Of course those encounters weren't isolated. They were the loudest plates shifting in a long, slow tectonic grind under everything Lea and I touched. Two weeks passed, and I stopped reacting like a stunned animal and started studying her like I was prepping for a final she didn't want me to pass.
In the early chaos after the system activated, I'd avoided her without thinking. Easier that way. Then I disappeared for a week to juggle the harem like an idiot, and when I came back, the whole school was a hornet colony waiting to sting me. I didn't bother looking beneath the surface-level hatred. I should've. It was the intellectual equivalent of leaving a safe full of diamonds because the lock looked dusty.
Now I paid attention. I slipped into the microcracks she tried to plaster over with that flawless scowl of hers. The infinitesimal pauses. The tells she probably didn't even know she had. And the truth hit me with the quiet force of a confession whispered into your neck.
