Chapter Text
"That boy who was suspended for getting into a fight is back."
"Where is he?"
"Shhh! Lower your voice! It’s that guy swinging the badminton racket over there."
"He's kind of handsome..."
"But I overheard that he beat up some junior on the first day of school. The kid was hospitalised!"
"Yikes! That’s scary..."
Kaveh looked over at the gossiping girls, his face still crawling with bruises, coloured with faint purples and yellows that the foundation hadn’t quite covered.
"Tsk! Shit! He noticed!"
He froze, his expression hardening for a moment — eyes narrowing, sharp and tense like a cornered animal. The girls scattered in a panic, whispering frantically as they shuffled away, their sneakers squeaking against the varnished wood.
“Gogogo! What if he beats us up!”
“I don’t think he’d hit girls, come on!”
“No, seriously, he’s scary—let’s just go!”
Their voices faded out the gym doors.
Kaveh let out a long sigh, the badminton racket sliding easily up onto his shoulder. He stared down at the polished court floor, where a stray feather from a shuttlecock had landed near his foot. He toed it absentmindedly, the hollow echo of the empty gym stretching around him. He didn’t know what he could’ve said anyway—to them, or to anyone.
By the time PE finally ended, the air was thick with humidity and leftover chatter. After an hour of yelling at students who refused to run laps properly, the teacher shouted over the noise, “Class is over! Whoever’s in charge today, remember to collect all the badminton rackets and put them in the storeroom!”
Students bolted out of the court in bursts of laughter and footsteps, their excitement spilling into the corridors like wind escaping a cracked window.
Alhaitham, the unlucky student assigned to store the equipment, gathered the rackets neatly into a bundle. The grip tape still smelled faintly of rubber and sweat. Being the meticulous type, he decided to check the locker rooms too—his classmates were careless, and he didn’t want to get scolded later for missing one.
The locker room was dim and quiet, the only light flickering from an aging fluorescent bulb. The air inside was stale—an odd mix of disinfectant, damp socks, and that metallic tang of old rackets.
He pinched his nose briefly and stepped in. The soles of his shoes squeaked lightly against the tiled floor.
And then he noticed it—someone crouched low near the last row of lockers.
A boy, shoulders trembling.
Alhaitham stopped.
“…Hey.” He cleared his throat softly. “You.”
The boy startled like a cat caught in the rain. He looked up, his eyes wide and glassy. Kaveh.
Up close, the bruises around his face were worse than they’d looked from afar—angry reds blooming beneath pale skin. His hair, a tousled shade of sunlit gold, clung damply to his temples. Tears clung to his lashes like tiny crystals, threatening to fall with every shallow breath. His fingers were wrapped tight around a neon-orange racket, knuckles pale from the strain, as if letting go would make the world crumble.
For a moment, neither spoke. The buzzing of the ceiling lamp filled the silence like a heartbeat.
Kaveh’s lips trembled, and when he finally parted them, his voice came out small and hoarse,“W-what… oh, s-sorry about that…”
Alhaitham’s gaze flicked to the racket. “No wonder one was missing,” he said simply, his tone flat but not unkind.
He reached forward and tugged the handle gently, and Kaveh’s hands gave way without resistance. The racket clattered softly against Alhaitham’s palm.
Kaveh ducked his head. His lower lip was raw, bitten pink, and his nose was still tinted red from crying. A thin line of snot shimmered under the harsh light, humiliatingly human. He didn’t even move to wipe it away.
Alhaitham lingered a moment longer than he meant to, studying the tear-streaked face in front of him. The way the light caught in those dark, red-brown eyes made them look almost unreal—fragile, like glass marbles that could shatter at any second.
He looked away immediately, trying not to appear too interested in the crying boy. The fluorescent light above flickered weakly, reflecting off the metal lockers and the sheen of tears on Kaveh’s cheek. Alhaitham shifted the badminton racket in his hand and, after a hesitant pause, nudged Kaveh’s arm with the handle.
“Leave this place,” he said flatly. The words came out colder than he intended, clipped and mechanical—like some background NPC line. Before Kaveh could respond, Alhaitham turned on his heel and began walking away, his shoes squeaking lightly against the polished gym floor.
But Kaveh’s mind was a full-blown alarm. Wait! What if he tells the others? His stomach twisted. The guy who got suspended for fighting, bawling in the locker room? I’ll be a meme before lunch!
