Isaac POV
"What the fuck?"
The words slipped out before Isaac could stop them.
Both he and Aria stood frozen in front of the car, staring at it as if it belonged to someone else.
Like there was no way this wreck belonged to them, because if it did, it meant the last five minutes were real.
The metallic red paint along the side panels was torn up by deep, deliberate scratches that ran almost the full length of the car.
The glossy surface had been ruined, gouged until bare metal peeked through in jagged, angry lines.
The windows were worse.
White paint, probably from a cheap aerosol can, was smeared and scrawled across the glass in thick, messy letters.
[Whore.]
[Slut.]
The words stood out stark against the dark tint of the windows.
For a moment, all Isaac could do was stare at the letters, feeling something cold settle at the base of his throat.
His mind flicked through faces automatically.
He was aware that people knew they lived together.
That wasn't a secret.
Friends, classmates, people from their building, anyone who saw them arriving and leaving together daily had pieced it together quickly.
Plenty of them gossiped about it.
But vandalism?
He slowly scanned the surrounding area.
The parking lot was relatively quiet.
A few students walked past at a distance, some glancing their way before quickly looking away once they saw what was on the car.
No one lingered close enough to be suspicious. No one stood around watching.
It could've been anyone.
The girl from before flickered in his memory, the one who had confessed to him behind the building.
The one with the too-intense eyes, the trembling hands, and the way she had said "you can live with me" as if she had already written the scenario in her head.
The memory hovered at the edge of his thoughts like a shadow.
Too close.
Too convenient.
He shook his head, forcing the thought aside for the moment, and exhaled slowly.
"Seriously though, what the fuck? Why would anyone do this?" he muttered again, voice flat but tight.
It made no sense.
It wasn't just the insult.
It was the insults they had chosen.
[Whore.]
[Slut.]
Words that didn't connect to reality.
As far as their sex lives went, they had hardly interacted with anyone else in the past year.
There had been the occasional messy fling in the earlier days, but ever since that drunken night between them months ago, it had all but stopped.
The very few encounters he'd had were private, not public enough for anyone to make a big deal out of.
And even if someone had known details about their personal lives, the leap from "I don't like them" to this kind of vandalism was insane.
Aria's hand brushed against his as she leaned forward over his shoulder, the contact brief but grounding.
"Let's… get the bus," she said quietly.
He looked at her.
There was no accusation in her tone.
No snapped question, no "Is this your fault?"
The words were simple, practical.
But the slight hesitation before she spoke, the way her eyes avoided his and instead fixed on the ruined car, made his chest tighten.
Isaac could sense it, the almost imperceptible crack in her usual composure.
She had an idea who might be responsible.
He could tell.
So did he.
But neither of them said it out loud.
Neither of them wanted to be wrong.
Or worse, right.
It was just a fleeting thought they both had.
One they almost immediately shoved down into a corner of their minds.
"Fine, but let me clean this first," Isaac said, stepping toward the trunk.
He popped it open and rummaged inside until he found an old spray bottle of cleaning solution and a rag they kept for wiping down the dashboard.
His movements were a little sharper than usual.
"...We'll be late," Aria murmured.
Her voice was small, but there was a subtle softness in it that made him glance up.
"So what?" he replied, shrugging one shoulder. "Not like either of us needs to stay in college anyway. I've already got a job and you're loaded."
He tried to inject a bit of teasing into his tone, hoping to puncture the tension.
The joke sat somewhere between truth and deflection.
A soft chuckle slipped out of her, but it was empty around the edges.
"Aren't you the one who's always saying we need to go?" she replied, voice flat but trying to play along.
"Whatever, smartass. I just have my priorities straight," he said, giving a vague wave of the hand.
He sprayed the window, watching the white paint streak and drip down in uneven tracks.
It didn't come off easily; he had to press hard with the rag, scrubbing in tight circles to get even a portion of the letters to blur.
