Ivory Spire, Morning Homeroom
It started with the clack of chalk against the board.
"Your first set of quarterly exams," their homeroom teacher announced, underlining the words with the kind of glee only someone not taking the test could muster, "will begin next Thursday."
There it was. The universal death knell of student peace.
Aika groaned so dramatically that even Nozomi would've applauded. "Nooooo... Not like this. I just started living my best life."
Beside her, Haruaki blinked slowly, as if still buffering the announcement. He slouched further into his seat, chin resting on folded arms, watching their teacher scribble dates and subject breakdowns like she was mapping their demise.
"Next Thursday?" Aika hissed, half-whispered panic already blooming. "That's barely a week. I haven't even opened my math notebook since April!"
"You have a math notebook?" Haruaki deadpanned.
She smacked his arm. Lightly. "I own one. Doesn't mean I've used it."
He gave a sleepy shrug. "Guess I'll have to bump up my homework schedule…"
Aika narrowed her eyes at him. "Wait. You're actually gonna start studying?"
"I mean, not right now. I've got class reports and make-up work to finish." He yawned. "Not all of us cruise through life on vibes alone."
Aika pouted. "Well I need help! Come study with me again?"
Haruaki tilted his head. "Is this a bribe setup?"
"Maybe."
"Ice cream?"
"Obviously."
"Then... deal. But not today."
She clapped her hands. "Perfect! I'll bring the strawberry sundae tubs. The big ones."
"I want my own tub this time," he said flatly. "Last time you kept stealing mine."
"They taste better when they're stolen!" Aika grinned. "But fine, fine. You'll have your sad loner tub."
"Sweet." He leaned back with a small smile. "I'll pencil in the betrayal for Friday."
Aika rolled her eyes. "Hurry up with your reports so we can start cramming soon. We're in this failure boat together."
He gave her a thumbs up. "If we sink, we sink in style."
Behind them, someone whispered about needing extra notebooks, someone else muttered about physics formulas, and the rest of the class slid into that post-announcement haze where you think about studying without actually doing anything about it.
Haruaki pulled out a notebook from his bag, flipping through pages of assignments and class logs that needed his attention. He was on cleaning duty and had around three assignments due tomorrow. Maybe he'd hide in the library during lunch.
It was quiet there.
And if luck didn't completely abandon him… he could finish in peace. Maybe.
Probably.
The sun had shifted by the time Haruaki finally finished his homeroom duties, casting long golden beams across the floor of Ivory Spire's library. The quiet was almost unnatural, broken only by the faint creak of old shelves and the soft hum of the AC.
He stepped inside, brushing his fingers through his hair and sighing as the scent of books hit him. A peaceful place, and most importantly, distraction-free. He needed that. His mind had been scrambled since the chess match with Mizuki—not because he lost, but because of her. That sharp gaze, those poised fingers tapping the chessboard, the silence that felt oddly comforting instead of awkward.
Get it together, he told himself as he plopped down at an empty table, pulling out a mess of worksheets and notes from his bag. You're here to finish schoolwork, not write a poem about her.
And for the most part, he did just that. For about twenty whole minutes, he made solid progress—rewriting sloppy lab notes, organizing council-free schedules, even solving a few math problems without hitting a mental wall. He was almost proud of himself. Almost.
Until the faint click of shoes on hardwood reached his ears.
He didn't look up right away. Maybe if he ignored it, it'd just be some underclassman passing through. But then the steps paused. Right by his table.
"…Tsugihara-kun?"
He blinked, mid-calculation, and slowly turned. There she was—Mizuki Fuyune, in the quiet library light that made the pink ends of her hair glow faintly like a sakura tree at dusk. Her uniform was pristine, her posture perfect, and her expression… slightly curious.
"Oh. Uh—hi," Haruaki managed, sitting up straighter. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"I could say the same," Mizuki replied, tilting her head. "This section isn't usually popular at this hour."
She wasn't accusing him of anything, just making an observation. Still, her presence felt strangely weighty. Like the moment you realize someone sat next to you on a park bench and now your thoughts were no longer private.
"I had work to catch up on," Haruaki said, tapping his worksheets. "Figured the library was the safest bet if I didn't want to be too distracted."
"Smart," she said, lips twitching in something that might've been the beginning of a smile. "May I?"
She gestured to the seat beside him.
"…Sure," he said, then coughed. "I mean, yeah. Of course."
Mizuki slid into the chair with the kind of grace that made Haruaki weirdly self-conscious of his own existence. She set her bag down, pulled out a notebook, and flipped it open with clinical precision.
For a while, neither said a word. Pages flipped. Pens scratched. A clock ticked somewhere overhead.
Then Mizuki's voice, again. Soft. Curious.
"…You're in Class C, right?"
He looked over, surprised. "Yeah."
"You ranked in the top twenty last semester. But you don't attend review sessions. And your handwriting looks… improvised."
"…Thanks?" he blinked. "That was the weirdest compliment I've gotten today."
She blinked slowly. "It wasn't meant as one. Just an observation."
He laughed, unable to help it. "Wow. I'd be so screwed if we were on a debate team together."
"You'd still win," she replied, flipping a page without looking at him.
That quiet confidence. Haruaki swallowed. "Do you always talk like a novel character?"
She tilted her head. "Do you always act like you're not trying as hard as you are?"
Touché.
He leaned back in his chair, pretending to stretch. "Okay, okay. Fair."
There was another lull, but not an awkward one this time. A comfortable pause, like the kind that settled between people who didn't need to fill silence with small talk.
"…What are you studying?" he asked eventually, peeking at her notebook.
"Literature," she said. "Classic poetry comparison."
"Sounds painful."
"It is. But necessary."
