Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel-Chapter 155: The Clash of Princes [5]

The War for The North [43]

Chapter 155: First Spark and Dreams of Heroism

"Hey loser, what are you reading there again?"

A shadow fell over the skinny boy sitting in the back rows of the class.

The boy felt his shoulders tense up involuntarily. He looked even smaller than he was with his bony frame and thick rimmed glasses, his school uniform hanging loosely on him.

His only sanctuary was that imaginary world imprisoned in black and white squares, where he quietly turned the pages at his desk.

However, reality was cruel and unavoidable as always. His bully stood over him with a smirk.

He wrapped his thick arm around the boy’s thin neck and squeezed it as if he were a friend.

But there was no friendship in this grip; only pure bullying and a display of power.

"N...nothing..." the boy with glasses stuttered, his voice knotted in his throat. His muscles were rigid.

The bully did not stop. He snatched the manga from the boy’s trembling hands with greed. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The bully roughly flipped through the pages of the book, squinting at the pictures, and then burst into laughter loud enough for the whole class to hear.

"Puahaha! What is this? Seriously?" The boy turned to the center of the class and shouted. "Hey everyone! Look at this! Our Alex is reading ecchi manga in class! What a pervert!"

The hum in the classroom cut off instantly, replaced by giggles and mocking whispers.

Alex felt his face burning with shame and jumped up in panic. "Give that to me!" he lunged, extending his frail arms.

However, a classmate standing nearby grinned and stuck out his foot.

Alex tripped and lost his balance, falling hard onto the floor.

He groaned with the pain of his chin hitting the ground. His glasses flew off his face and landed a few meters away, right at the feet of one of the popular girls in class.

Alex looked up with blurred vision. The girl looked at the glasses on the floor, then at Alex lying helplessly on the ground.

There was no mercy in her eyes; only disgust and indifference. As if shooing away a bug, she kicked the glasses with an elegant movement. The glasses spun and slid under a desk.

The boy holding the manga shrugged with a bored expression. "Here, take it you pervert," he said, throwing the book at Alex’s head as he lay on the floor.

The corner of the book hit his forehead. "Come on guys, let’s go eat lunch. It smells like a loser in here."

Yawning and laughing, they walked out of the classroom. They left behind nothing but broken pride and a boy lying on the floor.

Alex rose from the ground with trembling hands. He took his cracked glasses from under the desk and put them on.

He went to his desk, took his battered manga into his lap, and continued reading. Because there was nothing else he could do.

As soon as the school bell rang, Alex set off for home.

His shoulders were slumped as he walked the long and ominous road from school to home. And what he feared came to pass. That group was there again, waiting with cigarettes in their hands in front of a market.

The boy with dyed blonde hair, slightly chubby and large, grinned the moment he saw Alex and stood in the middle of the road.

"Ooo, look who is here! Our friend Alex is here," he said with mocking joy.

Alex hung his head, fixing his eyes on the pavement. There was no escape.

Another one from the group approached him with hands in pockets and a half smoked cigarette in his mouth. "Haha, right on time as always. Just like a hero, coming to save us from poverty."

Alex’s palms sweated, and he clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. The boy in front of him leaned in, took a deep drag, and blew the smoke into Alex’s face. The bitter smell that burned the throat filled Alex’s lungs.

"You see, right Alex?" the boy said with fake sadness. "Your friends have no money left so they cannot buy cigarettes. How sad, isn’t it?"

Alex put his hand in his pocket with a soulless movement that had become a reflex.

He took out the crumpled banknotes and coins he had saved for lunch. He extended the money with a trembling hand. This was not a bribe; it was the cost of his existence.

The boys snatched the money from his hand. "Well done," said the blonde one and pushed Alex roughly. "Now get lost."

Alex stumbled but did not fall. Without looking back, eyes on the ground, he continued walking home.

When he arrived home, he opened the door with his key and entered. Silence welcomed him. There was no one to greet him or ask how his day was.

His older sister was still at school or hanging out with friends.

They were actually in the same school, and she knew every bit of bullying Alex went through. But she did not care.

On the contrary, she had forbidden him from approaching her at school and warned him not to tell anyone he was her brother. She had preferred her own popularity over her brother’s pain.

His mother... She was probably on a date with another man under the guise of a business dinner again.

His father was out of town due to work, or so he said. Both his mother and father knew of each other’s infidelity but did not confront it.

Because this was easier. They were four strangers living in a house with a rotten foundation built on lies.

Alex went to his room and threw his bag into a corner. He lay on his bed and picked up his favorite manga, the volume he had read hundreds of times.

