Alpha Athen's POV

Grains of sweat popped up on my forehead and my heart shivered like a crippled petal swinging from a branch when the slightest gush of wind hit it up. 

An ocean of emotions aroused to the brink and blocked all the words one would say at such a moment and left me spellbound. 

"Hey, Slim." A bony boy who had his personality graced with the magnificent aura of richness, with his hand curled around the strap of the shoulder bag hung on one side, pulled on a smirky smile, and spoke to his friends who were standing beside him. Meanwhile, his orbs studied my figure like it had something alien about it.

They overtook me while I was walking toward my campus along with my friends.

Now there's something you need to know. My name's not 'Slim'. Considering that, you'd be wondering who they were referencing. 

Well, it was me and nobody else. It was a name they had given me, contrasting my personality.

I was not a slim, tall, and handsome kind of boy, but the total opposite of it. Attempted, Neil and his gangster disciples had nicknamed me Slim.

Despite knowing that many people struggle mentally, physically, and emotionally in their lives to get this title, and grind their bodies heavily in the gyms to get into shape. The perfect ideal slim body type. I was strangely bothered by it. Mainly, because I knew the cost attached to it.

Food.

The only thing in this mundane, materialistic world which could make me happy is like kid oblivion to the worries awaiting him in his grown-up years.

My eyes strained to look at them through the mist of hypertension that formed in front of my eyes when I saw them smirking at me. Their ways were suggesting their evil desires.

I pinched my fingers onto my pants, attempting to hide my nervousness, and pushed my grumpy, fluffy chest forward to make a manly impression on them.

Nevertheless, I knew that it was not doing me any good as I was badly under the influence of their power and force.

"What business do you have with me now?" I tried to shout but I could barely speak.

"Nothing much, just a few bucks." Neil traced his knuckles down my cheeks and pressed my shoulder down with his hand.

"What bucks. I don't owe you anything." I squinted my eyes in contemplation, trying to recall if I really do.

"Oh, come on. Bumpy bunny."

His friend who was standing on his right side came forward and thrust an unannounced punch on my belly so hard that I immediately leaned forward over my waist.

Kaden, a weak bony boy with red hair nicely chopped like an army cut, and Nick, who was his twin owning similar looks to her brother rushed forward to defend me. However, it was obvious they could not stand the boys, apparently, double in size from both of them.

Stepped back as soon as they stared at them. Poor me was left alone to defend myself from these boys, who were claiming that I owe them some bucks.

"F**k, what the heck do you want from me?" I groaned in pain as I clutched my hands around my belly.

It was then, that another punch from the other boy came, faster than the previous one, and rolled me down on earth. Crumpled like a paper wrestling with the dust layering over the path, I vaguely heard the noise of dead leaves crunching below my fatty, chubby body.

"Hey! Stop the hell!" I could barely manage to speak when I pledged to them to stop hitting me. 

"100 bucks will be enough for that."

Neil's voice echoed in my ear, as he was standing at a distance watching his boys beating the hell out of me for something that I didn't even remember.

"I- I don't..." I was halfway reiterating my sentence when something happened, it was so quick at first that I couldn't make sense of it, until they ran away leaving me pain stricken on my stomach when I struggled to pull my head up and look in the direction they vanished.

"Pheww..." Disappointedly, I threw my head back on the muddy road sprinkled with the dead yellowish fallen leaves.

It took me an instant to figure out the reason for their sudden left out. They would not have stopped beating me at once and let me go without taking that money they were asking for, irrespective of the fact that I didn't owe them even a single buck, if only they had not seen Sienna walking towards our way.

They could manage to sacrifice the profit, in any case, but not afford their reputation to be affected in her eyes.

Well, nobody would want that, especially when it's her.

Sienna, a student of the second year, with red hair chopped into a gorgeous bob which was framing round to her jawline, as her forehead was covered with fringes scattered enough to show glimpses of her skin. Moreover, giving her the dainty resemblance of a Korean girl. 

Her lips were as fine and thin as a Chinese girl's. And her cheeks were as pinkish round as a Japanese girl, yet, she was American. 

She was the kind of girl who could make the sword of men rise high even piercing through the tightness of their underwear with her mere looks.

It was an undeniable fact that every guy wanted to have an affair with her, yet, it was famous too that she was not an easy girl to please and melt.

Overhearing all this gossip around the college, I often felt the urge to date her. Despite knowing she would never like to stand by a guy as ugly, fat, and chubby as me.

"Alright?" With a cool misty breeze wafting around me, a soft voice echoed in my ear which made me swirl my head around.

Hurriedly, I pulled myself up and back on my knees, and then I tried to get on my feet when I nearly lost my balance. 

"Be careful!" She leaned forward and clutched my arms. 

Embarrassingly, her intricate hands could not even hold onto half of them. 

"Umm.. yeah yeah. Thanks for helping."

I regained my balance and got on my feet. A gush of swift pain rushed across my belly and thighs and shins as I flinched.

"Why were they messing with you? What's the matter?" She asked me concernedly, meanwhile, my orbs landed on a red heart-shaped mole which was spotted right on the edge of her breast revealing through the top she had pulled on.

"Stop staring at her breast!" A warning voice came from inside me.

Suddenly, some sharp red rays emitted from the cherry-colored mole like the red blaring horn fixated on the roof of a police car and blinded me. My retina flared due to the strong intensity of the light. "What is it?" I wondered. Though, the thought took too long to hit my mind.

"Ahmm.." she broke the shell of my concentration with her coughing as I dragged my eyes up to hers.

It was then, that I saw a red fiery glint shooting across her eyes. My orbs spread wider in disbelief for an instant when I jerked my head to shake off the strange things happening to me.

"Maybe, it was the repercussions of being beaten." Gradually, I felt my head spinning and my legs shivering, a wave of nausea rushed up to my throat when I swallowed it down.

"Yeah, it's just... Umm... nothing." Saying this I plunged over my waist and began to dust off my pants which turned white with all that mud sticking onto them, as I was being rolled over the ground during the one-sided fight.

Subsequently, I pulled myself up and rushed away from her after my throat had a hard time restricting the vomit quarreling to spill out. 

"Ah, Man! What an awfully unexpected day it is." I wiped off my mouth after vomiting behind the tree.

As I pulled straight back to my feet, I curled around to check whether she was there or not. I forgot to make sure she went away in the hurry of finding a place far from her eyes to ease it out.

After a while, I headed towards the department when out of nowhere a thought hit my mind like a bird flying high up in the sky thrust into the airplane and smeared its huge white beak with the red color of its blood.

"What was that?" Once again I found myself wondering about the blinding shaft of red light which permeated from her mole. 

"Was it merely an illusion? 

Or what?"

Drifted away from reality by this wonderment, I climbed up the small stairs opening at the mouth of the corridor of our department. 

~ Faculty of social and human sciences~ was engraved in big bold black letters on the forefront of the building.

I walked in straight towards my class with my legs limping suggesting something was wrong with them. Indeed, something was really off with me, however, my naked eye was unable to recognize the bizarre adventure waiting to happen soon.