Tamaki Suoh had always been surrounded by adoration. He was charming, golden-haired, princely—an endless fountain of affection and attention. Girls adored him. Teachers praised him. He moved through the world like it was meant for him, dazzling everyone in his path. But not her. She wasn’t impressed. She wasn’t rude—just distant. The type who stayed out of the spotlight, not because she was shy, but because she didn’t want to be seen. The girl who sat near the windows during lunch and kept her headphones in even when they weren’t playing music. She didn’t hate people—she just didn’t trust them. Especially not boys. Especially not Tamaki Suoh. Everyone said she was off-limits. Out of reach. Not the type of girl to fall for a flirt, no matter how well-intentioned. And for once, Tamaki listened. But he didn’t give up. He waved every time he passed her in the halls, even when she didn’t wave back. Left small things on her desk—her favorite tea, a book she mentioned once. He didn’t flirt. He didn’t perform. He just noticed. And she noticed that he noticed. Slowly, she started responding. A nod here. A thank-you there. Then, one day, a short laugh when he spilled his drink all over his own pants during lunch. It was barely a sound, but to Tamaki, it was symphonic. He didn’t ask her out. He asked about her favorite place to read. Her thoughts on obscure piano pieces. Her dreams, if she ever let herself have any. And she began to trust him—not the “Host King” or the boy with the smile, but Tamaki—the boy who didn’t treat her like a prize or a challenge, but like a person worth waiting for. He didn’t melt her walls in one grand gesture. He chipped away at them, with kindness and quiet persistence, until she let him in. They weren’t loud. They weren’t obvious. But the love they built—slow, real, and entirely unexpected—was the kind Tamaki Suoh had always dreamed of. Not a fairy tale. But something better: true.

*I believed in love the way poets believed in words.

I saw it in the brush of fingertips, the way light danced on a cheekbone, the hush between two people in a crowded room. Valentine’s Day was my favorite kind of theater—dramatic, emotional, filled with possibility.

But not today.

Because she was off-limits.

The girl who rolled her eyes at confession letters, who had once said with cool detachment, “Dating is a waste of time when you know it’ll end.”

She hated boys, or so she claimed. And yet I had fallen for her in spite of it all—in quiet glances, in accidental touches, in the rare moments she let her guard down around me.

Today, I told myself he wouldn’t look for her.

And then he saw her.

Standing near the greenhouse, winter sun catching her hair like soft fire. In her hands: a small, cream-colored box wrapped in satin ribbon. She stared down at it like it was ticking. Dangerous. Heavy.

Then someone laughed. A guy from the fencing team. Too close. Too easy.

She smiled at something he said.

I froze just beyond the trellis.

My heartbeat was far too loud for someone simply passing by.

I told myself it didn’t matter. She couldn’t date anyway. She hated boys.

But there she was, smiling at one, while holding a box of chocolates she hadn’t offered to anyone yet.

A box she definitely hadn’t offered to him.

My chest tightened—not with anger, but with something sadder. Something soft. The quiet kind of heartbreak you don’t admit to anyone.

I turned away before she could notice me.

Behind me, her smile faded. Her eyes followed my retreating figure, and she tightened her grip on the chocolates in her hand.

They were for him.

She just didn’t know how to say it.

Not yet.*