Ok, so I decided to post this cut chapter from Act 1 as a bonus chapter. 
I added this scene with Calvin and Justin because I love them and they got too little screen time. There’s a few easter eggs in there that might or might not be very obvious to spot. 

Enjoy! 
♡
/ Frida aka Furipon

Girls weren't supposed to be in the boys' dorm, not even before the door closed at eight. That was one of Greenwode's simple rules, the kind Yosuke understood. But somehow they'd appeared anyway, giggling down hallways and occupying spaces that felt sacred just hours ago. Even his and Erik's room had been invaded—the perfect order of their shared sanctuary disrupted by purses and makeup bags and the sweet scent of whatever Karin kept spraying into the air.

Yosuke huddled in their tiny bathroom, door locked against the chaos outside. The mirror showed a boy trying too hard not to be himself—dark hair falling in his eyes, bright blue irises stark against cheap white face paint.

Monster Mash faded out, replaced by familiar synthesizers. Ratio's mumbling voice filled the hall—"The Original," one of his early hits. The lyrics wrapped around complex metaphors about laboratorial experiments and Seraphims, somehow making theology sound cool and seductive over a pulsing dance beat.

Name‘s Mathematical, Irregular, Rational, International (Sensational)

"No way!" Someone shouted. "Not this poser shit!"

"It's totally gothic!" Karin's voice rose in defense. "Listen to that organ intro. Plus, he was like, mega hot at nineteen."

Ratio kept panting:

Ah, I’m the Irresistible, Untouchable, Genetical, Hypocritical, Sensational.

I’m the Original.

And don’t forget it…

More arguing, then grudging acceptance as Ratio's dark groove thumped through the dorm's thin walls. Yosuke studied his reflection, carefully painting fake blood at the corner of his mouth like the vampire on Miller's discount cape package.

He looked nothing like Count Dracula, just a washed-up boy with messy dark hair and big blue eyes, cheap face paint already cracking around his eyes and full lips.

A sharp knock startled him. "Come on, space cadet!" Karin's voice carried that edge of command she'd developed lately. "Let's see your costume!"

Yosuke's fingers trembled on the doorknob. Through the gap, he could see his room transformed—Erik's perfectly made bed now covered in jackets, while girls passed around red cups of what looked like ordinary Fanta. Why did suddenly everyone enjoy the orange soda as much as him? Room 32 that had sheltered him now felt like a stage where he didn't know his lines.

Leon sprawled on Yosuke's bed, fur patches glued to his chest and legs, looking more "stripper who got mauled" than werewolf. His Greenwode basketball shorts rode low, showing a strip of skin that made Yosuke's throat tight. The black nose paint was already smudging from how often he rubbed it.

Karin's zombie nurse costume showed exactly how not-dead she felt—white fabric torn strategically, fake blood placed to draw attention rather than disgust.

Adjusting his flimsy vampire cape, he stepped fully into the room.

"Seriously?" Karin's perfect eyebrows rose as she inspected Yosuke. "That's your costume? God, you look like some community theater reject. Even Erik's weird toxic paint job beats this."

"Leave him alone K," Leon said, but he grinned, clearly buzzed. His hand found Karin's waist, smearing fake blood onto her costume. The fur patches on his chest were already starting to peel off.

"I could help," Karin stood, swaying slightly. "Got some better makeup in my purse. Make you look less... you."

Less you. The words hit harder than they should. Yosuke backed toward the door as Karin approached with her cosmetics bag, bumping into Erik's perfectly organized desk. Silver paint tubes rattled and fell to the floor.

"Come on, just let me fix—" She reached for his face with unsteady hands, reeking of vodka and orange soda.

"Not everyone can pull off the sexy monster look, babe," Leon said without conviction, pulling Karin back down the bed with him.

"Your costume's a disaster, much like the rest of you," Erik told Leon, sounding extra precise and cold in his Tin Man costume—expensive gray clothes and silver paint turning him robotic, mechanical as he sat over his desk, a clear liquid in his tall glass. Water or something stronger, impossible to tell.

Karin left Leon's side and thrust someone's abandoned plastic cup into Yosuke's hands instead, something orange and sharp-smelling sloshing inside. Definitely not just Fanta.

"Drink up, space cadet!" She clinked her cup against his. "It's called a Screwdriver. It'll help you relax."

Yosuke glanced at Leon, who caught his eye and winked, making Yosuke's stomach flip in ways that had nothing to do with the dubious drink.

