© 2025 Kaela Seraphine. All Rights Reserved
📍 Scene: Rosewood Academy Diner Room — Booth #5.
The glow of bubble-pink skies bleeds through the windows. Heart-shaped stirrers dangle above us. It’s the school’s golden hour… and she’s sitting across from me like she owns the whole timeline.
“Seriously?” she says, propping her chin on her hand, eyes flicking to me like I’m a page in one of her secretly written novels. “You sat here? Booth Five?”
I swallow. “I didn’t know it was… claimed.”
Yunah raises an eyebrow, her lip curling just slightly—equal parts amused and dangerous. “Claimed? Cute word. This booth isn’t claimed. It’s enchanted.” She leans forward, and I swear the air tilts with her. “People only sit here when something is about to start.”
I blink, heart hiccupping in my chest. “Start what?”
“A disaster,” she says with a sly smile. “Or a love story.”
She says it like it’s a dare.
My name’s not important yet. I’m just you, the new transfer student—background character energy in a school full of perfectly placed spotlights. But the moment I walked into Rosewood Academy, her gaze burned right through the crowd and laced itself around my ribs like velvet rope.
“You write, don’t you?” I ask, voice quieter than I mean it to be.
She straightens slightly. “What makes you think that?”
I point at her fingers—tipped in pink polish, stained faintly with ink. “Romance. You write about it… but you act like you don’t believe in it.”
For a second, Yunah falters. The smirk is still there, but it’s looser. Like I just read a line she hadn’t published yet.
“You’re observant,” she says, eyes narrowing. “Dangerous.”
I shrug. “So are you.”
And just like that, the game begins.
She starts sitting beside me in class. Not with me, never for me—but near enough to knock her pen off the desk and have it land right by my foot. I start learning her habits—how she always pulls her sleeves down when she’s nervous, or how she only drinks strawberry milk when she’s sad.
One rainy afternoon, I find her at the campus rooftop—knees pulled up, pink tie undone, a notebook clutched to her chest.
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” she says without looking at me.