Koharu wasn't supposed to find it.
The notebook—my old writing, the kind dredged from a memory I had long since tried to forget—was only ever supposed to be a relic for me. Something to burn in metaphor, if not in actual fire. But somehow, in the chain of chaos that defined my life, it had slipped from my bag to the Literature Club desk.
And now she was reading it.
She didn't say anything when I walked in. Just sat there, cross-legged on the floor, the worn pages open in her lap, fingers curled slightly around the edge as if it might fly away if she let go.
When she finally looked up, her eyes didn't shine with mockery, or laughter, or even confusion.
They shimmered.
"You wrote this?" she asked, softly.
I debated lying.
"Yes."
"It's beautiful," she said.
I stared at her like she had just told me the sky was green and fish could rap battle.
"It's not," I replied. "It's messy. Overwrought. Pretentious. I was twelve and full of delusions."
"Yeah," she said, closing the notebook gently, "but it was real. And it's you."
She reached into her own bag and pulled out her draft—the one she'd spilled ink on just a few days ago. It had been reworked. Lines were tighter, themes sharper. The margins were filled with questions, arrows, scratched-out words, and new ones scribbled above.
"I rewrote mine," she said. "Because if you can write like this… then I want to try writing something real too."
I blinked.
"I don't want to be the heroine of a fake story anymore. I want to tell one that matters. So…" She hesitated, then held out her notebook. "Write it with me?"
My fingers hovered over the cover.
I hadn't co-written anything since a doomed group project in second year that ended with a broken printer and two friendships dissolved in passive-aggressive texts.
But this was different.
This was her.
And she was offering not just collaboration, but vulnerability.
I took the notebook.
And just like that, something changed.
From a few desks away, Yuki closed her own notebook. No pages fluttered. No dramatic sigh. Just the quiet snap of a decision being made internally.
She watched us in silence, unreadable as always. But her eyes lingered.
Makki, naturally, was hiding under a nearby table with a bag of shrimp crackers and his phone recording. For "archival purposes," he claimed.
He popped out like a gopher emerging into the sunlight.
"All routes are valid," he said, dusting off crumbs, "but only one becomes canon."
"What does that even mean?" I asked.
"It means don't mess it up, man."
Surprisingly wise. Infuriatingly delivered.
Noa appeared moments later, breathless and holding what I could only assume was another unsolicited chapter of her fanfic.
She took one look at Koharu and me—me holding her notebook, Koharu smiling like a glitch in the matrix had been corrected—and narrowed her eyes.
"I found him first," she said.
"Found me?" I asked, exasperated.
"As a talent, obviously," she snapped, crossing her arms. "You're still my senpai-sensei. We have literary chemistry."
"Pretty sure we just have confusion and legal concerns."
Behind her, Tsubaki-sensei stepped into the room with the quiet grace of someone who had already read this script and knew her lines.
She looked at Koharu, then at me, and finally at the notebook in my hand.
"The moment you write together," she said, her voice like turning pages, "it becomes more than fiction."
"What's it become then?" Koharu asked, half-whispering.
Tsubaki smiled. "It becomes truth—even if it's made of lies."
That evening, Koharu and I sat under the sakura tree, notebooks open, pens poised. The setting sun stained the sky pink and gold like a half-finished painting.
"Alright," I said, "so who's the protagonist?"
She looked at me with a smirk. "You, obviously."
"I vote we kill him off in Chapter One."
She laughed. Really laughed. That kind of messy, belly-deep laugh that cracked open the day and let the light pour in.
"Too bad," she said. "I like this one."
My pen touched the page.
And for the first time since I was twelve, I started a story without fear.