"Fineee," Aria said, drawing out the word as she slowly lowered herself down onto the sidewalk.
She let herself collapse there with an exaggerated sigh, leaning her back against the curb.
From anyone else's perspective, she probably looked like she was just being dramatic as usual.
But Isaac noticed the way her eyes lingered on the vandalised car longer than necessary.
The tension in how she held herself.
The faint tremble in her fingers as she clasped her hands together in her lap.
He saw it all.
He didn't comment.
If he pointed it out, she would just brush it off, and they would fall into a loop of half-jokes and half-truths that didn't actually fix anything.
So instead, he focused on the glass.
"What a pain though…" he muttered, scrubbing at the stubborn paint. "It's gonna cost a shitton. Should I just repaint it myself?"
He looked down at his hands, now smeared with streaks of white.
The smell of the cleaner was sharp and chemical, stinging his nose.
"I'll pay for it, don't worry," she said quietly.
Her gaze stayed locked on the car, expression strangely blank.
"Isn't that a waste, though?" he asked, glancing at her.
"Didn't you literally just comment on how I was loaded?" she replied without missing a beat.
He opened his mouth, then shut it again.
"…Fair," he conceded.
He turned back to the car, bracing an arm on the frame as he continued to scrub.
"...Fine," he said after a moment. "Let's take it in after I finish this. We can just skip today."
"Yayyy," Aria replied, but the word came out flat, her lips barely moving.
If he hadn't known her, he might have mistaken it for boredom.
He knew better.
As he worked on the windows, he kept sneaking small glances at her.
The way her hands flexed restlessly on her knees.
The slight tightening in her jaw, as if she were trying not to grind her teeth.
The way her eyes would briefly unfocus, as if recalling some memory she didn't want to revisit.
He had always thought of Aria as someone with an ironclad composure, someone who could laugh off harsh comments, roll her eyes at judgmental looks, and keep going without flinching.
But something was shifting now, subtle, slow, like the beginning of a crack in glass.
A thin line that, once started, would only deepen.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Inside the lecture hall, the atmosphere felt wrong the moment they stepped in.
Public speaking class usually had a particular energy, complaints, groans, quiet chatter as people found seats, the rustle of notebooks and laptops.
Today, the room was heavy and still.
Eyes followed Aria the second she crossed the threshold.
Not in the usual way.
Not the casual glances she was used to ignoring.
These looks were sharper.
Measured.
Waiting.
""...""
Isaac and Aria came to an abrupt halt at the front of the room.
They stood side by side, staring at the blackboard.
Words were scrawled across it in thick, uneven handwriting, the chalk pressed too hard, leaving faint dust at the edges of each stroke.
Accusations.
A list of venom poured into sentences:
— Aria's a filthy slut who sleeps with anyone.
— She uses money to manipulate Isaac so he won't leave her.
There were more lines that twisted those same ideas in different phrasing, as if whoever wrote them couldn't stop circling the same obsessions.
Isaac felt his chest tighten.
His jaw clenched as he read each line, the mix of familiarity and rage scraping at his nerves.
Because it wasn't just the words.
Pinned up around the board, fixed with tape and tacks, were photos.
Some blurry, taken from a distance.
Some disturbingly clear.
Aria at a bar, drink in hand, laughing at something someone off-camera had said.
Aria walking down the street beside a man.
Aria sitting in a café, leaning over a table, smiling.
Different men.
Different places.
Clearly collected over time.
All framed in a way that made them look like evidence.
Aria's eyes moved over the board once, twice, then stopped.
Isaac turned his head to look at her.
Her face had gone completely pale, the colour drained from her cheeks.
Her lips were parted slightly, as if there were words she wanted to say but couldn't push through her throat.
For the first time since he had known her, Aria looked… small.
Fragile.
Like someone had reached inside and ripped away the easy smile she always wore, leaving nothing in its place to hold her up.
Her hands shook violently.
