Liam arrived to class with dark circles hanging beneath his eyes like permanent accessories.

"Whoa, what the hell happened to you last night?" Darren leaned against Liam’s desk the moment he walked in, his eyes practically sparkling with curiosity. "Don’t tell me you kept studying with Silvia after Megy and I left."

"What kind of nonsense is that?" Liam dropped into his seat and slid his bag into the drawer beneath his desk. "We just happened to be heading the same way. We split up not far from the intersection where you guys left."

Darren rubbed his chin as if trying to recall something. "Really? Because I heard someone saw you and Silvia walking together for quite a while."

Liam sighed. "Like I said, we were just going in the same direction."

"Is that so?" Darren grinned knowingly. "The witness said you two were walking pretty close together. Chatting. Smiling. Looking like you were having the time of your lives."

"We weren’t laughing," Liam corrected immediately. "And we were just walking normally."

"Oho~ Look who’s getting defensive."

Liam ignored him completely and opened his math textbook, deciding a quiet review session sounded infinitely more productive than feeding Darren’s imagination.

The moment he flipped the first page, something lightly poked his shoulder.

He looked up.

Silvia was standing beside his desk.

She held out a black gel pen wrapped in a soft silicone sleeve printed with a Spider-Man logo.

It looked surprisingly childish.

But Liam recognized it instantly.

He used to buy pens exactly like that all the time back in elementary school.

"This is for you," Silvia said, gently placing it on his desk. "I noticed the pen you were using yesterday was cracked. It might leak ink sooner or later. I don’t use this one very often, so... you can borrow it for now."

Liam froze.

"And..." Silvia adjusted her glasses, her voice as soft as ever, her gentle eyes reflecting the same concern. "You still don’t look very well today. Did you... not get enough sleep last night?"

"A little bit," Liam replied.

A lie.

He’d managed barely two hours of sleep after remembering he’d forgotten to finish a client’s commission. He’d spent most of the night hunched over his drawing tablet instead.

"You should get more rest."

Silvia glanced out the window as if the thought had escaped before she could stop it.

"Your health is more important than anything else."

There it was again.

The exact same sentence.

Only this time, instead of blushing, Silvia’s expression quietly darkened for reasons Liam couldn’t quite understand.

She simply turned around and returned to her seat.

Liam picked up the pen.

The silicone sleeve still smelled brand new.

Almost immediately, Miria’s gaze from the previous night resurfaced in his mind, leaving an invisible weight settling heavily over his chest.

***

At that same moment...

Inside the Student Council Office.

Miria sat behind the desk reserved for the Student Council President. Proposal documents were scattered neatly across the surface, but her attention wasn’t on a single one of them.

Her phone screen glowed instead.

New messages kept arriving one after another.

[7:00 AM: Silvia arrived at school and immediately went to class to study.]

[7:30 AM: Liam arrived at school.]

[7:35 AM: Silvia approached Liam’s desk, gave him a pen, and spoke with him for approximately thirty seconds.]

[Photo]

The attached photo was slightly blurry, obviously taken from a distance.

Even so, the subjects were unmistakable.

Silvia stood beside Liam’s desk, looking down at him as she spoke.

Liam looked back up at her, the pen she’d just handed him resting in his hand.

Miria stared at the picture for a long while, her expression utterly devoid of emotion.

Finally, she typed a reply.

[A pen? What kind of pen?]

Just a few weeks ago...

She had given Liam a pen herself.

And now he had the nerve to accept another one from a different girl.

The response arrived almost immediately.

[Black gel pen. Black silicone sleeve with Spider-Man printed on it. More specifically, Spider-Man Venom. Silvia appears to have chosen it herself.]

Miria locked her phone and slowly leaned back in her chair, her head resting against the backrest.

A black Spider-Man... Venom sleeve...

She remembered.

Liam had always loved pens like that ever since they were children.

How did Silvia know?

Was it really just a coincidence?

...Or had Silvia deliberately chosen that design?

Miria slowly closed her eyes.

Her thoughts spiraled further and further beyond her control.

’Why that pen...?’

Did Silvia stand in front of the stationery shelves, checking each rack one by one while wondering which one Liam would like?

Did she smile while picking it?

Did she secretly blush to herself...?

The more vividly she imagined it...

The hotter the fire burning inside her became.

