“So my name isn’t Glasses, it’s…”

Juno Huntington.

However, Victor left without even listening to my explanation. His legs were so long that he had already reached the cafeteria door after just a few steps.

The three queen bees waited quietly, resting their chins on their hands and only moving their eyes as Victor left the cafeteria.

And as soon as he completely disappeared, they flipped their hair back with a haughty expression, as if performing a victory ceremony.

“Hmph.”

Victor’s ex-girlfriend, Regina, looked at the other two with an impressed face.

“Thanks, Chloe, Jena. I was still uncomfortable being around Victor.”

Chloe snorted in response.

“You know our rule, right? Even if you meet all the men in the world, you shouldn’t even glance at a man who makes your friend cry. We all know how much Big hurt your feelings, so we shouldn’t even deal with him.”

“That’s right. We shouldn’t even breathe the same air in the same place!”

The three of them were delighted as if they had defeated a common enemy. Then, as if making a blood oath, they elegantly bent their wrists and clinked their pancake knives together like the Three Musketeers.

Chiiik—

Making a strange sound with their mouths.

“…”

I watched this unique scene from across the table.

After leaving the cafeteria, what I did was try to avoid Victor as much as possible.

Victor would probably confront me about why I revealed that he was an awakened one.

Well, even though Victor was a muscular, burly guy, I wasn’t afraid of him.

It was just annoying to be confronted.

Even before I had a passive skill, I was pretty good at erasing my presence. So during movement classes and PE classes, I avoided Victor while erasing my presence.

Victor really searched for me all afternoon.

He even came to the classroom I was in after each class, as if he had asked someone.

“Hey, clumsy glasses!”

For the activity period, I had chosen the choir and needed to go to the music room for class.

I was about to leave after roughly stuffing my textbooks into the cabinet when I saw Victor approaching from afar, dressed in football gear with a helmet tucked under his arm, looking straight at me.

Ah, how persistent.

But I was just as stubborn as Victor.

I quickly slipped into the crowd of students moving for the next class. Victor barely squeezed his large body through and called out to me.

“Let’s talk, okay?”

“I have nothing to talk about with you.”

And if you keep trying to be familiar with me, it’ll draw attention. I don’t like that either.

The gap between us in the crowd gradually narrowed.

And just before Victor reached out to grab my shoulder, I fell face-first onto the floor. I had bumped into the back of a student walking ahead and bounced off, falling on my own.

“Ack!”

This annoying paper-thin body!

The body of a nerd who had never done any exercise other than breathing in his entire life immediately tumbled to the floor.

“Hey, be careful…!”

Victor hesitated as he watched me roll on the floor.

“Where did he go?”

As soon as I rolled once on the floor, my passive skill activated.

‘The Basics of an Extra (A)’, that is.

It’s so kind to count bumping into someone and falling as being hit, or should I say overprotective?

If they were higher-ranked than me, they would quickly notice my presence. But there were a lot of people, and Victor seemed quite flustered, so he couldn’t immediately sense my presence.

I gathered my paper-thin body and quietly slipped out behind the dumbfounded Victor.

And before 60 seconds were up, I quickly escaped to the music room for choir class.

It absolutely wasn’t because I was embarrassed or ashamed of falling in front of Victor McQueen.

Absolutely not.

But I couldn’t avoid Victor forever. As soon as the school schedule ended, Teacher Gina called me, Adrian, and Victor back to the gym.

Probably for the school dungeon team activities.

With no choice, I walked to the gym with my bag slung over one shoulder, and Victor approached as if he had been waiting. His hair tips were wet, as if he had showered after football practice.

“Hey, didn’t I tell you we need to talk? But you’re avoiding me? Why make me chase you all day?”

“Oh? I was avoiding you? I don’t remember doing that. How strange.”

“Ah, is that so? You’re going to play it like this?”

I tried to feign innocence and enter the gym right away. I heard an exasperated laugh behind me, but I ignored it.

“Then who was it that bumped into someone’s back and rolled on the floor during PE?”

“Me?”

“Who else could it be but you, squirrel?”

Promoted from clumsy glasses to squirrel. Well, at least it’s a living thing rather than an inanimate object.

I deliberately shrugged my shoulders to annoy him.

“You little…”

As I glanced at Victor, who seemed irritated, biting his lip, I turned my head forward and was startled.

While walking and looking back at Victor following me, I hadn’t noticed the gym pillar in front of me.

I was about to hit my forehead on the pillar and wondered if my passive skill would activate again, but instead of the pillar, a pale white hand suddenly appeared and hit my forehead.

“Are you okay?”

It was Adrian.

He seemed to have come out to see the two of us making a commotion, as he was already in the gym.

Incidentally, he also protected my forehead.

