Zero Mercy

003 Cursed with rotten luck

A few days after the semester began, Mu Yang understood, with the cold clarity of a slap, that she did not belong at Dire Academy and never would.

The teachers tried. They really did. Whenever she raised her hand, they called on her first. When monthly scholarship lists were posted, her name always sat at the very top in bold red ink, as if the administration wanted to remind everyone that the charity case was still outperforming their precious heirs. But kindness, however, only made the gulf wider. Every “Well done, Mu Yang” from the podium felt like a spotlight that burned.

Her classmates never bothered hiding their contempt.

Her uniform might as well have been a neon sign screaming POOR. When the seating chart was rearranged, the empty desk beside her stayed empty for three periods until the teacher forcibly moved someone. That someone spent the rest of the term angling their body away, as though poverty were contagious. Group projects were agony; no one wanted the scholarship girl who couldn’t chip in for Starbucks runs or printed color handouts.

She told herself, over and over, like a prayer: I’m here to study. I’m here for the university entrance exam. Their opinions are air.

So she made herself small.

She chose the desk in the very back corner, the one under the flickering fluorescent light no one else wanted. When the classroom dissolved into the usual pre-period chaos, she slipped away.

Behind the main academic building lay a hidden pocket garden few people seemed to know about. Ivy strangled the stone walls, roses climbed in reckless red tangles, and two weathered benches faced a tiny koi pond. The air smelled of wet earth and late-summer jasmine. On most afternoons the only sounds were leaves rustling and the occasional splash of orange fins. It became her sanctuary.

One golden afternoon, she arrived with her English textbook, settled on her usual bench, and began reciting vocabulary aloud the way her middle-school teacher had taught her: loud, rhythmic, fearless.

She had barely reached the third page when something hard struck the space between her shoulder blades. Pain flared; the book flew from her hands.

Mu Yang whipped around, ready to apologize, but the words died in her throat.

A boy dropped from the branches of the ancient oak that overhung the garden wall. He landed cat-light, boots barely making a sound on the flagstones. White dress shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled to the elbow, black hair falling into eyes that were the pale grey of winter storms. The face was twisted in pure fury.

“Do you ever shut up?” His voice was low, dangerous velvet. “I finally find one quiet place on this entire damn campus, and you’re ruining it.”

Mu Yang’s heart stuttered, then slammed against her ribs.

She knew that face.

The sharp jaw, the arrogant tilt of his brows, the way cruelty looked almost elegant on him. This was the boy on the crimson motorcycle who had run her down, blamed her, and told her his bike was worth more than her life.

And now fate had enrolled him at Dire Academy too.

Before she could speak, recognition flashed across his features. His scowl deepened into something lethal.

“You.” The single word dripped venom. “Of course it’s you. Every time I see your face, something goes wrong. You’re a walking curse.”

The insult ignited the anger she had been swallowing for weeks.

“Funny,” she snapped, rising to her feet, “I was just thinking the same thing about you. Is this garden private property? Does it have your name carved on it? Because last I checked, it belongs to the school. You want silence? Go back to whatever palace you crawled out of. Some of us are trying to study.”

His eyes narrowed to slits of ice. In two strides he was in front of her, long fingers clamping under her chin, forcing her gaze up to his. Up close he smelled like cedar and winter air and something darker. His grip was not quite painful, but it promised pain if she pushed him further.

“Listen carefully, ugly little nobody,” he said, voice soft enough to cut. “I don’t know which gutter the scholarship committee fished you out of, but you do not speak to me like that. One phone call and you’re gone. Expelled. Blacklisted from every decent school in the province. Try me.”

For one heartbeat fear flickered through her. Dire was private. Private meant money talked louder than rules. And this boy radiated the kind of wealth that bought silence, futures, lives.

But then she remembered her father’s tired face when he changed her application. Yuan-ayi’s sneer. The broken basin waiting in her dorm. All the times she had swallowed humiliation because she thought she had no choice.

No more.

She knocked his hand away with a sharp jerk that made him blink in surprise.

