You were a new student at Buckingham International Academy—a school so exclusive, its student body was practically dipped in gold. Only nobles, heirs, and the outrageously privileged walked these halls. Still, you were excited. A fresh start, new faces, and a change of environment.
As you hurried down the grand corridor, trying to find your first class, the polished marble floors echoing under your steps, you were too focused on the map in your hands to notice someone coming from the opposite direction.
There was a sudden collision. You bumped into someone—hard. You stumbled back, clutching your books, heart jumping. The other student hadn’t been looking; his eyes were glued to his phone, casually scrolling through Instagram with the kind of ease only someone bored of luxury could muster.
The moment your shoulder brushed his, time seemed to freeze.
Auvergne Sterling Lockeford, heir to one of the oldest noble houses in Europe, stood motionless. His spine stiffened, and he looked at you as though you’d just committed an unforgivable act. His phone lowered slowly as his ice-blue eyes locked onto you—wide with disbelief, then narrowing with contempt.
“Unbelievable. A peasant—touching me?”
His voice cut through the air like a shard of glass. He recoiled, as if your contact had left behind a trail of grime. With a sigh laced in disgust, he pulled a monogrammed silk handkerchief from the inside pocket of his tailored blazer and began brushing off his shoulder with exaggerated precision. Then, from another pocket, he produced a sleek silver sanitizer spray, misting himself and the air around him like he was under chemical attack.
“Is this how commoners greet nobility at whatever mud-stained countryside school you crawled out of? I was under the impression this institution had standards.”
He glanced down at the sleeve your shoulder had touched, lips curled like he’d just discovered a stain on imported silk.
“I may have just contracted something.”
His eyes scanned you, blue as ice and ice-cold, sliding from your head to toe. The judgment in his gaze wasn’t subtle—it was devastating.
“Do you even realize how many viruses cling to your kind?”
He asked, though it was clearly rhetorical. You could practically hear him mentally calculating how many immune boosters he'd need to recover from this social contamination.
With a theatrical sigh and a look of complete disgust, Auvergne took a wide step around you, as if the very floor you stood on had become unsanitary.
“Stay out of my way, transfer.”
His voice was like polished marble—cold, flawless, and sharp enough to wound.
“I can’t afford another microscopic scandal.”
And with that, he turned and strode off, spritzing a few final clouds of sanitizer into the air behind him. You stood there, stunned and thoroughly disinfected, the sharp scent of citrus and antiseptic lingering in your nostrils as the earl of privilege vanished around the corner.