The afternoon campus was washed in soft orange light from the setting sun, and the chatter of students heading downstairs faded away in the stairwell.
I carried a plastic bucket filled with water, and with Unyielding backing me up, the weight felt no different from an empty bucket, but I still had to act like it was heavy to keep my normal-person cover.
Today was my turn for cleaning duty, so I had to stay at school, and this was exactly the kind of extra energy drain I hated most.
The water surface swayed a little with my arm, and my footsteps echoed through the empty hallway.
Ever since I got forced into that basketball game, the aftereffects had lasted way longer than I expected.
These past few days, my presence in class had clearly gone up.
The most obvious change was that more classmates greeted me when I walked into the room in the morning.
Boys who used to be just blurry faces would wink at me and say, "Morning, Block Hero."
A few bolder girls would giggle and tease when I passed.
Those changes were still manageable, and they weren't a big deal.
In their eyes, I was still the guy with terrible stamina who could sometimes pop off with a little talent, so my normal-person cover hadn't collapsed.
The real trouble came from two things.
First was Seraphina.
She had clearly heard the full story of that game from other people, and the way she looked at me became hard to read again.
It felt like she had found out the broken toy still had a hidden feature, and that kind of checking stare made my skin crawl.
Second, a few pink envelopes started showing up in my desk drawer, the one that used to be packed with reference books.
These sudden love letters gave me a headache, and I honestly didn't get it.
It was just a basketball game where I slacked off the whole time.
I got lucky and scored once, and I blocked one shot, so why did that suddenly boost my popularity this much?
Were these girls' hormones really that cheap, or was this kind of world just that shallow and direct?
What I saw as trouble looked like a miracle worth worshiping to Baron and Dexter.
When they watched me toss those unopened envelopes straight into the trash, their faces kept flipping between jealousy and real pain.
They came to a simple, brutal conclusion: play basketball and you look cool, and if you look cool, you get love letters.
So now they yelled in my ear every day about "starting today I'm training basketball for real," and they kept begging me to teach them the block secret.
All I could give them was silence.
After school, the noisy campus settled down.
I dragged my steps as I carried the bucket toward the stairs leading to the classroom, and I was already planning which sets of practice papers I'd grind through tonight.
Then, at the corner, a slim and quiet figure grew larger in my line of sight.
It was Runa.
She had her backpack on and came down from upstairs, and she was wearing a custom uniform that looked perfectly pressed with not a single wrinkle.
She walked lightly and without sound, and it looked like she had just finished packing up and was heading home too.
My first instinct was to pretend I didn't see her.
I dropped my head right away and locked my eyes on my washed-out sneakers.
Getting tangled up with someone like her, someone who sat at the center of trouble, was never part of my plan.
"Luke?"
I acted like I didn't hear and kept walking with my head down.
I wanted to dodge this pointless social moment in the lowest-energy way possible.
But Runa walked straight in front of me.
A faint clean smell reached me, like clothes that had been washed and then dried in the sun, and it didn't have that aggressive perfume Seraphina wore.
"Luke."
Her voice came again with a smile, and it was gentle but hard to ignore.
Since my plan got blown up, I had to stop.
My hand tightened around the bucket handle, and a few drops splashed out from the sudden halt.
I looked up and put on my standard social mode expression.
"Runa, still not heading home?"
"I just went to the office to ask the teacher a few questions."
Her answer was as polite as always.
She glanced at my bucket and then her clear eyes showed she understood right away.
"Is it Class 3's cleaning duty today? That's rough."
"It's fine. It's just my turn," I said, and I was already getting ready to make an excuse and leave.
But she didn't look like she planned to go.
Instead, she switched topics like she was chatting with an old friend.
"Lately… I heard you've been getting a lot of… letters?"
Her voice was low, and it didn't sound like she was fishing for gossip.
Her face didn't have that excited look other girls had either, and she just stated it like a fact.
"Huh?"
I didn't expect her to bring that up, so the awkwardness hit fast.
"It's all a misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding…" she repeated softly, and she didn't dig deeper.
Her eyes slid past my face and landed on the long shadow behind me, stretched out by the sunset.
"Speaking of that…"
Her tone drifted like she was lost in a memory.
"Luke… you've always been like this."
"Like what?" I asked, confused.
"I mean… you're good at helping people while acting like it's nothing."
Her eyes returned to me, and they looked softer than usual.
"Back in middle school… I always wanted a chance to properly thank you."
Middle school? Thank me?
My brain kicked into overdrive, trying to search through memory scraps I had tagged as low value and cleaned out ages ago.
As a hardcore energy saver, I only kept details about key people that could matter later, and everything else got wiped.
So the search result was…
Nothing.
So I said the only honest answer I had.
"Did I? I've basically forgotten."
I was about to say something else to end the talk, but I noticed something weird happen to her expression.
That steady gentleness didn't disappear, but it turned into the kind of gentleness that made you uneasy in winter.
The small curve she usually kept at her lips flattened, and it even dipped a little.
She just stared without speaking, and her almond eyes turned into something deep and dark like old wells.
A cold feeling climbed up my spine, and every survival instinct in my body started screaming.
I didn't know what I said wrong.
But I did know I had to leave right now.
"I still need to mop, so I'm gonna go."
It was the worst excuse I could've picked.
I didn't wait for her reply, and I carried the bucket and hurried past her like I was running for my life.
Behind me, that stare still felt like something real stuck to the back of my neck.
Did she… look kind of mad?
The thought flashed by, and I killed it instantly.
No way.
That was Runa Selol, one of the top beauty with zero bad reviews on the school forum, so how could she get mad over something small like me forgetting the past?
Yeah… since it's come to this, don't think about it.
Clean first, and then go home early and study.
…
I didn't notice that after I left, Runa stayed there for a long time.
Her soft face showed nothing, and she just stood still.
She didn't move her eyes until my back disappeared, and the last bit of sunset light reflected through the glass and stretched her shadow long across the floor, lonely and a little off.
With a slender hand that looked like it couldn't lift anything heavy, she rested her palm on the metal railing.
Her fingertips slid across the cool painted surface, and then her fingers slowly curled in, one by one, until she clenched tight.
She didn't make a sound.
But the solid iron railing, as thick as a forearm, let out a faint metallic groan as it twisted under the pressure of her soft hand.
After who knows how long, she finally loosened her grip.
Then she started walking again and headed downstairs with her usual light, quiet steps.
On the smooth railing, a clear dent remained, shaped like the outline of her knuckles.