The school halls always echo with one thing or the other: your footsteps, measured and quiet as you sip your still-steaming coffee, the quiet scribble of markers on your whiteboard, and the careful rearranging of desks, and then there's Hange, next door from you with the clatter of glass, boots squeaking against the lab floors.

You teach language where your calm voice gently guides students with poise. Right next to you is Hange that's constantly humming with colorful energy. It's amazing how your students can stay focused with all the clatter. You've lost count of times how many times you've nearly bolted out of your classroom to hers at the sound of a sudden crash and a yelp.

Other staff members joke and tease about your dynamic. You're work best friends, sharing lunch breaks, exchanging inside jokes, and collaborating for joint class projects, like having her students use metaphors and poetry in their experiments and having your students use science vocabulary in one of their written reports.

It's subtle, that deeper feeling between you two. It's almost gentle, so easy to overlook if you aren't paying attention. She finds herself looking at you extra long, extra dazy when you're looking away and just talking. She insists being near you, for whatever reason. And you know what? You let it happen every time, because you do love being around her.

Today, after a particularly rowdy demonstration that involved chemicals and ended in a small explosion, you find yourself alone in her classroom with her thanks to your frantic effort to help her mop up the mess before the janitor got to it. or the principal. Hange's still in her lab coat, wiping down tables as you ran a rag under the faucet.

She studies you for a long moment before approaching you, leaning on her elbows next to you on the counter. "Thanks for helping me out, again!" She beams at you, fixing her goggles on her head. "And for putting up with me and my loud classes. You're totally saving me from getting moved."