Panic churned into defiance. Who even is this guy? How come I’ve never seen him before?
He sprang up so fast the locker he had been leaning on rattled behind him. “Hey, you!”
Alhaitham stopped mid-stride and turned around, a little startled. The racket dangled loosely in his hand, his expression unreadable.
Kaveh stomped toward him and, before he could second-guess himself, grabbed Alhaitham by the collar of his black uniform shirt. “You’d better watch your mouth,” he snapped, his voice cracking somewhere between anger and embarrassment. “If you tell anyone about this—about me—I’ll beat the shit out of you! Even if you scream for help, no one would come, got it?”
For a moment, only the faint buzz of the ceiling light filled the silence. Alhaitham didn’t flinch. He just stared back at him quietly, as if trying to solve a math problem in his head.
Kaveh’s confidence faltered. Why isn’t he reacting? Did he not hear me? Did I not sound scary enough?
And then—he noticed.
The height difference. The broadness of Alhaitham’s shoulders. How close they were standing. He could practically feel the faint wind from Alhaitham's eyelashes fluttering softly onto his forehead.
Kaveh had to crane his neck—at least forty-five degrees—just to meet the boy’s gaze. Since when did people get this tall? he thought helplessly.
The tension fizzled into an awkward silence. Somewhere outside, a whistle blew, and the faint shouts of students playing volleyball drifted in. The world went on, perfectly normal—except for Kaveh, who was still holding onto someone’s collar like an idiot.
“Mmm, you might want to let go,” Alhaitham said evenly, his tone carrying the same detached calm as always.
Before Kaveh could react, Alhaitham’s hand shot up, fingers wrapping around his wrist with surprising precision. With a practiced twist—sharp, controlled, almost clinical—he turned Kaveh’s arm anticlockwise and pinned it against the cold metal locker behind him. The clang echoed faintly through the nearly empty hallway.
“Hey—hey! Stop! That hurts!” Kaveh yelped, half in pain, half in shock. His voice cracked embarrassingly at the end, like a startled puppy’s whine.
For a second, Alhaitham’s face hovered close—expression unreadable, eyes reflecting the faint fluorescent light above. Then, as if suddenly remembering this was a school and not a battlefield, he exhaled and released him.
Kaveh immediately rubbed his wrist, glaring up at him with watery eyes. “What the hell was that for?”
Alhaitham adjusted the strap of his bag with an indifferent air. “You were the one who grabbed me first,” he said simply, brushing invisible dust off his sleeve.
His tone wasn’t mocking, just matter-of-fact—like he was correcting an equation.
“I’ll see you in class.”
With that, he turned and walked off, waving his arm lazily behind him as though dismissing a conversation, not an incident. The faint squeak of his sneakers faded down the hall, leaving Kaveh standing there, hair mussed, clutching his wrist and wondering how he’d managed to lose a fight he hadn’t even started.
Outside, the lunch bell rang, and a few students peeked curiously around the corner before hurrying away—pretending they hadn’t seen anything. Kaveh sighed and muttered under his breath, “What kind of person just exits like that?”
~
"Oh. Em. Gee! Can't believe it has been one week since school has started! Have you seen any hot guys yet?" One girl asked her classmate, hooking onto her arm like a koala bear hugging a tree.
"Yes, yes! Class 1A's Al~Hai~Tham! He's super, UBER cute!"
"Oh really," The girls giggled excitedly, "Don't lie to me!"
"I would never~"
Alhaitham walked past the two girls as if their voices were part of the background hum of the corridor—the squeak of sneakers, the clatter of lockers, the faint buzz of fluorescent lights. His soundproof headphones were still charging back in his bag, and for once, he almost missed the silence they gave him. Every giggle and whisper scraped against his nerves like chalk.
“It’s him! Speak of the devil!” one of the girls hissed, clutching her friend’s arm.
“Wow, he’s really so handsome—look at those arms,” the other whispered, trying (and failing) to keep her voice down.
Alhaitham didn’t even glance their way. His expression stayed unreadable, eyes fixed ahead as if the entire hallway was just a landscape he needed to pass through.
Behind them, Kaveh came rushing up, his bag bouncing against his hip. His steps were hurried, tense—the sort of movement that tried to look casual but failed miserably. He shot a glare at Alhaitham’s retreating back, his golden hair catching the light like the bristling mane of a cornered animal.
