New Face

The staring, he was used to. The whispering, he was familiar with as well. But as he strode through the halls like nobility, poise never faltering, he realized that there was something distinctly different about the attention he was attracting that morning.

Upon catching two girls staring at him, sharing secretive mumbles, he only smiled, flashing them a portion of an entire galaxy's brightness. The girls swooned, excitedly jumping at each other as he walked away.

He wondered if people recognized him in a style and an attitude that was incredibly unlike his established image. Judging from his classmates' bewildered faces as he politely greeted them, he was certain that they did. He was sure that the fact that it was Terrance Hunton, the academy's cold-blooded prodigy with serpent eyes, who was walking around in a childlike sweater, gingerly throwing around small talk, was the reason why there was such an uproar around him.

A group of boys sitting at the back looked at him suspiciously, shamelessly yelling their different takes on his change of personality. He heard a group of girls giggle in unison, approving stares directed at him. If he had been any weaker, he would've suffocated from the attention, but he was resolute in his goals, finding it much easier to pretend to be daydreaming as a variety of opinions were formed on one corner of the room and another.

When his class president entered the classroom, he stood from his seat, taking the opportunity presented to him on a glass platter. He helped lift the box from the opposite end she was holding, the cardboard container so big that her head was barely peeking from where Terrance stood.

"Oh, why, thank you for the help. It seems like not all my classmates are a lost cause." She said, completely unaware of who exactly was helping her guide the heavy box on top of their teacher's desk.

When she did, looking away from the box to properly thank her savior, the walls of her throat dried out. Speaking became a distant thought. "I— I, Thanks, Hunton. I didn't think you'd..."

"It's no problem. You looked like you were struggling."

"I was, I was, these school events have been getting more hectic all of a sudden."

He gazed at the box, his curiosity getting the best of him. "Oh? Is that what the box is for?"

"Mhmm, I'm here to hand out flyers for the club culmination week."

Terrance tilted his head, trying to get a peek of said flyers inside. "Really? I thought it'd happen later than this."

Their class president nodded, pulling out the printed flyers and collecting them on her other arm. "I thought so too. Heard the student council's vice president got it moved to an earlier week."

He hummed in thought as he read the information written on the flyer, eyes skimming over the three days that would be used for the event. "Interesting choice of date."

He felt the class president stare at him, burning holes in the side of his head. Eventually, the tension between them became too much to handle.

Terrance's gaze met her questioning look.

"President?"

"You know, I've never had a conversation with you in all three years we've been in the same class together. I never expected that to change overnight."

He smiled, recalling Ambrosia's words. Sociable. "You can say I've found a reason to socialize more."

She returned the sincerity in his words, eyes closing as she smiled. "That's good to know. I hope we see more of it in the future 'cause you're very handsome when you smile."

His eyes widened, flattered by her honesty. Only then did he fully comprehend the fact that they hadn't shared a proper conversation in the past. He hadn't shared a proper conversation with any of his classmates. He had no idea what his class president was really like or who anyone in the classroom he had spent almost a year in was really like.

"Ah! My apologies. I didn't mean to say that out loud." The girl said, head lowered.

"No need to apologize. I'm glad you think so."

The class president was rendered speechless, her face dissolving into a shade of bright red. He shot her a polite smile before heading back to his seat, silently patting his back in approval.

The interaction seemed to have stirred a commotion among the students. Everyone who witnessed the scene unfold discussed their newfound opinions on the young Hunton.

When the school bell rang, indicating the beginning of their lunchtime, he could barely contain his excitement, pace hastened to reach the waiting doorframe of the classroom. Terrance was on his way look for his favorite senior. He refrained from eating lunch with her for fear of scaring off her friends, but Terrance, every now and then, took the chance to run into Ambrosia for a quick chat before eventually returning to his classroom to eat alone.

Before he could do any of that, however, he was stopped by his classmates, something he had never experienced in all his years as a high school student. His fellow sports club members, notably basketball players, invited him over to sit at their table, forcing him into an impossible dilemma.

Turning them down would sabotage all his hard work so far, and surely, he'd be able to run into Rose on the way or, if he was lucky enough, maybe even watch from the sidelines as she ate with her friends.

But what if she ate with Hugh? Did he have the mental strength not to just lunge at him?

He was quick to silence his simmering thoughts, deciding that he had already gone much too far to back out. So he went with them, flinching when one of the boys wrapped an arm around his shoulder. He wasn't quite used to human touch. Instead of his brain fuzzing into a pleasant warmth, he could only tense in unease, the foreign sensation awakening rather unpalatable nerves.

Still, he held on, face hardening as he forced a smile, going along with whatever they had to say.

"Damn, you're tall, Hunton. Are you sure you don't want to join the basketball team? We could use a boost on the height factor." One of the basketball players, Noah or something like that, offered him, his muscular hand patting Terrance's back. He almost sent the prodigy flying from his sheer strength.

Whether that was on purpose or not, he didn't want to know.

Terrance stared at his classmates in disbelief, not expecting to hear what he just heard. They were surely quick to accept him. "Oh no, I don't know how to play. I'd rather not drag the team down."

"Nah, we'll teach you. You can just come over to the basketball court after class. We can play a game or two."

He could only laugh along, the jocks around him sharing stories about their previous games and training regimens. It wasn't too hard to relate. He even relayed experiences of his own regarding his time learning archery and the martial arts. They seemed to be impressed, gawking at his simple facade and empty bragging.

