The silence that followed the explosion was a living thing, a heavy blanket woven from shock, terror, and a dawning, terrifying understanding. For a full minute, Class 2-F was a photograph. Students were frozen in their seats, their faces pale, their eyes locked on the scene of impossible destruction. The only movement was the slow drift of plaster dust through the air, sparkling in the sunlight that now streamed freely through the shattered windows and the new, man-shaped hole in the wall.
The spell was broken by a choked, wet gasp.
All eyes snapped to the source. It was the tattooed brute, Riku's top lieutenant. He was staring at the hole in the wall, at the broken form of his leader, and then his gaze shifted to Ravi. His face, usually a mask of aggression, was now a canvas of pure, primal fear. His lips trembled, and his eyes were wide, like those of an animal facing a predator it knows it cannot escape.
He scrambled backwards, his chair screeching against the floor before it tipped over, sending him sprawling. He didn't care. He crab-walked away, pushing himself with his hands and feet, his eyes never leaving Ravi. "M-m-monster…" he stammered, the word catching in his throat.
His panic was a contagion. One by one, the other students began to stir, their movements jerky and unnatural. A girl in the front row let out a small, suppressed sob. A boy in the corner vomited quietly into a trash can. The card players who had been betting on the fight were now staring at their hands, as if they had forgotten what they were for.
They had all grown up in a world where strength was measured in muscle, speed, and the ability to endure pain. Fights were won with brutal punches and savage kicks. Kings were made by breaking bones and spirits. They understood that world. They knew its rules.
What they had just witnessed did not belong in that world. It was a page torn from a different book, a scripture of cosmic horror that had no place in a high school classroom. The sight of Riku Sato—their invincible, terrifying king—being swatted like an insect had not just broken a wall; it had broken their reality.
Ravi remained impassive through it all. He watched the fear spread through the room with the same detached curiosity he'd watched the clouds. He had seen this reaction before. It was always the same. First shock, then fear, then a fearful reverence that he found more irritating than any open challenge. This was the point of no return. The point where his hope for a quiet life officially died.
He let out another soft sigh, this one laced with a profound sense of resignation. He stood up.
The collective intake of breath was sharp and sudden. Every student flinched as if he had pulled a gun.
Ravi picked up his worn backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and began to walk towards the door. His path took him right past the desk of the tattooed brute, who was still on the floor, trembling. As Ravi passed, the brute pressed himself flat against the ground, his face averted, as if making eye contact would cause him to spontaneously combust.
Ravi didn't even glance at him. He was just a piece of furniture in a room he was now eager to leave.
He reached the classroom door and slid it open. Standing on the other side, her back pressed against the opposite wall, was Reina Kurozawa.
Her face was as pale as marble. Her usually sharp, analytical violet eyes were wide, unfocused, still replaying the impossible physics of the finger flick. The formidable Ice Queen of Black Fang High, the paragon of control and discipline, looked utterly lost. Her composure, the armor she wore every single day, had been shattered into a million pieces.
Their eyes met.
His were calm, gray, and deep as the void. Hers were a swirling storm of confusion, fear, and a terrifying, magnetic curiosity.
For a moment, neither of them moved. In Reina's mind, a thousand questions battled for supremacy. Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? How did you do that? But her throat was dry, her tongue a leaden weight in her mouth. All the authority she commanded, all the sharp words she used to intimidate others, had abandoned her.
Ravi saw the storm in her eyes. He recognized it. It was the look of someone whose world had been upended, someone now desperately seeking an explanation, an anchor in the swirling chaos. He knew that if he engaged, if he spoke, he would be pulling her into his orbit, and he wanted nothing of the sort.
He broke the gaze first, turning to walk down the deserted hallway.
The motion seemed to snap Reina out of her stupor. A spark of her old self, the unyielding disciplinarian, reignited. She couldn't let him just walk away. She couldn't allow an anomaly of this magnitude to exist in her school without an explanation.
"Wait!" she called out, her voice stronger than she expected, though it held a slight tremor.
Ravi didn't stop. He didn't even slow down.
Anger, a familiar and comforting emotion, began to push back against her fear. Who did he think he was? To cause such destruction, to potentially kill a student, and then to simply walk away as if he were heading to the cafeteria?
She pushed off the wall and strode after him, her long legs eating up the distance. "I am Reina Kurozawa, Head of the Disciplinary Squad," she announced, her voice regaining its cold, authoritative edge. "You are not permitted to leave. You have just committed an act of extreme violence and destruction of school property. You will answer to me. Who are you?"
Ravi came to a stop, his back still to her. The hallway was silent, the only sound the faint, distant hum of the school's ventilation system.
He turned his head slightly, looking at her over his shoulder. His expression was unreadable. "I'm just a student," he said, his voice flat and dismissive. It was the same answer he'd given her in his mind before, a stone wall of a response.
Reina's jaw tightened. The casual, almost bored way he said it was infuriating. "Don't play games with me," she snapped. "'Just a student' doesn't put a man through a concrete wall with one finger."
"He was loud," Ravi replied simply, as if that explained everything. He started walking again.
That was the final straw. Reina's frustration boiled over. She would not be dismissed. She would not be ignored. She would force a reaction from him. She would drag him back to reality.
In a swift, fluid motion, she lunged forward. Her hand, open and sharp, sliced through the air, aimed directly at his face. It wasn't a killing blow, but it was a warrior's slap, thrown with enough speed and controlled force to stun a normal man and leave a stinging, humiliating welt. It was a physical assertion of her authority.
She expected him to dodge, to block, to do something.
He did nothing.
At the very last moment, just as the edge of her hand was about to make contact with his cheek, his own hand rose. It moved with none of her urgency, none of her fury. It was a slow, almost gentle motion. He didn't grab her wrist. He didn't swat her hand away.
He simply caught her attack.
Between two fingers. His index and middle finger, extended with casual grace, closed around the blade of her hand, stopping its momentum instantly and completely.
Reina froze, her hand trapped, her entire body locked in place. Her eyes widened as she stared at the point of contact. She had put her full speed, her full disciplined power into that strike. And he had stopped it. With two fingers. Gently.
There was no strain in his hand, no tension in his arm. It was as if he had caught a falling feather. She tried to pull her hand back, but it wouldn't budge. It was held by a force that felt as gentle as silk and as immovable as a mountain.
He finally turned his entire body to face her. They were standing mere inches apart. He looked down at her trapped hand, then his silver-gray eyes lifted to meet hers. For the first time, she saw an emotion in them. It wasn't anger or annoyance.
It was pity.
It was the pity of a truly ancient being looking at a child's tantrum.
He slowly, gently, released her hand.
Reina stumbled back a step, cradling her hand as if it had been burned. It wasn't injured, but a phantom energy, a feeling of absolute, crushing power, tingled through her nerves. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and a cold sweat broke out on her brow. All the fight, all the anger, drained out of her, replaced by the same raw, primal fear she had felt watching from the hallway.
This was no monster. Monsters could be fought. They could be killed.
This was something else. A force of nature. A living law of physics.
Ravi looked at her for a long moment, his gaze unblinking. Then, without another word, he turned and continued down the hallway, his footsteps silent, until he rounded a corner and disappeared from sight, leaving Reina alone in the corridor, trembling.