something.
Arthur held the gaze for two seconds and then looked away first.
Okay. Okay, that's fine. That's totally fine.
His seat was at the back. The classroom was built like an amphitheater, rows stepping up higher toward the rear, so the back row looked down over the whole room. He climbed.
Halfway up, his shoe caught something.
He looked down. Pens and ink brushes scattered across the step. A blue-haired girl was crouched over them, scooping them up fast, like every second counted, like something terrible was waiting at the end of a slow reaction.
She didn't look up.
His mouth opened.
"Do you want to die, wench?"
The words came out flat and cold before his brain had any say in it.
He clamped his jaw shut.
…What the hell did I just say?
The girl froze on the floor.
The whole room, already quiet, somehow got quieter.