The rumors kept building through the week, small and persistent, until one of them finally reached Charlotte directly instead of circling around her secondhand.
It came from a girl in her art class — something about Loid supposedly badmouthing Charlotte behind her back, some fabricated comment that didn't sound anything like him but was delivered with enough conviction that Charlotte felt an uncomfortable flicker of doubt before she could stop it.
She confronted him about it after school, finding him by the front gates, her arms crossed, her expression harder to read than usual.
"Someone told me you said something about me," she said, without preamble. "Behind my back. Is that true?"
Loid's stomach dropped. "No. Absolutely not. What did they say I said?"
Charlotte repeated it, and Loid felt something sharp and hurt flare up in his chest — not at Charlotte, but at the situation, at whoever had decided to fabricate something so specifically damaging.
"I never said that," he said, quieter now, more serious. "I would never say that. You have to believe me."
Something in Charlotte's expression shifted, softening slightly, though she didn't fully relax yet. "I want to. I just — I don't understand where this is all coming from. Why would someone make that up?"
"I don't know. I genuinely don't know. But I need you to know it's not true."
There was a long pause, Charlotte studying him carefully, and Loid found himself holding his breath, waiting, more anxious about her answer than he'd expected to be.
"I asked because I wanted to hear it from you," she said finally. "Not because I believed it. I just — I wanted your side, directly, instead of just assuming."
Something in Loid eased at that, a different kind of relief than he'd expected — not just that she believed him, but the specific way she'd gone about it, refusing to simply accept a secondhand story without giving him the chance to speak for himself.
He realized, standing there, the difference it made. She hadn't come at him already convinced of the rumor, already prepared to be angry. She'd come wanting his truth, specifically, deliberately, because she trusted that his answer would actually mean something.
"Thank you," he said, quiet, meaning it more than the simple words conveyed. "For asking instead of just believing it."
"Of course," Charlotte said, like it wasn't even a question. "I know you. Whatever's going on with these rumors, I'm not going to let some secondhand nonsense change how I see you. You'd have to actually do something, and even then, I'd want to hear it from you first."
Loid told her everything then — the strange conversation with Shaw, the vague, unsettling question about whether Charlotte "understood him," the small rumors that had started almost immediately afterward. Charlotte listened carefully, her expression growing more troubled as the pieces came together.
"That's not a coincidence," she said finally.
"No. Probably not."
"I don't know what his problem is. But I'm not going to let it get to either of us." She looked at him, steady and certain. "We're stronger than some rumors, right?"
"Right," Loid agreed, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he actually believed it. Whatever Shaw's plan had been — whatever he'd hoped to accomplish by planting small doubts and unfounded stories — it had done the opposite of what it presumably intended. Instead of driving a wedge between them, it had only made the trust between Loid and Charlotte more solid, more deliberately chosen, both of them having proven, in the space of one uncomfortable conversation, exactly how little the rumors actually mattered next to what they already knew about each other.
The following week, the rumors quietly petered out, the way rumors that failed to land eventually did once it became clear neither Loid nor Charlotte was going to react the way whoever started them presumably hoped. A few people apologized, sheepishly, for having repeated things without checking first. Most simply moved on, the way the school always seemed to, onto whatever fresh piece of gossip came along next.
Shaw himself became noticeably scarcer after that, avoiding the hallways he used to frequent, keeping to himself even more than usual. Loid caught sight of him once, near the end of the week, standing alone by the courtyard pillar again, watching — though this time, when Loid met his gaze directly, Shaw looked away first, something almost embarrassed in the way he turned and walked off without a word.
Loid didn't feel triumphant about it, exactly. Mostly he just felt tired, and a little sad, in a way he couldn't entirely explain, for whatever quiet unhappiness had driven someone to go to such lengths over something that, in the end, had barely touched what actually mattered between himself and Charlotte.
"Do you think he'll try again?" Charlotte asked, one afternoon, watching Shaw's retreating figure from a distance.
"I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think it matters much if he does."
"Why not?"
Loid considered the question, then looked at her, steady and certain in a way that surprised even himself. "Because I don't think anything he says is going to change what I already know is true."
Charlotte smiled at that, small and warm, and neither of them mentioned Shaw again for a long while after.
They spent the rest of that walk home talking about lighter things instead — an upcoming test neither of them had studied for, a movie Emily kept insisting they all needed to watch together, the increasingly cold weather that meant Loid's grandmother had started insisting he wear a scarf every morning, something he complained about loudly and secretly didn't mind at all.
It felt good, Loid thought, to have something ordinary to talk about again after a week that had felt anything but. The rumor scare had been unsettling in a way he hadn't fully processed until it was actually over — a reminder, quiet and uncomfortable, that not everyone around them was necessarily happy to watch the two of them grow closer. But it had also, in its own strange way, proven something valuable. That whatever this was between them, it could survive more than just their own occasional clumsiness. It could survive outside pressure too, deliberate or otherwise, and come out the other side even steadier than before.
"You know," Charlotte said, as they reached her street, "I think I trust you more now than I did before all this happened. Which is a strange thing to say, given how awful the week was."
"I know what you mean, though," Loid said. "Same, honestly."
She smiled at that, and they said their goodnights, and Loid walked the rest of the way home thinking that maybe some difficult weeks were worth it, in the end, for what they left behind once they were over.