“Thanks. You were here first?”

“I had no student council work, fortunately.”

Adrian smiled gently at me.

It was a soft smile that would make many girls swoon, but more than that, I liked the fact that Adrian was S-rank. Just looking at Adrian made me feel as content as looking at a safe.

To have both hands holding the ropes that would send me to a prestigious university. How satisfying.

“The squirrel is smiling creepily.”

It seems my smile had unconsciously leaked out. Victor narrowed his eyes and glared at me as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have.

I hardened my face sternly. Victor looked at me as if overcome with a sense of betrayal.

“Are you getting serious because of what I said?”

“Yeah, I have no reason to smile at you.”

“This…”

He complained about me smiling but dislikes it when I get serious. What an incomprehensible guy.

While Victor and I were bickering as we entered the gym, Teacher Gina and Mr. Benjamin came in. Mr. Benjamin formally greeted us.

“Nice to meet you. You’re all the awakened students of Roingham High School, right? I’m Benjamin Trumpets.”

Mr. Benjamin welcomed us with a hearty laugh that one might expect from a soldier.

Of course, Victor’s expression wasn’t very good. He hadn’t volunteered but had been caught by Teacher Gina.

“I’ve heard everything. I know your ranks from Teacher Gina too. We have fewer team members than other schools, but I believe it’ll be fine since you’re all high-ranking students.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Victor responded half-heartedly, while Adrian and I nodded.

I heard that Victor had reluctantly confessed that he was S-rank, unable to resist Teacher Gina’s pressure.

‘He’s unexpectedly naive.’

Or should I say easy to handle.

As I glanced at Victor, Mr. Benjamin, who had finished greeting us, walked to the center of the gym. The eyes of the four of us standing in a row followed Mr. Benjamin.

He spread his legs hip-width apart, put his hands behind his back, and spoke in a resonant voice.

“As you all know, the reason I’ve gathered the four of you here is none other than to give you a brief briefing on how our ‘Roingham High School Team’ will operate from now on.”

Then, someone like an assistant popped out and brought a portable blackboard.

“Including Teacher Gina, who is a C-rank healer, the five of us will be immediately deployed to the dungeon to close the gate when a low-rank gate opens near Roingham High School in Connecticut. Now, even when gates open in the U.S., monsters don’t come out, right? But in some other countries, monsters often appear along with the gates. This means that we too might encounter monsters in the next gate.”

He pointed somewhere on the blackboard.

“Did you know that just a few days ago, the Tieson Boarding School team in New York entered a dungeon and closed a gate?”

“Yes, I think I saw it on the news.”

Adrian answered.

“At Tieson Boarding School in New York, they’ve already formed a student team after training using dungeon data from various countries and closed a D-rank dungeon. It was the first launch of a school awakened team. All dungeon data is shared among countries, and defense companies are also using dungeon by-products to create various weapons.”

The assistant handed out piles of paper to us.

“We plan to train based on the dungeon data accumulated by Tieson Boarding School and other countries, and then be deployed to suppress gates when they open in Connecticut.”

I briefly skimmed through the documents handed out by the assistant.

There was neatly organized data on dungeons that had opened not only in the aforementioned high school in New York but also in Korea, China, Costa Rica, Canada, Australia, and other countries.

Detailed information was listed about the ranks of the dungeons, the monsters that appeared, and how certain awakened ones defeated those monsters.

At that moment, Teacher Gina quietly raised her hand.

“What is it, Teacher Gina?”

“Well, um… I know it’s a service for the country, town, and school, but isn’t there a possibility of danger in deploying students to dungeons? Of course, I trust the military and Mr. Benjamin, but…”

She was a teacher, even if she was a health teacher. One who prioritizes student safety. And Mr. Benjamin nodded as if he understood such concerns.

“Of course, all officers, including myself, prioritize the lives of school students above all else. We will absolutely not force gate suppression recklessly. The deployment of students is for initial suppression of relatively low-difficulty gates. If we fail to close the gate, the U.S. military’s awakened unit will be directly deployed.”

Of course, the number of awakened individuals in the U.S. military won’t even be 1/10 of that. It’s realistically difficult to control this vast land with such a significantly small number.

Mr. Benjamin’s point is that the student awakened team was created just to use whatever help they can get, but they have no intention of putting us in mortal danger.

“This content will also be included in the parental consent form. We will prioritize the well-being of students above all else, so don’t worry.”

“I see…”

Next, Adrian raised his hand.

Adrian had also studied the report, like me. Adrian asked with a calm face.

“Looking at this report, it says that dungeon information can be obtained through a ‘rank measurement device’ jointly developed by a certain defense company and the U.S. military.”

“That’s correct.”

“Is there perhaps a machine that can predict when a gate will open in Connecticut?”