He better not have told anyone, Kaveh thought, his pulse quickening. The sight of Alhaitham walking so calmly—hands in pockets, shoulders relaxed—only made the anxiety coil tighter in his stomach. It was like watching someone walk away with a secret you couldn’t afford to have revealed.
The hallway smelled faintly of floor cleaner and teenage perfume, and somewhere in the distance, the school bell rang, scattering the whispers into motion.
~
The next morning, sunlight spilled through the windows of the academy's hallway, sharp and white, and far too bright for someone like Kaveh, who had not slept all night.
He trudged forward, fingers twitching restlessly at the strap of his yellow backpack. His reflection glared back at him from the glass panels of the window; eyes slightly swollen, the bandage on his cheek crinkling as his jaw ightened. He look exhausted. Guilty. Worst of all: Exposed.
Kaveh's heart thudded faster with each step. That tall guy with the gray hair...Don't tell me he's already told everyone I cried?!
The though hit him like a speeding train. His shoulders went rigid, and his back straightened like a piece of metal forcibly straightened out. Kaveh shook his head frantically. No, no, no, he couldn't've...
And then, from somewhere behind him, he caught the faintest sound of a voice, "He c-"
The word echoed in his brain before the second syllable even came.
C? Cry?
Kaveh spun around, face flushed red and his pupils dilated. "He cried?!" The shout ripped out of him, halfway between disbelief and pure panic. The student froze, staring awkwardly and in complete shock.
He told them. He told people. He actually told—!
His breath hitched as a cold wave of dread flooded through his chest, and for a split second he could already imagine the whispers spreading – Kaveh cried. The violent boy who beat up a junior on the first day of school cried.
Instead, the two girls standing nearby blinked at him, bewildered. One girl leaned over to the other and muttered, “He called me on my phone…”
Kaveh blinked as well, his panic short-circuiting into confusion. The tension snapped like a string.
Heat crawled up his neck as realization hit. They were not even talking about him…
Mortified, he spun on his heel and stormed off, every movement sharp with humiliation. His ears burned a furious crimson, betraying what he desperately tried to hide. Shoulders hunched, head bowed, he moved as if the air itself were pelting him with invisible question marks, reminding him of his embarrassing outburst.
~
Days passed.
But the fear didn’t fade — it fermented.
Every time someone said “Cry,” or anything that remotely sounded like it, Kaveh’s entire body went tense, like a spring about to snap.
“He recently c—“
“Cry?!” Kaveh blurted again, spinning around like he’d been caught red-handed.
Silence.
Two boys holding a basketball stared at him. One blinked.
“Did he just learn how to speak,” he muttered to the other, both visibly confused.
Kaveh froze mid-step, realizing what he’d done again.
The next moment, he felt it — the crushing weight of his own mind closing in on him.
It was as though a colossal stone had been set upon his back, pressing down until his spine threatened to snap, forcing him to crawl beneath its relentless heaviness. Each breath scraped through his throat like gravel, shallow and strained, the air itself too thick to swallow.
The fear of humiliation. The weight of secrets. The knowledge that if anyone saw through him, even for a moment, it would all come crashing down.
His lips trembled as the words escaped him, barely more than a whisper.
“I’m losing it… completely losing it…”
And then — silence.
He massaged his temples in an attempt to try and soothe himself down.
“Nevermind it! Socrates once said…” he muttered dramatically to himself, slapping both cheeks to stay awake, “When logic fails, use strategy.”
He peeked around the corner — and there he was.
Alhaitham.
Tall. Composed. That gray-haired, standing amidst a small circle of friends who seemed to orbit around his quiet confidence. His posture was calm, one hand shoved into his pocket, the other gesturing lightly as he spoke.
The keeper of my secret, Kaveh thought, his fists clenched angrily.
Kaveh’s eyes narrowed. His chest twisted with equal parts panic and indignation.
When you can’t win head-on, he reminded himself, you outthink your opponent. You crush him with intellect.
He’s tall, broad, looks strong — probably not too bright, Kaveh murmured to himself, staring at the mahogany door panel, trying to spy on Alhaitham and trying to look as if he was minding his own business at the same time.
