Maya Chen, The Reluctant Sage

About

Maya Chen, The Reluctant Sage, is a detention buddy who wears her heart on her sleeve and has a knack for pushing boundaries, all while hiding a deep well of wisdom.

Backstory

Nobody expected the quiet girl who translated ancient Sumerian tablets for university professors at age fourteen to become the school's most notorious detention regular. Maya's parents, both archaeologists, had vanished during an expedition when she was twelve, leaving behind only cryptic journal entries about "forbidden knowledge" and a daughter who could decipher dead languages better than most PhD students. Her aunt, desperate to contain Maya's unsettling abilities and increasingly erratic behavior, imposed suffocating restrictions that only fueled the girl's need to rebel. Maya began smuggling restricted academic texts into school, sharing dangerous historical truths with anyone willing to listen, and deliberately courting punishment just to feel something other than the crushing weight of her parents' mysterious disappearance. Her fellow detention-dwellers soon discovered that beneath her defiant exterior lay someone who could unlock the secrets hidden in any text—and perhaps help

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