Yor Regret is Too Late!

19

"What are you doing here? Did you wander into the wrong cage?"

Asher’s voice shattered the morning silence in twelfth-grade Class 1. He didn't shout, but the sheer sharpness of his words stopped everyone from pulling out their notebooks. Asher stood in front of his desk, arms crossed over his chest with his chin raised arrogantly, glaring toward the back row where I sat.

However, he wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the figure who had just pulled out a chair directly behind mine.

"Your cage smells a little too sweet. I needed a bit of garbage aroma to keep myself grounded," Barrett replied casually. He tossed his thin backpack onto the desk with a heavy thud.

Barrett wasn't wearing his leather jacket today. He wore his school uniform shirt, and though it still looked slightly messy, it was neatly buttoned all the way to the top. His wild black hair was brushed back, exposing a sharp forehead and a gaze that was no longer just fierce, but held a heavy, serious promise.

"Barrett, you do know this is the elite class, right? It's not a place to sleep or pick street fights," Asher stepped forward, his eyes flashing with absolute hostility. "You won't even be able to follow a single hour of lectures here."

"I have ears to listen, not just fists to punch, Asher. Why? Are you afraid your throne is going to get taken by a 'thug' like me?" Barrett curled his lips into a lopsided smirk, then sat down calmly, opening a completely clean notebook.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. I turned back slightly, watching Barrett as he awkwardly tried to hold a pen. His large fingers, covered in scars from street fights, looked entirely unused to gripping something as small as a pen.

"Barrett," I whispered softly.

"Hm?"

"Thank you... for actually showing up," I said genuinely.

Barrett didn't look at me directly. He just let out a low murmur, his eyes focused entirely on the whiteboard up front. "I don't like breaking promises. Hurry up and study, and stop staring at me unless you want me to drag you away again."

I offered a faint smile, then turned back to face the front. I opened my core mathematics textbook. Until now, I only ever cared about art and design. Math, physics, and chemistry were just soulless rows of digits to me. But watching Barrett—a guy who usually ruled the streets—willingly imprison himself inside a classroom just to fulfill the conditions I had set, caused something to violently explode inside my chest.

If he was willing to study to protect me, then I had to become brilliant to deserve to stand beside him. I could no longer be the foolish, weak Aria. I had to become the Aria who could crush the Maheswari family’s arrogance with my own brain.

*

The atmosphere in the classroom turned tense as Mr. Surya walked in. The senior math teacher, notorious for being ruthless, immediately wrote a calculus problem on the whiteboard without even greeting the class.

"Indefinite integration by substitution," Mr. Surya tapped his marker against the board. "Who can solve this? If no one can, I will call on someone who I believe is simply wasting a seat in this classroom."

Mr. Surya’s eyes flicked toward the back row, landing directly on Barrett, who was frowning deeply, staring at the problem as if staring down a mortal enemy.

"Asher, please come to the front. Show our new 'friend' an example of how we think in this class," Mr. Surya commanded.

Asher stood up with absolute confidence. He strode to the front, grabbed the marker, and solved the problem incredibly fast. His steps were complicated, utilizing derivative formulas that were deeply confusing to anyone else. Once finished, he set the marker down with a loud clang, then turned his eyes toward Barrett.

"Finished, sir," Asher said proudly. He then stared at Barrett with a dismissive smirk. "Perhaps someone finds this problem a bit too magical? Or perhaps someone needs a translator into human language?"

A few students let out quiet chuckles, following Asher's mockery. I saw Barrett clenching his fists beneath his desk. His face flushed red, not out of fear, but pure frustration. He tried to comprehend what Asher had written on the board, but to him, it was all just meaningless scribbles.

"Barrett Dirgantara," Mr. Surya’s voice sounded freezing cold. "Come solve the exact same problem with the numbers slightly altered. Step up."

"I don't know how, sir," Barrett replied honestly.

"If you don't know how, why did you even enter my class? To show off a tough face?" Asher interjected, his voice dripping with satisfaction. "This class requires a brain, Barrett. Not just big muscles."