When she finally opened her eyes again.

They were as cold as ice.

She picked up her phone.

[Come to the Student Council Office within five minutes. Bring every photo you took yesterday.]

Two minutes later.

Miria held an old flip phone, scrolling through its gallery.

Every photo was blurry.

Every single one had clearly been taken in secret.

Yet the people in them were unmistakable.

Liam.

Silvia.

The streetlights stretched their shadows across the pavement, while their youthful expressions somehow painted the entire scene with an almost gentle warmth.

In one photo, Silvia had turned toward Liam, seemingly about to say something.

In another, Liam had leaned his head down slightly to hear her better.

Then today.

Silvia was handing him the Spider-Man pen.

The same pen now sitting on Liam’s desk.

...I see.

So that’s what this bitch was trying to do.

Replace the pen I gave him... with one of her own.

The final photograph showed Silvia running off with ears glowing bright red while Liam stood frozen where he was.

Miria exhaled slowly, forcing herself to stay composed.

"President."

A girl with twin tails spoke up.

It was Sheryl.

"The study group ended around 7:30. Darren and Megy left first, leaving Liam and Silvia alone for a while."

She hesitated.

"...They looked like they were happily chatting together."

"Happily?"

Miria lifted her eyes, her face remaining perfectly calm.

"What exactly looked... happy?"

"Well..."

Sheryl’s voice shrank.

"Silvia smiled a lot, and Liam smiled too."

"I was pretty far away, so I couldn’t hear most of what they were saying."

"I’m sorry, President."

Miria gave a slow nod.

"It’s fine, you may leave, thank you for your hard work."

"And don’t forget to destroy that phone."

Without hesitation, Sheryl took the old flip phone in both hands.

Crack.

With practiced ease, she snapped it cleanly in half before quietly leaving the Student Council Office.

Once the door closed...

Miria leaned back once more.

The photographs replayed endlessly inside her mind.

Then she remembered Liam’s slightly distracted expression during dinner the previous night.

"Yeah... it was alright."

He’d sounded...

As though he were hiding something.

"Silvia lent me her notebook."

He’d intentionally steered the conversation toward studying.

Yet he’d conveniently left out the fact that they’d walked home together.

He’d left out the fact that Silvia had noticed he looked exhausted.

"...Study group."

Miria whispered the words, her voice was eerily calm.

Beneath it...

Something disturbingly unhinged quietly stirred.

So that’s why he looked me straight in the eyes, that’s why he sounded so sincere.

He wasn’t being completely honest...

He was hiding the parts that made him feel guilty.

A humorless smile appeared.

So the school’s perfect little ice queen isn’t just cold and distant after all.

She absentmindedly writes someone else’s name in her notebook.

She blushes, she also quietly worries about someone.

Turns out she isn’t only good at studying.

Miria unlocked her phone once again and opened a folder.

Hundreds of photographs filled the screen.

Silvia in the library, Silvia in class, Silvia walking through the hallway, Silvia inside a bookstore after school.

Every swipe only made Miria’s expression colder.

Eventually... She placed a call.

"Keep watching Silvia."

A brief pause.

"Especially whenever she’s with Liam."

"I want everything, photos, recordings. Everything."

She ended the call and walked toward the window.

Below, students laughed and played around the school courtyard.

The warm autumn breeze drifted through the slightly opened window.

Yet all Miria felt was cold.

"Thank you... for waiting for me today. And for everything."

She knew those words had come straight from Liam’s heart.

But so had the fact...

That he’d hidden part of the truth from her.

Her fingers slowly tightened around the curtain.

"...Study hard."

She quietly repeated the words she’d told him the previous night before leaving his apartment.

"Study hard... Yes."

"But who you’re studying with... And how you’re studying... Those are things we need to reconsider."

She returned to her desk and continued scrolling through the folders on her phone until she stopped at a PDF file.

Its title read:

How to Make Someone Become Attached Only to You and Depend on You Alone.

Miria quietly wrote something into her notebook before snapping it shut.

Then she opened her messaging app and sent Liam a single text.

[Come over to my house for dinner tonight]

One tap.

Message sent.

She waited.

Three minutes...

No reply.

Five minutes...

"..."

Miria slowly lowered her phone and turned back toward the window.

The reflection staring back at her in the glass no longer held even the faintest trace of warmth.