How To Be A Proper Villain

On a cloudy thursday afternoon, the students of Lauryn University flooded the school campus through the school gates.

The mid term holidays had just ended. But with most students going home for the holidays, a select few had just resumed a few days prior to the end of the holiday, while most of the students were just resuming.

As the skies thundered and the clouds became darker, the students hurriedly left the school's building after their registration and rushed home or to their hostels.

Now most of the students had left the school campus before the rain began, while a select few still lingered within the school walls, including Sil.

A student who majored in the Computer Science and Robotics engineering and development and minored in Physics.

He had brownish black hair, black eyes and a slightly handsome face which now looked haggard. He was in a laboratory and had just rounded up his research material.

Although he was only twenty, he was working harder than normal so he could have more achievements to his name and possibly graduate early.

Sil pushed his chair back with his feet, and removed his eye googles, before removing the glasses on his face and rubbing his tired eyes.

He had unsightly dark circles and had spent the entire holiday in this lab, trying to make something of his research topic. But despite the time and effort he had put in, he had not made any visible progress.

He stood up from his chair with his research progress in hand and walked to an empty desk that had long been cleared of all its accessories.

He took a seat, and plopped his head unto the table, dozing off instantly.

…

A little while later, an annoyingly loud ringtone disrupted the silence in the lab, but I ignored it since the phone was out of reach.

'It'll stop soon', I thought.

It kept on ringing then eventually stopped as expected. Then it began to ring again, and despite my reluctance, I eventually picked it up.

"Hello.", I said curtly, and tried not to sound tired so the caller wouldn't be worried.

"Hey Sil, have you arrived at school?", A lively voice came from the other side of the phone, and effectively startled me.

"…Yeah, I got back yesterday", I said after a moment of thoughtful silence and tried to suppress the sense of foreboding I felt in that short moment.

"Really, If that's the case then, why are your books still the same way I left them?", Ronald the caller, spoke smugly and my heart skipped a beat.

I had not gone back to the hostel since our holidays began, and the day before that, I spent the night at a friend's place working up a project plan with him help.

I knew Ronald liked to keep tabs on me and do things to know if I had left the lab or not, but I didn't expect him to come back from his trip, go to our hostel and move my books.

I didn't have a specific arrangement, but it'd definitely be unusual if the position of my books remained the same for three weeks straight.

A week before the holiday commenced, Ronald had travelled out of town for some family gathering. And from what I knew, he was going to spend at least two weeks on that trip, so I was not bothered about cooping myself up to research, but who knew…

"You're still at the lab, right? Wait for me, I'll bring you lunch and a change of clothes"

After the long pause, which was probably to relish in his victory at having caught me, or give me sometime to let go of the embarrassment of being caught red handed, he spoke again.

"Yeah thanks", I whispered softly and felt warm inside.

All my friends knew how much of a studyholic I was, and somehow made it their mission to make sure I lived a normal school life filled with all sorts of things but studying.

It was a silly promise they made at the freshman's party last year, but they somehow managed to make it a mission they needed to accomplish so it'd become a, "It was a long, long time ago, and I had this friend who…" type of story.

I wasn't expecting such friendships when I got to university, but I dearly cherished their friendship which could unfortunately end at any moment due to the mysterious plague that's spreading in this world of ours.

Thankfully none of them got hit with it, and we managed to keep our friendship steady through our first years as freshmen.

I snapped out of my daze and put the phone away, before trying to resume my nap. But…

Boom boom

The loud thunder that reverberated across the school grounds and into my ears, made me think that the lightning that came before it must have been very bright.

Since I was startled awake by the thunder, It wasn't easy to get back into a sleepy state, despite my fatigue. So I just decided to revise my analysis and notes as I waited for Ronald to come.

Twenty minutes later, Ronald arrived soaking wet with a grocery bag in hand and two umbrellas in a shopping bag.

"You forgot to bring an umbrella?", I asked when I noticed the umbrellas in his hand were from the grocery store.

"No, I gave it away then bought these ones from a nearby store", He said awkwardly as he handed me the grocery bags.

"Why did you give it away?", I looked at him with an expression that said, 'Are you a fool?'

Noticing my bewilderment, he just laughed it off and said a couple of girls needed it.

As expected.

"Your chivalry's going to get you duped one day", I said under my breath as I imagined the scene of him giving away the umbrella to a couple of girls who had taken shelter, whilst running heedlessly into the rain instead of telling me he couldn't make it.

"Haa… You're too innocent and stupid for this world", I said loudly as I watched him walk up to my desk.

He paused and asked without turning around, "That's not a compliment, right?"

"Guess", I added smoothly.

"You- Haa… by the way, there's this game that got released a few days ago, do you wanna join us to get it?", Ronald asked excitedly while I kept silent.

I knew there was a reason he sought me out so earnestly, and it was unsurprisingly for an outing.

"Did Derrick ask you to invite me?", I asked flatly.

"Uh… not really. He mentioned it on the group and invited everyone, but I realized you hadn't seen the message yet so I decided to invite you myself. Is there a problem?", Ronald asked innocently.

However, I was experienced and knew he was anything but!

After skipping out on the most recent outings in our friend group. Derrick got annoyed and claimed I was avoiding them.

He was a blunt and arrogant kid, who had a lot of clout, always got what he wanted, and refused to accept my constant rejections. For some reason, he seemed to despise the idea of me not going out, or rather being alone.

None of that mattered anymore though, since he decided not to invite me out again, and an acquaintance later made me aware that Derrick had made a bet which involved Ronald, me and my social life.

I didn't need to be a genius to know what it was about, but I was extremely stunned when I found out Ronald had somehow agreed to the bet, and if he lost, he'd have to do something embarrassing.

This idiot…! If he wasn't my best friend, I'd have long left him for the wolves. But…

"Haa… When is it?"

"It's okay, you don't have to go if you don't want to"

Ronald didn't interrupt me but just continued speaking.

"I know you're busy, I just thought it'd be nice to go out more. After all, you can't always rely on me-"

"What makes you think I always rely on you?!", I shouted, flustered. And Ronald giggled.

"It's really okay. It's just… you don't need to always study all the time. I mean look at you, you look like a monster!"

"I don't…", I tried to comb through my hair with my fingers to make myself look more presentable, but the look in Ronald's eyes made me think it was pointless.

"Okay, maybe I do overdo it sometimes. But I rather type codes than waste my time with already coded codes.", I tried to explain my point of view to him, but he just waved me off and continued speaking.

"Then you could do other things, like traveling, reading a book or novel, or even watching anime or reading manga!"

I frowned softly, those were all undesirable options because they were either extremely time-consuming, addictive, or both.

"Don't make that face, if you're not joining us this time. Then you better have a good reason not to", Ronald declared and left no room for refusal.

I paused and thought deeply about his words. Although I hadn't made any substantial improvement, I was still making progress. But that was up to a few days ago, and for some reason my progress stagnated. So I kept shut and listened to him because I had no good argument, and that was too strange to be brought up.

"And by a good reason, I'd suggest it's something similar or is one out of the three options I mentioned", Ronald said seriously and I thought deeply about my options.

Traveling was time and effort consuming, not to talk of the money I'd need to spend to do so. Reading books aren't that bad, I could get some books on physics and brush up on it, since it's been a while I've visited the lab or took any supplementary classes. But the anime and manga… there's a word for it Otku? Hmm… there's already a foreign term for such an activity, so I'm better off not dwelling too much about it.

In that case, I'll choose…

"Books", I said plainly while Ronald sighed softly.

"You nerd…!"