The beginning of the complications

So, where were we?

Right. The hallway. I remember now.

I was saying that Yang and I — we both felt something. Something neither of us had ever been brave enough to name out loud. But I made a decision. A quiet, terrifying, final kind of decision.

I can't keep letting this go. I have to tell him. Before it's too late.

I pulled out my phone and typed before I could talk myself out of it.

"Yang, I have something important to tell you. Can we meet alone today — after school?"

My thumb hovered over the send button for exactly three seconds. Then I pressed it.

His reply came a few minutes later.

"Sure. Where?"

"The rooftop."

"Okay. I'll be there. I actually have something important to tell you too."

I stared at those words until they blurred.

He has something important to tell me.

My imagination immediately spiraled — wild, wonderful, terrifying scenarios blooming one after another like—

"HEY."

I nearly dropped my phone.

Crystal's voice cut through my thoughts like a thunderclap, and I whipped around to find her standing right beside me, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched so high it had practically disappeared into her hairline.

"Are you even alive right now?" she demanded. "I've called your name four times. Four."

I blinked at her. "I was just... thinking."

"Thinking." She tilted her head slowly. "About something?" A pause, deliberate as a chess move. "Or someone?"

I pressed my hand flat against my forehead and exhaled through my nose. "Crystal. I am begging you—"

"I'm just stating facts," she said, all innocence, that familiar teasing glint alive in her eyes. "I know someone who cannot go five minutes without thinking about a certain person whose name starts with Y—"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." I cutted her in the middle .

"You always say that."

And she was right — she was never going to stop. If I'm honest, if our roles were reversed, I wouldn't stop either. That's just what we were. Less friends, more sisters forged from years of shared secrets and shameless teasing. Blood-bound, I used to think.

Used to, just like a myth.

After school, Crystal and I walked out together and found the others clustered near the front gate — Rony leaning against the wall like he owned it, Ali checking his phone, Johan already mentally halfway home.

I reached over and lightly smacked Rony's shoulder. "Hey. How was your day?"

He turned around and immediately pulled me into a hug. "It was fine," he said, completely straight-faced. "But now it's amazing."

I laughed despite myself. "That's our Rony." That was Rony in a nutshell — a little messy, a shameless flirt, but underneath all of it, a heart made entirely of gold.

"Hey — I'm a good boy," he said, pressing a hand to his chest with exaggerated dignity. "Everyone knows this."

"Everyone knows exactly what kind of boy you are."

He sighed dramatically. "No respect. Absolutely none."

Ali barely looked up from his phone. "Same as always for me. Slow, boring, painfully academic. You know what I actually want to do? Beach. Party. Anything that isn't a classroom."

That was Ali — wild and restless and completely, unapologetically himself. The kind of person who treated adventure like a basic human right.

Johan cleared his throat. "We should head home. Homework isn't going to do itself."

"Johan," I said, "do you ever think about anything that isn't school?"

He considered this with complete and genuine seriousness, the way he considered everything. "No," he said. "Not really."

I shook my head, smiling — but even as I did, something in the back of my mind snagged on him the way it sometimes did. Johan was quiet in a way that felt deliberate. Mysterious in a way that didn't quite add up. There was always something about him that I could never put my finger on, some layer I hadn't managed to reach yet. It bothered me more than I liked to admit, which made a different sport for him in my heart. Like a book, the more I read the more I want to learn. Probably a seed before a beautiful tree ?

But that was a thought for another day.

"Okay — but I can't walk with you guys today. I have something I need to do."

Rony's eyes sharpened immediately. He pointed at me slowly. "Wait. First Yang says he has something to do after school, now you have something to do after school?"

"It's nothing."

"That's exactly what someone with something to hide would say."

"Rony."

He raised both hands in surrender. "Fine. Your life, your business. Bye."

"Bye, guys."

I watched them go, a small knot tightening in my chest. I hated keeping things from them. But this — this was mine. Just for a little while longer.

I'll tell them after, I thought. After everything changes.

The rooftop door was heavier than I remembered.

I pushed it open slowly, and there he was — Yang, already there, hands resting on the railing, looking out at the late afternoon sky. He turned when he heard my footsteps.

"Sorry I'm late," I said.

"You're not. I just got here."

I walked over and stood beside him. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The city stretched out below us, golden and unhurried, and the wind was soft enough to feel like a kindness.

"So," Yang said quietly. "What did you want to tell me?"

My heart knocked hard against my ribs. "You go first."

He nodded slowly, like he'd been expecting that. He turned to face the sky again, and something in his posture shifted — careful, almost braced.

"Okay," he said. "Don't be too surprised."

"Okay."

A beat of silence.

"I have a girlfriend." His voice was steady, calm. "We started dating about a week ago."

The world didn't end. That was the strange part. The sky stayed golden, the wind kept blowing, the city kept humming far below us — and I stood there, completely still, while something inside me quietly shattered into pieces too small to ever find again.

"I thought I would give her and dating a chance because i was confused about something , finally....."

I didn't hear what he said after that. The words reached my ears but dissolved before they could mean anything. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to disappear — to step sideways out of this moment, out of this rooftop, out of Yang's entire world — and never have to hold this feeling in my hands again.

But I didn't.

I breathed in. Slow and deep. And when I turned to look at him, I was smiling.

"Congratulations," I said. My voice only cracked a little. "I'll be cheering for you both."

Yang looked at me — really looked at me — and something unreadable crossed his face. Surprise, maybe. Or something worse.

I didn't wait to find out.

I turned and walked back toward the door, and then I was through it, and then I was running — down the stairs, through the corridor, out into the street — and I didn't stop. I didn't know how long I ran or how far. I wasn't thinking about direction. I was just trying to outrun the weight sitting in the center of my chest.

I never managed it.

When I finally came back to myself, I was standing in the middle of the road.

The headlights hit me first. Then the impact — sudden, total, a force that picked me up and threw me like I weighed nothing at all. The pain was immediate and everywhere and then, strangely, it wasn't. The road was cold against my cheek. Something warm spread slowly beneath me, dark and red against the asphalt.

Through the blur, I could make out a figure running toward me. Someone was calling my name.

"Alice!"

I didn't know who it was. I couldn't make sense of anything — the sounds, the shapes, the hands that may or may not have been reaching for me. My body felt impossibly light, like something essential was already leaving.

I closed my eyes.

And let it be.

…To be continued.

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