Kairo's pov
I hated being told what to do. Everyone in my family knows that about me.
Especially by my big brother Kyle. My perfect, responsible, golden-boy brother who thought he could swoop in after years of being gone and suddenly fix my broken little life. His solution to me "failing" exams? It's not better teachers or a better school, not giving me space to breathe. No, he brought in her, a tutor.
Coco.
My saving grace. Gosh, I could gorge his eyes out right now.
The girl with the big eyes and quiet voice who sat across from me at the long mahogany table like she owned the place. Kyle said she was here to help me pass. I said she was here to annoy me, and annoyed, I was, but I have a feeling I will a little fun with this one. For her though, it won't at all be fun.
"Today, we're focusing on algebra," she said, pulling out her notebook, her voice soft but confident. She slid the worksheet across to me, her handwriting neat and small like someone afraid of taking up too much space.
"Oh joy," I muttered, tossing my pen on the table. "Numbers. My favourite."
She ignored my sarcasm, which only made me sharper. I fake-yawned, doodled on the worksheet, and even pretended my phone was vibrating just to get out of this nonsense. She didn't crack.
Instead, she drew these little boxes and arrows, turning the equation into something that looked like a puzzle instead of math. "See? If you treat it like a game, it makes more sense."
I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they'd stick at the back of my head, but when I glanced down… it actually did make sense. The answer appeared before me in a way it never had before. I quickly erased my doodles so she wouldn't notice I was following along.
I leaned back in my chair, with my arms folded, twisting a strand of hair around my finger. "Do I look like I care about… whatever those are?"
Her gaze flicked up to mine, just for a second, before she dropped it back to the paper. She didn't rise to the bait and that annoyed me even more. This girl, what exactly makes her tick?
"You're supposed to teach me," I added with a smirk. "What if I'm just too dumb to learn? Then what, huh?"
"You're not dumb," she said quietly, and the way she said it, flat, not flattering, made me pause. Like she wasn't giving me a compliment. Just a fact, and I don't even know to feel about it.
I rolled my eyes, grabbing a pencil just to twirl it between my fingers. "Whatever you say, teacher's pet."
Silence stretched across the table. Normally, when I poked at people, they snapped back. It was fun, like a game, but Coco didn't. She just… took it. The only sound was the scratch of her pencil as she worked out an example problem on the paper.
I looked at her hands. Slim, delicate, but not weak. They didn't looked too used to hard labour, but that's not what caught my attention. There were faint nail marks on her forearm, half-moon scars like someone had dug in hard, and on her wrist, a bruise that peeked out from under her sleeve.
My stomach twisted. I blinked and looked away before she could notice me staring.
Not my business. Not my problem.
Still, the image stuck.
"Fine," I muttered, dragging the worksheet closer. "Show me."
Her head lifted slightly, surprise flickering in her eyes before she nodded. "Okay… so, a logarithm is the opposite of an exponent. For example…"
I groaned dramatically. "You sound like Kyle when he tries to explain crypto. So boring."
Her lips curved. Just slightly. Not a smile, exactly. More like… patience. I hated it.
"You'll get it," she said. "You're sharper than you act."
That made me bristle. "Excuse me? You don't even know me."
She shrugged. "I don't have to. People who give up fast usually don't actually want to fail, and that's a fact. I've been where you are."
I opened my mouth to snap back but closed it again. For the first time, I didn't know what to say.
Kyle had dragged her in here to babysit me, but Coco wasn't like the other tutors I'd scared off in the past. She didn't flinch when I was mean. She didn't pander either. She just… stayed. Like a tree in a storm, and it bothered me more than I could explain.
I picked up the pencil again, pretending to focus. I hated how smug Kyle would be if I actually passed something because of her.
"Whatever," I muttered, scribbling numbers. "Let's just get this over with."
Two hours later, the table was littered with crumpled scrap paper and my brain felt like it had run a marathon, but the weird thing? For the first time, some of it actually made sense, no scratch that, a lot of it actually made sense.
I didn't tell her that, of course.
"You're improving," she said softly, gathering her notes.
I rolled my eyes, though not as hard as before. "Don't get used to it. I'm still not calling you Miss Genius or whatever."
She almost smiled again. Then she stood, brushing her sleeve down to hide that bruise.
And even though I pretended not to care, I couldn't stop thinking about it. About the nail marks. The bruise. The way her voice stayed steady even when mine dripped with venom.
Something wasn't right.
I shook the thought away. She was Kyle's problem, not mine.
Still, when she left the room, I caught myself watching her go, wondering who had put those marks on her, and why she was too quiet to ever mention them.
That night, lying in my ridiculously soft bed with silk sheets, I stared at the ceiling. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet only money could buy, but all I could hear was Coco's voice in my head.
"You're sharper than you act."
I hated how much it stuck.