Fortunately for him, the attention directed at the transformed prodigy hadn't been that bad inside the cafeteria, despite his previous assumptions. Everyone was too absorbed in their own conversations, in their own affairs, a sea of unintelligible phrases mixing into background noise.

His eyes skimmed over the cafeteria, vision sharp as a hawk's—sharpened from his years as an archer. He searched for his quirky senior and found that she was sitting on the far right of the room.

She waved at him, toothy grin miraculously wide. Terrance felt like he was being hit by cupid's arrow all over again, his heart clenching from her overbearing cuteness.

"You know that senior girl?" One of the guys accompanying him asked. His first reaction was to intimidate then away from Ambrosia, keep her all for himself, but he held back, realizing what it was that he was trying to accomplish.

"Yeah, we met when she transferred." He told them, hands clenched inside his pockets.

As his group walked over to her table, he realized that she wasn't alone. In fact, she was accompanied by two other figures—Mikaela and Lucy, his seniors whom, apart from him, identified as Rose's closest friends.

"You must be Terrance. Rose has said a lot of things about you." The strong-willed raven, Mikaela, mentioned, her presence more dominating than he expected. Ambrosia told him that she was a no-nonsense person, but he didn't expect to be sweating so much from her judgemental stare alone.

Gaining her friends' approval seemed to be more difficult than gaining her parents' approval. They'd been exuberant, accepting of him, almost ignorantly so. Mikaela and Lucy, however, were scanning him up and down.

He flashed the more guarded of the two a practiced smile, hands fidgeting at his side. "Good things, I hope?"

"Too good to be true, in fact." Mikaela snorted, expression melting into something gentler. "These are your friends?"

His classmates struggled to make straight responses, much too flustered in the presence of an older, attractive student. One of them eventually stammered out an answer, explaining how they only started hanging out that day, a fact that brought about a questioning look on Ambrosia's face.

The three seniors found their modesty to be entertaining, inviting the boys over to sit with them.

Terrance felt his soul fly out of his body when Rose forcibly pulled him to sit beside her, breath stuck in his throat. The angel gave him a curious look, inspecting his new get-up with pursed lips.

Whatever he expected, he certainly didn't foresee her leaning into his ear to whisper the words, "You look good."

He almost ascended on his seat, right there and then, overwhelmed with absolute bliss, but Lucy's loud laughter mixing in with the rest of the basketball players' snapped him back to reality. When he turned back to his senior, she was smiling at him innocently, admiration clear in her eyes.

"T– thank you..."

"Rose." She added.

He gulped, recalling how frustrated she had become when he refused to call Rose by her name.

"Thank you, Rose." He mumbled, looking away in hopes of hiding his embarrassment from her. If he kept his gaze on her for a second longer, he'd have caught the way her spirits rose in elation.

"What's the special occasion? You don't usually dress like this."

"I.. thought a change would be good. It's been working out well so far, a lot of people approached me."

She seemed to beam at his words, munching down her food quicker as she tried to speak with a mouthful. "That's great! My Terry's amazing personality and dashing good-looks are finally being acknowledged by this ungrateful society."

Terrance felt his heart warm at her words. "Something like that."

"Oh wait!" She exclaimed, the sound of her clattering fork gathering the attention of the table. She seemed to have noticed because her next words were lowered to a whisper meant for only him to hear. "This is for... the mission, isn't it?"

He was a bit lost, unsure of how to respond as he tried to sift through his memories, searching for a mention of a mission. His eyes widened, realizing what she meant.

"Y— yeah. For the mission."

She nodded enthusiastically, practically vacuuming her food in a rush. Mikaela reprimanded her for behaving like a savage as Lucy encouraged her to act more wildly. The third only gave her two friends the finger, turning to Terrance after emptying her plate.

"Why don't we head out of here and discuss our mission?"

His eager words of agreement were prepared before the girl even finished her question. Terrance was willing to do anything for her, after all. But before he could agree, he was interrupted by one of her friends—Lucy, the more attention-seeking out of the three.

"You two are pretty cute together. Didn't know you would go for younger guys, Rosie." The blonde pointed out, munching on a biscuit from a tray that definitely wasn't hers.

Terrance felt like he was in the fifth dimension. To hear others think they looked good together as significant others meant that his chances were better than he thought. But just as quickly as he was given hope, it was crushed by none other than the angel that haunted all of his dreams.

"No. Me and Terr are just friends." Ambrosia clarified, an unusually empty look on her face.

The people sitting at their table murmured amongst themselves when eventually, one of his classmates gained the courage to open his mouth, "Does that mean you're single?"

The smug bastard looked to be much too confident for someone who Terrance thought was way out of Rose's league. His eyes narrowed as she watched Ambrosia snicker in amusement.

Terrance dug his nails into his palms, threatening to break the skin there.

Holding back his violent urges, something wholly birthed by his obsession, was a task, but he made sure to remember the bastard's face for after class activities—he wasn't that much of a saint, after all.

"No thanks. I have my eyes set on someone else and I'm not giving up until they're mine."

Ambrosia's honesty, accompanied by a wink, seemed to humor the group enough to wane them off the topic, a wave of encouraging cheers leaving their lips.

If only they knew the extent of her devotion, they wouldn't have treated the subject so lightly.

The lovely senior moved behind Terrance's seat, hands on his shoulders. "Me and Terr have some important matters to discuss, so we have to head out now. Toodeloos!"

As the group watched the two exit the cafeteria side-by-side, eagerness bouncing from Terrance's every step, only one thought overcame their heads.

Lucy, shameless in her own right, said it for all of them. "Man, those two are totally dating."