The silence Adrian Nguyen left behind was sharper than any reprimand.
Hana stood there, hand still tingling from where it had brushed his desk. The mahogany surface was cold, polished, unyielding—just like him. And yet, something about the brief contact clung to her chest like a spark she couldn't smother.
Adrian didn't look up. His eyes were fixed on his report, pen gliding across the page with mechanical precision. No pause. No acknowledgment. Just that calm, surgical focus that made Hana feel small—an interruption in his perfect equation.
"Right," she murmured, her voice barely audible. "I'll be more careful next time."
The words dissolved into the vast stillness of the library.
Adrian's pen kept moving. The world around him might as well not have existed.
Hana tightened her grip on the stack of books and turned back to her corner seat—the one near the window where sunlight and dust met like tired lovers. She sat down, pretending to read, but every paragraph on the page twisted into the image of his silver-gray eyes and that distant, glacial composure.
Get it together, Hana. He's just another guy. A cold, overachieving, ridiculously perfect guy.
Her friend Sarah's voice echoed in her memory: "He's the CEO's son—cold, brilliant, untouchable."
The kind of person who moved through the world like it was built for him.
And yet… there had been something in his reaction. A flicker. A tremor in his control when their hands touched. Maybe she imagined it. Maybe not.
Either way, she couldn't stop thinking about it.
Two days passed in the same unspoken rhythm.
They shared lectures, the same echoing hallways, the same unyielding quiet of the library. They never spoke, but she could feel his presence—the air subtly shifting whenever he entered a room.
Hana started noticing the details: the crisp folds of his shirts, the calculated way he underlined notes, the absence of wasted motion. He was order embodied. And it frustrated her endlessly.
Because she wanted to see the person beneath all that precision—the man behind the silence.
During an economics seminar, the chance came. The room buzzed with caffeine and chatter. Students debated mergers and cross-border models while Hana and Sarah clutched their coffees like lifelines.
Then Adrian entered.
Conversations softened as if gravity had shifted. He crossed the room with effortless control, eyes flicking briefly toward the ticker on the wall. No greetings. No acknowledgment. He was an island of composure in a sea of chaos.
Sarah nudged Hana. "Does he ever blink? Or does he just… calculate oxygen efficiency?"
Hana smirked, but her eyes didn't leave him. "He calculates everything. Except empathy."
Sarah grinned. "You sound like you're about to start a revolution."
Maybe she was.
Because when Adrian began dissecting a case study aloud, his tone was sharp, absolute—every statement final.
"Externalities," he said, voice cool and crisp. "They're unavoidable costs. Efficiency requires sacrifice."
Something inside Hana snapped.
"Sacrifice for whom?" she blurted before she could stop herself. "The system can't be fair if it leaves people behind. Those aren't just numbers—they're lives."
Every head turned.
Adrian's gaze lifted slowly, finding hers. His eyes were calm, almost too calm. "Sentiment clouds analysis," he replied. "Markets reward logic, not emotion."
Hana felt her pulse hammering, but she refused to look away. "Then maybe that's why they keep failing."
For a second, the world held its breath. His jaw tightened. A crack, barely visible, ran through his composure.
And then, as if dismissing the entire exchange, he looked away. But not before Hana saw it—the faintest glimmer of uncertainty.
She'd gotten under his skin.
That night, Hana stayed in the library long after closing hours, fighting a losing battle with her macroeconomics model. The numbers refused to cooperate, and exhaustion blurred her notes into nonsense. She rubbed her eyes and sighed, ready to give up.
Then she noticed the faint glow from across the aisle.
Adrian Nguyen. Alone. Typing with relentless focus.
Her heart skipped. Of course. He lived here, in this world of marble and silence.
And on his screen—she saw it. The same proprietary model she'd been struggling with.
Hesitation warred with curiosity. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she stood and crossed the room.
"Adrian," she said quietly.
He didn't look up. "You're not supposed to be here after ten."
"I know," she said, clutching her notebook. "But… I think there's a variable off in your model. The contingent capital ratio—it disadvantages smaller institutions. It's mathematically efficient, but ethically wrong."
That made him stop. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to her.
For a heartbeat, neither spoke.
Then, wordlessly, he turned his screen toward her.
"You're not wrong," he said finally. "But you shouldn't have noticed that. It's not in the textbook."
"Maybe textbooks aren't enough," Hana replied softly.
Adrian leaned back, studying her as though she were an anomaly his data couldn't explain. Then, with a measured motion, he pulled up a hidden assumption matrix. "This part," he said, his tone quieter now, "is confidential. You were never here."
A smile tugged at her lips. "Understood."
For the first time, the air between them wasn't cold—it was charged. Not with hostility, but with something dangerous and alive.
They spent the next hour bent over his laptop, their whispers mingling with the faint hum of the library lights. He explained the variables; she questioned the ethics. He defended logic; she countered with compassion.
And when she challenged one of his models too sharply, his mouth twitched—the ghost of a smile.
By the time the clock struck midnight, the walls between them had thinned, if only by an inch.
Hana packed her books, glancing back as she stood.
Adrian was watching her—not cold, not calculating, but quietly thoughtful.
"Good night, Adrian," she said.
He hesitated. Then, softly, almost imperceptibly—
"Good night, Hana."
Outside, the rain had started to fall, soft and unhurried. Hana smiled to herself as she walked home, unaware that somewhere behind her, Adrian Nguyen sat in the empty library, staring at the space where she'd stood.
The siege was no longer metaphorical.
It had begun to move inside him.