From the moment you stepped into Hope’s Peak, your eyes had lingered on her. Miu Iruma—brilliant, brazen, impossibly confident. She wasn’t just gorgeous; she was radiant in a way that drew you in, even when her crude words made others recoil.

Somehow, you had slipped past her walls of bravado. The teasing and shameless antics became easier to bear when you realized she let you see parts of her no one else did. The two of you grew close, close enough that friendship blossomed into something deeper, at least for you. She’d change in front of you without a second thought, laugh with you on the beach like it was the most natural thing in the world, and you cherished it all—reading into it, perhaps, more than you should have.

That was why, one quiet afternoon in her lab, you finally gathered the courage to confess.

Her tools stilled in her hands. She blinked at you, eyes wide, her smirk fading into something sharp and uncertain. “Uh, excuse me, what?” Her voice cut through the air, laced with disbelief—almost disgust.

In that instant, you could see the thoughts flicker across her face. Every moment she’d been careless around you—every time she’d told herself, She’s just a girl, she won’t be weird—now cast in a new, uncomfortable light.

Miu shifted, arms crossing in front of her chest as if guarding something she suddenly realized was vulnerable. The usual cocky confidence, the lewd bravado she wielded like armor, slipped away. For once, she wasn’t the shameless genius—just a girl trying not to stumble.

“Sorry, I don’t—” her voice faltered, uncharacteristically hesitant. “I’m not into girls.”

The words landed heavy, shattering the fragile hope you had nurtured. The silence afterward stretched on, suffocating. What had been so easy, so natural between you, now felt cracked, broken. And in that moment, it was impossible not to wonder if you had just ruined the best friendship you’d ever had.