Epiones' POV
I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. For the first time in my life, someone had stood up for me. It wasn't a teacher or a lifelong friend; it was the exchange student I had barely spoken to, the girl whose friendship I had just rejected with a crumpled note.
"C-Chizuru?" I whispered, my voice lost in the sudden, ringing silence of the room.
"Chizuru? What are you doing?" Ssatihs asked, her face a mask of pure confusion.
"What do you think I am doing?" Chizuru replied. Her voice was like dry ice: sharp, freezing, and dangerous. "You boast about being so smart to your friends, Ssatihs. You sit right in front of me; I hear everything. Surely someone as brilliant as you can figure out what is happening."
Ssatihs scoffed, trying to wrench her wrist from Chizuru's iron grip. When she failed, her expression pivoted to a sickening, condescending smile. "You? A princess like you saving a peasant like her? She is useless, Chizuru. Don't waste your energy. Sit back, relax, and watch me slap her. I will even do it with style for you."
Chizuru let out a low, dark chuckle and released Ssatihs's hand.
"So... I should sit back and let you have all the 'fun'?"
"Exactly!" Ssatihs grinned, thinking she had won an ally.
"You are right," Chizuru said, her eyes glinting. "I should not waste my energy on useless things. And since you are so pretty, you should not waste yours either. Let me do the slapping."
The class erupted in cheers. My heart sank. I should have known, I thought bitterly. She is just another bully.
"Move to the side, then," Chizuru said sweetly. "I want you to have the best view."
Ssatihs moved to my left, leaning in eagerly. Chizuru placed a gentle palm on my already swollen cheek. For a split second, our eyes met. She gave me a tiny, almost imperceptible wink.
"Count with me!" Chizuru shouted to the class.
"ONE!" the students roared. I heaved a sigh and closed my eyes.
"TWO!" "Dude this is gonna be intense I'll record this," other whispers hissed in excitement.
"THREE!"
SLAP!
The sound echoed like a gunshot, but the pain never reached me. I opened my eyes to find Ssatihs reeling backward, her head snapped to the side. Chizuru hadn't used her palm; she had used the hard, bony ridge of her wrist, connecting squarely with Ssatihs's jaw.
"Oops," Chizuru said, her voice dripping with mock innocence. "I think I slapped the 'wrong' person. But you were in the way, so I don't really feel the need to apologize."
"You bitch!" Ssatihs screamed, her face contorting as she lunged forward.
But Chizuru was a blur of calculated motion. She wasn't just tall; she was a weapon. As Ssatihs swung a wild, desperate fist, Chizuru stepped inside her guard. With a sickeningly precise movement, she drove two fingers into the soft dip of Ssatihs's throat. Ssatihs choked, her airway momentarily constricted, her momentum dying instantly.
Chizuru didn't stop. She grabbed Ssatihs's arm, twisting it until the joint popped audibly, and slammed her face-first onto my desk. The wood groaned under the impact.
Kiro and two other girls charged from the side, fueled by a mix of rage and shock. Chizuru didn't even look at them. She spun on her heel, her school skirt flaring, and delivered a devastating roundhouse kick that caught the first girl right in the solar plexus. The girl folded like a piece of paper, the air driven from her lungs in a pathetic wheeze as she slid across the floor.
Kiro tried to grab Chizuru from behind, but she was faster. She dropped her weight, grabbed his wrist, and pivoted. With a sound like a dry branch snapping, she hyper-extended his elbow across her shoulder. Kiro let out a high-pitched wail as he collapsed, his arm hanging at an unnatural angle.
Chizuru finished the sequence with a precise, driving punch to Ssatihs's ribs. I heard the distinct crack of bone meeting force.
"Who is the weak one now?" Chizuru whispered into Ssatihs's ear, pinning her to the desk with one hand while the other remained raised in a striking serpent stance.
"Why do you care?!" Kiro spat from the floor, clutching his ruined arm. "You don't even know this freak!"
"Because," Chizuru said, looking around the room at the students who had previously been laughing, her gaze landing on each of them like a physical weight, "I would rather protect someone being mistreated than stand by like a coward pretending I do not see it."
The room went silent. The "oblivious" students hung their heads, unable to meet the cold, mechanical fire in her eyes.
