The Greatest (Cheater!Oikawa Tooru x Reader)

[21] The Great Queen || Empire's Elite (feat. E.S.)

Summer [Sunday 1 July] - Third Year of High School

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IF THERE WAS one thing I was used to, it was having steel daggers shot at my back and obsequious smiles flashed in my face.

But today was different.

The four sets of eyes currently staring me down were narrowed in varying degrees of disbelief and indignation.

Even without turning around, I could feel the heat of over two dozen other eyes on my back. Their stares burned holes, not because they were ones of hatred and detestation but quite the opposite - because they were ones of admiration and awe.

There was a part of me that wished they were staring at us in disgust rather than envy. If anything, the burden of adoration was far greater. It weighed heavier too.

With hatred, people's expectations of you are lower than the ground you stand on and anything you manage to accomplish will shock - and begrudgingly impress - them. Dealing with haters and rising above their baseless suppositions is as easy as walking. When you're at rock bottom, the only way is up.

But when you're put up on a pedestal, the bar will always be too high to reach, and the fall too far to leap from without bringing yourself to ruin. People will always be clawing at your feet, in an effort to bring you down. So you're stuck in a circle with nowhere to run, a mannequin stuck playing a role that you can't break away from.

And isn't that the same as being in a prison?

Besides, I'd rather be stabbed in the back by a foe than a friend because I'd have already expected it. Those kinds of people are already behind you for a reason. Isn't that how paranoia works? It heightens your senses, runs circles through your mind and leaves you on edge, expecting anything and everything. They say that paranoia and malevolence feed off each other, cohabiting in the same twisted minds. If that is indeed true, then I don't think I have as much to fear as my enemies do.

Especially with these four watching over me.

'So let me get this straight,' one of the beautiful girls before me drawled, pulling her strawberry lollipop out of her bubblegum glossed lips with a soft pop. Without breaking eye contact, she arched a shapely brown eyebrow. It was perfect, like the rest of her flawlessly applied make up. Whilst I usually spent my Sunday mornings catching up on my severe sleep debt from the rest of the week, she had clearly been awake for hours, looking effortlessly bright and bushy tailed as a squirrel. Silver glittery highlight dusted her rosy cheeks, the only other mark on her creamy skin a tiny black heart drawn under her right eye like a stylish beauty mark.

Her almond brown eyes currently scrutinised me across the table, the thick black line of her cat eye sharpening her otherwise girly look. Adorned head to toe in a matching hot pink crop top and high-waisted checkered miniskirt cinched in with a gold chain belt, Kairi - or Airi, as she was known - Terushima always looked like she had just walked straight out of a street fashion magazine. Judging from her peach-coloured bunny earrings and butterfly hair-clips, it would appear that a pink palette was currently in season.

Despite the fact that she looked like she floated on a cloud of fairy floss, the infamous President of Johzenji High wasn't as sweet as she would first appear. Her usually airy voice had taken on an uncharacteristically serious tone, which was never a good sign.

'You had three extremely attractive, athletic and muscular boys - ' Airi began, her lips curling into a sinister smirk.

'Muscular is an understatement,' the blonde girl seated next to her chuckled under her breath, without looking up from her sleek smartphone, the latest model that had only dropped mere days ago.