No One’s Pov

Vivien’s anger surged. She regained her balance, her eyes flashing behind her glasses. She couldn’t see this "Miss Amelia" yet, but the assistant was being a total ass.

"Excuse me?" Vivien called out, her voice echoing in the hallway.

The assistant stopped and turned around, looking Vivien up and down with pure disgust. "Are you deaf? I said move. People like you shouldn’t be blocking the path of someone like Miss Amelia."

Vivien crossed her arms, a cold aura settling over her. "People like me? You mean students who actually belong on this campus? Last I checked, the hallway is a public space, not a private runway for people with personality deficiencies."

The assistant’s face turned beet red. "Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I am the head personal aide to the heiress of the- "

"I don’t care if you’re the aide to the Queen of England," Vivien interrupted, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Actually, I’ve met more polite dogs. Does your ’Miss’ know you spend your time barking at people like a stray, or is being a nuisance part of your job description?"

"You- you little brat!" the assistant spluttered, her ego visibly bruising. "I could have you expelled!"

"With what grounds? ’Assault by standing still’?"

Vivien stepped closer, leaning in until the assistant flinched. "Listen, honey. You’re an assistant, not the main character. Your ego is way too big for someone whose primary skill is holding a handbag. Maybe try a little less ’shoving’ and a little more ’minding your own business’ before you embarrass your boss any further." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The assistant opened her mouth to screech, but a calm voice from behind her cut her off.

"That’s enough, Clara."

Amelia said not even turning to see them. She was wearing a hat so it wasn’t visible for Vivien to fully see her face.

"She’s right, Clara, You look desperate. Stop making a scene in such a... tacky hallway."

The assistant’s ego shattered. "But Miss- "

"Walk," Amelia commanded.

She walked past Vivien, the scent of expensive perfume trailing behind her. For a split second, Amelia’s eyes flickered toward Vivien not with anger, but with a strange curiosity.

Then, without a word, she disappeared around the corner, leaving her humiliated assistant to scurry after her like a kicked puppy.

Vivien stood there, adjusting her glasses. "Well," she muttered. "At least the boss has some taste. Too bad about the help."

Suddenly, Vivien felt an odd prickle on the back of her neck. She paused and glanced over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of Amelia’s elegant figure disappearing behind the double doors of the H.M office.

Was she here to meet that grumpy suit? Whatever. She shrugged, her priority being the massive headache currently forming behind her eyes. She turned and walked toward her classroom.

The moment she stepped through the door, the atmosphere shifted. The low hum of regular chatter turned into silence, followed immediately by frantic whispering.

"Look, that’s her..."

"The one in the office for five months of absence..."

"I heard she’s Valente’s personal assistant now. How did she pull that off?"

"Oh, awesome. Now everyone knows me," Vivien muttered, pulling her hoodie lower as she navigated to her usual spot- the very last bench in the corner.

But the attention didn’t stop. Three girls in the row in front of her kept twisting their bodies around, staring at her with a judgment. They weren’t even trying to be polite, one was literally pointing at Vivien’s messy ponytail.

Vivien leaned back, propped her chin on her hand, and stared right back at them through her thick lenses.

"Have you guys never seen a homosapien or did you guys just forget how to act in public? Because the side-eye is giving obsessed, and frankly, I don’t have the bandwidth to be your main character today. Either take a picture or focus on the lecture before your grades end up as cooked as your social skills."

The girls’ faces flushed. They snapped their heads forward. Finally, they stayed quiet, and the gossip died down.

Vivien opened her notebook and tried to focus on the projected at the front. She managed to follow the logic for the first thirty minutes, but the weight of the all-nighter finally caught up to her.

As the professor droned on about "binary search trees," Vivien’s head began to tilt. Her eyes fluttered shut, her glasses sliding slightly down her nose. Within minutes, she was out cold, dreaming of siren eyes, overpriced tickets, and a very grumpy man in a suit.

Meanwhile in the head office, the air was thick with a tension that Amelia seemed blissfully ignorant of.

Dominic’s eyes fell on the girl standing in front of him, and his gaze turned ice. She was his childhood friend, a shadow that had followed him for years.

He knew exactly how deep her obsession ran, she was the reason those ridiculous books existed, he was well aware of every single of them. He loathed the sight of her, but with their families’ businesses in between, he had been forced to mask his disdain.

Not for too long...he thought while glaring at her.

Amelia felt the sharp gaze of his stare, and for a second, her instinct screamed at her to run. But the moment she looked at his face- her favorite view in the world- she shuddered the fear away and replaced it with a bright smile.

"Dominic! How have you been? You’re looking even more handsome than before, if that’s even possible!" she chirped, stepping closer to his desk. "I’m so sorry I couldn’t meet you sooner, I’ve been so busy with the new collection, but I’ve missed our talks so much-’’

She kept going, her voice a relentless stream of chatter that filled the room. Dominic felt a headache coming up. He stayed calm, his face indifference as he completely ignored her nonsense.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, his thumb swiping across the screen.

