"Sometimes, the quietest discoveries are the ones that echo longest."
Sayaka sat alone by the window in the library.The note rested in her lap — folded, but not hidden.She hadn't read it again today.
Not yet.
She didn't need to.
She knew the words now.Every line.Every tiny curve of the handwriting.It lived in her like a melody stuck between heartbeats.
But it wasn't the words that unsettled her.
It was the voice in them.
Someone soft.Someone observant.Someone brave in secret, and quiet in the daylight.
And someone who saw Ren.
She glanced across the room.
Ren was there — two tables over, flipping pages of an artbook.He didn't look up. He rarely did.
But Sayaka had begun to notice:He moved differently lately.
His stillness wasn't idle anymore.It was searching. Resting in thought.
Not sketching.Not scribbling.Just… pausing.
Waiting for something?
She folded the note again, slowly. Deliberately.And tucked it back inside her planner.
Later that day, in literature class, Hana answered a question gently.She spoke of metaphors and unseen feelings in poems.Of "how some people only speak the truth when they write."
Sayaka's eyes lifted, only briefly.
The class moved on.The teacher nodded.But her chest tightened.
Was that coincidence?
Or had Hana said it for someone?
That afternoon, Ren passed Sayaka in the corridor.He smiled — barely. A corner of the mouth.It wasn't flirtation. It wasn't habit.
It was simple.Almost... shy.
She smiled back.
But only half of her meant it.
She walked slower after that.Lingering near conversations.Watching little things she hadn't noticed before:
– How often Hana stood near the garden wall.– How Ren looked up whenever someone approached from behind.– How quiet became different when the three of them were in it together.
The space between them had changed.
And Sayaka… didn't know where she stood in it anymore.
That evening, she sat at her desk.Planner open.Note beside her.
Unfolded.
"...that's when I think I see the most of you."
She pressed her thumb over the line.
It didn't hurt.
But something beneath her ribs shifted.
Not jealousy.Not anger.Just... the first hint of being left behind.
And she didn't even know by whom.
She didn't confront anyone.
She didn't speak of it.
But as she folded the note for the last time that night, she whispered to no one:
"You see him... differently than I do.""And maybe he sees you too."