Saiko No Sutoka -

"You know, Akira-kun," she whispered from the other side of a locked door, her voice dripping with saccharine sweetness, "I just wanted to be your number one. Your only one. But you kept talking to other people. Laughing with them. Don't you know? Friends are just enemies who haven't betrayed you yet."

Her eyes widened. No one had ever called her that without screaming. Saiko no sutoka

That was the key.

The first time she cornered him in the science lab, Akira didn't run. He stood still. He closed his eyes. He stopped breathing. The room fell into a profound, absolute silence. No footsteps. No humming. No knife scraping against the wall. "You know, Akira-kun," she whispered from the other

Akira smiled faintly and tucked the note into his drawer. He didn't know if she was real, or a ghost, or a fragment of his own lonely heart. But he decided that from now on, he would be kinder. To strangers. To classmates. To the girl who sat alone in the back of the classroom, drawing hearts in the margins of her notebook. Laughing with them