Chapter One: Blood on White Shoes

It happened on a Monday.

The kind of Monday that tastes like burnt toast and iron. The kind where everything is just slightly off—too hot, too bright, too loud. Sirenelle Qays was walking through the school hallway like a ghost in a perfectly pressed uniform, her headphones in, ignoring every voice, every stare. Her books were pressed tightly to her chest. Her eyes? Empty.

She didn’t expect the blood. Not so early in the day.

Screams came first. Then a crash. Glass. A thud. And then—

Silence.

Until it wasn’t.

She turned around the corner of the west staircase, the usually quiet one, and saw him—Andras Cruz—lying on the floor, his white shirt blooming red. His head was tilted back. Blood was dripping from a cut above his brow. His knuckles were scraped. His bag had exploded, papers everywhere.

Three juniors were standing over him, unsure whether to help or run.

"Get a teacher!" someone shouted. But Sirenelle didn’t move.

She just stared.

He had always been quiet. Tall. Kept to himself. People whispered about his past—how he vanished for two years and came back older, sharper, quieter. No one really knew what happened. They just knew not to mess with him. He looked like he could break someone’s face and then go back to solving math.

Now he was on the ground, bleeding.

Her shoes stopped inches away from him. Pristine white leather, now splattered with his blood.

His eyes opened slowly. Unfocused. Then… they found hers.

Everything else disappeared.

No voices. No footsteps. No chaos. Just his blood, her breath, and the silence between them.

“You good?” she asked, voice calm.

His lips parted. A drop of blood rolled down his cheek.

“I am now,” he said.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

It wasn’t the words. It was how he looked at her—like her face was something he’d memorized a thousand times before. Like this moment was meant to happen. Like the pain was worth it if she was the one to witness it.

She blinked. And backed away.

“Someone help him,” she muttered, and turned to leave.

But as she walked away, her heart—usually quiet and cold—was pounding.

Because those eyes? They knew her.

Too well.

---

Sirenelle sat at the edge of the school garden, fingers picking at her thumbnail, mind spiraling against her own rules.

Why was he looking at her like that? Why did her pulse spike when he bled at her feet like something feral and devoted? She didn’t like this. She hated this. She had clawed her way out of chaos. Cleaned her name. Erased her past. She didn’t need another boy obsessed with her. Especially not some junior freak with pretty eyes and a messed-up record.

But his voice… that little line—“I am now.”

It replayed like a dirty echo.

She hated how it made her curious. Curious enough to open Instagram during her free period and type his name.

Andras Cruz.

Private account. No profile pic. Zero posts. But she’d recognize the username—he’d sent a follow request a year ago. She never accepted.

She stared at the request still pending.

And for the first time in a long time, her finger hovered.

She didn’t accept it.

But she didn’t delete it either.

---

Meanwhile, Andras sat in the nurse’s room, cotton against his brow, blood crusting at the edge of his temple.

He could still smell her. Her perfume—subtle, vanilla and fire. Her voice—flat, but not cruel. Her eyes—wide for a split second before she covered it up. She felt something. He knew it. He had waited too long not to recognize that crack.

And she saw him.

Not just looked—saw.

“She’s gonna run again,” he whispered.

But this time, he wasn’t going to let her.

He had waited. Obsessed in silence. Respected her space. Stayed in the shadows like a coward. But now? Now she had looked back.

And that was all he needed.

Let the game begin.

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