Zeanne hates me.

And I definitely think she does...

For some reason, my classmate has always looked at me like I've done something unforgivable. But strangely, I don't mind it. She still stays around me somehow.

Whenever our eyes meet, she glares. Then somehow she looks at me all the time with a glare, and then we bicker out of nowhere.

I don't even know how our arguments start. One second we're minding our own business. The next, we're already annoying each other. It's almost like we have some kind of invisible competition that neither of us remembers signing up for. We argue over the smallest things, and somehow everyone around us has already gotten used to it. My friends don't even react anymore which is unusual. They just sigh and continue whatever they were doing.

One time she got mad because I borrowed her chair. It wasn't even her chair.

Another time she called me an idiot for lending someone a pen. I still don't understand that one. She also has this habit of acting like she knows exactly what I'm about to do. Sometimes she answers my questions before I even finish asking them. Other times she tells me not to do something seconds before I actually decide to do it. It's weird... almost suspicious.

And every time we pass each other in the hallway, I get this weird feeling. Like I've seen that expression before.

Odd to think I've seen it before.

Sometimes I catch her looking at me when she thinks I'm not paying attention. The moment I notice, she looks away. Neither of us says anything during those moments. It's just... silence. A strange kind of silence that feels heavier than it should. Then someone eventually clears their throat or walks between us, and whatever that moment was disappears.

Other times, she just keeps staring.

I usually end up staring back.

Then one of us gets annoyed and leaves.

Mostly her.

Did I do something wrong?

I've asked myself that question more times than I can count.

As far as I know, I've never offended her. I've even tried asking her directly.

She just stared at me For a few seconds and walked away.

For some reason, she looked more upset after I asked. Which only confused me even more.

There are other weird things too.

Sometimes she says my name before I even realize she's talking to me. Sometimes she starts a conversation and then leaves halfway through.

And once, I caught her looking at an old class photo. The moment she noticed me, she hid it and told me to mind my own business.

Wait, does she like me? That doesn't sound right. She's not my type anyway and I definitely I'm not her type either.

Honestly, she's impossible to understand.

Ah, maybe I know the reason she hates me.

Not long ago, she asked to take a picture with me.

I said no.

She looked disappointed for the rest of the day.

Maybe she's still mad about that.

Though...

For some reason, every time I think about it, it feels like that wasn't the answer she wanted.

I hate Leeron.

I hate how he always looks so carefree.

I hate how he always looks confused whenever I glare at him.

I hate how he keeps asking if he did something wrong.

I hate how he looks at me with such a smile that it's irritating.

I hate that I have to see him everyday. No matter how many times I tell myself to stop looking, my eyes always find him anyway. It's annoying. It's exhausting. I wish I could just ignore him like everyone else does. But somehow, the more I try, the more impossible it becomes.

Why does everything feel so different now?

The campus looks exactly the same, the clock on the lecture hall wall ticks the exact same way, and the people around us are just laughing like nothing happened. But everything is completely off. There's this weird, unsettling silence between us that nobody else notices. It's like we're trapped in a completely different version of reality, one where he looks right through me, and it makes my skin crawl.

It feels wrong... dark, and dangerous, like a quiet warning that everything we had is completely slipping away into nothing.

It makes me question my own mind every time I walk through the university gates. The world outside keeps moving, professors keep writing on the board, and students keep gossiping in the quad, but for me, time has completely jammed. There is an underlying tension in the air that nobody else can feel, a heavy, ominous weight that feels like a trap waiting to spring. Every corridor feels slightly longer, every shadow looks slightly deeper, and it all centers around him. He stands there in the middle of the crowded lecture hall, completely untouched by the darkness that is slowly swallowing me whole.

I look at his hands, his bag, the way he leans against the brick pillars outside, and it feels like looking at a ghost that doesn't know it's dead. Nothing makes sense anymore. The reality I knew has been completely overwritten by this cold, unrecognizable present, and I am the only one left with the truth. I am stuck watching the pieces of our past dissolve into absolute nothingness while he just smiles, entirely oblivious to the fact that something is really wrong with the universe we are standing in.

Sometimes he catches me staring at him.

Then he gives me that confused look.

I want to slap him.

And I hate how he acts like everything is normal. And every day, I hate him a little more.

