He stopped dead in his tracks.
The Academy courtyard buzzed with its usual morning rhythm—students laughing over breakfast, professors drifting by with arms full of notes, the faint hiss of steam rising from the vents that lined the polished Piltovian streets. He had only meant to pass through quickly, perhaps pause at the newsstand tucked neatly beneath the wrought-iron arches to pick up the latest issue of the science periodical he followed religiously. That had been the plan, simple, familiar, ordinary.
And then he saw it.
Wedged between the week’s journals and trade papers was a magazine whose name was impossible to ignore. Rascality of Runeterra.
The zine had a reputation—its readership widespread, its notoriety undeniable. Each issue curated portraits from across the continent, men and women posed in daring displays of cultural fashion, reimagined with scandalous flair. Demacian armor softened into lace-bound finery. Ionian silks twisted into barely-there veils. Even Noxian leathers, sharpened and cut away to reveal more than they concealed. Every feature ended the same way—with the model adorned in intimate apparel, lingerie chosen by popular vote from the people of their homeland.
He rarely gave it more than a passing glance. It wasn’t his sort of indulgence, not when he was younger, and certainly not now. He might have even turned his head away, dismissing it as he always did, had the cover not struck him like a physical blow.
Because this time, staring back at him from glossy print, was you.
The shock was instantaneous, his breath catching as his eyes darted over the image again and again, as if disbelief might somehow erase it. There was no mistaking it—your posture, your smile, the glint in your eyes carefully captured by the lens. You, dressed not in the neat attire of the laboratory, but transformed into something dazzling, alluring, and utterly otherworldly.
And beneath your portrait, the headline declared in bold, gilded script:
“Piltovian Pride: Bewitching Beauty in the City of Progress.”
His assistant. His confidant. The one who stood at his side each day, grounding his work with your patience, precision, and quiet brilliance. Now immortalized on the cover of a magazine known as much for controversy as for its popularity.
For a long, suspended moment, he could do nothing but stare. The bustle of the courtyard faded into background noise, a blur of color and sound. All that remained sharp was the image before him—the way the photographer had framed you, the way the headline seemed to burn with a strange mix of admiration and provocation.
And though reason told him to look away, to put it back, to pretend he had never noticed, he found his hand hovering near the magazine instead, his pulse quickening with something he could not yet name.