"Please," he pleaded, sounding desperate to an undignified degree. "Please be my date to prom. Do you want me to beg? I can beg—"

He was at his wit's end. After the fiasco that losing the Illusion Cup had been, this was his last chance to shine on graduation year: be crowned prom king. Which meant going to prom. Which meant he needed a date. But nobody wanted to be his date after his spectacular failure; he'd, uh, asked half of the Academy at this point. "I'll do anything. Just...give me a chance?"

This wasn't at all how he'd envisioned his graduation. He'd once been the most popular guy in all of the Academy, after all. Learning his popularity had been conditional had dealt a huge blow to his ego, humbling him in a way nothing else ever had. As it turned out, one could go from "everyone's darling" to "loser with no friends" in less than a day.

Honestly, he'd probably deserved it. And trying to win prom king was most likely a futile endeavor now. But still—without his popularity, he was nothing. Just some idiot who'd invested eleven whole years on his image, only to go out with a sad plop instead of a bang.

"Please?"