She clutched the strap of her bag so tightly that her knuckles turned white, the fabric pulled taut under her grip, as if it might tear at any second.
Her breathing hitched, short, shallow inhales that never seemed to reach her lungs.
"I-I didn't do it…" she whispered.
The words were tiny.
Lost in the quiet murmur of the room.
Isaac stepped closer to her without thinking, angling his body slightly between her and the rest of the class.
"I know," he said quietly.
He kept his voice steady, anchoring it in the certainty he didn't need to force.
"Don't worry."
He wasn't stupid enough to believe what was written there.
Sure, the pictures were arranged in a way that made them look incriminating.
The wording was calculated to sound like the conclusion of some sordid story people wanted to believe.
But Isaac knew their lives.
Outside of the hours he was at work, they were almost always together.
He knew where she went, who she met, and how she spent her time.
If she had had some hidden double life worthy of gossip, he would have noticed.
And even if, somehow, every word on that board had been true, it still wouldn't have mattered to him.
He had no interest in slut-shaming her.
No moral high ground he wanted to stand on.
Aria was his friend.
The person who had reached out a hand to him when he needed it most and said, "live with me," when he had nowhere else to go.
They weren't dating.
They had no plans to.
If she wanted to sleep with whoever she wanted, then all he would care about was that she stayed safe.
But she didn't hear him.
Or maybe she couldn't.
The words on the blackboard swarmed her mind.
The sentences blurred together into one long accusation that screamed louder than his quiet reassurance.
The photos burned into her vision.
Her classmates' murmurs, whether actual whispers in the room or echoes in her own head, pressed down on her from every side.
— Wow… I never would've thought her to be the type.
— Even old men? Damn, she must've been desperate.
— I feel bad for Isaac, poor guy.
None of them spoke those lines aloud in that exact moment, but she could hear them anyway.
The murmurs that did fill the lecture hall were bad enough, half-hidden, half-hearted attempts to sound sympathetic or disapproving.
No one stepped in to erase the board.
No one stood up to say it was obviously unhinged.
In that moment, her breakdown wasn't dramatic.
There was no screaming, no explosive outburst.
It was slow.
Suffocating.
Her chest tightened further with each breath, her throat constricting around every word she tried to force out.
The whispers hurt more than if someone had simply yelled at her to her face.
Every sideways glance, every quickly averted gaze, felt like another weight being piled onto her shoulders.
Her tears started silently.
One, then another.
They rolled down her cheeks, leaving thin, glistening trails that she tried to wipe away with the back of her hand, only to smear them across her skin.
"I didn't… do any of this…" she whispered again.
The room didn't quieten further for her explanation.
If anything, it grew worse.
Some of the students exchanged looks that tried to be "objective," weighing what was on the board against what they thought they knew.
Others only looked away as if they didn't want to get involved.
The blackboard remained covered in chalk and pictures.
It didn't matter that she denied it.
Someone wanted this story to exist.
Her mind jumped back to the scratched paint.
The ugly, white letters smeared across her car.
Now those same words were written here.
Bigger.
Sharper.
And surrounded by images that seemed to support them.
She could feel it now, in a way she hadn't let herself feel earlier.
Someone was watching her.
Someone wanted to see her fall.
Her knees buckled.
Isaac moved instinctively, hand shooting out to catch her arm before she hit the floor.
"Hey—"
She jerked away from his grip.
The touch, instead of grounding her, felt like another harsh spotlight.
Another pair of eyes on her, even if they were his.
Even if he was the one person she wanted to believe her.
She ripped her arm free and ran.
Her bag bumped against her hip; her shoes squeaked against the polished floor; the lecture hall doors slammed back harder than she meant to as she pushed through them.
Tears blurred the edges of her vision as she fled, not sure where she was going.
Only knowing she needed to get away from the blackboard. From the photos. From the eyes.
From the version of herself someone had drawn and pinned up for everyone to see.
————「❤︎」————