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Hanseong Arts & Prestige Academy was the kind of school where people learned very quickly that reputation mattered more than honesty.
Grades could be bought.
Friendships could be staged.
Relationships were basically PR deals.
But humiliation?
Humiliation lasted forever.
And nobody understood that better than The Royals.
The most untouchable group in school.
The beautiful ones.
The rich ones.
The dangerous ones.
Every Friday, students wore black.
Nobody remembered how it started anymore.
Only that The Royals did it first.
And everyone followed.
—
The first time you saw Seonghwa, he was standing in the middle of the upper cafeteria level like he owned the building.
Maybe he did.
Students moved around him automatically. Teachers smiled too politely at him. Even the principal looked nervous when Seonghwa spoke.
He looked perfect.
Perfect posture. Perfect uniform. Perfect expression.
Cold enough to make people lower their voices when he walked past.
Beside him sat Hongjoong, scrolling through his phone with a bored expression while secretly controlling half the social life inside Hanseong Academy.
Then there was Wooyoung, laughing too loudly while spreading gossip disguised as jokes.
San sat across from them, effortlessly beautiful in the unfair kind of way that made people stare too long.
Students adored him.
Which was dangerous.
Because people loved The Royals most when they forgot how cruel they could be.
—
You transferred to Hanseong on a scholarship halfway through the semester.
Wrong shoes.
Wrong background.
Wrong social class.
The kind of student rich parents whispered about.
At first, you tried staying invisible.
That worked for exactly three days.
Because during dance practice, San noticed you.
And unfortunately for you, when San noticed something, the rest of the school followed.
—
“San’s talking to the scholarship student.”
That sentence spread through the academy faster than wildfire.
By lunch the next day, people were staring.
By Friday, someone had posted your schedule online.
By Monday, The Royals invited you to sit with them.
Nobody refused invitations from The Royals.
Not if they wanted to survive socially.
—
The first thing you learned about them was that none of them acted the same in private.
Seonghwa was quieter than expected.
Hongjoong watched people too carefully.
Wooyoung flirted with everyone but trusted nobody.
Mingi barely spoke unless he had something genuinely cruel or genuinely honest to say.
And Yeosang—
Nobody understood Yeosang.
Not even The Royals.
Yeosang existed like a ghost inside the group. Silent. Elegant. Constantly observing.
Sometimes you caught him staring at people like he already knew how their story would end.
It was unsettling.
—
Then there was Yunho.
Basketball captain. Student favorite. Genuinely kind.
Which made him dangerous in a different way.
People trusted Yunho too easily.
And Yunho still believed people could be saved.
Even Seonghwa.
—
The deeper you got into The Royals, the uglier things became.
The parties were beautiful.
Huge mansions. Expensive alcohol. Designer clothes. Polaroids covering walls.
But every party ended the same way:
someone crying in a bathroom.
Someone getting exposed.
Someone becoming entertainment.
And somehow, every disaster eventually traced back to one anonymous Instagram account.
BLACKLIST.
The account ruled Hanseong more than the teachers did.
One post could destroy reputations overnight.
Cheating scandals. Secret hookups. Fake grades. Family affairs.
Nobody knew who ran it.
But everybody feared it.
—
One Friday night, BLACKLIST posted photos of a student kissing someone else’s boyfriend during a school event.
The girl transferred schools three days later.
Nobody spoke about her again.
That was the moment you realized Hanseong Academy didn’t just enjoy cruelty.
It rewarded it.
—
San changed after that.
Slowly.
Quietly.
He stopped laughing at humiliating posts.
Stopped attending afterparties.
Started walking you home after practice.
And Seonghwa noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
Seonghwa noticed everything.
“You’re distracted lately,” he said one afternoon while adjusting his cufflinks.
San rolled his eyes.
“You sound like my manager.”
“No,” Seonghwa replied calmly.
“I sound like someone warning you before you become a problem.”
—
The worst part about The Royals wasn’t their power.
It was the fact that they genuinely loved each other once.
You could still see traces of it sometimes.
In the way Yunho defended Seonghwa during arguments.
The way Wooyoung automatically leaned against San when tired.
The way Hongjoong stayed awake helping Jongho study before exams.
They weren’t born cruel.
Hanseong made them that way.
Or maybe power did.
—
Everything finally began collapsing during festival season.
Because BLACKLIST posted something it never should have touched:
proof that wealthy students were secretly receiving altered grades from administration members.
Parents panicked.
Teachers started investigating.
Students turned vicious.
And suddenly The Royals weren’t untouchable anymore.
They were targets.
—
That same week, Jongho accidentally discovered the truth.
Hongjoong ran BLACKLIST.
The entire time.
Jongho found the login information while borrowing Hongjoong’s laptop after study hall.
At first he thought there had to be another explanation.
There wasn’t.
Every cruel post.
Every exposed secret.
Every ruined life.
Hongjoong watched it all happen from behind a screen.
—
“You can’t tell anyone,” Hongjoong said quietly after Jongho confronted him.
Jongho looked disgusted.
“People got hurt.”
Hongjoong laughed bitterly.
“People were already hurting. I just posted proof.”
—
But the real betrayal came later.
Because when San found out and confronted Seonghwa—
Seonghwa admitted he already knew.
Silence filled the room.
“You knew?” San whispered.
Seonghwa didn’t look ashamed.
“Fear keeps people loyal.”
San stared at him like he didn’t recognize him anymore.
And maybe he didn’t.
Because suddenly San understood:
The Royals were never really friends anymore.
Just people desperately protecting the version of themselves Hanseong created.
—
After that, everything spiraled.
Wooyoung started panicking publicly.
Mingi stopped showing up to lunch.
Yeosang became quieter than ever.
Yunho kept trying to fix things nobody wanted fixed.
And Seonghwa?
Seonghwa started losing control.
For the first time in years.
—
Prom night was supposed to save their reputation.
Perfect venue. Perfect outfits. Perfect smiles.
The Royals arrived dressed in black.
Of course they did.
But halfway through the night, the ballroom screens flickered.
Then changed.
BLACKLIST drafts flooded every screen in the room.
Deleted posts.
Private messages.
Names.
Confessions.
Complete silence.
The entire school turned toward The Royals.
Wooyoung looked horrified.
Hongjoong looked furious.
San looked exhausted.
And Seonghwa—
Seonghwa looked afraid.
For the very first time.
—
Later that night, students would say Hanseong Academy changed forever after the scandal.
That wasn’t true.
Schools like Hanseong never really changed.
They just found new people to worship.
New people to destroy.
But sometimes, late at night, students still talked about The Royals like a ghost story.
About the beautiful boys who ruled the school until their secrets finally consumed them.
And every Friday after that?
People still wore black anyway.