The beautiful woman didn't answer me. She was staring intensely at my wrist, exactly where the birthmark was located.
I asked her again, "Ma'am, what—"
"Mom, what are you doing here?" A clear, cheerful girl's voice sounded from behind us.
The lady finally snapped out of her trance. Releasing my dirty hand, she turned back.
"Shannon, sorry, Mom made you wait," she said, sounding genuinely apologetic.
Before moving to the pretty girl, her supposed daughter, the lady pulled a handkerchief from her pouch and handed it to me.
"Take it."
At first, I didn't want to accept charity, but seeing the earnestness in her purple eyes, I took it.
"Thank you, ma'am. I will return—"
"Mom, little brother is waiting for you." The girl, Shannon, patted her mother's shoulder softly.
"Right." The lady clapped her hands once. "Let's go."
But before they truly left, the lady turned back to me one last time. "Go change your uniform."
I nodded, offering a faint smile that she couldn't see.
She was truly a kindhearted person. Her daughter and son were very lucky to have her as a mother.
I said this not out of envy—Lady Thalia, the Luna from my pack, was also incredibly kind—but out of genuine admiration.
Still, her purple eyes and her reaction to my half-moon birthmark continued to bother me.
I walked back to the dorm looking utterly unsightly. Everyone who saw me shrieked as if they'd seen the most disgusting trash.
I couldn't blame them. I genuinely smelled like garbage right now.
In the dorm, when Nadia saw me, she shrieked in shock, too. "So it was you they were gossiping about!"
I just nodded, uninterested in the inevitable bad things they were saying.
After cleaning my body, I washed the handkerchief from the kind lady. The curiosity about her only grew.
"Nadia, did any parents come to the school today?" I asked, hanging the clean handkerchief on the balcony.
"No—wait, a few parents did come today. I don't know if that's what you mean," she replied from her bed.
"Who were they and why did they come?"
"Apparently, the youngest Green sibling and his friends were caught making an illegal transaction. Lady Green came in for her son."
"The Green siblings? They're that elite family where all the siblings are in the best class, right?"
"Yupp. Shannon Green is the one in our year. Edwin Green is in the first year, and Larry is in the third year."
Shannon! Yes, that was the daughter's name. So the woman was truly Lady Green from the influential Green Pack.
Her sheer grace and commanding presence made sense now; she was a Luna. Someone as kind as her deserved that position.
"Why are you suddenly interested in them? That's not like you." Nadia narrowed her eyes, but I simply laughed it off.
"I'm tired of being the topic of everyone's conversation. I want to talk about other people, too."
Nadia chuckled. "Fair enough."
...
What Fina and her cronies did yesterday, I wouldn't just let go.
During the break period, I went straight to the teacher's office, met my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Willette, and told her everything.
She immediately summoned Fina and her cronies, and their homeroom teacher also came.
"I'm not lying, teachers. You should check the surveillance orb, or at least ask a few students. Many saw what happened yesterday."
I explained immediately, cutting off Fina before she could spout any nonsense.
In this academy, almost every hallway was equipped with a surveillance orb—a new invention from Ae-engineering that captured any sound within a certain radius.
Mrs. Willette quickly activated the orb recording from the entrance hallway.
At first, there was only a background murmur. I caught Fina let out a slight, hopeful sigh.
But her breathing hitched when her own shrill voice was heard from the orb. Every terrible word was perfectly clear.
Her face went pale. "I-it wasn't me!"
All eyes turned to her.
No one believed her, especially when the unmistakable sound of a rotten egg being thrown at someone was clearly recorded.
Mrs. Willette shrieked. "Fina, this is dreadful! How could you do that to a fellow student?"
Fina tried desperately to deny the audio, but every excuse she made just resulted in the teachers looking at me with increasing pity.
Fina's cronies didn't dare offer excuses. They simply hung their heads and said nothing.
As I had planned, the tables had turned. Everyone, including the faculty, was on my side.
That very day, all of their parents were called.
After a meeting with the Vice Headmaster, Fina and her cronies were given a one-week suspension.
Before I returned to my dorm, Fina looked at me with a fierce, burning glare.
I didn't back down. I gave her the same look right back.
"That lowly kind doesn't deserve your attention. Let's go." Fina's father, the Beta of the Sand Pack, said this with palpable disgust.
Now I knew exactly where Fina's vile behavior came from.
Whatever he said, I had avenged myself. I hoped this whole ordeal would serve as a warning to the other students not to cross my limit.
...
I barely had one calm day before another rumor sparked.
This one was the detailed version of Fina's vile theory about my parents: that they were criminal rogues who injected drugs into my eyes, causing the purple color.
"Oy, defective omega! Are your parents truly crazy criminal rogues? Is that why they injected drugs into your eyes?" a student from a neighboring class tried to stop me.
I glared at him. "Do you want me to inject it into your eyes as well?"
He stumbled back, staring at me as if I were a vampire from a horror movie.
His friends quickly dragged him away. "Don't talk to her. She is dangerous."
Tch! Whatever. Being branded dangerous was far easier than being dragged into the hallway and bullied.
In the class, Oscar tried a few times to taunt me using the ridiculous rumor, but I snapped back immediately,
"If you can't get the first rank this semester, maybe I'll take back that monitor class position."
"H-how dare you!" He turned and ran.
He finally shut down.
...