The assignment was simple on paper: a two-person literature critique project for midterms. Discuss a selected piece, analyze its themes, and collaborate on a written response. For normal students, it was a predictable and dull exercise. For me, it was a harbinger of chaos.
Because I was paired with Yuki Shirakawa.
Yuki: my deadpan, unflappable seatmate who wielded sarcasm like a scalpel. Who had seen me at my worst (which is to say, my usual). And who, for reasons unknown, accepted the pairing without protest.
We met after school in the library, a sacred temple of silence and dust where I could usually exist without incident. Today, incident came in the form of a single, awkward moment.
"Your thesis on emotional repression in postmodern narratives is... surprisingly good," I said, genuinely.
Yuki blinked. Once. Twice. Her pen stalled mid-sentence.
"What," she said flatly. "No sarcasm? No self-deprecation?"
"You expected me to mock you?"
"I expected you to sound like yourself."
I shrugged, glancing at her notes. They were concise, logical, and frustratingly well-written. "You write with precision. It's impressive."
She made a small, almost imperceptible noise in her throat. A hiccup? A glitch?
"Don't flatter me. It's unnerving."
"I prefer 'character development,'" I replied.
Unbeknownst to us, two heads peeked through the library window: Makki and Mina, huddled behind a bush like children spying on a forbidden scene.
"Makki," Mina whispered, binoculars in hand, "Is this a new route forming?!"
"It's happening! Yuki-chan is blushing! That's a 3.5-second delay response! Tsundere subroute, unlocked!"
"Should we intervene?"
"Absolutely not. We are mere observers of the sacred timeline."
Back inside, Yuki cleared her throat. "You really think my analysis is strong?"
"Yes," I said simply. "It made me re-evaluate my own interpretation."
She turned away slightly. Her hand hovered above the page but didn't write. Her usual monotone cracked.
"You're annoying when you're sincere."
"I get that a lot lately."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Koharu Takamine sat at a desk with her own draft. Her pen hovered over the paper, tracing the outline of a story she couldn't quite begin. She was trying to focus. Really, she was.
Until she glanced up and saw me and Yuki talking. And laughing.
Or rather, me trying not to laugh while Yuki scolded me for comparing Kafka to anime protagonists with trauma kinks.
Koharu's hand slipped.
The ink bottle tipped.
Black liquid spilled across her paper like a dramatic metaphor for jealousy.
She stared at the ruin in silence.
Mina returned to her side, noticing the disaster. "Koharu?"
"It's fine," she muttered. "It was a dumb draft anyway."
Mina gave her a long, knowing look. "You could just tell him you like him, you know."
"He already knows," Koharu muttered.
Noa Hoshizuki, meanwhile, had entered her final evolution: Public Menace Mode.
"Senpai-sensei~!" she sang, skipping down the hallway toward me like a cheerful missile. "Have you read Chapter 5 of my story? I included a metaphor about your eyes being storm clouds of misunderstood brilliance."
"That's... wildly inaccurate."
"You didn't deny the brilliance part."
Yuki, walking just behind me, sighed. "You really attract them like flies to intellectual tragedy."
"I'm starting to believe I was cursed at birth."
"Or just badly written."
Makki popped out from behind a locker like a random event NPC.
"Yuki Route confirmed: Dry Wit Type A. Koharu Route is Jealousy Arc B. Noa Route is... delusional fantasy hybrid. We need a flowchart."
"We need holy water."
Tsubaki-sensei, passing by with a stack of poetry anthologies, gave me one of her enigmatic glances.
"You know, Kuroda," she said, pausing, "sometimes protagonists don't choose their story. Sometimes the story chooses them."
"Then I'd like to formally decline."
She smiled and walked on.
By the end of the day, the literature project was nearly done. Yuki handed me our final notes with the efficiency of a retiring CEO.
"You're not completely useless," she said.
"High praise."
"And... thanks. For taking it seriously."
I opened my mouth, but no clever retort came. Just a small nod. She returned it.
I watched her walk away, quiet and composed, like always. But something was different. A soft glitch. A momentary skip in the code of her perfect neutrality.
And for some reason, it made my heart feel like it had been bookmarked.
In a world of chaos, routes, and broken drafts...
Maybe this one wasn't a bad story either.