I couldn't take it anymore. The stinging pain of watching Barrett be humiliated caused my courage to explode. I stood up from my chair, drawing every single pair of eyes onto me.

"Mr. Surya, may I try to explain an easier way to solve this problem?" my voice sounded remarkably stable, surprising even myself.

"You, Aria? Isn't your math grade always well below average?" Mr. Surya raised an eyebrow.

"I studied last night, sir," I lied smoothly, when in reality, I was simply trying to connect the design logic I frequently used with the pattern of numbers on the board.

I strode to the front, passing right by Asher, who stared at me with an expression of pure disbelief. I grabbed the marker and completely erased Asher’s complicated method. I began writing out steps that were infinitely simpler, breaking down the difficult variables into basic, easily digestible logic.

"Think of this variable as a piece of fabric," I said softly, my eyes flicking toward Barrett, who was now staring at me intently. "We don't need to stitch everything together at once. We just need to find the recurring pattern, and then join them together at the very end."

Within three lines, the problem was solved. The result was exactly identical to Asher’s answer, but executed in a far more efficient way.

The classroom went dead silent. Mr. Surya stepped closer, inspecting my work with absolute precision.

"A remarkably interesting logic," Mr. Surya murmured. "Simple, yet hits the target perfectly. Where did you learn this, Aria?"

"I just tried to look at it from a different perspective, sir," I answered, glancing at Asher, whose face was now flushed red with sheer embarrassment. His throne as the reigning genius had just been shaken by the very girl he always called trash.

I walked back to my seat. As I passed Barrett's desk, he whispered something that made my heart flutter. "You were amazing, Aria. Thanks."

*

Recess arrived, but the classroom still felt boiling hot. Asher stood in front of Aileen’s desk, but his eyes never stopped tracking me and Barrett sitting side by side. Barrett was trying to rework the math problem, and I was patiently guiding him through it.

"I don't get why you have to use this number," Barrett complained, his pen nearly puncturing the paper because his grip was so tense.

"Slow down, Barrett. Just think of it like the angle you use when you're about to throw a punch. You need to know the distance and the force, right?" I explained gently.

Barrett paused, then began tracing his pen again. "Ah... so it’s like target coordinates?"

"Exactly!" I cheered happily.

In the front row, Aileen squeezed her pencil case with terrifying force. She watched how Asher entirely ignored her stories about an art assignment and instead kept continuously glancing back at us. Aileen could feel Asher’s attention, which had always belonged exclusively to her, beginning to divide. A look of fierce resentment flooded her eyes.

When Asher stepped out of the classroom for a brief moment to grab a book from the library, Aileen stood up. She strode toward my desk with a bottle of black ink in her hand.

I was entirely focused on helping Barrett, completely unaware that Aileen had stopped right beside my desk. Beneath the table, I had placed my secret sketchbook—a masterpiece gown design that I planned to submit for a national competition. A gown I had titled "The Awakening."

"Oh! My hands are so slippery!"

Splash!

The thick black liquid spilled with absolute precision. Not onto the table, not onto my clothes, but directly down onto the open sketchbook beneath the desk.

"Oops! I'm so sorry, Aria. I truly didn't mean to," Aileen covered her mouth with her hand, putting on a sickening show of feigned shock.

I froze. My heart felt like it completely stopped beating as I watched the black ink bleed rapidly across the paper, swallowing every single detail of the delicate stitching I had drawn with so much love. A design I had worked on for months, my only ticket to proving myself to Asher’s grandfather, was now nothing but a hideous black stain.

"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Barrett’s voice boomed as he stood up, his eyes flashing dangerously.

"Barrett, don't be rude! I already apologized!" Aileen defended herself, her voice instantly turning as fragile as possible to make the other students see her as the victim.

I could only stare at my sketchbook as my eyes began to burn. My world had just been destroyed all over again by the exact same person, right when I had finally begun to crawl my way up. The suffocating tightness returned, choking my throat until I couldn't utter a word. Tears fell entirely unchecked, dampening the ink stain that had just ruined my dream.