He had personally ordered to set cameras in the CST labs, and the feed was now streaming directly to his device.

On the screen, he saw the back corner of the lecture hall. There she was-

his "Troublesome bunny". Instead of focusing on the class, Vivien was completely dead to the world. Her head was tilted at an awkward angle, her glasses were lopsided, and she looked utterly peaceful.

The side of his mouth curled up into a dark smirk.

Just then, his eyes narrowed as a guy with glasses walked toward the back of the lecture hall and slid into the seat right beside Vivien.

Dominic’s expression shifted instantly, the dark smirk vanishing into icy frown. A surge of irritation and possessiveness flared in his chest.

He didn’t even know who the boy was, but seeing him in Vivien’s personal space made him want to erase the guy from existence. The nerve of someone to sit that close to what was his.

Amelia, who had been yapping the entire time, finally noticed the shift in the room’s temperature. She saw the way his jaw tightened and the way he stared at his phone as if he were visualizing a murder. She shuddered involuntarily and cleared her throat, trying to reclaim his attention.

"Dominic... are you even listening?" she asked, her voice wavering. "Anyway, I had a question. Why did you decide to be here, in a shabby place like this? You’re a multi-billionaire, you could be in Dubai or London, but instead-"

Before she could finish her sentence, Dominic stood up abruptly. He didn’t give her a single glance as he adjusted his blazer and began walking toward the door.

"Cancel today’s lunch," Dominic commanded his assistant without stopping. "Lead them out."

Amelia stood frozen in the middle of the office, her face heating up with a mix of humiliation and rising anger. She dug her nails into her palms, forcing a tight, fake smile to stay on her lips even as her eyes flashed with resentment.

The assistant looked incredibly troubled, glancing between his boss’s retreating back and the fuming heiress. He stepped forward nervously to bridge the gap.

"I am so sorry, Miss Amelia," he stuttered, bowing his head. "It seems like the Boss has something extremely urgent to attend to. He won’t be able to join you for lunch today. I’ll escort you to your car."

Amelia didn’t move for a moment, her gaze fixed on the door Dominic had just vanished through. "Urgent?" she whispered to herself, her voice trembling with Anger "What could possibly be more urgent than me?"

Meanwhile, Dominic was already halfway down the corridor. He was heading toward the CST building, and heaven help the boy with glasses if he so much as breathed on Vivien while she was sleeping.

The moment Dominic stepped into the room, the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

The professor’s words died in his throat, and the students sat paralyzed.

His eyes immediately flicked to the seat next to Vivien. It was empty. The boy with the glasses was gone.

"Where is the guy who was sitting here?"

Dominic asked, his voice low.

The professor, sweating under his collar, stammered out a response. "Oh... that student? He- he was just here for a moment, but since he was late to the lecture, I sent him straight to detention. He just left."

Dominic didn’t respond. He turned his attention to the slumped figure at the back bench.

Between the gasps and the professor’s stammering, Vivien’s eyes finally fluttered open. She blinked slowly behind her glasses, the world coming back into a blurry focus. She let out a long unbothered yawn and stretched her arms over her head.

"Ugh... Dante, stop being so loud," she mumbled into the sleeve of her hoodie, still half stuck in her dream. But as her eyes finally locked onto the suit standing directly over her, her body went rigid.

"Mr. Grumpy Suit?..." she blurted out, her voice echoing in the dead silent classroom.

A sound of giggles and snorts erupted from the other students. Even the professor looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole.

Dominic’s eyes became impossibly colder. He leaned down, placing his hands on the edge of her desk and looming over her until Vivien was pinned between his shadow and the wall.

The scent of sandalwood hit her, finally waking her up for real.

Vivien’s heart did a triple backflip. Her eyes went wide and she nearly swallowed her tongue.

Oh shoot, I am actually dead. This is it. I’m going back to the countryside or worse, he’s going to bury me under the college football field.

"I wasn’t aware," Dominic whispered, his voice dangerously calm, "that ’Miss Troublesome’ had given me a nickname. And here I thought we were keeping things professional."

He glanced at her open notebook, which was completely blank.

"Since you’re so rested," he said, straightening up and looking at the professor, "I believe Miss Vivien would love to spend her afternoon ’assisting’ me in the archives. No need for her to finish this lecture- she clearly knows it all already."

Vivien gripped the edge of her seat. "Wait, the archives? But that place is like a dungeon! And I have a lab-"

"Now, Vivien," Dominic cut her off, his siren eyes boring into hers. "Unless you’d like to join your little friend in detention?"

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

TO BE CONTINUED