Chapter 1— Ink-Stained Pages
(Luna's POV)
The first thing I notice when I step into the classroom is the smell.
Ink. Always ink.
It hangs heavy in the air, mixed with chalk dust and cheap perfume. Desks scrape against the floor, laughter bounces between the walls, and I already feel eyes crawling across my skin before I even sit down.
They don't call me Luna here.
They don't call me Lynette Nicole Mendoza — the name my father gave me, the only name that ever felt like it belonged to me.
Here, I am Lin Meili.
Beautiful. That's what the word means. Beautiful.
What a cruel joke.
The first time I heard it, I almost believed it could be a fresh start. But now, every time they spit it from their mouths, it sounds like filth. It is not beauty. It is mockery.
"Late again, Meili?" Xu Feiyan says, her tone coated in honey that drips into poison. She tilts her head, eyes gleaming, and I know the laughter will follow before it begins.
I lower my gaze, walk quietly to my seat. My shoes don't make a sound against the tiles. Silence is the only shield I have.
Li Nuan leans across her desk, pretending to whisper though every syllable lands sharp in the air. "Maybe she thinks the world waits for her. She is an heiress, after all."
Heiress. That word again.
It clings to me like a curse, a brand burned into my skin. They say it with venom, as if wealth was my crime, as if inheritance was something I asked for. They don't understand — being an heiress never gave me a life of diamonds and roses. It gave me chains. It gave me cruelty. It made me prey inside my own home.
I place my books on the desk. Neat. Careful. Controlled. Because control is all I have left.
This would have been torture for anyone else, I whisper to myself inside, but not me. I have known torture since I was a child.
I remember being six, holding my father's cold hand as cancer took him away. That was the day my true suffering began. My mother's eyes turned sharp. My stepfather's hands turned violent. My relatives' laughter turned cruel.
I remember kneeling on stones until my skin cracked, ordered by my grandmother because I had spilled tea. I remember the sting of a belt across my back, my stepfather's words dripping with hate. I remember my cousins shutting the door while rain lashed against me outside, the storm soaking through my clothes until my teeth chattered, their laughter louder than the thunder.
Compared to that, whispers are nothing.
Compared to that, ink and laughter are nothing.
"Look at her," Zhao Mingkai drawls from the back, his voice lazy but sharp enough to cut. "Always so quiet. Maybe she's too stupid to speak."
Laughter. Always laughter. It circles me like vultures around the dying.
I keep my hands folded. I keep my head down. But inside, my blood pounds against my ribs.
Then it happens.
The rustle of paper. The soft pop of a cap. And then—splash.
Black spreads across my notebook. A dark flower blooms, soaking into the paper, drowning every neat line I wrote. My words — my fragile, careful effort — are swallowed whole.
"Oops," Chen Shuyin says. Her voice drips false sweetness, her smile too perfect, too sharp. "Sorry, Meili."
They laugh again. Always together. Always in unison.
"Clumsy Meili."
"Useless Meili."
The ink blurs before my eyes, and for a moment it looks like rainwater, like the storm that beat against me the night I was locked outside at nine years old. I see myself, small and trembling, pressed against the cold wall while the thunder roared and no one came for me. Not my mother. Not my brothers. No one.
My throat burns, but I do not cry. I have no tears left.
Ink is nothing. Rain is nothing. Your laughter is nothing. I have survived worse. I will survive this too.
I close the ruined notebook. My fingers are steady, though my nails bite into the paper.
They expect me to break. They want my silence to shatter, to turn into screams. But silence has been my shield for so long it has become my second skin.
Feiyan tilts her head again, studying me, and I hear the frustration hidden beneath her voice. "Silent again, Meili? What a useless heiress."
Useless. Heiress. Two words that have followed me all my life.
But inside, beneath the mask of silence, I whisper the truth only to myself.
I am not Lin Meili. I am not clumsy, not useless, not worthless.
I am Lynette Nicole Mendoza. I am Luna. And one day, when the time comes, you will remember these moments. You will regret them.
The bell finally rings. Its cold chime slices through the classroom, scattering the laughter, pressing pause on their cruelty. For now.
I sit in silence, but inside, I sharpen my vow like a blade.
My silence is not surrender.
My silence is my weapon.
And when the time comes, I will make them choke on every name they ever gave me.