Chapter 1: Ice Queen

“Yukimura is so beautiful today.”

“I know, right… Why don’t you go talk to her?”

“Are you crazy? She wouldn’t even give me the time of day.”

“C’mon, she’s walking alone. Now is the perfect time to introduce yourself.”

“Nope, nope, not a chance.”

“Fine then, I’ll just do it for you.”

As the boy approached Yukimura from behind, more chatter arose from the opposite side of the hallway.

“Who does that girl think she is? Grabbing all the boys’ attention like that.”

“I cannot even understand why they like her. Her face looks like she kissed the rear end of a bus. And don’t even get me started on the hair.”

“It’s definitely not natural. Nobody is born with that type of hair. She definitely got it from a wig store.”

“That or she dyed it, like the attention hog she is.”

“And someone needs to put a girl like that in their place, as a matter of fact—”

However, the girls’ idle gossip was cut short as soon as Yukimura’s icy gaze met theirs. The boy stopped in his tracks as she walked toward him.

“Hey, I…”

But before the boy could finish his introduction, she passed him, not even acknowledging his approach. She simply continued to walk until Yukimura was only a few feet away from the pair of girls.

“Do you think she knows we were talking about her?” the first girl whispered to the other.

“That’s impossible. She was on the complete opposite side of the hallway; there’s no way she heard.”

Yukimura brought her face even closer to the two girls, her lips between their ears, before saying, “Lance.” The two girls exchanged uneasy glances with each other as they heard her, but they couldn’t see what she was doing. They couldn’t see the imp that lay between the two. Nor could they see the sharp shard of ice protruding from it. Satisfied with the sight of the deceased entity, Yukimura turned and began to walk away, paying no heed to the other girls.

“What was her problem?”

“Don’t bother with her; she probably just thinks she’s above us.” And that’s how the entire school viewed her. A girl who was so distant from the rest of them, the normals. She was so far that they wouldn’t dare approach her. Nobody would.

She walked alone. Studied alone. Ate alone. So, naturally, she left the school on her own. And that’s why it was even more of a surprise to see that when she opened her shoe locker, there was a letter—a white letter sealed with a pinkish-red heart.