First day of school

Finn awoke the next morning and checked the calendar to see that it was Monday. He was in his last year of high school, so he packed his backpack and came down to the kitchen.

Normally, his mom would be there waiting for him to wake up, but today his parents had gone to the hospital for his father's appointment, so he had his breakfast in the microwave with a note.

"Finn, we went to the hospital and will be back in the afternoon. Warm up the food in the microwave and eat before you go to school. Your favorite mom."

"I mean, you are the only mom I have, but sure, you are my favorite."

Finn chuckled to himself as he threw the note into the trash and started heating up his food.

After finishing his breakfast, he locked the front door and started walking to school. Finn and his parents lived quite close to his school, so he would get there with a five-minute walk.

When he was walking through the school gates, an arm suddenly hugged him by the shoulder.

"Yo, Finn! Did you do anything other than study this weekend?"

Finn looked at the person talking with a slight nostalgia in his eyes.

"Leo... How many times do I have to tell you that just because I'm smart, that doesn't mean that all I do is study?"

Leo was a 195-cm-tall boy with blonde, wavy hair tied into a ponytail and brown eyes. His family owned a dojo, so he had been learning martial arts from a young age, which gave him a muscular build that made him look pretty overbearing.

Compared to Finn, who was 170cm tall with a pretty skinny body. So, when they were this close together, they looked pretty comical, but no one was laughing at them.

That's because Leo valued friendship so much that if he saw someone making fun of his friend, he would break that person's jaw. One such unfortunate person was hospitalized after calling Finn a dork.

Leo's and Finn's parents knew each other, so they quickly became friends in kindergarten and have been friends ever since.

When Finn's parents died, Leo tried to help him, but as Finn was too traumatized at that point, he cut off all his previous social ties that had anything to do with his parents and stopped talking to Leo.

Later, Finn found out that Leo died in a dungeon break when he was trying to help two kids run away from an orc.

Those two kids survived, but Leo wasn't so lucky. He knew martial arts, but against a 4-meter-tall muscular orc that had been hunting since a really young age, he was turned into a meat paste soon after the fight began.

Finn didn't want the past to repeat itself, so he planned to introduce Second Life to Leo once it was released.

They were walking together to their class when a lot of girls turned to look at them, but then blushed and ran away.

Both Finn and Leo were handsome, and while Finn had the brains, Leo had the muscles, so they would always attract a lot of attention from the opposite gender while walking around the school.

It was unusual to be popular again, but Finn quickly got used to it and just went to class with Leo.

Finn's first class after his regression was history. In math, he could deduce the answer from the math problem, but in history, he either knew the information or he didn't.

Normally, Finn would always be able to answer anything the teacher asked him, as he really enjoyed studying.

But after his parents' incident, he stopped studying, so there was no way he would remember something from 10 years ago.

Finally, his turn came, and the teacher looked at Finn as if knowing that Finn would know the answer to any question he would ask.

'Let's do something a little more difficult today so even Finn would have a hard time answering.'

"You surely know everything there is to know about Julius Caesar, so can you tell me the name of his sister?"

The teacher asked with a confident smirk.

He hated how Finn always acted like a know-it-all and that there was nothing he could learn from his classes, so he would normally ignore him every day.

But today he wanted to try asking a question that even he wouldn't know the answer to if he didn't look it up on the internet before the class.

The other students all exhaled in relief that they weren't the ones stuck with this question and glanced at Finn, knowing he would quickly respond like usual.

Meanwhile, Finn was experiencing a mental crisis.

'Huh? Sister? I remember almost nothing about him, and you want the name of his sister? How am I supposed to know that?'

'Julia Major, also known as Julia the Elder.'

Loki quickly read Finn's memories and answered, not liking the fact that some human nobody was trying to embarrass his champion.

"Julia Major, also known as Julia the Elder."

Finn instantly repeated what Loki had told him with a victorious smirk.

"Correct…"

The teacher begrudgingly nodded his head and went back to teaching the class.

"Good job, Finn! I don't even know who Julius Caesar is."

Leo, who was sitting next to Finn, gave him a thumbs up.

"…"

But Finn was speechless. Even someone like him, who didn't study for 10 years, knew who Caesar was.

---

After a few more classes where Finn had managed to not embarrass himself thanks to Loki's help, the lunch break began, and everyone went to the cafeteria.

While looking at what he was being served and comparing it to his mom's cooking, Finn felt like crying.

Suddenly, a commotion began near one of the tables. There were four boys. Three were standing, while the last one was on the ground with soup flipped on his head. They were laughing and throwing curses at him.

The person who looked like the main bully had red dreads with piercings in his ears, and he kept pointing at the boy who fell on the ground while grinning.

"That's James. You know, the silent guy who doesn't really talk to anyone and just sits alone. Being an outcast made him the target of Josh's group, and now he is bullied like this every day."

