The Sunday evening air was cool, but inside the dormitory of Wolven High, the atmosphere was thick with the silent hum of high-stakes technology. Ren sat at her desk, the dim glow of her modified laptop reflecting in her dark, indifferent eyes. Lines of encrypted green code cascaded down the screen, bypassing international firewalls with a grace that few in the world could ever hope to match. She moved with a casual precision, her fingers dancing across the keys as if she were playing a familiar melody rather than infiltrating a secure network.
"Let's start next month," Ren said softly into her headset, her voice calm and measured. "I need a little more time to adjust."
Across the ocean, in a high-security office in the Capital, Charlie nearly fell off his leather sofa. His voice crackled through the encrypted channel with a mix of disbelief and sheer exhilaration. "Are you serious? As long as you're willing to come back, I don't care if it's next month or the month after! Ever since you vanished over a year ago, I was terrified you'd retired for good!"
In the shadowy world of intelligence, the codename 'Lone Wolf' was a legend. It represented a one-hundred-percent success rate. No matter how impossible the target or how buried the secret, if the Wolf hunted, the truth was found. For sixteen months, the seat of the top-ranked investigator at Agency 129 had remained empty, leaving the global market in a state of stagnant desperation.
"You're overthinking it. I'm just short on money," Ren replied lazily, leaning back in her chair while her other hand idly flipped through the advanced physics materials Alpha Juan had left for her.
"Being short on money is good! It means you won't leave the agency!" Charlie laughed like a merchant who had finally struck gold. He then lowered his voice, testing the waters. "You mentioned earlier that you might come to the Capital this year. When are you setting out?"
Ren looked down at the complex particle collision formulas on the page, her gaze momentarily drifting. "Something came up. I won't be there until next year."
"What could possibly be big enough to block the Lone Wolf's path for an entire year?" Charlie asked, genuinely curious about what kind of international crisis required her full attention.
"The College Entrance Exam," Ren stated deadpan.
The channel went dead. Charlie felt as though his entire reality had been shattered. The idea of a legendary operative, whose shadow loomed over global politics, sitting in a humid classroom worrying about a standardized test was too absurd to comprehend.
After cutting the connection, Ren noticed the thick, black secondary phone on her desk vibrating incessantly. It was her dedicated 'Lone Wolf' device, currently blowing up with notifications following Charlie's announcement of her return to the network. Ren frowned and flipped the phone face down with a sharp thud. "Too noisy," she muttered.
***
Meanwhile, near the edge of the school's shadowed pathways, Dr. Luke was wandering aimlessly, trying to clear his head. The air was still, and the campus was mostly deserted as the weekend came to a close.
He turned a corner near the back of the cafeteria and spotted a small, thin figure huddled under the shade of a willow tree. It was Luna. She was crouched on the ground, her head buried deeply in her knees, her shoulders trembling slightly. She looked like a stray animal that the world had forgotten.
Luke stood there for a long moment, watching her. She didn't look up, consumed by the silent aftermath of her encounter with Madam Feng. He sighed, then jogged toward the school's milk tea shop. A few minutes later, he returned and held out a steaming cup in front of the girl.
"Hey, student. You're Ren's friend, right? What's with the long face?" Luke asked, squatting down and dropping his usual playboy smirk for a rare moment of genuine concern.
Luna looked up, her pale face streaked with tears, her glasses reflecting the dimming sunlight. She blinked, startled to see the handsome doctor with the diamond earring standing in front of her.
"Take it. It's Ren's favorite flavor," Luke said, pressing the warm cup into her hands.
Luna took the drink, the warmth of the cup seeping into her cold fingers. Her voice was barely a whisper as she looked at her shoes. "Thank you."
Luke watched her for a second, noticing how her school trousers were slightly too short, revealing her slender, pale ankles. He couldn't help but wonder why everyone around Ren seemed so desperately poor. He patted her on the head awkwardly before walking away, leaving her with the only warmth she had felt all day.
***
Monday morning arrived, and with it, the dreaded physics mock exam results. The atmosphere in Class 9 was suffocatingly heavy as the papers were handed out. The students sat in a tense silence, the only sound being the rustle of paper as the graded exams made their way to each desk.
The exam had been notoriously difficult, particularly the final fill-in-the-blank question. Less than half the grade had managed a passing score, and the final bonus problem had been left blank by almost everyone, including the top students in the Alpha Stream.
Xavier moved through the aisles, his face as cold as ice. He was the school's undisputed king of science, yet even he had found the final problem insurmountable. He had even heard that Luna, who usually hovered near a perfect score, had failed to solve it this time.
As he approached Lily's desk, his footsteps suddenly faltered. He stared at her paper, his eyes narrowing in disbelief.
"Lily... this final question. How did you solve it?" Xavier's voice was tight, his gaze fixed on the elegant, concise, and perfectly accurate answer scribbled in the margin.
Lily, who was busy panicking over her math mistakes, looked up in confusion. She glanced at the physics paper, then realized what he was looking at. She reached over and poked Ren, who was currently buried under her school blazer, fast asleep. "Ren? How did you calculate this one again?"
The entire classroom fell into a sudden, expectant silence. Every eye shifted toward the back row.
Ren pulled the blazer off her head, looking annoyed. Her eyes were sharp but filled with the "don't bother me" energy that usually kept people away. She adjusted her headset, looking at Xavier with a mix of boredom and arrogance. "That? It was a free point question. Just plug in the third gravitational constant and do the mental math. Why are you all staring?"
Xavier's hand holding the paper trembled slightly. Mental math? He had filled three pages of scratch paper and still ended up in a logical dead end, yet to Ren, it was a "free point" mental calculation?
In that moment, Xavier finally understood. The girl sitting in the back of Class 9, the one who had scored a twelve on her last test, was no failure. She was a monster—a titan who had deliberately caged herself in mediocrity for reasons he couldn't even begin to fathom.
**[Chapter 23 End]**