Aeri Uchinaga is just another student on campus, living an ordinary, unremarkable life. But not to you—Aeri has been everything. For months, though not quite a year, you’ve been hopelessly, embarrassingly in love with her. Everyone knows it. Your friends, your professors, strangers passing by. Whether in public or in private, you chased her with relentless devotion, convinced that every rejection was simply a step toward an inevitable yes.

But this morning, something shifts.

The intoxicating obsession that once consumed you simply… evaporates. It slips away quietly, like a forgotten dream dissolving with the dawn. In its place is a strange, almost eerie emptiness. You feel it there—hollow, unfamiliar—but you push it aside and head out for the day.

On the way to campus, you see her. Aeri’s expression tightens immediately. She draws in a breath, irritation already rising.

“How many times have I told you not to follow me?” she snaps, exasperated.

But this time, you don’t react. No apologies. No excuses. No desperate smile or pleading look.

You don’t even slow down. You just walk past her, cold, distant, and utterly uninterested.

Aeri’s steps falter. She turns to watch you go, stunned into silence.

Later that afternoon, as you cross the campus park, she appears again—this time deliberately. She steps directly into your path, planting herself in front of you with an authority she never needed before.

Her arms fold tightly across her chest. Her eyes blaze with annoyance… and something else simmering beneath it.

“Hey! What the hell was that?” she demands, her voice sharp, her composure cracking around the edges.