The afternoon sun was slipping behind the rooftops, throwing long shadows across the school gate. Yūki Riko waited there, tapping her foot impatiently, her schoolbag hanging off one shoulder. Beside her, Haruna clasped her hands in front of her, eyes drifting toward the building as if she could will Kaito to appear.
"He said he'd come straight after class…" Haruna murmured, worry tugging at her voice.
Riko puffed her cheeks, rolling her eyes. "Tch. Knowing him, he probably got stuck cleaning up again, or maybe he's wandering around like some gloomy manga protagonist."
But then a wave of noise rolled across the courtyard. Not laughter, not the usual after-school chatter, this was sharper, urgent. Students clustered toward the walkway, phones lifted, whispers multiplying like wildfire.
Riko and Haruna turned, and froze.
Kaito.
Handcuffs biting into his wrists. Two uniformed officers gripping his arms. His face was blank, expression carved from stone.
Gasps shot through the crowd.
"Wait, is that… Yūki Kaito?!"
"No way! What'd he do?!"
"Someone said… pervert? Assault…?"
Haruna's breath hitched. Her eyes went wide, panic flashing across her face. "N-no… this… this can't…"
Riko's usual sharp tongue faltered. For once, her smirk was gone, replaced with sheer disbelief. "What the hell is this…?!"
The students around them raised their phones higher, recording, snapping photos, already typing feverishly. Rumors buzzed in the air, toxic and heavy.
"Kaito!" Riko shouted, her voice cutting through the chaos.
For just a second, he looked their way. His eyes met theirs, calm, steady, almost apologetic. Then, without a word, he turned back and kept walking, letting himself be led.
Haruna's hands trembled at her sides. "Kaito-kun…"
Riko clenched her fists so tight her knuckles turned white. Her eyes burned, not with tears, but fury. "I don't buy this crap for a second. Someone set him up."
She spat the words out, her glare swinging back toward the school building. "That damn queen bee… this stinks of her."
Haruna bit her lip, torn between fear and desperation. Around them, the gossip swelled like a storm, swallowing Kaito's name whole.
And then, he was gone. The police car door slammed shut, sealing him away as the crowd's whispers turned into headlines.
But for Riko and Haruna, one truth was already clear.
They couldn't just stand by.
The murmurs outside still echoed faintly, even after the crowd had dispersed. In the third-floor classroom where it all began, Takane Takamine sat alone. The late sun painted the room gold, dust motes drifting through the stillness. Her uniform clung to her damp skin from where she had staged her "accident," but her perfect posture remained, as if she could will dignity back into herself.
Yet her hands trembled faintly in her lap.
That gaze. Even as the police closed the cuffs around his wrists, Yūki Kaito hadn't begged, hadn't shouted. He had only looked at her once, calm, cutting, filled with something she couldn't name. Disappointment? Pity?
It gnawed at her.
The door slammed open.
"Takamine!"
Yūki Riko strode in first, fire in her eyes, Haruna trailing behind with worry written across her face. Riko didn't hesitate, she grabbed Takane's desk and shoved it forward with a screech of metal against the floor.
"You think we're idiots?!" Riko barked, leaning over her. "You set him up. Everyone out there might eat your little performance, but I don't buy it for a second."
Takane's lashes lowered, her lips pressing into a tight line. "You dare raise your voice to me…?" she began, but her tone lacked its usual venom.
Haruna, gentler but no less firm, stepped closer. "Takane-san… why?" Her voice trembled. "You know he didn't deserve this. Why would you..."
"Because...!" Takane's voice cracked, surprising even herself. She rose suddenly, fists balled at her sides. "Because he… he rejected me."
Riko blinked, momentarily thrown. "…Rejected you?"
Takane's throat tightened. Her golden eyes flickered away, toward the window. "I offered him a place at my side. My secret. My trust. No one has ever… no one has ever told me no before."
Her nails dug into her palms, her composure crumbling at the edges. "And yet… he looked at me with those eyes. As if I were some… child throwing a tantrum. As if I was beneath him."
Haruna's lips parted softly, sympathy flashing for a moment despite herself.
Riko, however, slammed her hand against the desk again. "So what, you drag the cops into this? You'd ruin his life because your pride got scratched?!"
Takane flinched. The accusation hit deeper than she wanted to admit.
Silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.
Finally, she sank back down into her chair, her voice dropping to a whisper. "…I didn't think it would… go this far."
The words barely left her lips before...
Smack!
Riko's palm connected with her cheek, sharp and echoing through the empty classroom. Takane's head snapped to the side, golden hair swinging, eyes wide with shock. No one had ever dared lay a hand on her.
"Shut up." Riko's voice trembled, not with fear, but fury. "Don't you dare play the victim now."
Takane pressed her fingers to her stinging cheek, too stunned to reply.
Riko leaned forward, her fists gripping the desk between them. "Do you even know who my brother is? Do you even understand the kind of person you just tried to destroy?"
Her voice cracked, not from weakness, but from the force of keeping herself steady.
"Kaito grew up in silence. While I filled the house with noise, he stayed in the background, quiet, still. He doesn't laugh. He doesn't cry. He barely even shows anything. The neighbors called him 'different.' Teachers whispered about him when they thought we couldn't hear. But you know what?" Her glare burned hotter. "He was always there."
