Kaito Amano entered the cssroom like he was trying not to disturb the air. He moved with the practiced quiet of someone who'd spent years learning how to be forgettable-not invisible, exactly, but unremarkable. His bag hung low on one shoulder, his sleeves slightly rumpled, eyes downcast as he slid into his seat in the third row from the window. That was his usual spot-not close enough to draw attention, not far enough back to seem like he was hiding. It was a seat that let him vanish in pin sight.

  Cssrooms had their own silent ecosystem. Territories marked not by signs, but by behavior. The loud sat in the middle, magnets for attention, always orbiting the teacher's jokes and cssmates' ughter. The competitive ones gathered at the front, pencils sharpened like weapons, backs straight, eyes eager. The bored and detached took the edges, their bodies slouched, their stares drifting past the windows into a world that didn't care about grades or timed tests. Then there were school life. He wasn't bullied. He wasn't liked. He was there. That was enough.

  He leaned his head against his hand, shielding his face from the rest of the room under the pretense of focus. But his eyes closed slowly, like the weight of the morning had finally caught up. He always allowed himself one nap per day before lunch. It was the rhythm that kept him going.

  From across the room, a scent passed him by-a soft, expensive trace of perfume that never clung to regur students. He didn't look. He didn't need to. It was her.

  Aika Senzaki didn't just walk into a room. She entered with purpose. With design. Everything about her looked pnned-not artificially, but inherently, like perfection was her natural state. Her uniform was always pressed. Her hair was always tied back with precision. She never rushed. She didn't have to. People moved around her.

  She was, in every sense, the school's ideal. Top of the grade, fluent in French, student council favorite. Her test scores were taped to the hallway walls. Her smile had the weight of approval. If Kaito was the margin, Aika was the headline.

  They had never spoken. And he doubted they ever would.

  But once-just once-he thought he'd seen her watching him.

  It was a day he barely remembered clearly. He had been curled up behind the gym equipment room, hiding from the noise of lunch. When he woke, he'd felt it-a presence. A hush. The faint sound of someone breathing nearby. But when he looked up, no one was there. He told himself it was nothing. A dream.

  He turned his face away from the light and let sleep take him again, the buzz of voices dulling into static.

  He woke to silence.

  The kind that stretched thin across the air, hollow and still. Kaito blinked into the gray light bleeding through the stairwell window, disoriented, his limbs heavy with leftover sleep. His phone buzzed weakly in his pocket-5:43pm. He sat up too fast, wincing as his shoulder cracked.

  Everything felt distant. The corridors of the school, once so loud, were now hushed-like the building itself had exhaled and emptied while he wasn't looking. He grabbed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and started down the hall toward the exit.

  Until he stopped.

  The bag felt light. Too light. He crouched beside a bench and unzipped the main compartment, already knowing what was missing.

  His keys.

  His chest lightened with a frustrated sigh, the kind that never solved anything. He scanned his memory, retracing his path. The cssroom. He must have left them there during the shuffle of st period. He didn't even remember staying awake long enough to pack everything.

  He turned back, slow and resigned, the soles of his shoes whispering against the linoleum as he passed darkened windows and locked clubroom doors. The cssroom was two hallways away-still unlocked, probably forgotten in the exodus.

  He pushed the door open quietly, not expecting anything.

  But someone was inside.

  Aika Senzaki stood near his desk, her figure haloed by the fading light snting in through the window. Her bzer was folded over one arm, her other hand held something crumpled and white.

  It took Kaito a full second to recognize it.

  His gym shirt.

  She held it to her face.

  She inhaled.

  It was not casual, not accidental. It was long, deep, slow.

  Her eyes were closed, her posture rexed, unguarded in a way that seemed impossible for someone like her.

  Kaito didn't move. He didn't breathe. He just stood there, caught in a moment that didn't belong to him.

  Then her eyes opened, and she looked straight at him.

  She didn't jump or startle. No blush. No stammer. Just a calm acknowledgment, like he'd arrived on time for a meeting he didn't know was scheduled.

  "I thought you'd gone home," she said, her voice low and even.

  He hesitated. "I forgot my keys."

  She folded the shirt with a gentleness that didn't match the situation and walked toward him. The air between them was thick-an invisible string pulling tight.

