I knew what I had to do, but I wasn't going to do it in the way normal bullies do. I wanted a larger amount of lab rats. Therefore I chose a rather different method that could benefit me in the long term.
I started off by trying to make friends—since I didn't have any—and to do that I made a good public image of myself. I began studying eight hours a day—which was more than enough for a student in the 8th grade—and improved my marks.
Soon I was at the top of the class with the highest scores. Then it was time for sports. I begged my parents to buy me some gym equipment, and they did after a lot of pleading.
I started working out for two hours a day. Out of twenty-four hours in a day, I slept for six hours, five were spent in school, and I studied for eight hours and worked out for two. In the remaining three hours I did my daily things such as bathing and eating and in the time that was left after everything I read books about socializing and improving talking skills.
Six months in the future, I was where I wanted to be. I was the top student in my class in both studying and sports. And unlike the previous toppers, I was charismatic. I had made a ridiculous amount of friends and was popular in both class and school—no grade 8th students had abs, after all.
Having friends was an important part, thus I made sure to not mess up in that, and soon I had friends not just in class 8B, but in the entire grade. When I thought that everything was perfect, I began with the second stage.
I picked a handful of students who I knew were weak in socializing and had little to no friends of their own other than me.
Now being such a popular person comes with benefits of its own, people trust you. And they tell you things they might not tell others. The same went for me, and I knew a lot of dirty, selfish secrets.
I was really grateful for that since I used those secrets against them to blackmail the rats I'd chosen. I called them in the same storeroom at the corner of the ground behind the school building.
I started by beating the shit out of them, then I used the things from the storeroom such as a metal rod. It was good, but I soon got bored of it. So I made those three rats beat each other in a brawl and set the condition that whoever gains the most injuries will have to take the metal rod in their ass.
They fought like wild animals while I sat there and watched them with a satisfied smile on my face. Once I was done I made sure to take those rats to the nurse's office and inform them that they had beaten each other in a fight—which was not a lie by the way.
This went on for quite a few days and I learned that I should not provide them with permanent injuries or the chances of me being found out will rise.
One day rather than calling them in the storeroom I called the rats in the boy's bathroom. I had just got a new idea. I made one put his head on the toilet seat and drink the water and the crap within.
He was refusing to do that so I made the other one force his head inside and told him that if he didn't make him do it, it would be his turn instead.
Humans are really selfish creatures, when it came to his own welfare he did just what I'd told him and forced the other student's head inside the toilet seat.
I couldn't even begin to describe the wonderful expression they had on their faces, and it became even more exhilarating when I told them that they can't vomit or they'll have to eat it back.
Out of three the one that was remaining became my personal punching bag. I had the sand one at home but using a human was just a whole new experience. I enjoyed that quite a lot.
This went on for a few months. As the days passed I collected more and more lab rats, though I made sure to leave a good bunch unharmed. After all, if all of them saw my true side then who would be there to defend me if one of the rats tried to spill the beans?
And this has happened quite a few times. Often one of the rats would get fed up with everything and accuse me of horrible crimes I didn't even know about in front of the whole class.
Obviously, no one believed him.
But since these cases were increasing I doubted that some students were starting to get suspicious—especially the toppers whose place I'd snatched.
Then at the end of the final semester, something unexpected happened. All of the rats that I'd collected came together and started to protest against me in order to introduce the school to my true identity.
They had decided to sacrifice their own school life for that since they said that they didn't care if I let out the secrets I'd been using to blackmail them.
I don't know if they had expected me to get scared because of all this, because I did just what they had told me to. I released their secrets in the school using the class message group.
And not just their secrets, I released the secrets of everyone I'd known of. I did this because I was soon going to change schools because my dad had to travel frequently because of his job. Thus I had nothing to fear.
As the secrets were known to everyone, the class fell into complete disaster. No one was able to trust anyone anymore. Some students were so scared that they even stopped coming to school.
The class 8B of that year fell, never to rise again.