This story was different. The main character did not possess innate super powers, was not special, and was not the chosen one. He was weak and flawed, yet he managed to be happy. He defeated all the villains and became a hero loved by the people.

Alex’s eyes filled with tears as he turned the pages. In a way, he wanted to be like him. To achieve something even if he was weak, to be someone’s hero, to be loved...

But real life was pain.

He had been a target of bullying his entire life. People took out that sick pleasure they felt when crushing someone weaker than themselves on him. They needed a victim to satisfy their weak egos, and Alex was the perfect target as the embodiment of weakness and silence.

He never fought back because he did not have that courage.

He did not possess the will found in the manga he read. He was a coward. He was afraid of everyone and everything. So much so that even at this age, he could not sleep without a nightlight.

He stuttered when speaking to people because he felt the other person was disgusted by him and looked down on him.

He was all alone. In this vast world, there was not a single person who truly cared about him.

"But..." Alex whispered as he took off his glasses and placed them on the edge of his bed. A dull and ominous glint, one that had never been there before, appeared in his eyes. "Tonight... everything will end."

It was evening. The household had slowly gathered. His mother and father had retreated to their rooms, and the sounds of arguing had ceased.

His sister was in her room too, probably texting on her phone. Alex sat in the dark, waiting for time to pass.

When midnight passed, the house fell into a deep silence.

Alex opened the bottom shelf of his closet. There stood 14 small bottles of gasoline, carefully accumulated to fit in his school bag.

He left his room with silent steps. He opened the lids of the bottles. He poured the gasoline not randomly, but according to a plan.

In the corridor, on the door thresholds, at the exit of the living room... They lived on the 8th floor of the apartment building. When the fire started and exiting through the door became impossible, only one way out would remain: The windows. And that meant certain death.

The smell of gasoline permeated the house, settling over the rotten family portrait.

Alex struck the match in his hand. He looked for a long time at the small light dancing on the tip of the flame.

The fire reflecting in his pupils was in harmony with the suppressed anger inside him. There was no fear, no hesitation. Just... the end.

He dropped the match onto the gasoline spread on the floor.

"Fwoosh!"

When the flames flared up instantly and engulfed the corridor, Alex had already exited the door and locked it from the outside. He dropped the key into his pocket and started descending the stairs.

Before he even reached the second floor, muffled screams had already started to be heard from above. "Fire! The door won’t open! Help!"

Was it his sister’s scream? His mother’s? Alex did not pause. His steps neither quickened nor slowed down. He did not care. Those screams were echoes of a past that no longer belonged to him.

He exited the building and inhaled the cold night air. He did not turn back to look.

"Remaining..." he muttered to himself. "Thirteen left."

This was not a moment of madness. He had planned this for a long time, during those nights he got lost in the pages of manga.

He had learned and noted the addresses of everyone who caused him pain and humiliated him. The blonde boy, the girl who kicked his glasses, those who took his money... They were all on his list.

That night, Alex wandered the city streets like a ghost. He caught everyone on his list, one by one, in their homes, in their sleep. Flames were the language of his revenge. The smoke rising from different points of the city was his silent scream.

When he finished his work, just before dawn broke, he came to a children’s park. He sat on a swing.

It was strange. All that weight on his shoulders, that feeling of being a loser had vanished. There was a weird, icy peace inside him.

He took out the last bottle of gasoline from his bag. He turned the bottle in his hands and looked at his own reflection in the liquid.

This last bottle was for himself. To finish the story.

Alex smiled involuntarily. It was a bitter smile.

He had always wanted to be a hero. He did not care how weak or cowardly he was; he had still wanted it. That bright hero who won people’s love, who was respected, who everyone wanted to be friends with...

But at the end of the day, he had become a killer. And of the most disgusting kind. A monster who burned his family and friends.

"So this is how my story goes," he said quietly.

Alex lifted his head slightly from the bottle and looked at the man standing in front of him.

The man standing before him possessed a majesty that pushed human limits. He was taller than two meters. His flame red hair waved in the wind, and his light red beard added an expression to his face that was wild but equally handsome.

His broad shoulders looked like they could carry the world, and the aura radiating from his body was hotter and more scorching than all the fires Alex had lit that night.

The man’s eyes were the same as Alex’s eyes; only they were a version blended with the fatigue and power of thousands of years.

The small, skinny, bespectacled boy smiled with the bottle of gasoline in his hand and asked the colossal, mighty man standing before him.

"Tell me..." Alex said, his voice trembling with hope. "Did we manage to become heroes?"