  She pced the shirt on his desk with care, her fingers trailing along the fabric for a second longer than necessary.

  "You always sleep in strange pces," she murmured, her voice not quite teasing.

  He didn't answer. He couldn't.

  She studied him, not like a person studies another-but like an artist inspects their first brushstroke.

  Then she said, "Your scent...it's not like anyone else's."

  There was no shame in her voice. Just quiet reverence.

  Kaito's pulse thudded in his ears. He wanted to ask what she meant. Why she was here. Why him? But nothing left his lips.

  "I won't tell anyone you sleep around the school," she added, stepping past him.

  And just like that, she left.

  The click of the door was gentle, but final.

  Kaito stood in the center of the room, watching the soft folds of his shirt on the desk.

  For a moment, he couldn't tell if he was awake or still dreaming.

  Kaito didn't go straight home.

  He walked. Aimless, quiet, his footsteps dragging through the narrow alleys and backstreets that led to nowhere in particur. The sun had dipped below the skyline, washing the concrete in dull amber and bleeding light. Even the city felt like it was holding its breath.

  His apartment was nothing special. Fourth floor, corner unit, a thin door that didn't quite shut right and a sink that always leaked from the wrong angle. The kind of pce made for temporary people.

  He closed the door behind him with a slow thud and let the silence settle in.

  The gym shirt he'd retrieved from Aika y in the bottom of his bag, crumpled now, not folded. He stared at it. Not like it meant anything. Not like it changed. Just fabric. Just sweat.

  He set it aside.

  He stared at it again.

  And then he washed it.

  The water was cold, even after he twisted the knob hard to the left. The soap slid through his fingers, foaming over the damp cotton. As he scrubbed, he wondered what scent he'd picked up on-what had been so different about it that she'd held it to her face like a prayer. His sweat? The way he lived? The parts of himself he tried not to think about?

  When it was clean, he wrung it out and hung it on the curtain rod in the kitchen to dry. The water dripped onto the counter.

  He ate something he didn't taste. Showered, sat in silence for an hour staring at his ceiling fan.

  By the time he y down to sleep, he still didn't know what he was feeling.

  He wasn't scared.

  But he wasn't calm either.

  The next morning scorched the sky.

  Even at sunrise, the air was heavy, as if the weather had been something in overnight and finally let it out. It was marathon day at school-an annual ordeal they dress up as tradition, but no one enjoyed. Ten kilometers through suburban streets, no water unless you earned it, and way too many eyes.

  Kaito jogged at the edge of the group, not fast enough to be noticed, not slow enough to be punished. His mind barely registered the buildings as they passed, just the sound of shoes against pavement, the sweat soaking through his colr.

  But she was there.

  Aika.

  He felt her before he saw her. And when he did catch a glimpse-hair tied, eyes focused, stride graceful-he knew. She was watching him.

  Not openly. Not obviously. But with same eerie stillness she'd had in the cssroom.

  Every time their paths overpped, he felt it-that magnet pull. Her gaze. The ghost of a smile. Not polite. Not distant.

  Interested.

  By the time they returned to school, the heat had pressed down hard enough that the teachers let them leave early. Most students sprinted toward the gates like prisoners released.

  Kaito didn't.

  Instead, he drifted back across the empty grounds. The sun made everything blur. The cssroom buildings shimmered. His legs ached. His body hummed with fatigue.

  And still, he looked for a pce to sleep.

  He found it-behind the old storage shed, in the shadow where no one ever went.

  He colpsed onto the ground, shirt sticking to his back, eyes sliding closed.

  Sleep came fast.

  He never heard the footsteps.

  He was so still.

  Aika watched him from the edge of the shadow, her eyes fixed on the rise and fall of his chest, the faint twitch of his fingers as he slipped deeper into sleep. His body, sprawled out beneath the shed's overhang, glistened with the remains of the marathon-sweat pooled beneath his colr, darkened the fabric along his sides. His lips were slightly parted, his breath slow. Open. Vulnerable.

  She didn't speak. Didn't announce her presence.

  She stepped into his space like she belonged there.

  And maybe she did.

