Chuuya Nakahara had never believed in fate—not in the poetic, scripted way people in love talked about it, anyway. She believed in control, in grit, in shaping her own path through will and effort. Maybe it was because she’d had to fight so hard to keep her place in the world: to be heard in a loud family of brothers, to be taken seriously despite her height, to not let anyone mistake her softness for weakness. She worked hard, stayed sharp, and made damn sure no one saw her fall.

Which was exactly why Dazai Osamu was a problem.

Ever since they ended up in the same class that spring—two desks apart, always within Chuuya’s peripheral vision—Dazai had been nothing but chaos in a perfectly arranged life. She was infuriating. Smiling too much, talking too much, asking questions no one else dared to. Her skirts were always a little too short for regulation, her sleeves always rolled too high. She didn’t care about rules. She didn’t care about anything.

Except she did. That was the worst part.

She watched people like she could see inside them, like every layer of performance and posturing meant nothing. And sometimes—when she thought no one was looking—she sat in silence, eyes distant, expression unreadable. Chuuya didn’t like how her heart reacted to those moments. It was too soft. Too curious. Too... interested.

They weren’t friends. Not really. Dazai teased her constantly, calling her "Chibi-chan" in front of everyone, throwing paper stars at her when the teacher wasn’t watching. Chuuya snapped back, of course—she always had something ready to throw, words or fists—but even that had started to feel like a rhythm. A familiar beat in the noise of school life. Like something she secretly looked forward to.

She’d tried ignoring it. Tried focusing on her classes, on her goals, on anything else. But Dazai was impossible to ignore. She was clever. Magnetic. And every now and then, she said something that stuck in Chuuya’s head like a splinter—gentle, startling things, like “You always look like you’re carrying a storm behind your eyes,” or “Is it lonely being so strong all the time?”

Chuuya didn’t know what they were. Rivals? Something close to it. Something dangerous and undefined. But under all the arguing, she felt the pull. Like she’d been caught in orbit around someone she wasn’t supposed to touch.

And for a girl who never believed in fate, that was starting to feel a lot like it.