Not long ago, he asked me why I hated him.

I wanted to answer.

But I couldn't.

So I stared at him and walked away.

There are words sitting in my throat that refuse to come out. Every answer I could give would mess everything up in the wrong way. I can't tell him, not ever. Every explanation sounds impossible and too much for me to bare. So I stay silent, hoping he'll stop asking before I completely fall apart.

If I speak the words aloud, I feel like the whole fragile illusion will shatter, leaving us both exposed to whatever darkness caused this mess in the first place. So I choose the silence, even when it tears at my insides, even when the pressure in my chest becomes almost too much to handle. I force myself to turn my back on him, walking away down the empty building corridors with my teeth gritted, keeping the secrets locked deep inside where they can't hurt anyone else.

Sometimes I wonder if it'd be easier if I hated him for real.

Maybe then my chest wouldn't hurt every time I looked at him.

Maybe then I wouldn't keep watching him from across the classroom.

Maybe then I wouldn't care.

But I do.

That's why I hate him.

I hate him because he was mine first.

And now, I'm becoming a stranger to him.

Because since then...

He had forgotten about me.

"Are you stupid?" he asked.

"What?"

I remembered clearly when Leeron and I first met. I wouldn't say it was a good meeting in the least. If I remember correctly, it was during middle school when I first ran into him. Leeron was an exchange student from Korea. Though I'm not really sure if he's really korean, that confuses me a lot ngl.

I thought he was the easygoing type but I was wrong, and he managed to completely infuriate me within a span of five minutes.

During our second semester of our 6th grade year. We had been assigned to the same clean-up committee on the first week of school. Back then, Leeron was already exactly who he is now- the calm, composed, ultra-mature kid who always got picked to be the class leader and representative. He was organized, he never raised his voice, and he treated every single classmate with this polite, easygoing friendliness.

Except for me.

I don't even know what I did to set him off, or if I just existed wrong in his presence. While he was cheerfully helping the other girls carry the heavy water buckets and smiling at their dumb jokes, he walked past me like I was a piece of the classroom furniture. He didn't offer to help me move the desks. He didn't even say hello. He just gave me this short, indifferent nod and went right back to being the perfect, helpful student leader for everyone else.

It drove me absolutely insane.

I've always been the type to snap first. I couldn't handle the fact that this guy, who was supposed to be Mr. Nice Guy to the whole grade, looked at me like I was just an annoying chore he had to deal with. So, naturally, I tried to do everything myself to prove a point. I grabbed three heavy wooden chairs at once, trying to stack them on top of a desk, even though my arms were shaking like crazy.

That was when he walked over, took two of the chairs out of my hands without even breaking a sweat, and set them down calmly. He looked down at me with those cool, unbothered eyes, let out a tiny, exhausted sigh, and dropped that line.

"Are you stupid?" he asked.

"What?" I fired back, my face turning bright red from a mix of exhaustion and pure embarrassment. "Who do you think you're talking to? I had it covered!"

"You clearly didn't," Leeron replied, his voice completely level, not even sounding angry--just genuinely annoyed that he had to stop what he was doing to fix my mess.

"You're going to drop them and hurt yourself. If you can't carry them, just ask someone. Or better yet, just go clean the chalkboard and stay out of the way. I don't have time to deal with you getting hurt."

He didn't wait for me to yell at him. He just picked up the remaining chairs, stacked them perfectly, and walked away to go talk to the teacher.

I stood there by the desks, my fists clenched so tight my short fingernails dug into my palms. I hated him. I decided right then and there that Leeron was my absolute worst enemy.

Our middle school years ended on a bad note, but looking back, it was a bad note in a good way. We spent three years constantly bickering over the stupidest things. If he was the head of a committee, I would join just to vote against whatever he suggested. If he said a project should be done one way, I'd argue for the exact opposite. He never yelled back; he would just debate me calmly, using logic and facts that made me look ridiculous in front of the class, which only made me want to follow him around and argue even more.

Deep down, even back then, I think I was just desperate for him to look at me the way he looked at everyone else. I didn't realize it at the time... I thought I just genuinely loathed his guts. But looking back, the frustration was already there. I was a little middle school girl throwing tantrums just to get a calm, composed boy to notice her.