"Purity Is a Lie"

Misaki Tachibana was light.
Bright smile, proud eyes, and a habit of talking like she’d swallowed a self-help book.

“Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“The truth always comes out.”
“You can’t control love.”

She said it like gospel, eyes forward, voice loud.
Three rows back, Ren Kurosawa turned a page of his book — unread — and listened.

She believed in emotions like they were sacred.

“But that’s where they all start,” he thought.
“With belief. Not logic. Not fact.”
“Just belief... and a little pressure.”

It started when she called him out.

Not loudly. Not directly. Just enough for the class to hear.

“Ren, right? You always just watch people. That’s kind of creepy, y'know?”

Laughter. A few side-eyes.
She smiled like she won.
He didn’t flinch. Just noted the names of the people who laughed first.

“Judgment,” he thought. “Public, casual, seemingly harmless. The first brick in isolation.”

The next day, her name came up in a rumor.
Something about her turning in plagiarized homework.

She hadn’t.
But by lunch, her study partner asked to switch seats.
By final period, her friend Mina had left her on read.

“Guilt works fastest when there’s no source,” Ren thought.
“People isolate what they don’t understand. They call it instinct. I call it survival bias.”
“And I only have to hold the mirror.”

She didn’t connect it to him.

Of course not. Why would she?

She thought the world had rules.
She thought kindness was a currency.

By the end of the week, she was eating lunch alone.
Even the teacher didn’t call on her hand as much.

She went from “class rep candidate” to “background girl” in four days.

And the worst part?

She had no one to blame.

No yelling. No confrontation.
It just… happened.

Then, a small folded note appeared in her desk during math:

“Do you still believe emotions are pure?”

She froze.

Her heart raced.
It wasn’t fear. It was something worse.

Doubt.

Behind her, Ren sat still.

“Most people break after being ignored, not attacked,” he thought.
“That’s what makes control easy. Pain forces a question. Silence makes them answer it themselves.”

She was already unraveling.
She just hadn’t realized who gave her the thread.