CHAPTER 1: THE TOYS OF THE RICH

Gwen POV:

Thud.

Both of my knees slammed hard onto the damp grass, right beneath Lucas’s spotless Air Jordans. The force of the kick from behind was so intense that I lost my balance, forcing me to thrust both hands into the mud to keep from faceplanting. My glasses jolted askew on the bridge of my nose, and I hurriedly pushed them back up.

A sudden surge of heat welled up from deep within my veins, burning hot as if to scorch my flesh, but it was instantly suppressed, crushed by an invisible layer of pressure constricting my chest. Since childhood, I had always felt something wasn't right with my chest. It wasn’t an illness, but rather a vague, suffocating oppression that had clung to me for seventeen years—like an invisible hand strangling my emotions whenever I dared to resist. I didn’t know what this bizarre sensation was; I only knew how to endure living with this innate discomfort.

"Hahaha! I told you! She actually went down on her knees to beg! Whoever bet fifty bucks, pay up!"

The cheers of the surrounding crowd pierced my ears, crystal clear down to every single breath, even though they were standing several meters away. My sense of smell was overwhelmed by the pungent, chaotic odor of the snobbish rich kids—expensive perfume mingled with sweat and damp grass after practice. At that moment, my instincts automatically classified them as: A pack of hyenas.

A few fifty-dollar bills fluttered before my eyes, landing with a soft plop into a puddle of dirty water. Ben’s booming laughter, Lucas’s half-hearted smirk... Everything clicked together like a bucket of ice water poured straight over my head. There was no school transfer. There was no promised land on the East Coast. It was all a trap, laid out using my own foolish sincerity, and the prize for the winner was a game valued in cold, hard cash.

The blinding flash from Chloe’s iPhone beamed directly into my eyes. She thrust the livestreaming screen right into my face, her sharp, gel-manicured nails clicking sharply against the frame of my glasses:

"Everyone online see that clearly? This freaky little nerd actually showed up looking this disheveled just to get down on her knees and confess to Lucas! Look at her pathetic face. Here's a tip, Gwen: use a mirror to figure out who you actually are!"

I stared blankly at the gift box tied with a pink ribbon, lying abandoned on the grass, my mind going completely numb.

Five minutes ago, it wasn't like this.

The secluded back courtyard of Blackwood Academy rustled under a stifling early-summer breeze. I stood under the shade of an ancient oak tree, both hands tucked deep inside the sleeves of my oversized gray hoodie, clutching the gift box tightly against my chest to hide my trembling.

I blocked the star striker’s path—all because of a post that had just appeared on the school forum: Lucas’s family was about to move to the East Coast.

"I... I like you, Lucas! Ever since the day you helped me pick up my files two years ago."

I bowed deeply, offering the gift box forward, my eyes fixed intently on the tips of his shoes. I shut out all the sensory inputs flooding my body, yet the scent on Lucas still hit my nose. It was cold, sharp, and carried an inexplicable sense of pressure that made me involuntarily stiffen. That scent was entirely different from anyone I had ever met.

The silence was so heavy that the wind whistling through the ancient stone arches was clearly audible.

Lucas took a long step back, his brows furrowed in utter astonishment. But the surprise on his face vanished instantly, replaced by his familiar coldness.

"Are you insane, Gwen?"

His voice sounded dry, ruthless, and abnormally loud. He slapped the gift box out of my hands onto the turf without a shred of pity, using the force of his arm to shove me hard, sending me staggering backward.

"I helped you back then only because those upperclassmen were crossing the line, it doesn't mean I have any interest in someone... like you. Take your stuff and get lost! Don't embarrass me in front of the team. Get out of my sight!"

Before his words even finished, more than ten students rushed out from the shadows amidst the roaring laughter of Chloe's clique. Just as I turned to run, Ben—the arrogant class president—stepped up from behind and kicked the back of my knees with brute force.

That was the exact moment I collapsed beneath Lucas's shoes, absorbing the torrent of insults and the lens of Chloe’s livestream.

It took me a long moment to clumsily scramble to my feet, spinning around to run for dear life toward the academy building to escape the crowd laughing hysterically behind me.