Takane blinked, her lips parting.
"At five years old, he stood in front of me when a stray dog lunged. Didn't scream. Didn't run. He just stood there. Calm as stone. One look, one voice, and the dog fled. That was the first time anyone ever saw him feel anything."
Haruna shifted uneasily beside them, eyes wide. Hearing this side of Kaito was new to her, too.
"When Mikan was born, she was so fragile it scared me to even hold her. But Kaito? She stopped crying when he was near. He doesn't smother her, doesn't coo over her like I do, but when she stumbles, he's there. When she wakes up screaming, he's there. And once, I heard him mutter, 'I don't want her to break.'"
Riko's voice softened for the first time, but her hand still shook on the desk. "…He doesn't love the way people like you think he should. He doesn't flirt, or cling, or smile just because someone wants him to. But when it matters… he loves in ways that count."
Takane swallowed, her proud façade wavering.
"And you?" Riko spat the word like poison. "You thought he'd be like every other guy who trips over himself for you. You thought you could blackmail him, frame him, ruin him, because he didn't bend to your little world. But he's not like that. He's not the type to do this. You don't get it, he never has been, and he never will be."
The silence after Riko's words was suffocating. Takane sat frozen, her composure unraveling piece by piece, like porcelain cracking under a hammer.
Her fingers tightened around her skirt until her knuckles blanched. "…I didn't…" The words were broken. "…I didn't mean to..."
She stopped herself, but the trembling in her voice betrayed her. For the first time, Takane Takamine, the girl who ruled over her classmates with flawless poise, looked small.
Her eyes darted to the floor. "I only wanted… to keep control. To never lose. To never let anyone see me weak. And when he looked at me like that…" Her shoulders shuddered. "…Like I was beneath notice, like I wasn't even worth fighting back against... I panicked."
Haruna's expression softened, but she said nothing.
Riko, still burning with anger, clenched her fists. "…So you tried to crush him instead."
The words landed, sharp and merciless. Takane flinched.
Her chest heaved as her pride and guilt battled inside her. She could feel the wetness sting her eyes, but she refused to let the tears fall. Not in front of them. Not here.
"…I can't let it end like this," she whispered, almost to herself.
And then she stood. Slowly, shakily, but with a strange resolve hardening in her golden eyes.
She hooked her thumbs under the band of her underwear, hesitating, just for a breath, before pulling it down, her face hot with shame. She closed her eyes. Time twisted, space folded. The air vibrated with the soft, impossible chime of a clock resetting.
The world bent backward, and when Takane opened her eyes again, the classroom was quiet, clean, and untouched.
The handcuffs. The flashing phones. Riko's scream at the school gates. All of it dissolved, erased in a blink.
The world had rewound.
When the dust cleared, Kaito once again stood in the unused classroom, his desk half-packed, his face as unreadable as stone. And across from him, Takane Takamine stood pale and trembling, clutching the folded scrap of lace she had just sacrificed to pull time back.
For a moment, silence ruled. Dust swirled in the sunlight, like mocking confetti to a stage play only the two of them remembered.
Then Kaito spoke.
"…So you really went back on it."
Takane froze. Her lips parted. "…You"
"You used it again." His tone was flat, his eyes steady, the same ones that had watched her scheme, fall apart, and claw back her dignity. "Everyone else forgot. But not me. You can't rewind me."
Her throat tightened. "That's… impossible."
Kaito tilted his head slightly, as if studying a specimen. "Not impossible. Just you forgetting there are things beyond your rules."
Her composure, usually flawless, cracked under that gaze. The very same gaze that had condemned her before, not with hatred, not even with anger, but with something worse. Indifference.
"…Why?" His voice, low and steady, cut deeper than shouting ever could. "Why go back on your own decision? You chose to destroy me. And then you ran from it. Was it pride? Or was it guilt?"
Takane's fingers dug into the fabric at her chest. "…Because" Her voice shook. For the first time in years, it truly shook. "The way you looked at me…"
Her mask splintered. She stepped back, the legs of her chair scraping sharply as she sank into it. Her golden eyes wavered, brimming with something raw. "…It was worse than losing. Worse than humiliation. You didn't even hate me. You just… dismissed me. Like I was nothing."
Kaito said nothing.
To her, the silence was unbearable.
Takane pressed her forehead into her palm, breath shuddering. Her pride told her to spit venom, to sneer, to reassert herself as the idol no one could touch. But the words refused to come. Instead, her shoulders trembled, the dam of perfection finally leaking.
"…I didn't think it would… go that far," she whispered, voice cracking.
Her prideful crown slipped lower with every word. And when she lifted her head again, it was not the perfect Takamine idol who looked back, but a girl, terrified, regretful, and utterly lost.
And still, Kaito only stared, unmoved.
His silence pressed her harder than chains.
Takane's fingers clenched. Then, almost violently, she reached under her skirt, tore another piece of silk from herself, and crushed it in her fist. Time warped again, the air folding back into the classroom as it had been before her breakdown.
Yet nothing changed.
Kaito still stood there, watching her with the same cold eyes.
And Takane realized, horrified, that no matter how many times she rewound, this boy would always remain.