Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Because of my father’s job transfer, I changed schools halfway through the term.
Principal Harris told me he understood my situation. He said I didn’t need to worry too much. As long as I settled into the new school, got along with my classmates, listened in class, studied hard, and made a few friends, everything would get better.
I nodded.
Transferring was supposed to be simple.
But on my first day, the prettiest girl in school looked me up and down, laughed with her friends, and said, “Guys, look at him. Those dark circles. Is he a transfer student or a raccoon?”
From that moment on, Mia Sterling and her little circle started treating me like their new source of entertainment.
Until one day, my dark eyes became the reason everything went too far.
It was my third day at the new school.
Someone posted a picture of me in a private group chat.
In the photo, I was wearing the school uniform properly, head lowered, my dark eyes making me look even more quiet and out of place than usual. The picture was clear enough that anyone could tell I was the new transfer student.
Mia Sterling couldn’t sit still after seeing it.
She came forward with her phone in hand, laughing so hard her shoulders shook. “Everyone, look. The new guy’s eyes are seriously something else.”
Someone asked, “So what are we doing with him?”
Mia’s eyes curved with mischief. She bit down on her smile, like she had just thought of a game too good to keep to herself.
The group chat went wild.
One boy typed, “Since everyone’s bored, why don’t we make it a game? Mia and I can judge. For the next few days, whoever comes up with the best way to mess with the transfer kid wins.”
Another person replied, “What does the winner get?”
“End of the month,” the boy wrote. “Whoever has the best prank gets a brand-new Nintendo Switch. Any game you want. I’ll pay.”
That was all it took.
The whole group exploded.
They thought it was hilarious.
In their eyes, I was the perfect target: a quiet transfer student with no friends, no confidence, and no interest in anything except studying. Someone like me was probably too poor to have much fun outside school anyway. If I spent all my time buried in books, then they could make me their entertainment.
The replies came fast.
“Count me in.”
“This is going to be fun.”
“Let’s see how long he can keep pretending to be calm.”
By the time I walked into the classroom with my backpack, Mia had already started launching paper airplanes in my direction.
She sat in the back row, leaning lazily against her chair, watching me with bright, teasing eyes.
The classroom was chaos.
Students were laughing, talking, passing notes, playing games under their desks. No one looked like they planned to study. Even Ms. Carter, standing at the podium, seemed too used to it to bother shutting them down.
She skipped the usual formal introduction and simply pointed to an empty seat near Mia.
Chapter 2
“Noah Bennett, sit there.”
I walked over and sat down.
Mia twisted the cap off her water bottle, propped her chin on one hand, and smiled at me like she had been waiting all morning.
“Wow,” she said. “You really are boring. But since you’re sitting next to me now, I guess I’ll have to keep you entertained.”
Her tone was light, but there was an edge of expectation in her eyes. She seemed to be waiting for me to blush, get nervous, argue, or at least react.
I only glanced at her.
“Please don’t talk to me during class,” I said. “It affects my studying.”
Then I took out my textbook, opened my notebook, and started copying the lesson from the board.
The coursework here was far behind what I was used to.
After listening for a few minutes, I understood the pattern well enough to start working through the problems on my own.
For the rest of the period, I kept my head down and wrote. I didn’t look at Mia again.
The group chat went quiet for a while.
Then someone wrote, “He didn’t react at all?”
Mia stared at me with narrowed eyes. There wasn’t the slightest flicker of embarrassment on my face. No flustered smile. No awkward attempt to talk to her. Nothing but the blank focus of someone who genuinely wanted to study.
She let out a soft laugh, but it sounded annoyed.
“Keep pretending,” she muttered. “Acting like you’re doing homework when you’re probably thrilled inside. Sitting next to me must feel like winning the lottery.”
It was the first time I had been teased by a girl like that.
Especially by a girl other boys could barely look at without getting nervous.
But I still didn’t answer.
Mia’s smile faded a little.
And the boys who liked her were not nearly as calm.
In the group chat, one of them sent a message.
“Looks like we need to teach the transfer kid a lesson first. He should know whose attention he’s allowed to have if he wants to survive at this school.”
At first, I thought the pranks would burn themselves out after a day or two.
They didn’t.
The first few were small enough to pass for accidents. My water bottle vanished the moment I looked away. My study notes turned up in the wrong stack, shoved under someone else’s notebook. When I got up for lunch, my chair had already been tugged back, just far enough to make my knees buckle. Whoever did it always acted innocent afterward, and the people around them laughed as if that was the funniest thing in the world.
I played the part they expected me to play: quiet, easy to push around, not worth taking seriously.
That only made them bolder.
Chapter 3
If I showed even the slightest annoyance, they seemed to catch it immediately. The group chat lit up with jokes, taunts, and stupid ideas for what they should try next. By night, the messages had piled up into a storm. They were egging each other on, trying to see who could get a reaction out of me first.
One of them kept saying I was as stiff as a wooden post. Another claimed that if I had been a girl, they would have backed off already, because somebody would have stood up for me.
They weren’t completely wrong.
At least if I’d been a girl, they might have worried about embarrassing themselves in public.
Instead, I was just the transfer student with the boring face and no backup. So they pushed a little harder.
The real trouble came during second period.
While Ms. Carter had her back turned to the class, someone from the row behind me tipped a bottle of black ink over my desk.
It emptied in one ugly rush.
Ink spread across the wood, soaked through my papers, and bled into the edge of my notebook. The smell was sharp and bitter. A few students sucked in a breath. Someone else laughed under their breath, clearly waiting for me to explode.
I stared at the mess for a moment, then reached for the ruined notebook.
Nothing in me snapped.
I’d already been through enough of this to know that losing my temper was exactly what they wanted. If I reacted, they’d have a story to tell for the rest of the day. If I stayed silent, they’d at least get bored eventually.
That was when Mia Sterling moved.
She had been sitting a few seats away, watching the whole thing with her usual lazy expression, as if none of it was worth raising her voice over. Then she stood up, walked over, and looked down at my desk.
Her hand appeared in front of me with a packet of tissues.
I took it before I could think too hard about it.
The class went a little quieter.
Mia glanced at the boy who had done it, then back at me, and gave the smallest of smiles. It wasn’t warm, exactly, and it wasn’t teasing either. More like she was measuring the room, and everyone in it, with one quick look.
The prankster had clearly expected a different reaction. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.
Mia leaned down and started blotting at the ink without asking permission, her movements careless but efficient. “You’re not going to just sit there and let them make a mess of everything, are you?” she said softly.
I looked at her.
For a second, I didn’t know what was stranger: the fact that she had stepped in, or the fact that she sounded almost annoyed on my behalf.
The boy behind me stiffened. The others stopped laughing.
Mia straightened up with the tissue still in her hand and said, in that same calm voice, “If you have time to play games, maybe you should spend it doing your homework.”
Nobody said a word.
The whole row of boys looked as if they’d swallowed something sour.