The harsh, sterile stench of rubbing alcohol and cheap hand sanitizer was the first thing to assault Raditya’s senses. It was closely followed by the ticking of the wall clock, which currently sounded ten times louder than normal. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Every second felt like a tiny sledgehammer slamming against the inside of his throbbing skull.He tried to twitch his fingertips. Ice cold. It felt like he’d just been pulled out of a meat freezer. But beneath that biting cold was an intense, slow-crawling heat, moving just beneath his skin like liquid magma. His body felt weirdly restricted, like the ratty clothes he’d put on that morning had suddenly shrunk three sizes.Oh, great. If this kid croaks on my watch, the district is gonna have my license, a woman’s voice whispered right next to him. The tone was anxious, but laced with a heavy dose of annoyance.Raditya recognized the voice. Nurse Davis. She was notorious for playing Candy Crush on her desktop rather than actually treatin

Raditya took a deep breath outside the door of his AP Pre-Calculus class. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, which now felt suffocatingly tight across his newly broadened chest and shoulders. The sensation of having clear skin and a jawline sharp enough to cast a shadow still felt incredibly alien, like he was walking around in a hyper-realistic Halloween costume. As soon as his hand touched the doorknob, a wave of audio—not physical sound, but psychic echoes—began seeping through the cheap wood.Holy crap, Raditya is gorgeous now, I just want to jump him. What happened to him out there? Did the lightning burn the ugly off? Whatever, he's still a nerd, just with a better casing now.Raditya scoffed under his breath. He pushed the door open. Instantly, the chaotic chatter inside the classroom died. An awkward, heavy silence fell over the room, as if someone had just hit the mute button on the universe's remote control. Dozens of eyes locked onto him. Kids who were normally busy thro

The smell of damp old paper and lingering floor disinfectant was Raditya's last line of defense. He stepped inside the Merdeka High School Library hoping for one thing: silence. To him, after the canteen drama that left his brain feeling baked by the collective lust of the entire student body, the library was supposed to be a sanctuary. A temple of quiet where his brain frequency could rest.But Raditya quickly realized that "silence" was the biggest lie on earth. Physically, the library was indeed as quiet as a hero’s grave at midnight, but telepathically, this place was a low-frequency battlefield, sharper and more dangerous.Bu Lia, the chubby librarian with glasses tethered by a chain around her neck, sat behind the circulation desk. Her mouth was busy chewing gum slowly, but her inner voice screamed something completely contradictory to her placid face.Damn it, whose armpit smell is this? Can't these snot-nosed brats go one day without making the library carpet stink even more?

The second-floor corridor of Liberty High felt like a personal catwalk that afternoon. Every heavy, confident step Raditya took in his boots sent ripples through the crowded hallway. He didn't need to keep his head down or pretend to be deeply engrossed in his phone to avoid getting shoved anymore. Instead, he had become the school's new center of gravity."Oh my god, is that really Raditya?! No way!" whispered a sophomore girl, nearly walking face-first into a bank of lockers because she was too busy staring at his razor-sharp jawline."He's ridiculously hot. I swear, I’d gladly stick a fork in a toaster right now if it meant I'd wake up looking like that," her friend replied, not even blinking.Raditya kept his expression perfectly neutral, but inside, his skull felt like it was going to crack open. His physical transformation was a miracle, but his "psychic hearing" was a bottomless pit of hell. The mental signals from across the corridor battered him without mercy.Damn, his ass l

Raditya walked with a slight limp, not because his legs hurt, but because his brain felt like it had just been soaked in a vat of boiling battery acid. The chaotic aftermath of the cafeteria incident left a parasitic ringing in his skull. Every whisper, every suppressed urge, and every petty grudge he had intercepted was still spinning like a broken record in his mind. Becoming ridiculously hot was a blessing, but being a walking receiver for other people's thoughts was a curse that was driving him to the absolute brink of insanity.He needed silence. He needed a dead zone where this cursed "thought-radio" would stop broadcasting everyone's filthy frequencies.Raditya steered himself toward the back of the old Biology greenhouses. It was Liberty High's ultimate blind spot. There was nothing back there but a row of overgrown oak trees, an old sports equipment shed that rarely got unlocked, and a high brick wall covered in thick ivy. There, in a corner nearly forgotten by the daily high