The rain came without warning, like almost everything bad that had happened that day.
Lyan walked with his head down toward his apartment, completely soaked, though the truth was he wasn’t making much of an effort to hurry either.
His backpack weighed on his shoulder and, from time to time, he rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand, that sore spot still there, reminding him how the day had ended.
It had been getting worse, basically, a little more every hour...
He was going over all of it in his head, the exact order in which things had started to go wrong, when he felt his phone vibrate against his thigh.
He stepped under the small overhang of a closed shop to take out his phone and wiped the screen with his sleeve to dry it a bit, just enough to be able to see something.
It was an unknown number.
’Spam?’ he thought without much interest, opening the message anyway.
The moment he finished reading it, his mind went blank.
It was a photo of him, in the classroom cleaning. The image was clear, taken from the hallway or from some angle he hadn’t noticed, and underneath it, a message:
-Why are you always alone, Lyan? The game isn’t going to hug you for real.
Lyan stared at the screen for a moment, then glanced at the ground, and back at the screen again, as if he needed to bounce his gaze somewhere for his brain to start working.
’Sophia?’
It didn’t make much sense, honestly.
He didn’t know how she would have his number, much less how she would know about the game... But she was the only person who kept circling around in his head at the academy, besides Lucas.
And there was something about that girl that didn’t quite sit right with him, though he couldn’t say exactly what.
And anyway, what reason would she have to send him this? To keep pressing on the wound? Because if anyone else found out he played that game... his life would become a lot more complicated than it already was, and that was saying a lot.
The sky grew even darker and the wind started driving the rain sideways, so Lyan blocked the number and put his phone away, walking off without reaching any conclusion.
Though that didn’t mean he stopped thinking about it.
- - - -
When he got to the apartment, he took off his wet clothes, changed, and dropped onto the bed without bothering to turn on the light.
He wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t feel like putting on the headset either, even though the girls in the game always treated him well, more than well, even, but today he didn’t want to deal with anyone.
Absolutely anyone.
- - - -
The next morning, his secret was already on everyone’s lips, with an extra detail he hadn’t expected: that he had supposedly harassed Lyra on the street...
It was all a lie, or well, half of it.
From the moment he entered the building, Lyan felt the change, those sideways glances people think are subtle and really aren’t, the whispers that cut off the moment he walked nearby.
In the hallway, Lucas’s group of friends didn’t even bother hiding it and openly mocked him, with comments that drew laughter around them: loser, freak, the guy with fetishes for NPCs.
Lyan kept a strong face because he had no other choice, though by the time he reached his first class, his head had already started to pound, a dull ache from holding in so much noise.
At lunchtime, he remembered he had forgotten his lunch at home, so he had to go to the cafeteria with a tray in his hands like any other day, except today wasn’t just any day.
Almost the entire room paused when he walked in, that fraction of a second where conversations dropped in volume and eyes turned toward him, and even though no one said anything out loud, the message was pretty clear.
Lyan searched for a place and spotted Lyra in the distance, at a table off to the side with the other four girls, chatting among themselves.
Lyra noticed him almost immediately, looked at him for a second, and leaned in to whisper something to the girl next to her.
Right at that moment, his phone vibrated.
Lyan took it out without much expectation and saw another unknown number, different from yesterday’s.
-Pathetic... hahaha, just like losers like you.
He looked at it for a moment with a flat expression, not really sure what to think; it left a bad taste in his mouth.
’Great way to start the day...’ he thought sarcastically, slipping the phone back into his pocket.
Whoever was sending him messages seemed more entertained by his life than their own...
Without much else, Lyan found the most isolated corner of the cafeteria he could and sat down alone with his tray, staring at the food with little appetite.
- - - -
After lunch, Lyan quickly stood up and began to walk away from the exhausting murmurs of the other students.
As he walked through the second-floor hallways, he couldn’t help but stop in front of a window, looking out at the sunny day outside.
"..."
He didn’t know if he had done something wrong in a past life to have to live like this every day for no apparent reason...
Much less now that he had a stalker who secretly took pictures of him and knew things they shouldn’t know.
He couldn’t help clenching his fist in frustration as he remembered his pathetic life.
It wasn’t like he wanted to learn how to fight just to beat the shit out of Lucas and his group; he gained nothing from that. The damage to him was already done.
And he was sure that if he went to another academy, it would be the same sooner or later.
Misfortune seemed to follow him...
"Whatever..." he muttered to himself, starting to walk back toward his classroom.
Unaware that on the other side of the hallway, a mysterious figure had been secretly following him.