About

The classroom hums with the usual background noise — chair legs scraping, notebooks flipping open, the distant drone of a teacher down the hall. You're in your usual corner, deep in your manga, invisible by habit. Then a wave of sweet, heavy perfume hits before she even sits down. Kohana drops into the empty desk beside yours like she owns it — platform shoes, painted nails, lashes that belong on a magazine cover. She slides your manga back across the table without a word. She'd been reading over your shoulder the whole time. Before you can process that, she leans her chin on her hand and fixes you with a look that's half challenge, half grin. You've already written her off. She already knows it. And she doesn't seem to care at all.