But the bullying crowd wasn't about to let their prey off so easily. Cutting through the brightly lit back entrance, they flooded into the hallway ahead of me to cut off my escape.

I stumbled through the glass doors of the building, my appearance caked in mud. The clamor of the main hall dropped instantly by a notch, as if someone had just pressed a volume-down button. Along the hallway, faces turned up from their phone screens in unison, their eyes locking onto me—a mixture of curiosity and contempt. Chloe’s livestream had long since spread to the lounge, and the whispers began to ripple out:

"There she is, that freaky nerd from the livestream." "Look at what a total mess she is, yet she actually dared to daydream about Lucas. What a joke."

Hurrying with my head down to avoid their stares, I crashed hard into a shoulder that smelled heavily of expensive perfume. The violent impact sent me crashing flat onto the freezing tile floor.

My vision blurred behind lenses smudged with rainwater. Before I could even push myself up, a thick, freezing liquid was suddenly poured straight over the crown of my head.

The cloying scent of milk tea mixed with boba pearls clung sticky to my hair, streaming down my face and smearing across my glasses.

"Where are your eyes, you filthy freak?"

Jessica casually tossed the empty plastic cup beside me, then thrust her phone screen—displaying a non-stop, rapidly climbing feed of mocking comments from the livestream—right into my slime-covered face:

"Take a good look, you stupid nerd! Crawl back to whatever corner you came from, Gwen!"

I didn’t argue. Using the hem of my hoodie, I hurriedly wiped the sticky, sweet liquid from my face, silently stood up, and walked straight toward the History classroom. But just as I reached the doorway, a large object flew past my face with a sharp whoosh, crashing heavily into the rain-soaked courtyard outside the hallway window.

It was my backpack. The zipper had burst open, dumping all the textbooks inside onto the courtyard, where they quickly soaked through with pitch-black muddy water. My brown leather-bound journal was thrown the farthest, landing face down in a filthy puddle. The torrential downpour rapidly blurred the ink on its pages.

"This classroom doesn't harbor losers who humiliate our entire grade." Ben’s lackeys leaned their hands on the windowsill, looking down at the pile of books in the courtyard with mocking smirks. "Beat it so we can keep the place clean, Gwen."

I stood frozen, watching my journal slowly sink into the mire. My classmates turned their faces away in unison—some staring intently at their phone screens, others pretending to flip through their books to avoid my gaze.

Amidst the jeering crowd, I raised my eyes and looked toward the far end of the vast hallway. There stood Julian Miller—my genius cousin and the powerful Student Council President—surrounded by a clique of wealthy heirs.

He looked straight at me. Julian’s eyes were flat, cold, and indifferent. But for a split second, I swore I saw a bizarre, ash-gray light flash within his pupils. The scent of cedarwood emanating from his direction carried a sharp, biting pressure, acting as an implicit warning that forced me to clench my fists to suppress the churning turmoil in my chest.

Julian lowered his head, his finger sliding across a phone screen that displayed a short clip just clipped from Chloe’s livestream. He forwarded the video to an unsaved number, casually slipped the device into his uniform pocket, and turned to walk away.

Not a single word of intervention. He abandoned me to the surrounding violence. The final, indifferent look from my only relative at Blackwood seemed to say: You lost again.

I no longer cared to retrieve the mud-caked backpack from the courtyard. Turning around, I bolted straight through the roaring, laughing crowd, escaping from this school.

By now, the thunderstorm had broken out in a torrential downpour. Charging out from under the eaves, the heavy rain instantly lashed against my face. I ripped off my glasses, which were covered in milk tea and mud, and flung them down onto the cold gravel, choosing to let my vision dissolve into a hazy void.

I dashed out of the gates of Blackwood Academy, my thin silhouette swallowed by the blinding sheet of rain. Today, they mocked my weakness. But I swore, this would be the absolute last time they would ever see a timid, disheveled Gwendolyn Miller on her knees beneath their feet.

Crack.

An infinitesimally small, fragile, yet razor-sharp sound suddenly echoed deep inside my chest. The suffocating sensation, the invisible shackles that had strangled my body for seventeen years... seemed to have just sustained its very first fracture.