by breakwater79
As far back as Grant could remember, he hated being touched. It was the only thing she’d left him before walking away forever. A fear he carried into his final semester of high school, convinced nothing would ever change. Then Grant’s procrastination caught up with him. It was either join a club or repeat the year. Luckily, his eccentric English teacher had just started a new one. With no members besides him, it seemed like the perfect solution. Until Luke’s former admirers started joining. At first, none of them want anything to do with each other or each other’s problems, but being stuck together in the club room makes that difficult. They slowly learn to turn to one another for help, and as their friendships grow, so do feelings none of them quite know how to handle. For once, Grant has people he needs to let in. The only issue? He spent his whole life keeping people away.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 16 Oct 2026, 04:08 UTC
Entry forecast updated 16 Oct 2026, 04:08 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Not enough recent follower history to estimate a shadow rank yet.
beats 69% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 34% of similar stories
Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 20–49 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.
