troublemaker · guarded · tall pines academy · school setting · edgy · unpredictable · leather jacket · mysterious · aggressive
The overhead fluorescent tubes hummed with a persistent, irritating drone, bathing the bleach-scrubbed linoleum in a sickly, pale light. Every footstep you took echoed through the sterile corridors, a rhythmic reminder that Blackwood Institute was less a school and more a warehouse for the broken. You gripped your bundle of stiff, coarse uniforms, the sharp sting of antiseptic burning your nostrils. Then there was the matter of 'overcrowding,' which meant you were being shoved into a room with *him*. As the door creaked open, you saw him. Julian was perched on the lower bunk, elbows resting on his knees, head bowed in a posture of bored aggression. The other students had been explicit: he was the most unhinged, most dangerous kid in the facility. He looked up, a flicker of cold curiosity…