“Go ahead,” she said, smiling without warmth. “Call whoever you want. If Dire expels the city’s top scorer because some spoiled prince threw a tantrum over vocabulary words, the newspapers will love the story. I’m sure your family would enjoy the publicity.”

His jaw clenched so hard she heard the click of teeth.

Mu Yang scooped up her fallen book, dusted it off, and walked away without looking back. Only when she was out of sight did her legs start shaking.

Behind her, Gu Qianyi stared at the empty space where she had stood, knuckles white around nothing. No one had ever spoken to him like that. Not teachers, not rival heirs, not even his own father.

She was going to regret it.

He would make sure of it.

Mu Yang’s rage carried her all the way to the dormitory before it crashed into exhaustion. The garden had been her last refuge; now even that was poisoned.

She decided to wash clothes instead. At least dirty laundry couldn’t talk back.

Room 312 was quiet when she entered. Two of her three roommates were present: He Xinyue scrolling on a rose-gold laptop, Tang Fei sprawled across her bed reading a hardcover romance novels that probably cost more than Mu Yang’s entire textbook set. The third, Li Wanyue, was out, probably at some salon getting her nails done for the weekend.

Mu Yang pulled her small pile of worn clothes from under the bed and reached for the plastic basin she had bought the day she moved in.

The bottom had a jagged hole the size of a fist. Someone had taken a sharp object and stabbed straight through. The edges were still sharp, fresh.

For several long seconds she simply stared.

Then the fury she had barely contained in the garden roared back, hotter than before.

“Who did this?” Her voice cracked across the room like a whip.

He Xinyue didn’t even look up from her screen. “Wow. Drama queen much?”

Tang Fei turned a page lazily. “If someone touched your trashy basin, they probably caught tetanus. Stop accusing people.”

The casual cruelty snapped something inside Mu Yang’s chest.

She picked up the ruined basin and, with all the strength built from years of hauling groceries up six flights of stairs when the elevator was broken, snapped it cleanly in two. The plastic cracked like a gunshot.

Both girls shrieked and scrambled upright.

Mu Yang hurled one half at He Xinyue and the other at Tang Fei.

“You don’t want my ‘trashy’ things?” she said, voice trembling but steady. “Fine. Then don’t touch them. You have until tomorrow morning to replace it. Brand new. Same color. Or I swear I will make every single day here a living hell for both of you.”

She stepped forward. The girls shrank back against their silk comforters.

“I may be poor,” Mu Yang continued, each word deliberate, “but I am not your punching bag. Touch my stuff again, and I fight back. Remember that.”

Silence rang louder than any scream.

He Xinyue recovered first, mouth twisting. “You’re insane. Wait till—”

“Till what?” Mu Yang cut in. “Till you tell your daddies? Go ahead. I’m sure the board of trustees will be fascinated to hear how their scholarship student was bullied for owning a ten-yuan basin.”

Tang Fei opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Nothing came out.

Mu Yang gathered the broken pieces, dropped them into the trash with deliberate calm, and walked to the communal bathroom to hand-wash her clothes in the sink like she always.

Behind her, the two heiresses exchanged wide-eyed glances. For the first time since arriving at Dire, someone had drawn a line in marble and dared them to cross it.

They weren’t sure yet whether they were impressed or terrified.

They would be both before the week was over.

That night Mu Yang lay on her narrow dorm bed, staring at the ceiling while luxury cars hummed past the window far below. Her back still ached where the unknown object had struck her. Her palms stung from plastic edges. But beneath the anger, something new flickered.

A tiny, reckless spark.

She had spent her whole life making herself small to survive.

Maybe it was time to stop.

Somewhere across campus, in a private suite most students didn’t even know existed, Gu Qianyi stood at floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the moonlit gardens. He turned a silver lighter over and over in his fingers, the flame flaring and dying with each click.

A nobody had ever defied him twice in one lifetime, let alone twice in one month.

He smiled, slow and sharp as a blade.

The game had just begun.

And Mu Yang, whether she realized it or not, had already declared war on the king of Dire Academy himself.

Let the storm come, she thought, curling her bruised hands into fists beneath the blanket.

She was ready.