"Just sip it slow, dude," Leon grinned, scratching a fur patch. "Like, no pressure and stuff."

Yosuke lifted the cup to his lips. The smell hit first—sweet-rotten, like Fanta gone wrong, something chemical underneath that scraped his throat before he'd tipped the cup.

"All the way, space cadet, c'mon—"

He drank.

It burned. Not hot—bleach-burning, hospital-burning, sharp and wrong. His face contorted before he could stop it, eyes squeezing shut, mouth pulling back from his teeth.

"Oh my GOD—"

Karin shrieked, doubling over, one hand braced on his shoulder. "Did you see his face? He looked like a cat—"

"It tastes—" Yosuke coughed. "It tastes like—"

"It tastes like vodka, you absolute disaster, drink more, drink more—"

She clinked her cup against his, hard enough to slosh, cheering him on. Leon was laughing too, that low surprised laugh he did when something genuinely caught him off guard, and Yosuke's back itched, sudden and hot between his shoulder blades.

"I really could grab you a Fanta," Erik said from the doorway, the cold can already in his hand.

"I'm good," Yosuke said. The word came out a little soft at the edges.

Karin whooped. Leon's grin widened and he reached for her without looking, pulling her down onto the bed beside him by the small of her back. She landed half across his lap, giggling, and his hand slid up her thigh—over the torn white fabric of her nurse skirt, fingers spread wide, settling there like he'd done it a hundred times.

Yosuke's stomach did something cold.

Karin tipped her face up to Leon's, and Leon's mouth opened against hers slow, then closed, then opened again, the rhythm of it loose and practiced. Her painted nails scraped lightly down his cheek, leaving four pale lines through the smudged black nose paint. Leon's thumb worked a small circle against her thigh.

Yosuke didn't move. The cup was warm in his hand. He watched Leon's mouth open and close on hers, the wet small sound of it audible even over Ratio's bass, and the dark thing in his belly twisted tighter—heavy, hot, mean, a feeling he had no name for and no idea what to do with. His back itched harder. He looked away found Erik’s gray eyes. One eyebrow raised.

"I'm good," Yosuke managed, proud of how casual it sounded. See? He could do this. He could be normal, be cool, be whatever Leon wanted-

"Oh my god, what's this?" Karin's voice cut through his thoughts. She'd found his penguin book, papers sticking out. Her fingers reached for a drawing before Yosuke could process what was happening.

"NO!" The screech erupted from somewhere primal as Yosuke lunged forward. "Don't touch it, you... you evil fiend!"

The room froze. Yosuke clutched his book to his chest, penguin drawings safely contained, but aware he'd just made a sound previously unknown to human ears. His face burned beneath the vampire makeup.

"That..." Karin blinked, then burst out laughing. "That was like a pterodactyl having a panic attack! I didn't know boys could even make that noise!"

Someone's drink had spilled in his lunge, leaving orange patches on Erik's perfect gray carpet. A girl Yosuke didn't know was sprawled across his bed, skirt riding up, giggling at his outburst.

Leon watched him with those dark eyes that seemed to see too much lately. "Chill, dude. Nobody's gonna steal your-"

But Yosuke couldn't handle it - the mix of pity and amusement in Leon's gaze, the way he kept touching Karin's waist, how biology and hormones and everything about being human seemed designed to push them apart. He grabbed the basketball from under the bed.

"Here," Erik offered that cold Fanta anyway as Yosuke fled past, but he was already gone, those sharp nails on his back probably back again, threatening to burst through cheap fabric, Ratio's hypnotic voice, Karin's "God, what a freak" and Erik's concerned "Joskey, wait-" following him down the crammed corridor. He almost made it.

"—gotta take the glasses off, dude, that's the whole bit—"

"I can't see without 'em, Justin, jeez—"

Yosuke skidded around the corner and nearly plowed into them. Calvin, ginger curls aggressively spiked into something that was trying to be six-year-old chaos and mostly looked electrocuted, red-and-black striped tee stretched over his soft middle, knobby knees sticking out of khaki shorts in November. Behind him, Justin loomed half a foot taller in a cheap orange-and-black tiger one-piece—the kind they sold at Fred Meyer for kids and that he'd somehow stuffed his lanky frame into. Black greasepaint stripes streaked his cheeks beneath sharp black eyes. His stoic face hadn't moved an inch to commit to the bit.

They froze. Yosuke froze. The basketball was clamped against his ribs like a shield.

