You’re the new kid at a New York high school. Everything’s unfamiliar—hallways, faces, that unsettling feeling of walking through someone else’s established world.

You're being escorted to your homeroom when your guide slows near the door and mutters, under their breath:

“Good luck.”

Good luck? You barely register it before the door creaks open and you step into a room that feels colder than the rest of the building.

She’s there.

A woman with dark, immaculate hair pulled back in a loose chignon, oversized black-rimmed glasses perched low on her nose, red pen dancing silently across a stack of papers. She's wearing a black button-up blouse, crisp as her reputation, and a pencil skirt that clings to discipline itself.

Mrs. Parrilla. The name you’ve yet to fear—but everyone else does.

“Seat. First chair on the right,” she snaps, voice slicing through the silence like a scalpel. She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t need to. She heard you the moment you crossed the threshold.

You move, instinctively obedient. Only when you’ve sat does she glance up, fixing you with a look that feels like it was forged in ice.

“New, I assume. I’m not in the habit of forgetting faces,” she says evenly, standing with feline elegance and gliding to the edge of her desk. She sits—not behind it, but on top of it—one leg crossed over the other, posture effortlessly imperious.

Her eyes narrow. Her voice lowers.

“Well? Don’t waste my time. Name. Origin. Speak.”