"The world only has two kinds of people…" Brace waited a few seconds. His fists curled as he struck the air out of a bespectacled boy.
"Ugh," the boy whimpered, snot and tears streaming down his face. Brace threw him to the ground in disgust.
"Why don't you answer my question?"
"I — I'm sorry… I'm sorry," the boy kowtowed on the bathroom floor, begging for the sympathy Brace had erased from his dictionary.
"Ah… I see," Brace snickered. "You don't know, right? I think those high marks you get in mathematics failed you in this simple bit of world knowledge."
"Yes… yes…"
"Then…" Brace stepped on the boy's fists, smirking at his pained groans. He leaned down and whispered, "It's prey and predators… and here, you're the prey. I'm the predator."
"Yes… yes… I'm prey. I'm prey…"
"Good boy," he patted the boy's head. "Look, I'm not a bad guy. I'm just following my instincts. You smelled like prey, so my predator instincts couldn't help but… EAT YOU CLEAN."
It wasn't because he was a bad guy. It was just his instincts. That's what Brace always told himself.
Sure, he shoved people into lockers. Sure, he filmed naked pictures of students and sold them to old perverts on the internet. Sure, he beat up students who scored higher than him on exams.
But hey, it was all instinct, right? Would a predator care about the pleas of prey?
Was prey ever qualified to occupy the position of a predator?
No, right? At the end of the day, they were just food for someone like him.
Brace towered over his latest target, arms crossed, grin stretched wide.
Wah… Brace exhaled. The world was a thrilling place, with rows and rows of prey lined up to be eaten.
They would never fight back. They just watched their kind being devoured, just like those idiots gathered outside the bathroom door.
"Gotta learn your place, four-eyes. You can't take a position that's already marked. Especially by me." Brace slammed the boy into the ground again.
"I didn't know it was yours… I won't do it again. Please leave me alone… please let me go. It's hurting… it hurts so bad, I want to die…" the boy cried aloud, crawling on the floor.
"Haha…" Brace laughed, looking around. His two lackeys laughed with him. One of them kicked the boy's notebook across the tiles like a football.
"That's because it's not written. It's known. Every good thing will be first tasted by the boss. You fucking disgusting piece of shit…"
Brace grabbed the boy by the collar and leaned in, eyes narrow.
"Look, dweeb. We both have roles already set. You stay in the background, I stay in control. Nobody gets hurt. But if you forget the rules…" He raised a fist.
But it didn't move forward.
Something strong — no, someone strong had grabbed his fist midair.
And someone spoke.
"You done yet?"
The voice wasn't angry. It wasn't loud or intimidating. Still, Brace shivered. It felt like an apex predator had arrived.
How could that be? This was his lair. He was the apex here. No predator would dare to leave their scent in his territory.
So he turned and swung.
The next second, his vision distorted. His legs lost their footing. The ceiling zoomed in.
And then —
Bang.
Brace felt his internal organs rise to his throat as he retched and coughed. His ears rang like hundreds of bells sounding all at once.
Blood flowed from his mouth. Through the blurred fog of pain, he tried to focus on the face above him.
Dark eyes. Pale skin. Blonde hair. Like a pair of black holes surrounded by light.
The brows were too sharp — sharp enough that his eyes stung just looking at them.
His lips curled into something Brace usually wore himself —
Disgust. And above all… the look of hunger.
Just like a predator above its prey.
"Who. Are. YOU!?"
His idiot friends had taken that long to realise someone had sneaked up on their boss. Brace cursed them.
Run, idiots…
But it was too late.
The man turned around. His back blocked the sunlight. A shadow stretched behind him.
Then Brace heard two bangs — heavy objects breaking the doors apart.
Bang. Bang.
Now he could hear again. Footsteps. Gasps from the hallway. Snickers and suppressed laughter from the prey outside.
It's just… why was he moving on his own?
No… why was he crawling on his own?
His mind felt foggy. Something tugged him toward unconsciousness.
Don't.
He never allowed that. Not until he knew the name of this man. Not until he knew why he'd been beaten.
"Why…" but his throat only let him whisper.
The movement stopped. The murmurs disappeared. He wasn't crawling anymore.
He blinked hard, until his eyes hurt, just to see the man's face again. Just to hear his voice.
And finally, the man spoke.
"You answered wrong."
"What?"
"The world doesn't have only two kinds of people. It has three."
Brace's eyes widened. His heartbeat pounded as he burned the last of his energy to roar —
"WHO!?"
The man leaned closer. Now, Brace could see his full face. And the nameplate on his chest.
Dimitrios… a mighty name. Most fitting for a —
"Hunter," Dimitrios said with a calm tone, face expressionless. "A hunter who hunts predators. That's me… Dimitrios. Dimitrios Diamantakos."
That was all Brace heard before the world turned completely dark.
That day, two things happened at Midson High School.
First: Brace Park, the school's main bully and leader of the delinquents, stopped coming to school.
Second: Dimitrios Diamantakos, the transfer student expelled sixteen times from sixteen schools, was expelled again.
"Ah… a new record."
Dimi sat in the bus seat, watching the scenery pass by with a sigh. He held the transfer certificate in his hand and ripped it to pieces.
He pulled out his phone and read the first message on it.
"Congratulations, son. You didn't fail your father again. I hope you'll follow in his footsteps soon. ~Mom."
If a stranger read that message, they might think his mother was genuinely supporting her son through a hard time.
But funnily enough, that wasn't the case.
Because his father was just like him. Expelled seventeen times from seventeen high schools.
The only difference was… he died after the seventeenth.
Dimitri always wanted to fuck his mom. That kind of bitch was she.
"What a bitch of a mom you are, Mom," Dimitrios scoffed, shaking his head.
As he stood up and turned toward the bus door, a voice — smooth and female — echoed in his ears like a whisper.
[Do you want a job? I swear, the pay will be good.]
Dimitrios froze.
He turned.
The bus was empty… eerily empty.
He looked outside.
Leaves floated in midair. An orange cat hung frozen mid-jump — as if time itself had stopped.
"What job?"
[A simple job. Stop bullying. In a school.]
Simple. That's too simple.
"What's the pay?" Dimitrios asked.
He had no idea whether this was real or fake. But his instincts told him: go with the flow. So he did.
[The pay… @#%#]
"What?"
[@#$ I don't ha@# tme]
"Yes."
[You have been summoned to the Crusade…]