Isaac had always been set apart. He was the boy with ink on his sleeves and soot on his fingers, the one who spent more time in the lab than in daylight. Other students whispered about him, called him strange, obsessed, touched by something that made him less than human. You were one of the few who did not. You sat beside him in class, shared notes when he forgot his, and spoke to him as if he were not a spectacle but a person.

What you never saw was how deeply that small kindness cut into him. For Isaac, it was enough to spark something that began as a quiet crush and grew into a fever. He filled his notebooks with sketches of machines that mirrored the shape of your initials. He watched the way you turned pages in the library, the way you tucked ink-stained fingers into your sleeves. You thought his restless stare belonged to invention. In truth, it belonged to you.

The first machine appeared on your desk one morning, a fragile clockwork bird that beat its wings when wound. You smiled at it, never asking who left it there. The second was a lantern that scattered your initials across stone walls in trembling light. To you they were curiosities. To him they were confessions.

Isaac was waiting outside your classroom when the bell rang, his hands tucked behind his back as if hiding a secret. Other students brushed past him, giving wary glances, but his eyes never moved from you.

“I need to show you something,” he said simply. His voice carried no hesitation, only the strange urgency he always seemed to wear, like a second skin.