"You will regret this," Ssatihs hissed, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. "The rest of your time here will be hell."
Chizuru gasped, mock-trembling. "Mada mada? Really? I am so scared! What should I do?"
"Leave her," Ssatihs suggested, trying to regain a shred of her shattered confidence. "Join us. We can forget this happened."
Chizuru's face went completely blank, her eyes turning into empty black voids. "Hmmm... no. I would rather be with a 'useless girl' than a group of mutated harvest mites. My mother told me not to play with feces. Your faces are okay... pretty, actually, but your hearts are so dirty no toothbrush could ever clean them. I am just trying to stay hygienic."
Before the second wave of the fight could break out, the door burst open. Ms. Missouri stood there, her eyes glaring at the wreckage of the classroom, the blood on the floor, the bent limbs, and Chizuru standing calmly in the center of the chaos.
"Guidance to all involved! Now!"
In Ms. Pillarion's office, the air was thick with the sound of six bullies shouting over one another. It was a chaotic, unintelligible mess of accusations, mostly centered on how the "new girl" was a monster who had dismantled them in seconds.
"ENOUGH!" Ms. Pillarion slammed her hand on the desk, the sound echoing like a gavel. "One at a time. Ssatihs, speak."
Ssatihs put on her "Class President" mask, though it was lopsided due to the swelling on her jaw. Her voice trembled with fake sincerity. "Miss Counselor, they started it. We were just trying to maintain the reputation of our section, and they became unruly. Chizuru... she attacked us for no reason. Look at Kiro's arm! She is a danger to this school. She's a beast in a school uniform."
Ms. Pillarion leaned over her desk, inspecting Kiro's purpled elbow and Ssatihs's bruised face. Her eyes narrowed. "These are significant injuries. Miss Katsura, what do you have to say for yourself? Physical assault is grounds for immediate expulsion, regardless of your family's status."
I felt the blood drain from my face, but a soft, broken sniffle stopped my heart. I turned to see Chizuru. Her eyes were red, and crystal tears were streaming down her face with a rhythmic, perfect frequency.
"It is just... not fair," Chizuru sobbed, her voice trembling. "I came here to learn your culture. I worked so hard to fit in, but they were so mean. And now... now they are trying to blame me for the trouble they got into this morning?"
"What trouble?" Ms. Pillarion asked, her brow furrowing.
"They are lying!" Kiro shouted, holding his arm. "She did this! She broke my elbow ten minutes ago!"
Chizuru didn't argue. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a sleek, obsidian-colored smartphone. "I wasn't going to show anyone because I was scared of them... but I happened to pass by the industrial backyard near the gym this morning before class. I saw them fighting with students"
She tapped the screen and slid the phone across the mahogany desk.
Ms. Pillarion peered at the screen. I leaned in, my jaw nearly hitting the floor. The video was grainy, but undeniably clear. It showed Ssatihs, Kiro, and the others in the muddy backyard of the school, engaged in a brutal, chaotic brawl with a group of boys in different uniforms. In the footage, Kiro was slammed against a metal pole;the exact moment his elbow would have "broken";and Ssatihs was struck in the face by a girl from the other school. The others were also bruised the same way how they are injured right now. Even I was shock, I was there...it did happen all to protect me... why?
The bullies froze. Their eyes bulged as they watched themselves on the screen.
"W-what? That never happened!" Ssatihs stammered, her voice hitting a panicked high note. "I was in the cafeteria this morning! That's... that's not us! It's edited!"
"The metadata doesn't lie, Miss Verbione" Ms. Pillarion said, her voice dropping into a dangerous chill as she checked the file's timestamp. "This was recorded at 7:15 AM today. You were clearly involved in a violent altercation before school even started, and now you are trying to pin the consequences of your 'extracurricular' activities on a foreign exchange student?"
"But Miss-" Kiro started, his face pale with shock. He knew he hadn't been in the backyard, but the video showed his face, his clothes, even the specific way he limped. Chizuru's editing was flawless; she had mapped their movements and faces with terrifying, digital precision.
"Silence!" Ms. Pillarion snapped. "Not only are you violent, but you are also manipulative. You thought you could use a guest as a scapegoat for your thuggery."
