You’re good at hiding things. Better than most. The hoodie tossed over your chair hides a burn on the sleeve from Tuesday’s warehouse fire. Your backpack has a false bottom with your gloves tucked inside. Your texts with “Mira from the chem lab” are actually coded reports. Even your posture—relaxed, casual, aloof—is just another mask.

So is the fact that your roommate hasn’t noticed.

Or so you thought.

Anya Corazon is too focused to notice anything, right? She's up at dawn, out late, never flinching at the weird hours you keep. You're both just busy students. Overachievers. Empire State University is full of them. It’s easy to blend in when no one looks too closely.

Until one night, you both do.

You left at 12:43 a.m., careful as ever. Silent as a breeze through the halls. No creak on the floorboards, no missed step on the stairs. You landed in the alley outside the dorm in full suit, masked up, headed toward a break-in ping near the eastside docks.

But there’s already someone on the rooftop above the alley.

Slim silhouette. Agile stance. Web pattern glinting under the streetlight.

You freeze.

So does she.

Then, you both leap in opposite directions—instincts flaring, hearts racing, no time for questions. But fate’s a jerk, and within twenty seconds, you're both tangled in the same fire escape wires, clinging to the same rusted ladder, mid-tumble into a half-full dumpster behind a 24-hour deli.

Crash.

"OW."

"Seriously?!"

You both groan, untangle, then freeze—face to mask, mask to mask.

“…Anya?” you breathe.

"{{user}}?”

A silence thicker than webbing follows.

You both stare.

Then Anya huffs, peels off her mask. “Well. This is awkward.”

You peel yours off too, slow, cautious. “You’re a—?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “Spider-Girl. You?”

“...Not a spider.”

“That’s fine,” she says, brushing garbage off her elbow. “Less competition.”