Haruki Saitō didn't believe in fate. Not in destiny, not in miracles, and definitely not in anything remotely poetic. He believed in reactions—predictable, measurable, and grounded in the laws of chemistry. That was safe. That made sense.
But all of that began to unravel on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday.
It started with an accident.
The university hallway was overcrowded, loud, and reeking of cafeteria grease and cheap perfume. Haruki was weaving through it with a folder pressed against his chest, a pencil clenched in his teeth, and his head lost in balancing chemical equations inside his mind.
Then—bam.
He collided with someone.
The folder skipped. Papers scattered like feathers in a storm. Something warm splashed over his forearm—acid? No. Just soda. But a bottle of lab reagent he'd been carrying cracked open in the chaos and hissed against the concrete.
"Crap—sorry, sorry!" he stammered, crouching down.
"Watch out—your glove's melting!"
The voice was calm. Clear. Feminine.
He looked up—and froze.
There she was.
Ayla Hanami. Everyone knew her. Not in the celebrity sense, but in the she's-too-perfect-to-be-real way. She was the kind of girl you only saw in cherry blossom ads or on the covers of romantic dramas.
Her shoes were splashed with the reagent. She should've been furious.
Instead, she smiled. Just a little.
"You okay?"
Haruki blinked. "Uh—I—I think so."
She crouched beside him, helping him gather the soaked papers. "You dropped your mixture list. Did you know it's flammable?"
"I—I wrote it myself."
"That explains the doodle of the exploding frog."
He turned red. She handed him the last sheet, her fingers brushing his.
Then she stood up, waved lightly, and disappeared into the crowd.
Haruki sat frozen, heart pounding like a runaway chain reaction.
He should've been mortified—his cheeks still burned at the memory of her calm voice, her half-smile. But instead, he was … curious. Obsessed, almost.
All afternoon, between lectures on polymer chains and titration curves, his mind chased the echo of her words: "You okay?" It wasn't pity. It was genuine concern. He'd never had someone look at him like that.
At the chemistry lab later, he found himself lingering by the acid cabinet long after submitting his samples. His fingertips traced the warning labels, but he wasn't thinking about safety—he was thinking about her fingers stained yellow by the spill. How she hadn't recoiled. How she'd crouched beside him, as if his crisis were hers too.
He scrawled her name across the corner of his notebook:
Ayla Hanami Girl with the acid-scarred sneakers
He erased it. Re-wrote it. Erased again. Each time the name felt heavier—more important—than any molecular formula he'd ever learned.
When he reached his Classroom, he pulled open his textbook—hoping to bury himself in schematics and equations. But every diagram looked like a map leading to her instead of hydrochloric acid or reactive intermediates.
He closed the book and scribbled in thea margin again:
Her kindness is more reactive than any catalyst I've known.
He laughed at himself. A chemistry nerd waxing poetic about a stranger. But he didn't care.
Because something in him had shifted.
He didn't know what she studied—only that her sneakers had meant more to him than any tear-down project he'd ever built in lab.He didn't know yet that her blood would one day save the world and also destroy his entire life.But he knew this: he was already under her spell, and no formula could undo it.
Later that day, as Haruki dug through his bag for the ninth time , he realized something was missing.
His reaction sheet—a list of sensitive chemical mixtures for him to mix to satisfy his hungry, chemical adict brain—was nowhere to be found. Scrawled in rushed handwriting, filled with formulas, side notes, and a crude doodle of a stickman being electrocuted by sodium chloride. He groaned.
That paper had no business being in anyone else's hands.
Still that day, at the cafeteria, Haruki sat slouched across from Kenta, his closest thing to a best friend—a mechanical engineering major with zero social filter and a sixth sense for free Wi-Fi.
Haruki stabbed his rice with a spoon.
"She's in my head, man. Like... constantly."
Kenta didn't look up from his phone. "Is it the girl whose shoes you nearly melted?"
"I didn't melt them."
"Still cooked her soles."
Haruki sighed and rubbed his temples. "What's going on with me? Is this... love?"
That finally made Kenta look up.
"You askin' me like I'm your therapist or your mother?"
Haruki groaned. "I'm serious. Like, my heart does this weird thumpy thing every time I think about her. Even my acid reflux has feelings."
Kenta leaned back, crossing his arms. "Bro, it's love if you start writing poetry about chemical burns."
Haruki stared at the ceiling.
"…You think she likes me too?"
Kenta shrugged. "Doubt it. You spilled acid on her. That's not exactly textbook romance."
"Hey," Haruki said defensively, "she smiled."
"Yeah, out of pity. You looked like you were gonna cry."
Haruki buried his face in his tray. "Ahhh—I wanna talk to her."
"Then why not call her?"
Haruki blinked.
"…Because I don't have her number—"
Bzzzzzt. His phone lit up on the table.
Unknown Number Calling...
Haruki froze.
He slowly picked it up like it was a ticking bomb. Kenta raised an eyebrow.
"You gonna answer or let fate give you a missed call?"
Haruki swallowed, thumb hovering over the green button.
Click.
"…Hello?"
There was a pause. A calm, steady voice replied:
"Hi. Is this Haruki Saitō?"
"…Yeah."
"It's Ayla Hanami. I think you dropped your paper. Something about combustion rates and making things explode?"
Haruki nearly dropped the phone.