Yuna's POV
Some days at San Esteban High passed without incident.
This was not one of those days.
I had been staring at the back of the classroom for what was probably too long, letting my brain do that thing it did when the lesson stopped feeling urgent and my thoughts took over the space.
It wasn't deliberate.
It just happened.
One moment I was watching the teacher write something on the board, and the next I was somewhere else entirely — somewhere quieter, where the words I had been trying to piece together for the Ryo job were lined up and waiting for me to look at them properly.
"Yuna."
I blinked.
Erika's voice, low and close, cutting through whatever I had been thinking about.
"Hm?"
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"The thing where you leave your body and go somewhere else entirely."
I straightened up in my seat.
"I was listening."
"To what?"
"To..." I glanced at the board.
"The lesson."
Erika gave me a look that said she had been watching me not listen to the lesson for the last ten minutes and was willing to provide a full report if necessary.
"Sure," she said.
"Anyway.
Don't look now, but Benjie has been staring at you for the last three minutes."
I looked immediately, because that was the natural human response to being told not to look.
Benjie was sitting near the back of the room, in the part of the classroom that people occupied when they preferred not to be noticed.
He had a notebook open in front of him that he was definitely not writing in.
The moment I turned, his eyes dropped to the page.
He was wearing a grey sweater.
He was always wearing a sweater of some kind, I realized — I had never paid enough attention to register it before, but now that Erika had pointed him out, I could see it clearly.
Quiet.
Head down.
The kind of person who existed in the periphery of a room without ever quite becoming part of it.
I turned back to Erika.
"How long has this been going on?"
"A while," she said.
"He looks at you a lot."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I figured you'd notice eventually."
I had not noticed.
At all.
I spent the rest of class in that low-level uncomfortable awareness of being watched, which made it even harder to pay attention to anything the teacher was saying, which meant I spent the entire period simultaneously trying to look like I wasn't aware of Benjie and also genuinely having no idea what was being discussed.
When the bell rang, I was already packing up, moving on automatic.
Then I felt the presence.
Someone had stopped behind me, slightly to the left.
Not walking past.
Stopped.
I turned.
Benjie was standing there.
Close enough to talk to, far enough to still technically be giving me space.
He was holding a stack of notebooks against his chest like a shield, and his face was doing several things at once — flushed, uncertain, eyes that kept almost meeting mine and then dropping to a point somewhere around my shoulder instead.
"Y-Yuna?" he said.
"Yeah?" I said, keeping my voice easy, giving him whatever time he needed.
"I, uh." He took a breath.
Let it out.
His grip on the notebooks tightened.
"I've been meaning to say something.
For a while.
And I know this is probably terrible timing but I kept waiting for a better time and then I thought maybe there isn't one so—"
He stopped.
Looked at the floor.
Looked back up at a point somewhere near my chin.
"I like you," he said, all at once, like he had decided to just get it out before he could stop himself.
"A lot.
I think you're really cool.
And I just wanted you to know."
The words landed in a specific kind of silence.
The kind that wasn't actually silence because the classroom was still full of people gathering their things, but that felt like it, because everything else had gone slightly distant.
I looked at him.
He was waiting, shoulders slightly hunched, bracing for whatever came next.
He wasn't bad.
He was genuinely not bad — quiet and earnest and clearly terrified, and none of that was his fault.
It was just that I didn't feel anything back.
Not in the way he meant.
Not even a little.
And the worst thing I could do was pretend otherwise.
"Benjie," I said carefully, keeping my voice low.
"I really appreciate you saying that.
That takes a lot of courage."
He nodded, very slightly, still braced.
"But I'm not in a place right now where I'm looking for that kind of thing.
I'm sorry."
He nodded again.
The flush on his face deepened.
He swallowed once, hard, and gave a small smile that didn't reach his eyes — the kind of smile people pull out when they're trying to make things less uncomfortable for everyone else even though they're the one who just took a hit.
"No, it's — yeah.
I understand.
I just had to say it."
"I know," I said.
"I'm glad you did."
He nodded one more time, shifted his notebooks in his arms, and walked out of the classroom at a pace that was measured enough to not look like fleeing but fast enough that he was through the door before I could say anything else.
I stood there for a second.
Erika appeared at my elbow, as she tended to do.
"I saw," she said quietly.
"I know."
"You okay?"
"Yeah.
Are you?" I paused.
"Is he?"
Erika tilted her head slightly, watching the doorway.
"He'll be okay.
He's the type."
I hoped she was right.
I picked up my bag and followed her out, and the day kept moving the way it did, pulling everything forward whether you were ready or not.
That evening I was at Lily's desk attempting homework when my manager called.
I had been staring at the same question for twelve minutes and getting nowhere, so I answered it.
"Yuna." The chaos in his voice was immediate.
"Big news.
Are you ready?"
"I'm never ready," I said.
"You're going to be ready for this.
You know Ryo Ishikawa?"
I put my pen down.
"Yes," I said, very carefully.
"I know who Ryo Ishikawa is."
"His team called.
They want a love song.
For the new album.
They asked for you specifically — well, for your alias specifically, but same thing."
I stared at the homework in front of me without seeing it.
Ryo Ishikawa.
The same artist whose songs I had listened to enough times that I had inadvertently memorized most of them without trying.
The same artist I had quietly, anonymously written two album tracks for over the past year, never once thinking he'd come back.
The same artist I had never in my life expected to be on a first-name basis with, even professionally, even secretly.
A love song.
For Ryo Ishikawa.
Written by me.
Who had never been in a relationship.
"A love song," I repeated.
"Yes."
"He wants me to write a love song."
"Yes."
"I don't have any experience with—"
"I know."
"I literally just turned down a confession today—"
"I don't need that level of detail, Yuna."
I pressed my free hand over my face.
"How am I supposed to write a love song?"
"The same way you write everything else.
You figure it out."
"That is not helpful."
"It's a little helpful."
It was not helpful.
But the job was real.
And the deadline would be real.
And somewhere between now and whenever that deadline was, I was going to have to figure out how to write something convincing about a feeling I had no personal data on whatsoever.
"His team will reach out to set up a meeting," my manager said.
"Just take the call.
You'll be fine."
"You always say that."
"And you're always fine."
"I'm never fine."
"You're fine enough."
He hung up.
I sat at the desk in Lily's room with my phone in one hand and my pen in the other, staring at the homework I was not going to finish tonight.
Lily was asleep already, breathing peacefully under her pile of stolen blankets.
I looked at her for a second.
Then I looked at the blank page in my notebook.
A love song.
I pulled the notebook toward me and uncapped the pen.
Somewhere in this was a beginning.
I just had to find it.
To be continued.