Chizuru nodded weakly, her shoulders shaking as she began to unbutton her long-sleeved polo. "They didn't just fight this morning... they took their anger out on me when I tried to ask them to stop."
The fabric slid from her shoulders, revealing the map of violence she had painted on her own skin. Deep purples and angry, mottled reds bloomed across her ribs. Compared to the "evidence" on the video, these bruises looked like the result of a sustained, vengeful beating.
"Your injuries are nothing compared to this," Ms. Pillarion sneered at the bullies. "One week suspension for the backyard brawl... and another week for hurting a foreign guest and lying to a school official. You are all banned from the premises for fourteen days."
The atmosphere in the office shifted from tense to suffocating. Ms. Pillarion looked from the digital evidence on the phone to the "bruises" on Chizuru's ribs, her jaw tight with indignation.
"And it wasn't just me," Chizuru added, her voice dropping to a fragile, shaky whisper. She reached out and gently took my hand, guiding me forward so the Counselor could see the damp, stained patches on my blazer and the swelling on my cheek. "I walked into the classroom after finishing a lovely chat with Professor Croffer, he was telling me how much he wants to visit Kyoto someday. and I found them doing this to Epione. I tried to pull them off her, to tell them that this isn't how students should treat one another, but they just turned on me."
I stood there, frozen. My mind was racing. I had been there, I had felt the sting of Ssatihs's palm and the weight of the toilet waste. but seeing Chizuru weave the truth into her digital lies was like watching a master weaver at work. She had provided the perfect alibi: a teacher who could vouch for her being "late" to the room, making it impossible for her to be the one who caused the wreckage inside.
"Is this true, Miss Paramnesia?" Ms. Pillarion asked, her gaze softening as it landed on me.
I looked at Chizuru. She didn't look back, but her grip on my hand tightened a silent, grounding pulse. "Yes," I whispered, the word feeling like a heavy stone in my mouth. "They... they were already attacking me when she arrived. She was just trying to help."
"You lying little rat!" Kiro roared, his face turning a blotchy, panicked red. "She wasn't helping! She's the one who snapped my arm!"
"The video says otherwise, Mr. Kiro," Ms. Pillarion snapped, her voice cutting through his outburst like a guillotine. "The video shows you sustaining that injury hours ago in a back-alley brawl. Are you suggesting the camera is lying? Or perhaps the Professor who was speaking with Miss Katsura is also part of some grand conspiracy?"
The bullies fell silent, their faces pale as the trap Chizuru had set snapped shut around them.
"You bitch!" Ssatihs screamed at Chizuru, her rage finally overriding her common sense. "If you had not played the hero, we could have just finished beating this useless girl and none of this would have happened! You should have just stayed out of it!"
The room went deathly silent. Ssatihs had just confessed in her fury.
"Who is she even anyway?!" Ssatihs lashed out, tears of frustration streaming down her face. "She is just a stray exchange student!"
Ms. Pillarion chuckled, a cold, dry sound. "Just an exchange student? Ms. Verbione, your ignorance is staggering. Chizuru is the daughter of the General and founder of the Katsura Heavy Industries in Tokyo. She is also the heiress to the Katsura National Research University. If her father finds out his daughter was maltreated, this school loses its primary foreign funding."
The bullies stood like statues, the realization of their total defeat sinking in. Chizuru finished buttoning her shirt, her tears vanishing instantly. She looked at me with a gaze that was suddenly clear, sharp, and utterly victorious.
"This is a disgrace," Ms. Pillarion continued, standing up and looming over her desk. "To assault a fellow student is one thing. To assault a foreign guest of this institution and then attempt to frame her for your own external street-fighting injuries is a level of malice I will not tolerate."
She turned to her assistant. "Prepare the suspension papers. Fourteen...no, 20 days for the entire group. If I see any of you on campus before that time, it will be converted into a permanent expulsion."
As the bullies were marched out, Ssatihs paused at the door, her eyes burning with a hatred so cold it made my skin crawl. "You think you're clever," she hissed at Chizuru. "But you've just signed her death warrant. Dream-2 isn't like this place. They don't care about your father's money there."
Chizuru didn't even flinch. She just tucked her phone back into her pocket and offered a small, polite bow to the Counselor. "Thank you for your justice, Miss Pillarion."