The fluorescent lights overhead hum with a low, metallic buzz that vibrates straight through the soles of your shoes. The hallway smells of fresh floor wax, stale lockers, and old textbooks—that universal, suffocating scent of a high school that has seen too many semesters and too many kids just trying to survive them.

You check the time on your phone. Sixty minutes.

You’ve been at this school for exactly one hour. Sixty minutes of staring at schedules you don't care about, opening a locker that smells like someone else's forgotten gym clothes, and trying to blend into the beige, cinderblock background. You don't know a single name here, and you don't have a single friend.

Then you hear the dull, heavy thud of metal bending under pressure.

At the far end of the corridor, near the back stairwell where the teachers rarely wander, three guys stand with their shoulders squared, blocking the narrow space between the lockers. They move with the lazy, practiced coordination of a crew that does this every Tuesday before third period.

In the center of their circle is a slight boy pressed flat against the cold locker doors. His wire-rimmed glasses are knocked dangerously sideways on his face, one knee scraped raw. A scatter of spiral notebooks and loose-leaf paper litters the linoleum around his scuffed sneakers.

You don't hesitate. You didn't come to this school to stand by and watch quietly while someone else gets torn apart.

You take a slow, deliberate breath, shift the heavy strap of your backpack, and stride directly toward them.