Jay's POV
The morning air was thick with a humidity that felt like a warning. My head was still spinning from the night before—from the memory of Keifer's smirk and the stern, cold conversation me and Jane had last night .
We walked through the gates of Section E like we were walking into a lion's den, but for once, the hallway wasn't filled with the usual hushed whispers. Instead, there was a roar.
A cacophony of shouting and the rhythmic thumping of feet against the floorboards echoed from our classroom.
I quickened my pace, my heart hammering against my ribs. When I pushed the heavy oak doors open, the scene inside was pure chaos.
The desks had been shoved to the perimeter, creating a jagged, makeshift arena in the center of the room. In the middle of the circle, Keifer and David were locked in a brutal struggle.
It wasn't a clean fight. It was a brawl. Keifer had David gripped by the collar, his knuckles white, while David swung a heavy blow that caught Keifer's shoulder. The rest of Section E was standing on chairs and benches, pumping their fists and howling with a primal, bloodthirsty energy.
"Kill him, Keifer!" Rory screamed from the back.
"Take his head off, David!" someone else countered, though the support for David was drowned out by the sheer volume of those rooting for the King.
"Stop it!" I yelled, but my voice was a pebble dropped into an ocean of noise.
They didn't even blink. Keifer's face was a mask of focused aggression, his jaw set in that stubborn line I had seen yesterday. David was panting, his eyes wild. They lunged at each other again, the sound of their bodies colliding making my stomach turn.
"I said STOP!" I screamed again. Nothing.
Something inside me snapped.
I grabbed the nearest wooden bench—heavy, solid oak—and with a burst of adrenaline-fueled strength, I shoved it with all my might. It skidded across the floor and slammed into the gap between them just as Keifer was winding up for a devastating hook.
The wood groaned under the impact. The room went dead silent.
Keifer stumbled back, his chest heaving, sweat dripping down his pale face. He looked at the bench, then slowly raised his head to glare at me. His eyes were dark, swirling with an adrenaline high that hadn't faded yet.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Jay?" he shouted, his voice echoing in the sudden stillness. "You could have broken my leg!"
I didn't flinch. I stepped over the bench and stood right in front of him, my hands trembling but my gaze steady. "What is wrong with me? I should be asking you that. You're acting like animals! What is wrong with you?"
Keifer wiped a smear of blood from his lip and let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. "We were having elections, Jay. That's it. Mind your business."
"Elections?" I spat the word back at him. "You call this a fucking election? Beating each other into the floorboards in the middle of a classroom?"
"Shut up," Keifer stepped closer, his shadow falling over me. "You don't know our rules. You don't know how this section works. This is how we decide who leads. This is how it's always been."
"Then I'm interested in knowing your stupid rules," I challenged, stepping into his space until we were inches apart. "Because from where I'm standing, they're aimless, barbaric, and pathetic."
The air in the room turned freezing. The boys behind us stopped cheering; even David looked worried. Keifer leaned down, his face inches from mine, his voice dropping into a low, husky vibration that sent a chill down my spine.
"Either you shut up right now," he whispered, a dangerous edge to his words, "or I will make you shut up."
Before I could respond, a hand planted itself firmly in the center of Keifer's chest and shoved. He stumbled back two steps, surprised by the force.
Jane moved in front of me like a human shield, her knuckles already white as she fisted her hands.
"Touch her," Jane said, her voice a low, lethal hum, "and you will see the side I haven't shown you yet."
The tension was a physical weight, ready to snap, until Yuri stepped into the center of the circle. He looked at me for a split second—a look of profound exhaustion and something else I couldn't name—before turning to the crowd.
"The election will be held after class," Yuri announced, his voice authoritative and calm. "In the old gym. Not here. Everyone, take your seats."
A collective murmur of agreement went through the room.
The boys began dragging the desks back into place. Keifer didn't take his eyes off me, but he eventually smirked, adjusted his shirt, and walked away.
I sat down, my heart still racing. Jane sat beside me, her gaze fixed on the front of the room, but I saw her hand reach under the desk and squeeze mine.
The "Old Gym" was a cavernous, rotting building at the edge of the campus, smelling of damp concrete and ancient sweat. It was the perfect place for a slaughter.
Jane and I stood in the far corner, away from the main crowd. I watched as Keifer and David stripped off their uniform jackets.
Keifer looked like he was carved out of marble—lean, efficient muscle and a terrifyingly calm demeanor. Yuri was acting as the referee, standing between them with a stopwatch.
"This is stupid," I muttered.
"It's how they maintain the hierarchy," Jane whispered back, though she looked pale.
The fight started with a sharp whistle. It was different from the classroom brawl. This was calculated. Keifer moved like a cat, circling David, waiting for a weakness. David was bigger, stronger in raw power, but he was frustrated.
"Keifer! Keifer! Keifer!"
The chant started low and built into a roar. Every single boy in Section E was screaming for their King. It was a wall of sound designed to crush David's spirit before his body even gave out.
"Why are they all supporting him?" I hissed. It irritated me. The blind loyalty to a brat who used his status like a weapon.
Oh I forgot.He is King of Uplongs and they all are his Uplongs.
I looked at David. He was taking hits—brutal ones to the ribs and kidneys—but he was staying upright. He was the underdog, the one trying to break the cycle, and nobody was in his corner.
"David!" I shouted. My voice wasn't as loud as the crowd, but in a momentary lull, it pierced through. "David! Move your feet! Use your left!"
