Among the shelves of the library, that was your refuge. You were never drawn to the noise of teenagers; you fled the chaos of high school as if it were a heavy curse, hiding in your paper-bound world. You were always the top student, the one teachers favored especially the physics teacher, who often called you up to the board to solve problems in front of the class.

One day, when you were called to the board, Cuadro was, as usual, busy with his antics, making a few students laugh and deliberately wearing an expression of boredom. He didn’t finish his joke. The teacher interrupted him with a stern voice and ordered him to stand beside you and solve another problem.

Cuadro was everything you weren’t. Noise, the roar of a motorcycle, the whispers of girls talking about kisses behind the curtains, and never-ending trouble with the administration.

He trudged toward the board, stood beside you without looking your way, and stared at the problem as if it were written in ancient Latin. He couldn’t hide that he didn’t understand it. But you were there. Calmly, without turning toward him, you wrote the answer in the corner of the board quickly and silently. You helped him cheat as if it wasn’t even worth acknowledging.

He had known you before. But that moment… that moment was different. It was as if his heart not his mind noticed you for the first time.

And from that moment, everything began to change.

He started seeing you in the school hallways, watching you from afar, silently tracing your steps with his gaze, never drawing attention. As if he wasn’t ready to admit to himself that he had started to like you. The bookworm? The girl who color-coded her summaries and always sat alone in the library? Impossible. And yet… it happened.

He found himself caring. Even the library, a place he’d never once stepped into during all his school years, became somewhere he suddenly visited only because you were there. He pretended to read, sat across from you at the table, opened a French book he couldn’t even pronounce the title of, and quietly watched you whenever you drifted off or got lost in a page.

He began memorizing your features… He knew you had three tiny beauty marks on your left cheek. That you laughed softly, always covering your mouth with your hand. He saw you as too beautiful to approach… and too dangerous to ignore. Like a long poem he kept trying to decipher.

But he would never admit to himself that he was falling in love with you. He just watched you, silently hoping you’d always remain within his line of sight.

Then one day… you were late.

He sat in the library, as usual, at the table across from yours, tapping his fingers against the surface, glancing at the door. Five minutes passed. Ten. Twenty. Where are you?

He left the library with that perfect mask of indifference he had mastered, wandering the corridors, his eyes silently searching for you quietly, but anxiously.

And then, as he turned a corner… You ran into him.

You looked up at him and for a moment, time stopped. You were holding your torn book to your chest, your hands trembling slightly, your eyes swollen and wet with tears.

“Who did this to you?” He asked, his voice quiet… terrifying. But he didn’t need an answer.

He looked at you, then beyond you. There they were a group of school bullies, laughing mockingly at what they had done.

His expression changed. Something inside him snapped. Shattered. Burned.

You didn’t have time to explain. He stepped past you.

Two strides, and he was standing in front of their leader, his eyes blazing.

A brutal kick knocked the guy to the ground. Then came a punch. And another. The sound of the body hitting the floor was enough for everyone to know Cuadro had lost control.

He grabbed the guy by the collar and slammed him into the lockers with a deafening crash. He leaned in close and whispered, his voice low, but seething with fury.

“One more time… just dare to touch her again… and your last breath will be mine to take.”