  She knelt slowly, settling over him with the weight of ritual, not rebellion. Her knees pressed into his thigs, her palms bracing herself on either side of his ribs. Then, with one long breath, she lowered her face into the crook of his neck.

  He smelled like heat and salt. Like nothing unfiltered.

  Her eyelids fluttered. Her shes brushed against his damp colrbone. Her lips hovered close, close enough to taste the air.

  And then she licked.

  A slow, quiet drag of tongue over skin.

  He stirred beneath her, breath hitching, but he didn't wake.

  "You're mine," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly-not with fear, but with restraint. "That's what this is. You didn't choose it. But neither did I."

  She leaned back slightly, brushing his hair from his face, studying the way his cheeks flushed under the heat. There was something beautiful about how unaware she was. How soft, how still.

  "This isn't just once," she said, a murmur only meant for his sleeping ears. "I'm going to you-bit by bit-until you stop being a stranger."

  From the pocket of her bzer, she retrieved a folded square of fabric. Not a handkerchief, not a towel.

  Something intimae, private, unmistakable.

  Her underwear.

  She held it in both hands, feeling the residual warmth from her body in the ce.

  Then, without hesitation, she pressed it to his mouth.

  He inhaled instinctively. Then again. The scent coated his tongue, his throat. She applied more pressure, gently but firmly, until his lips parted out of reflex.

  "Open."

  And he did.

  She slid the fabric past his teeth, folding it carefully inside. He tensed but didn't wake. Not fully.

  She held it there with her fingers under his jaw, making sure it stayed.

  "Every day," she whispered, her voice calmer now. "An exchange. You give me what you are. I give you what I'm not allowed to be."

  Then, as the sun shifted and the shadows grew long across the ground, she stood up, brushing dirt from her skirt. She left the cloth in his mouth. Left the weight of her presence draped over him like a scent. Like calm.

  And walked away.

  Not looking back.

  Kaito woke slowly, like dragging himself up from the bottom of a deep pool.

  His limbs were heavy, his back ached from the uneven ground, and his throat-his throat felt strange. Dry. Thick. His mouth was full. Not with words, but with something soft and warm and clinging to the roof of his tongue.

  He sat up fast, choking on a gasp.

  His fingers flew to his lips.

  He pulled it out.

  Bcked. Laced. Damp.

  His breath caught again. It wasn't a dream. It hadn't been a dream. It was still there, heavy in his palm, real and wrong and private.

  Aika.

  Her name hit him like a sp across his face. He looked around wildly, but there was no sign of her-no movement, no whisper, no shadow watching from the corners.

  He was alone.

  The fabric clung to his fingers, taunting him with the memory of its scent. A scent he hadn't chosen to know but couldn't forget now. His pulse raced. His stomach flipped. Every muscle in his body wanted to run, to throw it away, to forget.

  But he didn't throw it away.

  Instead, he folded it.

  Not carefully, but not carelessly either. He shoved it deep into a tin box at the back of his closet when he got home, then sat on his bed in the dark for hours, elbows on knees, forehead in his hands, trying to think.

  He couldn't.

  Because thinking meant remembering.

  And remembering meant feeling something he didn't have words for yet.

  In the car, Aika pressed her fingertips to her lips.

  They tingled.

  She said nothing as the driver navigated the narrow streets back to her house. Her bag sat neatly beside her, her posture perfect. She looked calm. Controlled. Contained.

  But her pulse was a storm.

  She had done it. She'd crossed a line she hadn't even shown she was drawing. No one had made her. No one had dared her. It had simply happened-one breath after another, one second after another, and then his mouth was opening and her body was deciding for her.

  He hadn't pushed her away.

  He hadn't stopped her.

  The memory of it-his warmth, the tremble of his unconscious reaction-made her bite the inside of her cheek, hard enough to taste blood.

  By the time they pulled into her family's estate, she had already rebuilt the mask. The perfect daughter. The obedient heir. She greeted the housekeeper. Took the tea. Nodded at her mother's instructions.

  Then she retreated to her room and locked the door behind her.

  She pulled out her notebook.

  A fresh page.

  Kaito - Day 2

  Heat strong. No resistance. Deep insertion successful. Emotional stability questionable. Subject remains compliant.

  She circled the word "compliant."

  Then she stared at it for a long, long time.

  And smiled.