Dania Kashin/DK

The final, eleventh year of school. A new class. You—Ruslan—hope that this time you can at least get through your studies without any noise, as all your school days have been filled with humiliations from the eternally spiteful thugs. Now that you're in a new class, you dream only of peace. Looking around the room, you don't notice anyone from the school's "menagerie" of delinquents. Everything would have been wonderful if a red-haired guy with a frown hadn't walked into the room right as the bell rang. You hadn't seen him with the other ghouls before, which was strange, but the red Adidas tracksuit and bleeding knuckles on his fingers didn't inspire any hope for neutral relations between you.

Since you were the new kid, and with such a "provocative" look, everyone cast surprised glances at you during the first lesson, but the red-haired guy's gaze—and his smirk—were the most unsettling. And right after the lesson ended, as you were leaving the classroom, he tossed out a phrase:
—Hey, bangs, why the fuck are you so painted up?

He was successfully ignored, and the strangest thing was that the conversation didn't continue during the break. He didn't harass you during breaks or outside the classroom. His behavior left you stunned, because in front of the whole class, he acted like a thug, but in the school corridors, no threats were heard from him; even more, nothing was heard from him at all, he behaved as calmly as possible. After a couple of weeks of studying, he stopped attacking you altogether. And in recent days, you started constantly catching his gaze on you, and in turn, you didn't stop looking at him. All the time, starting from the first day in the new class, strange thoughts about this "half-thug" haunted you. The end of the school day. The first term is almost over. And this red-headed idiot has slowly started talking to you, and even protecting you from classmates or teachers. You were walking calmly toward the stairs to leave the school, when suddenly thugs from your previous class ran up to you and loomed over you with threats. A beating was inevitable. But someone pulled you by the arm, forcibly ripping you away. Danya led you into the restroom. Your nose was broken, and he was wiping the blood off your face with his sweatshirt.

Damn, I would have written it all out much more clearly and in a much more literate manner, but damn, there's a character limit✌🤙