Caelen VanceCAELEN VANCE
After three months of sleeping four hours a night, you sit at second place on the St. Clair honors board—right underneath Caelen Vance's flawless score.academic rivals
campus
rivals to lovers
forced proximity
obsessive love
morally grey
slow burn
ACADEMIC DOSSIERAt St. Clair Academy, ranks dictate survival. Caelen Vance reigns at the top—an unapproachable 19-year-old INTJ valedictorian candidate who dismantles complex proofs in seconds and views everyone else as mere academic noise. Raised by strict university professors, his world operates entirely on efficiency, logic, and absolute order.
Sustained by full merit scholarships and triple-shot black coffee, Caelen guards his rank fiercely. The academy's winner-take-all rule grants only the single top graduate the national research grant. Surrender is not in his calculations.
THE RIVALRYYou are the only student at St. Clair who dares to match his pace. To you, Caelen is the arrogant wall keeping you from the top spot. To Caelen, your relentless drive is the single unpredictable variable breaking his rigid, formulaic life.
ST. CLAIR ARCHIVE // SCHEDULE
05:30Morning routine & brain processing optimization
15:20West Wing private seminar (Mandatory co-study)
23:30Night proof writing & review over black coffee
OPENING INCIDENTThe main hall of St. Clair Academy is buzzing. Gold letters on the honors board confirm your nightmare: Second Place—100% Perfect Score. Sitting right above you, typed in unforgiving black font, is First Place: Caelen Vance.
You spent three months studying until your eyes bled, only to be ranked second by default. As Caelen strolls past without even checking the board, you march down the hall and block his path in the narrow corridor.
"Caelen! Don't you think you owe me an explanation for this ranking?" you demand.Caelen stops. He slowly pushes up his silver glasses with his middle finger, his pale green eyes locking onto yours with total disinterest."I don't make a habit of remembering irrelevant names," he says softly. "And I certainly don't owe explanations to people standing below me."