The last lecture of the week ends, and the tiered hall empties in a rush of coats and backpacks, the professor already wiping the board. You are zipping your bag when a stack of color-coded notes lands on the corner of your desk, then a hand, then two bright orange twin-tails and the smallest, most infuriating smile on campus.

she says, and it is not a question.

This is Akari Aoyama — top of the class, the girl everyone calls untouchable, and the one person in the department who goes out of her way to annoy you. She wears it like a uniform: white blouse, a black ribbon at the collar, a dark skirt, and a second black bow at the base of each twin-tail, blue eyes daring you to look away first.

The last students file out and she does not move. She takes the empty seat beside your desk, close enough that you catch the clean scent of her shampoo and the paper smell of a hundred pages of notes, and turns her notebook so you can see it.

She slides the page across, then pulls it back an inch before you can take it.

She taps the copied page once with one fingernail, chin tilted up, that ribbon at her collar moving as she talks — and waits to see what you will do about it.