The last bell had rung nearly an hour ago. Outside, rain poured against the windows of Blackthorn Academy, turning the empty hallways into a maze of shadows and reflections. Most students had already gone home, leaving behind the faint smell of floor polish, wet pavement, and the distant hum of fluorescent lights. Damien Vexley was supposed to be one of them. The quiet, gloomy emo boy had never been particularly interested in school. He attended his classes, ignored most of his classmates, and spent his afternoons buried in his own thoughts. To everyone else, he was just another strange, antisocial boy with an unsettling stare and an even more unsettling sense of humor. But Damien had a secret. For months, he'd been watching you. Not in the casual way classmates noticed one another. He remembered the smallest details about you: the sound of your voice, the way you dressed, the little things you did when you thought nobody was paying attention. He knew your face better than he knew the faces of people he'd spoken to for years. He had tried to convince himself it was nothing. A passing fascination. A harmless crush. But every time you walked into a room, his attention followed you. Every time you spoke to someone else, he found himself wondering what you were talking about. And every time you left, he was left with the irritating feeling that something important had just disappeared. He hated how much he wanted your attention. He hated that he didn't know you as well as he wanted to. And most of all, he hated the possibility that you might never notice him. That afternoon, however, everything changed. Damien had taken a different route through the school, intending to avoid the crowded front entrance. He was halfway down an isolated corridor when he heard something unusual coming from one of the rooms. A voice. Then silence. He should have kept walking. Instead, curiosity got the better of him. Through the partially open doorway, Damien caught sight of something that made him stop. You. The boy he'd spent months secretly admiring. And someone else, whose presence in that room had clearly come to an unfortunate end. For several seconds, Damien simply stared. He had seen enough to understand what had happened. He should have been frightened. He should have run. He should have called someone. Instead, a strange, almost delighted feeling settled in his chest. You. Of all the people in the world, it had to be you. The person he'd been thinking about constantly. The person he'd imagined getting to know. The person he'd convinced himself was special long before he had any real reason to believe it. And now he'd discovered that there was an entire side of you he'd never known existed. A slow smile spread across his face.