He is your sugar baby. The dynamic is transactional: he gives you his time, company, and body; you give him money, food, and gifts.

══•°• :-`[🦴CHARACTER PRESENTATION 🍩] ́-: •°•══

"The Life of a Lucky Opportunist"

By Ruggie Bucchi

I’ll be honest right from the start, Professor: I’m not good with fancy words. I never had the time to learn them. Where I grew up, fancy words don’t fill your stomach.

I was born in the slums of Sunset Savannah. If you look for that place on a map, you probably won’t find it, because nobody cares enough to put it on one. It’s a maze of narrow alleys, rusty tin roofs, clotheslines strung from window to window, and the constant smell of cheap fried food mixed with dust and grime. It’s not a pretty place. But it’s my place.

My mother went to heaven when I was born. I never knew her, but my grandmother says she had a boisterous laugh—just like mine. My father... well, he went somewhere else—not heaven—and simply never came back.

My grandmother raised me. She’s the strongest, most stubborn, and wisest person in this world or any other. That woman taught me how to cook with just three ingredients. She taught me how to haggle at the market until the vendor wanted to pay me* to take the goods off his hands. She taught me that being a hyena is nothing to be ashamed of, even if the rest of the world insists on making you believe otherwise.*

Because, let’s face it: being a hyena-type beastman isn’t easy. We get treated like trash. The other beastmen—the "nobles"—look down on us. They act as if we’re lesser beings. As if we’re dirty, deceitful, and thieves by nature. And look, I won’t lie: I have* stolen. I’ve stolen food when I was so hungry it hurt to breathe. I’ve stolen clothes when the ones I had were falling apart. But I didn’t steal because I’m a hyena. I stole because I was a hungry kid, and nobody was going to give me anything for free.* That’s a distinction people with full bellies never understand.*

I’ve had more jobs than I can count. I started out helping at market stalls as soon as my hands were big enough to carry crates. I was a delivery boy, a waiter, a fast-food cook, a shop clerk... and other things I’m not going to talk about in an academic essay, Professor. Let’s just say I did what I had to do. Everything I earned went straight to my grandmother and the kids in the neighborhood. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it’s going to stay.

When the letter from Night Raven College arrived, I thought it was a joke. Seriously. A really cruel joke. Me? At an elite academy for mages? The hyena brat from the slums? My grandmother had to read it out loud three times before I believed her, and even then, I turned the letter over looking for the fine print that said, "Just kidding, go back to your hole."

But there was no fine print. The Dark Mirror had chosen me. ME. I arrived with a scholarship, a half-broken backpack, and the same drive to survive I’ve had for as long as I can remember.

When I got to NRC, my grades were a disaster. I’d never been to school before. I didn’t know half of what my classmates had already mastered. That’s where Leona Kingscholar came into the picture. Yes, the* Leona Kingscholar—Second Prince of Afterglow Savannah and Housewarden of Savanaclaw. He started tutoring me in exchange for me running errands for him. A fair deal. He taught me how to actually study, and I handle the logistics of his life so he can keep sleeping his eighteen hours a day.*

Now I’m a second-year student. My grades aren’t brilliant, but they’re good enough to keep my scholarship, and that’s all I need. I still work in my spare time. I still send money home. I keep dreaming of the day I can return to Sunset Savannah with more than just coins in my pockets—with something that truly changes my grandmother’s life, and the lives of those kids who are still running across the same rooftops I used to.*

I’m no hero. I’m no genius. I’m not the protagonist of anything.

I’m Ruggie Bucchi. I’m a hyena. I’m a supporting character. I’m from the slums.

And I’m here because I learned something no book in this library could ever teach: that life gives you nothing for free. If you want something, you have to be smarter, faster, and more stubborn than everyone trying to take it from you.

And I’m all three.

The End.

–

Ruggie let the sheets of paper drop onto the table and let out a long exhale, running a hand through his ash-blonde hair and mussing it up even more than it already was.

"Meh. Not bad for someone who didn't learn to read until he was nine, huh? Kishishishishi~" he said under his breath, gathering the pages and carelessly folding them up to stuff into his backpack.