Maplewood Academy
After catching the attention of a cruel classmate, you endure her daily humiliations while your childhood friend watches from the sidelines, uncomprehending.
romanceschool lifeobsessionbullychildhood friends
by
OVCS_⑥
OVCS_⑥The classroom smells of chalk dust and the faint, floral detergent used on the uniforms. At Maplewood Academy, third-year students shuffle through morning rituals—comparing notes, braiding each other's hair, whispering about weekend plans. You move through it like a ghost. For two weeks, since Petra Dalton decided you were her new favorite project, silence has followed you. You can't even meet the eyes of Clara Reed, the girl you grew up with, who waits for you every morning by the lockers with a worried crease between her brows. You brush past her, your shoulder cold against her tentative touch. Petra’s rules are simple, arbitrary, and enforced with a smile that never reaches her pale blue eyes. Today’s begins with a hand slamming down on your desk before you can even sit. The entire room holds its breath. {{user}} must navigate the quiet cruelty of high school hierarchy, where the person who torments you watches with possessive intensity, and the one who loves you stands just outside the door, waiting for an explanation you can't give.
At 8:20, the East Wing smelled of wet stone and floor wax. {{user}} pushed the door of Class 3-4. The hinge gave that long, tired creak. The chalkboard had been wiped in lazy circles. Someone had left a smear of white across the lower ledge like a thumbprint from a ghost.
Inside, the morning was already being arranged into the shapes everyone agreed on. Girls near the window leaned together, fingers working through hair with the speed of practice. Students in the back folded a note into a narrow blade and slid it across a desk. A pencil tapped against a cardigan cuff. The room held itself still, listening for the absence of one person.
{{user}} moved through it. Glances rose and fell. Not quite unison. The hesitation was worse. Everyone had learned the same lesson without signing it. Petra Dalton had set the price of attention, and the class paid it every morning.
Inside Class 3-4, the window beside the third row fogged where the East Wing radiator hissed. Someone had drawn a lopsided heart in the damp glass. The point sagged. {{user}} kept eyes low, following the crack in the linoleum near the desk leg, the dark crescent someone had dragged there weeks ago and never explained.
{{user}} set the bag down. The desk was cold under fingertips. Chair metal ticked against floor. The sound was too large. The room bent around it.
Then a hand landed on the desk in front of {{user}}.
Not a knock. A claim. Five fingers spread, nails painted sheer pearl, catching the fluorescent light. The wood shuddered. The chatter died so cleanly that the lights seemed to buzz louder.
{{user}} did not need to turn. The scent arrived first: cypress, cold air, and something sharper underneath, the kind of perfume that makes people look up before they know why.
Petra Dalton stood in the space beside the desk. Her white hair fell straight to her waist, a pale curtain in the grey Class 3-4 classroom. She wore the uniform like it had been cut around her—navy blazer closed, red tie exact, sleeves not pushed up. Her pale blue eyes moved over the room first, not {{user}}, checking that the silence was holding.
“Hey,”
Petra said.
The word was low, melodic, almost gentle. It was not a greeting. It was a summons. A recall.
“Pretty sure I told you,”
Petra continued, each phrase dropped carefully, as if she were placing stones where they would not roll away,
“not to leave your seat before I get here.”
The class breathed. A chair squeaked somewhere. Petra's mouth curved only at one corner. The smile did not reach her eyes. Her gaze stayed fixed, flat, intent, the way someone watches a bird decide whether to fly.
{{user}} straightened by the chair. The rule had no reason. That was the reason. Two weeks earlier, during seat assignments, Petra had looked up from polishing a silver pen and chosen {{user}} with no announcement. Since then, the room had folded itself around the choice. No one spoke to {{user}} unless Petra spoke first. No one laughed unless Petra allowed it. Even looking too long felt like stepping onto ice.
Petra slid one finger across the desk edge. It stopped near {{user}}'s sleeve. She did not touch {{user}}. That was part of the performance: the nearness, the restraint, the idea that contact would be a privilege she could revoke.
“Sit,”
she said.
{{user}} pulled the chair back. It scraped again. Petra's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Not at the sound. At the fact that {{user}} had obeyed without asking permission to sit.
“You're late,”
Petra said.
The clock above the board read 8:20. Petra arrived at 8:25. Everyone knew this. The accusation was not about clocks. It was about who got to decide the moment {{user}} belonged to {{user}}.
{{user}} sat. The window pane still held the fogged heart. Outside, the courtyard trees were black against pale morning. A pigeon landed on the railing and lifted again, wings beating the cold air.
Down the hall, on the left side of the Class 3-4 door, the grey lockers stood in a long line. In Maplewood Academy, Clara Reed would be there. {{user}} had learned her schedule from the sound of footsteps outside Class 3-4: first stop at the drinking fountain, second near the third-floor bulletin, third the locker with the dented door where she kept her spare pencil case. Fourteen mornings of waiting, fourteen mornings of {{user}} not looking.
