"You okay?" Qiao Zeyan leaned casually against the locker next to hers, but his tone was far from playful.
Yan Xiyan didn't answer. Her hand hovered just slightly over the combination lock, head tilted like she was listening to something no one else could hear.
Zeyan didn't press. Not yet.
Her instincts were louder now than ever, an itch under her skin, a tension that screamed she was being watched. Not the casual glances from boys trying to act smooth. Something colder. Smarter.
The same way she used to feel… before pulling the trigger.
A girl squealed in the hallway as her friend yanked her into a hug, breaking the moment. Xiyan blinked, realizing she'd input the wrong locker code. Twice.
"You sure you're not glitching?" Zeyan asked, one eyebrow raised.
She scowled at him. "Do you ever shut up?"
"When I'm unconscious," he said brightly. "Rarely happens."
But he didn't leave.
Instead, his gaze grew more serious. "Listen, something's been off about you lately. I don't mean your suspiciously perfect aim in PE or the fact that you can calculate projectile velocity faster than our physics teacher. I mean… the way you just freeze sometimes. Like you're waiting for a war to break out."
Her hand paused mid-twist.
She turned to him, eyes hard. "Don't pry into things you can't handle."
His smile faltered but only for a second. "Guess I'm not as fragile as I look."
"Looks are deceiving."
"You'd know."
The bell rang.
Later That Night – Rooftop Shadows
The wind was sharp up here. Not enough to numb her fingers, but enough to whisper against her neck like a threat.
Yan Xiyan crouched low, the school rooftop giving her a perfect view point. She wasn't wearing the sniper gear she trained in. Just her school jacket. It'd have to do.
She'd seen the glint again. Twice.
Either someone was toying with her… or she was being hunted.
She adjusted the lens of the compact monocular hidden in her pocket, eyes sweeping across the building opposite. Nothing.
Then sudden movement quick and calculated.
A dark figure darted out of sight behind the ventilation shaft.
Xiyan's pulse spiked. That gait, smooth, deliberate, eerily familiar.
Don't tell me...
She leapt over the edge silently, grabbing the rusted ladder and swinging onto the adjacent ledge like it was second nature.
By the time she landed behind the other building, the figure was gone but a small piece of cloth fluttered from a hook. Black, military-grade. Torn, like someone escaped just in time.
"Coward," she muttered, grabbing it.
Behind her, a voice.
"Didn't peg you for the nighttime parkour type."
She spun, fingers instinctively curling as if reaching for a nonexistent trigger.
Qiao Zeyan stood there, hands in his pockets, face shadowed—but smile intact.
"What... are you doing here?" she hissed.
"I could ask you the same thing. Except I think I already know." His eyes dropped to the torn cloth in her hand.
She stuffed it in her pocket. "Go home, Zeyan."
"Or you'll what? Snap another pencil at me?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Or you'll find out just how fragile you actually are."
He grinned.
But behind his grin was something else, curiosity that wouldn't go away. And a gut feeling that this girl was hiding a storm.