"He's still wearin' the glasses," Justin said flatly, to no one.

"Cuz I'm blind, dude—"

"Calvin's not blind. That's the whole thing."

"Yah, well, this Calvin is." Calvin pushed the glasses up his nose with a freckled knuckle. "Nobody's gonna get it anyway."

"They're gonna get it. We hang out so much people already think—" Justin clamped his mouth shut.

"Already think what?"

"Nothin'."

"No, finish it—"

"Nothin', Calv."

Calvin's ears went red behind the spiked-up hair. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then his eyes landed properly on Yosuke for the first time. The argument died.

Yosuke felt the look. He shifted the basketball higher against his chest. The cape was sliding off one shoulder and he didn't have a free hand to fix it. His face was hot under the cracked paint and he could feel where the fake blood at his mouth had smeared.

"Whoa." Calvin's voice softened. "Space cadet, you okay?"

"Yo, basketballin' Drac!" Justin tried, too loud. "Slam dunk by night, suck necks by—uh—"

It hit the floor and died there. Even Justin winced.

Calvin took a half-step closer. His sneakers squeaked on linoleum. He didn't say anything for a second, just looked at Yosuke—really looked, the way Calvin did sometimes, like he was running numbers behind his glasses. Then he glanced down the hall toward Room 36, where the bass was still thumping Ratio through the walls, and his face did something complicated.

Yosuke wanted him to stop looking. He also didn't.

"Hey. Y'know you don't gotta," Calvin said.

"Don't gotta what."

"Hang with Leon's crew." Calvin shrugged, awkward but steady. "I'm just sayin'. Leon used to be a nerd, ferreal. Sat with us in seventh grade, role-played and everythin'. Then he hit it off with Karin sophomore year and turned into kind of an asshole."

“Facts” Justin said, crossing his arms and nodding once, like he was Calvin's bodyguard verifying a statement.

"And Erik—" Calvin made a face. "Erik's tryin' so hard to be cool he's loopin' back around to weird. Or like, he thinks he's above everybody. Either-or."

Yosuke's mouth opened. Nothing came out. His back itched harder, a hot crawling between his shoulder blades that he couldn't reach.

"But you don't gotta copy 'em," Calvin pressed on. "Like, you can just hang with us. We're nerds, sure, but the jocks leave us alone, mostly. We got D&D Thursdays. We got snacks."

Justin laid a hand flat over his tiger-striped chest. "Never been bullied. Whole life."

Calvin's mouth quirked. "We got ways."

He winked. Justin snorted. 

Yosuke stared at them with big eyes. The hum of teenagers chatting filled the hallway. Karin's laugh ricocheted from their room. Calvin with his electrocuted hair and round glasses, Justin in a tiger costume he'd outgrown by a decade, both looking at him like the answer to the question was obvious.

It wasn't. It was the wrong question.

"I like Leon," Yosuke heard himself say. "When it's just us."

The words landed between them and just sat there.

He didn't wait to see what their faces did. He ducked past Calvin's shoulder and took the stairs two at a time, the basketball thumping against his hip, cape catching once on the banister and tearing a little more.

Behind him, Justin's voice carried down after him, low and unhurried.

"You clock that, Calv?"

A pause. The crinkle of a soda can. The long suck of a straw.

"I clocked it, Hobbs."

Cold air hit like salvation. The basketball court made sense—no social games, no half-naked werewolves, no drunk girls trying to fix him. Just rules he understood.

His cheap cape billowed as he dribbled. Crossover, pivot, shoot. The ball arced through darkness, finding net sometimes, bouncing into shadows more often. Music drifted from foggy windows above, fresh laughter spilling down.

He retrieved a wild miss, cape catching on a bush and tearing. Didn't matter. Nothing up there mattered.

Headlights swept the courtyard. A police cruiser crawled past the school grounds, blue-white beams catching him mid-shot. Yosuke froze, basketball clutched to his chest like armor. Time stretched. The painted face that felt authentic minutes ago turned garish under examination—fake blood too bright, cape too cheap, everything wrong.

The cruiser slowed. Stopped. Engine idling while the spotlight held him pinned. His breath clouded in the cold air, the only movement he dared. Above, the party continued unaware. Down here, a boy in a torn costume waited for judgment.

The light lingered a beat too long before the engine rumbled back to life, taillights disappearing around the corner.

Darkness returned, deeper than before. The ball resumed its rhythm, softer now, more cautious, as if remembering some creatures weren't meant to be seen.