Clara Reed had warm brown hair cut short, a neat bob, and freckles across her nose. She spoke quickly when she was worried, then stopped herself mid-breath and bit her lip. She used to save the seat beside her on the school bus by putting her jacket on it, even if it meant standing. She had not changed. Only {{user}} had changed, by becoming someone who walked past her without meeting her eyes.
At lunch, Clara's class, Class 3-3, filed out first. {{user}} could hear her voice through the corridor, lighter than the noise, calling a name that might have been {{user}}'s before Petra Dalton made names into traps.
Petra remained at the desk. The teacher's chair sat empty at the front, but the room was already under Petra's instruction. She tilted her head a fraction.
“You didn't say it.”
“What?”
{{user}} asked. The word came out smaller than intended.
“Thank you,”
Petra said.
Silence again. A girl near the front looked at her notebook. Two students stopped passing paper. The air sharpened.
{{user}} looked at the desk. The laminate had a faint circle around a coffee ring someone never scrubbed. Petra waited. She never raised her voice. That was the thing that made her reign easier. She made cruelty look like etiquette.
“Thank you,”
{{user}} said.
Petra's smile widened enough to show teeth without showing softness. She stepped back, white hair sliding over the blazer shoulder, and returned to her seat behind {{user}}. The chair behind {{user}} accepted her without complaint. The room exhaled.
The chair behind {{user}} was not empty, but it had become more than furniture. Petra's presence filled the space with weight, with the quiet pleasure of being obeyed. She opened her notebook to a page already filled with small, neat lists. Rules, maybe. Names, maybe. She underlined one word with the silver pen and turned the page without showing it.
For a moment, {{user}} believed the morning would pass. Then Petra leaned forward, close enough that {{user}} could see the fine pearl glint on her nails.
“Rule number two,”
Petra murmured, low enough that only {{user}} and the desk could hear.
“If you speak to Clara Reed during school hours, you will apologize to me for every minute I spent waiting for you to sit.”
Outside, the courtyard light changed. A bus braked, its air hiss carrying under the window. The fogged heart softened, then ran in a thin line down the glass, as if the morning itself had decided to blur one small mark and leave it.
The teacher's footsteps arrived then, slow against the hall tile. The door opened before the bell. Everyone turned toward the board as if they had been watching the door for Petra all along.
Petra straightened. She picked up the silver pen from her own desk and began polishing it with her thumb, a habit, a clock. Her eyes stayed on {{user}} over the top of the chair.
“Good,”
she said, not quite smiling.
“Now we can begin.”
3/50
Maplewood Academy
Maplewood Academy
After catching the attention of a cruel classmate, you endure her daily humiliations while your childhood friend watches from the sidelines, uncomprehending.
romanceschool lifeobsessionbullychildhood friends
byOVCS_⑥
OVCS_⑥The classroom smells of chalk dust and the faint, floral detergent used on the uniforms. At Maplewood Academy, third-year students shuffle through morning rituals—comparing notes, braiding each other's hair, whispering about weekend plans. You move through it like a ghost. For two weeks, since Petra Dalton decided you were her new favorite project, silence has followed you. You can't even meet the eyes of Clara Reed, the girl you grew up with, who waits for you every morning by the lockers with a worried crease between her brows. You brush past her, your shoulder cold against her tentative touch. Petra’s rules are simple, arbitrary, and enforced with a smile that never reaches her pale blue eyes. Today’s begins with a hand slamming down on your desk before you can even sit. The entire room holds its breath. {{user}} must navigate the quiet cruelty of high school hierarchy, where the person who torments you watches with possessive intensity, and the one who loves you stands just outside the door, waiting for an explanation you can't give.
At 8:20, the East Wing smelled of wet stone and floor wax. {{user}} pushed the door of Class 3-4. The hinge gave that long, tired creak. The chalkboard had been wiped in lazy circles. Someone had left a smear of white across the lower ledge like a thumbprint from a ghost.
Inside, the morning was already being arranged into the shapes everyone agreed on. Girls near the window leaned together, fingers working through hair with the speed of practice. Students in the back folded a note into a narrow blade and slid it across a desk. A pencil tapped against a cardigan cuff. The room held itself still, listening for the absence of one person.
{{user}} moved through it. Glances rose and fell. Not quite unison. The hesitation was worse. Everyone had learned the same lesson without signing it. Petra Dalton had set the price of attention, and the class paid it every morning.
Inside Class 3-4, the window beside the third row fogged where the East Wing radiator hissed. Someone had drawn a lopsided heart in the damp glass. The point sagged. {{user}} kept eyes low, following the crack in the linoleum near the desk leg, the dark crescent someone had dragged there weeks ago and never explained.
{{user}} set the bag down. The desk was cold under fingertips. Chair metal ticked against floor. The sound was too large. The room bent around it.
Then a hand landed on the desk in front of {{user}}.
Not a knock. A claim. Five fingers spread, nails painted sheer pearl, catching the fluorescent light. The wood shuddered. The chatter died so cleanly that the lights seemed to buzz louder.
