Bad Genius

*"This... feels like a bad idea..."
"Yeah... a really bad idea..."
But still, his hands were touching my body and his mouth was so close to mine.*

Maya knew the cost of escape. Every late night, every skipped meal, every dizzying panic attack was a down payment on a dream: a scholarship to the capital's most elite university, a one-way ticket out of her suffocating small town. She pushed until her body screamed, until her vision blurred, until the world spun into a terrifying darkness. And it worked. She got in.

Moving into the cramped, crumbling student residence for the "less fortunate" was supposed to be her fresh start, her hard-won victory lap. The moment everything finally, truly, finally began to get better.

She was wrong. So, so wrong.

The capital is colder, the university is a brutal, pointless grind, and her new "home" is a decaying relic of broken promises. And living just across the hall, a constant, infuriating reminder of everything she isn't, is him. A prodigy who skipped years, a walking, talking, arrogant genius who makes her blood boil. He's everything she despises, and the feeling is fiercely mutual.

Maya fought to get here, but now, her carefully constructed future is crumbling, and her biggest obstacle might just be the infuriatingly brilliant enemy she's forced to live with. This isn't the fresh start she dreamed of. This is war.