Chapter 1: Silence After School

Silence.

As the school hallways emptied, the only thing left behind was the dust drifting through the evening sunlight.

I put my bag over my shoulder.

— Haru, are you running away again? You're coming to the café. No objections.

Sato suddenly appeared beside me, as if he had been waiting for the right moment to stop me. He was one of the few people who had stayed by my side since middle school.He could always tell whenever I was trying to get out of something, but he never stopped bothering me anyway.

— I'm skipping today. I'm exhausted.

— Dude, you're exhausted every single day. You're coming tomorrow, or I'll knock some sense into you.

— We'll see.

He just smiled, lightly hit my back, and continued walking.

As Sato's footsteps disappeared at the end of the hallway, I made my way toward my locker.

I opened the locker near the school entrance and took off my indoor shoes. While putting on my outdoor shoes, I raised my head slightly and looked toward the courtyard.

The members of the soccer club were shouting as they adjusted their gear and ran around the field, running around the field. A short distance away, the muffled sound of an electric guitar from the music club room echoed through the courtyard. Several groups of students walked toward the main gate while laughing together.

Everyone had somewhere to go and something to do.

Normally, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do too.

Leave school, walk to the bus stop, and go home.

Change clothes...

Clean up the mess...

Make dinner...

Today, even those simple things felt exhausting. I wanted to put studying and everything else off until the weekend again.

I stopped two steps before reaching the courtyard gate.

A strange feeling of reluctance appeared inside me.

I didn't want to go home today.

I turned around and went back into the school building. Walking against the flow of people, I headed toward the stairs leading to the lower floor.

My steps eventually brought me to the quiet, dim hallway at the end of the first floor.

A small brass plate hung above the wooden door.

Library.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The smell of old paper and dust...

The sunlight slipping through the blinds, leaving golden lines across the wooden floor...

This was why I liked this place.

Nobody expected anything from me here.

I moved to the shelf at the very back and leaned my back against a wooden pillar. I picked up a random book and began flipping through its pages.

It was one of those moments when time slowed down and the noise inside my head disappeared.

Then, the door creaked softly.

Someone entered the library.

I didn't raise my head from the book. Making eye contact with someone, saying hello, starting a small conversation...

Those things felt tiring to me.

The sound of footsteps slowly approached the shelf where I was.

They stopped in front of the shelf beside me.

The first thing I noticed was her long black hair and the perfectly neat school uniform she wore.

There wasn't even a single wrinkle. From her socks to the length of her skirt and even the button on her collar, everything was almost unnaturally neat.

If someone dressed like that had been in my class, I probably would have remembered her.

At least, that's what I thought.

She reached out and took a book from the shelf.

She didn't say a word.

She didn't even look at me.

She returned to her own world of silence.

She looked at her book.

I looked at mine.

We didn't talk.

We hadn't even properly seen each other's faces.

But somehow...

At that moment, the library didn't feel as lonely as it usually did.

It was strange.

But I didn't know why.