He nodded, then smirked. "Wanna trade? I've got trigonometry and a half-done physics sheet."
She glanced at his mess of equations. "No."
"Yeah, I wouldn't either."
And just like that, the air between them shifted. Not dramatically. But just enough. Like the breeze that comes before the first drop of rain.
They studied like that for a while. Quiet. Side by side. Two students on opposite ends of Ivory Spire's social spectrum, brought together by coincidence, stress, and the strange gravity of each other's presence.
Mizuki's handwriting was, of course, immaculate—even when she was scribbling notes at lightning speed. Haruaki, on the other hand, seemed like he was fighting his pen. His letters danced in chaotic angles across the page, but the actual work? Surprisingly sharp.
The sun dipped a little lower, stretching golden bars of light across the quiet corners of the Ivory Spire library. The wooden tables gave off a gentle warmth under their elbows, the smell of aging paper and faint lemon polish settling like a blanket around them. Mizuki's notes were immaculate—columns aligned, pen strokes crisp and neat. Haruaki's, by contrast, were… present. Mostly legible. Organized by pure vibes.
But he was focused. Eyes flicking from textbook to worksheet, brow furrowed, pencil tapping lightly as he mentally sorted out a long-winded problem that Mizuki had quietly been struggling with for the last fifteen minutes.
"...You're gonna waste a lot of time if you go through the whole expansion like that," Haruaki said eventually, breaking the silence without looking up. "Want a shortcut?"
Mizuki paused, surprised. "Shortcut?"
He pulled her sheet toward him, tapped near the quadratic mess. "This part here? You can complete the square, cut it down by half the steps. Saves you a ton of time—especially when you've only got, like, thirty seconds left on the exam clock and your brain is halfway out the window."
She blinked at the page. "Oh…"
He slid a spare scrap of paper over and walked her through it, voice low but lively—he explained with metaphors that somehow involved pancakes, running late to class, and a suspicious vending machine that only accepted 97 yen coins. And somehow, it worked. Mizuki watched his fingers move, watched how easily he danced around the equations like he was fluent in a language she had only studied mechanically.
"You're… actually really good at this," she said, half to herself.
"Shhh, you'll ruin my brand," Haruaki muttered. "I've worked very hard to maintain the illusion of mediocrity."
She chuckled softly. "I can tell."
He glanced over, a little surprised at her amusement. "Wait, was that sarcasm? Mizuki Fuyune—top of the class, breaker of GPAs—making jokes?"
"I do have a sense of humor."
"I thought you downloaded it as a trial version and forgot to renew it."
She gave him a flat look. He grinned back.
They settled into a rhythm after that—catching each other's mistakes before the other noticed them, switching between pages and formulas like a casual tennis rally. Mizuki even softened enough to admit she'd never been good with shortcut techniques. Haruaki admitted he got bored of doing things the "approved" way and just made stuff up until it worked.
Eventually, the topic drifted.
"So," Mizuki said, pencil stilling slightly. "What do you actually like? I mean… outside of this."
"This? You mean the raw thrill of dragging my academic record through the mud?" he teased.
She didn't even dignify that with a look.
He shrugged. "Fixing stuff. Solving puzzles. Rhythm games. Used to run track. You?"
Mizuki paused a beat. "Music. Strategy games. Shogi."
"Ohh, brainy and classy. Let me guess—you play the violin."
Her expression flickered, just briefly. "...Yes."
He snorted. "Called it."
"What gave it away?"
"You've got the 'I practice scales instead of sleeping' aura."
Mizuki pretended not to be flattered. Haruaki pretended not to notice.
The library clock ticked steadily on, but the silence between them had shifted—no longer awkward or dutiful, but companionable. A little open. A little easy.
And neither of them pointed it out.
By the time the clock above the library's main desk struck half past five, the daylight had thinned into gold, casting a soft halo over the old bookshelves. The students had all but cleared out, leaving the space so hushed that even the flipping of a page sounded like a small confession.
Mizuki closed her notebook with a quiet snap, her handwriting neat, organized, and now peppered with a few of Haruaki's shortcuts scribbled in the margins—tiny annotations in slightly messier, slanted writing. "I suppose your methods do work. Even if they look strange at first."
Haruaki shrugged, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "Strange gets you the answers faster. That's efficiency. That's brilliance, right?" He grinned, unrepentant.
She gave him a rare, amused glance. "Or a very creative kind of laziness."
He accepted that proudly. "I'll take both."
There was an ease between them now—still laced with caution, like walking on stones across a river. But somewhere in the middle of integers and logic puzzles, their worlds had stepped a little closer.
As they exited into the corridor, Mizuki fell into step beside him, her fingers lightly adjusting the strap of her schoolbag. "I didn't expect today to go like this."
"Studying with someone who doesn't plan every second?" Haruaki raised an eyebrow.
"No," she said, after a pause. "Studying with someone who makes it… fun."
That earned a blink from him. "Coming from you, that's basically a love letter."
She glanced away, and for a fleeting second, the ends of her hair glimmered under the setting sun's light—almost like a slow blush hiding in strands of black and pink.
They reached the fork in the hall. Haruaki stopped, already turning toward the exit stairs. Mizuki lingered at the base of the other hallway, her silhouette crisp against the soft orange of the windows.
"Thanks," she said. "For today."
He gave her a lazy salute. "Anytime."
Neither of them said anything more—but something had shifted. Nothing dramatic. Just the quiet, mutual acknowledgment that this wouldn't be the last time they found themselves side by side like this. That maybe—just maybe—studying, schoolwork, and afternoons in dusty corners of the library weren't the only things they could share.
They parted with a soft nod.
And somewhere behind them, a page turned.