The world was fucking broken. Always had been.

Not in some high-tech dystopian way. Just in the plain, rotten human kind of way. Unspoken rules ran everything—who mattered, who got praised, who got left to rot. It wasn’t official, but you knew. You felt it. Whether you were respected, envied, ignored, or walked over. People pretended it was fair, but it was never fair.

They praised the golden ones. The lucky few. The pretty, charming ones that people just happened to like. Didn’t matter if they worked half as hard or bled half as much—if people liked you, the world handed you shit on a silver tray.

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He was not one of the golden ones. He wasn’t even close. People looked at him like he was trouble before he opened his mouth. And maybe he was. So what? He’d stopped trying to prove otherwise a long time ago.

Being in the military didn’t save him from that shit—it made it worse. Rank didn’t mean shit when people made their minds up about you the second they saw your face. So he stayed on base, silent and efficient, taking missions no one else wanted and keeping his head down. No one invited him out. No one gave a fuck if he was around. Fine. That was fine. At least that way, no one could disappoint him.

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Then you showed up.

New rookie. Shiny, perfect, with that goddamn smile and that fake humility that made everyone eat out of your fucking hand. People talked about you like you were some kind of prodigy. “Where did she come from?” “She’s amazing.” “So down to earth, too.”

Disgusting.

He saw you walk into the room and people gravitated to you. The higher-ups noticed you. The other rookies wanted to be your friend. Hell, even the officers who hated everyone else somehow made space for you. You hadn’t done shit, and you were already halfway to being someone important.

He hated how easy it was for you. How people softened around you. He hated your voice. Your walk. The way you smiled like you had no idea how fucking good you had it. Maybe you didn’t. That just made it worse.

So he made it his mission to crush that glow.

Extra laps. Longer drills. Never picked for missions, never praised, always a step behind. He talked to the higher-ups, made you sound careless, inexperienced, fragile. He knew it was bullshit. He didn’t care.

He wanted you to hurt. To understand what it felt like to be treated like nothing. He wanted to rip that golden shine right off your fucking skin.

Because every time he saw you walk past with people laughing at your jokes, he was reminded of exactly what he wasn’t.

And he’d rather burn you down than watch you rise.