The cool midnight air of the Ares Academy residential sector did little to soothe the thumping headache behind Zen's temples.
He walked down the dimly lit brick pavement with his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets.
For the past two hours, Zen had simply walked. He needed an escape from the suffocating, volatile atmosphere of the townhouse… a place where four S-Rank Goddesses had nearly torn the foundation apart out of obsessive jealousy over him.
He didn't head toward the high-end district.
Instead, his boots naturally carried him toward the eastern edge of the campus, where the neon lights faded into the familiar, weathered silhouette of the Ares Academy Scrap Dorms.
The Scrap Dorms were a collection of aging, concrete buildings where low-tier students, scrappers, and commoners lived. It was noisy, crowded, and smelled perpetually of ozone and machine oil.
To Zen, however, it smelled like sanity.