Leo told Finn while pointing at the guy on the ground.

Other than Leo, Finn never really cared about other people at his school. He always focused on studying so he could get into a good university and support his parents.

Leo, on the other hand, was aware that James was being bullied, and he enjoyed helping others when he could, but he despised people who could but did not stand up for themselves in a fight, so he never bothered to help.

This, of course, didn't apply to his friends. If Finn was ever in a pinch, Leo would do everything to help.

Finn suddenly started walking in the direction of the four boys, and Leo followed behind him, thinking that something fun was going to occur.

Walking up to the head bully, Josh, Finn pushed him aside.

"Are you done? The food is already shit in here as is. I don't need another piece of shit like you here as well."

After hearing this, people started to gather around them. The boys were there to see a fight go down, while the girls only came because Finn and Leo were involved.

Josh wanted to retort and beat Finn up, but after seeing Leo standing behind him, he changed his mind.

'I'm not going against that monster.'

"Let's go guys, it was getting boring here anyway."

After giving a second-rate villain line, Josh and his two friends pushed through the crowd and left the cafeteria.

Finn then looked at James, who was still on the ground, and worriedly asked him.

"Are you okay?"

---

James was born into a wealthy family. He had two loving parents and a big sister that always cherished him.

He was always happy and had a bubbly personality, but it all changed when he entered high school.

Due to an accident on a skiing trip, he had to enter high school one month late, so everyone already had friends but him.

Talking to his family wasn't a problem for him, but talking to other people was a whole different thing.

He didn't know what they liked or disliked, and he didn't want to embarrass himself by saying something bad.

James was too scared to talk to anyone, so he always stayed silent. Soon he began to be labeled as the silent kid, but he had his family at home, so he always told himself that he didn't need friends.

A few months later, after going to school just to study, he attracted the attention of Josh's group.

One day, while walking through the corridor and reading a book, he accidentally bumped into Josh. He fell on the ground and apologized, but when he fell, his wallet also fell out, and Josh saw the stacks of cash inside the wallet.

Josh began telling James that he would tell his parents that he broke his shoulder and that he needed money for the hospital fees.

James knew that was bullshit, but he didn't want anyone to bother him in school, so he just gave him a hundred-dollar bill and ran off.

Seeing how easy it was to get money, Josh started to bully James and ask him for money every time they met.

One day James told Josh and his group that he had no money left, so to vent their anger that they couldn't go drinking that day, they beat him up until he was bleeding and then left him lying on the ground in a dark alley.

When James got home, he ran up to his room, locked himself in, and started crying into his pillow.

"What did I do to deserve this… What did I ever do wrong..."

He kept sobbing and wiping his tears with his pillow.

The dinner was ready, so his sister came to inform him. She knocked on the door, but after not hearing a response, she tried to open the door. It was locked, so she tried to call out to his brother.

"James! Dinner is ready! Come on out or I'm going to run in there and drag you out!"

"Leave me alone! I'm not hungry!"

James shouted as he kept crying.

His sister was stunned for a second, not expecting her cute little brother to shout at her.

"Oh… Okay… We will leave the food on the table, so just come downstairs when you feel like eating."

She spoke with a softer voice and left to eat dinner.

From that day on, James stopped talking to his family and stopped eating more and more.

They were worried about him, but he always told them everything was fine, and he just focused on studying or playing video games.

His family loved him, so to respect his wishes, they stopped bothering him.

This might have been nice if he wasn't feeling like crap every day, but now that his family has stopped talking to him, he started to feel even emptier inside.

He unknowingly cast away the only ray of hope he had left. And one day, he had had enough. He told himself that because he didn't have friends and his family didn't talk to him, nobody would care if he just died.

James went to school like any other day. His classes were boring, as studying was the one thing, he was really good at. Soon the bell rang, and he went to the cafeteria.

He picked up his food, which was a soup he liked to eat as a kid and went to find a table. Before he could find one, though, a hand slapped the bottom of his bowl, and the soup flipped and fell on his head, drenching him in it.

As the school cafeteria served the soups lukewarm, he wasn't hurt, but at this point a little burn wouldn't bother him too much.

Three boys gathered around him and started laughing at him. This was a common occurrence for James, and he had already gotten used to it but even so, every time it happened, it felt like his heart was turning darker and darker.

Suddenly, he heard someone say something about the food being shit, and when he looked around, he noticed that Josh was leaving. Then he heard a voice talk to him.

"Are you okay?"

When he glanced up, he saw Finn looking at him with worry in his eyes. At that moment, it felt like his mind, which had been clouded with black clouds every day, gave way to sunlight.

It was like a dam had broken inside of him, and he started crying his eyes out. His tears kept falling like two waterfalls as he replied.

"No… No, I'm not."