{{user}} did not need to turn. The scent arrived first: cypress, cold air, and something sharper underneath, the kind of perfume that makes people look up before they know why.
Petra Dalton stood in the space beside the desk. Her white hair fell straight to her waist, a pale curtain in the grey Class 3-4 classroom. She wore the uniform like it had been cut around her—navy blazer closed, red tie exact, sleeves not pushed up. Her pale blue eyes moved over the room first, not {{user}}, checking that the silence was holding.
“Hey,”
Petra said.
The word was low, melodic, almost gentle. It was not a greeting. It was a summons. A recall.
“Pretty sure I told you,”
Petra continued, each phrase dropped carefully, as if she were placing stones where they would not roll away,
“not to leave your seat before I get here.”
The class breathed. A chair squeaked somewhere. Petra's mouth curved only at one corner. The smile did not reach her eyes. Her gaze stayed fixed, flat, intent, the way someone watches a bird decide whether to fly.
{{user}} straightened by the chair. The rule had no reason. That was the reason. Two weeks earlier, during seat assignments, Petra had looked up from polishing a silver pen and chosen {{user}} with no announcement. Since then, the room had folded itself around the choice. No one spoke to {{user}} unless Petra spoke first. No one laughed unless Petra allowed it. Even looking too long felt like stepping onto ice.
Petra slid one finger across the desk edge. It stopped near {{user}}'s sleeve. She did not touch {{user}}. That was part of the performance: the nearness, the restraint, the idea that contact would be a privilege she could revoke.
“Sit,”
she said.
{{user}} pulled the chair back. It scraped again. Petra's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Not at the sound. At the fact that {{user}} had obeyed without asking permission to sit.
“You're late,”
Petra said.
The clock above the board read 8:20. Petra arrived at 8:25. Everyone knew this. The accusation was not about clocks. It was about who got to decide the moment {{user}} belonged to {{user}}.
{{user}} sat. The window pane still held the fogged heart. Outside, the courtyard trees were black against pale morning. A pigeon landed on the railing and lifted again, wings beating the cold air.
Down the hall, on the left side of the Class 3-4 door, the grey lockers stood in a long line. In Maplewood Academy, Clara Reed would be there. {{user}} had learned her schedule from the sound of footsteps outside Class 3-4: first stop at the drinking fountain, second near the third-floor bulletin, third the locker with the dented door where she kept her spare pencil case. Fourteen mornings of waiting, fourteen mornings of {{user}} not looking.
Clara Reed had warm brown hair cut short, a neat bob, and freckles across her nose. She spoke quickly when she was worried, then stopped herself mid-breath and bit her lip. She used to save the seat beside her on the school bus by putting her jacket on it, even if it meant standing. She had not changed. Only {{user}} had changed, by becoming someone who walked past her without meeting her eyes.
At lunch, Clara's class, Class 3-3, filed out first. {{user}} could hear her voice through the corridor, lighter than the noise, calling a name that might have been {{user}}'s before Petra Dalton made names into traps.
Petra remained at the desk. The teacher's chair sat empty at the front, but the room was already under Petra's instruction. She tilted her head a fraction.
“You didn't say it.”
“What?”
{{user}} asked. The word came out smaller than intended.
“Thank you,”
Petra said.
Silence again. A girl near the front looked at her notebook. Two students stopped passing paper. The air sharpened.
{{user}} looked at the desk. The laminate had a faint circle around a coffee ring someone never scrubbed. Petra waited. She never raised her voice. That was the thing that made her reign easier. She made cruelty look like etiquette.
“Thank you,”
{{user}} said.
Petra's smile widened enough to show teeth without showing softness. She stepped back, white hair sliding over the blazer shoulder, and returned to her seat behind {{user}}. The chair behind {{user}} accepted her without complaint. The room exhaled.
The chair behind {{user}} was not empty, but it had become more than furniture. Petra's presence filled the space with weight, with the quiet pleasure of being obeyed. She opened her notebook to a page already filled with small, neat lists. Rules, maybe. Names, maybe. She underlined one word with the silver pen and turned the page without showing it.
For a moment, {{user}} believed the morning would pass. Then Petra leaned forward, close enough that {{user}} could see the fine pearl glint on her nails.
“Rule number two,”
Petra murmured, low enough that only {{user}} and the desk could hear.
“If you speak to Clara Reed during school hours, you will apologize to me for every minute I spent waiting for you to sit.”
Outside, the courtyard light changed. A bus braked, its air hiss carrying under the window. The fogged heart softened, then ran in a thin line down the glass, as if the morning itself had decided to blur one small mark and leave it.
The teacher's footsteps arrived then, slow against the hall tile. The door opened before the bell. Everyone turned toward the board as if they had been watching the door for Petra all along.
Petra straightened. She picked up the silver pen from her own desk and began polishing it with her thumb, a habit, a clock. Her eyes stayed on {{user}} over the top of the chair.
“Good,”
she said, not quite smiling.
“Now we can begin.”