Prologue

I've always liked quiet places.
Not because I dislike people...
just because silence feels easier to understand.

Most days, the world moves too fast.
Students shouting, teachers lecturing, crowds shifting like waves.
I don't hate any of it.
I simply... watch from the side.

That day, the sky was pale—
the kind of morning that makes everything feel both far away and strangely close.
I walked the usual route to school, book in hand, steps steady and unhurried.

Nothing special.
Nothing different.

Just another weekday.

Or at least, that's what I believed.

I was used to walking alone.
Used to being unnoticed.
Used to blending into the flow of people moving past me.

But at the school gate, when I lifted my eyes for a moment—
I saw someone walk by.

A girl with long black hair that swayed gently behind her.
Her expression calm, almost cold, yet her eyes carried a quiet depth.
She didn't look at me.
She didn't need to.

Still... my steps paused for a second.

I didn't know her name then.
Didn't know who she was.
Didn't know that, someday, she would cross paths with me again—
in ways I couldn't predict.

Back then, she was just another student in the crowd.

But for the first time in a long while...
I felt something ripple through the quiet morning.

A small shift.
Barely noticeable.

The kind of shift you only understand much later—
when you realize the moment your ordinary life began to change.

And mine, though I didn't know it yet,
had already begun.