Jane looked at me, surprised for a second, then her jaw set. She joined in, her voice higher but just as piercing. "David! Come on! You can do it!"
Keifer's head snapped toward us for a fraction of a second. His eyes found mine, and for the first time, I saw genuine irritation there. He glared at me, a silent command to shut up.
In response, I didn't back down. I looked him dead in the eye and stuck my tongue out at him like a child, a deliberate insult to his "King" persona.
His eyes flared with heat, and he turned back to David with renewed violence. The fight intensified. David managed to land a solid punch to Keifer's nose, sending a spray of red across the floor. The crowd gasped.
For a moment, I thought David had him.
But Keifer was a predator for a reason. He baited David into a wide swing, ducked low, and delivered a punch so solid it sounded like a door slamming shut. It caught David right on the chin.
David's eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
The room exploded. The boys swarmed the center, hoisted Keifer onto their shoulders, and began parading him out of the gym, chanting his name.
Keifer looked over the heads of the crowd at me, a smug, victorious smirk on his bloodied face.
They left as quickly as they had come, leaving the gym echoing and empty, save for the three of us and the boy unconscious on the floor.
"Jay, let's leave," Jane said softly, her hand on my arm. "He's the President now. It's over."
"What if I was in his place, Jane?" I asked, looking at David's limp form. "If I was the one on the floor, would you want everyone to just walk away?"
Jane sighed, but she nodded. "I'll go find a first aid kit and some water. Be careful."
I walked over to David. He was groaning, blinking back into consciousness. I reached down and offered him my hand. He looked at it, confused, his face a mess of bruises and blood.
"Come on," I said, my voice softening. "Get up. You fought well."
He took my hand, his grip weak, and I hauled him up. I draped his arm over my shoulder and navigated him to a nearby bench. He sat heavily, his head in his hands.
"I almost had him," he croaked.
"You did," I said, sitting beside him. "And that's why he's going to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of the year."
Jane returned with the kit and a bag of food. She didn't say much, just started cleaning David's wounds with practiced hands. A few minutes later, the door creaked open, and Cin slipped in, carrying three bottles of cold juice.
"I figured you guys would be here," Cin said, a small, sad smile on her face. She sat on the floor in front of us. "That was a brave thing you did, Jay. Rooting for him. No one ever does that."
"He's my friend," I said simply.
David looked up, a lopsided, painful smile appearing through his swollen lip. "Friend, huh? Does that mean I get your notes for the history test?"
"Don't push it," I laughed, nudging his shoulder.
For a moment, the weight of the "Sections" and the "Kings" felt far away. We were just four kids sitting in a dusty gym, sharing sandwiches and cold juice, laughing quietly at David's terrible jokes. It was the first time since coming to this school that I felt like I could actually breathe.
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Keifer's POV
The celebration at Eman's Restaurant was loud, expensive, and utterly hollow.
Rory and the others were Downing expensive steaks and shouting about my "legendary" hook, but I couldn't taste the food.
All I could see was the image of Jay throwing that bench in the classroom. The sheer, unadulterated gall of her. No one—not even the teachers—dared to interrupt a Section E election. But she had treated it like a nuisance, a fly she wanted to swat away.
And then, the gym.
I had expected her to be impressed. I had expected her to see my power and realize that I was the only one worth her time.
Instead, she had shouted for him. For David.
"David! David!"
Her voice had cut through the crowd like a knife, and when I looked at her, hoping to see fear or respect, she had stuck her tongue out at me.
A growl rose in my throat. I slammed my glass down on the table, the sound making Rory jump.
"You okay, Keif?" Rory asked, his mouth full of fries.
"I'm fine," I snapped.
I wasn't fine. I was jealous. It was a pathetic, burning sensation in my gut. David was a loser. He was on the floor, bleeding and broken, and yet he was the one who got her hand. He was the one she was probably sitting with right now, treating his wounds with those hands that I wanted to feel on my own skin.
She chose the underdog because she hated the crown. And for the first time in my life, I hated the crown too, because it was the very thing keeping her away from me.
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Yuri's POV
I sat at the corner of the table at Eman's, my eyes fixed on the condensation dripping down my glass. The noise of the celebration was a dull roar in my ears.
Everyone was talking about Keifer. Everyone was talking about the fight.
But all I could think about was Jane.
When the fight was at its peak, when the atmosphere was thick with violence, I had looked toward the corner. I saw Jane. She wasn't just watching; she was shouting.
Her face was flushed, her eyes bright with a passion I hadn't seen when she looked at me. She was rooting for David with everything she had.
A strange, sharp tightness constricted my heart. It wasn't like the panic from the lockers. This was heavier. It was a dull ache that made it hard to swallow.
Why David?
David was a good guy, sure, but he wasn't... he wasn't part of our world. He was safe. Maybe that's why she liked him. Because he didn't pin her against lockers or make her world tilt on its axis.
I looked at Keifer, who looked like he wanted to kill the waiter. We were both the same, I realized. We were Kings of a section that everyone feared, and yet, the two girls we actually wanted were in a dusty gym somewhere, cheering for the guy we had just crushed.
I stood up abruptly, my chair scraping against the floor.
"Heading out?" Keifer asked, his eyes sharp.
"Yeah," I said, not looking at him. "I need some air."
I walked out into the cool night, but no matter how deep I breathed, the tightness in my chest wouldn't go away. I had won the election for my section, but looking at the empty street, I felt like I had lost everything that actually mattered.
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