His jaw clenched, his grip tightening on his bag strap until his knuckles went white. He could feel his pulse hammering in his throat — embarrassment, frustration, the fragile remnants of his pride.
Whatever! Someone as handsome as he is probably isn’t very smart! I can easily manipulate him!
Kaveh cracked his knuckles slyly.
His ruby eyes sharpened, catching the light like polished glass.
Target locked. Alhaitham, just you wait!
~
It was the end of the school day, and the golden light of sunset streamed through the windows, catching dust motes that drifted lazily through the air. The classroom had emptied out, save for one student still at his desk—Alhaitham, as composed as ever, reading as if the world beyond his book didn’t exist.
Kaveh stood by the doorway, a small bandage still plastered across his nose, his expression the very picture of forced nonchalance. After a deep breath, he approached, clutching a cup of pearl milk tea in one hand like a peace flag.
“Let’s talk,” he said, his voice a touch too casual. He extended the drink with a little flourish—“Step One: Cast the bait,” he thought smugly.
Without even glancing up, Alhaitham accepted the cup, the gesture so effortlessly calm that Kaveh felt a twinge of relief. He dropped into the seat beside him, legs crossed, arms waving animatedly as he spoke.
“A gentleman,” Kaveh began, “uses his mouth, not his hands. We shouldn't be rude to each other—especially when we just made up! I’m still injured, mind you!” He pointed dramatically to the bandage on his nose.
“Step Two: Laying the groundwork,” he recited mentally, suppressing a grin.
He snapped his fingers as if struck by inspiration. “Oh, right! Shakespeare once said, ‘He who accepts another’s favor is constrained to comply with their wishes.’ Very reasonable, no?” His tone was mock-scholarly, but his eyes glimmered with mischief.
“Step Three: Introduce the concept.” he thought, the little devil on his shoulder rubbing his hands maniacally.
Then he leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “So you see,” he said, tilting his head, “you accepted my milk tea… Therefore, you shouldn’t mention a certain secret of mine, right?”
“Step Four: Stating the main point.”
Kaveh inwardly patted himself on the back. It was flawless—unassailable logic! Surely, even someone as dull as Alhaitham wouldn’t bother to twist that around.
Alhaitham’s eyes flicked up from his book. A small pause, a quiet hum. “Mhm,” he said finally, lips curling just barely. “You’re right.”
Kaveh’s heart leapt. He agreed! The little devil of on his shoulder was now doing victory laps. “I win! He really is an idiot! I’m a genius!” He thought.
Satisfied, Kaveh began packing his bag, humming to himself. “Well, that’s that,” he said cheerily. “From now on, we shall be like the water in the well and the water in the river—never EVER crossing paths! Goodbye!”
“Wait.”
That single word froze Kaveh mid-step. Alhaitham stood, holding up the now-empty cup of milk tea.
“I’m giving this back to you,” he said simply, placing it into Kaveh’s confused hands.
“Huh? But… I bought this for you…” Kaveh blinked rapidly, his victory starting to crumble.
Alhaitham’s lips curved—just slightly, but enough to make Kaveh’s stomach drop. It was a predator’s smile, sharp and knowing. “Once it’s given to me,” he said, his voice smooth as silk, “it becomes my property. And I may dispose of it as I please.”
He leaned in, inching closer to Kaveh’s face in a mocking sort of way, the faint scent of ink and paper clinging to him, and tapped Kaveh lightly on the nose—right where the bandage sat.
“Oh, right,” Alhaitham murmured, his tone soft but edged. “Shakespeare also said…”
Kaveh stiffened.
“He who accepts another’s favor,” Alhaitham continued, voice dipping lower, “is constrained to comply with their wishes.”
Kaveh’s breath hitched.
“Now that you’ve accepted my property,” Alhaitham said, eyes darkening with quiet amusement, “you owe me a favor.”
The realization hit Kaveh like a falling piano. Wait—how did the tables turn so quickly?!
Alhaitham straightened, his expression unreadable, while Kaveh stood frozen, clutching the cup like it might explode.
“Huh? Isn’t that… very reasonable?” Alhaitham echoed his earlier words with a faint, mocking lilt.
Kaveh’s mouth opened, then closed again. He’d tried to outsmart a philosopher—and instead, had built his own trap and walked straight into it.
His secret was safe… but now, he was in debt.
To Alhaitham.