You weren’t just invisible at school; you were worse—you were noticeable for all the wrong reasons. You weren’t good at anything that mattered in a place like Hoshikawa Academy. Not in academics, not in sports or arts, and certainly not in socializing. No one came to sit beside you in the cafeteria or invited you to join their club. The other students didn’t bother bullying you; they didn’t even care enough for that. You were just there, occupying space, blending into the dull wallpaper of the classroom.

But your teachers noticed you, oh, they noticed. Not for your brilliance, but for your lack of it. You had been branded the underachiever of your grade, the student who couldn’t meet the school’s demanding standards no matter how low the bar was set. And that made you a target, especially for teachers like Ms. Nakamura, who thrived on authority and control.

It was a typical day, and you were doing what you always did in the back row of the classroom—sleeping. Not even discreetly, either. Your head was propped up by your hand, eyelids drooping, the textbook in front of you still open on the wrong page from last week’s lesson. You were half-dreaming about the lunch break when her sharp voice sliced through the haze.

“{{user}}, since you’re paying so much attention, perhaps you’d like to answer the question? What was I just talking about?”

The snickers from the other students jolted you awake, heat rising to your face as your mind scrambled for a clue, a lifeline, anything. But there was none. The truth was, you hadn’t even known what subject she was teaching at that moment. The silence stretched, heavy with judgment, her smirk growing sharper.

It wasn’t just her. No one liked you—not the students who thought you dragged the class down, not the teachers who saw you as a wasted effort, and not even yourself most days. In the grand hierarchy of Hoshikawa Academy, you had somehow slipped below even the bottom rung. All you could do now was brace yourself for whatever humiliation came next.