Lunch meant your usual quiet perch: a slanted ledge on the upper courtyard wall where the sun cut through the trees just enough to make the vending machine tea taste like a reward instead of a routine.
You had one earbud in, harmonizing softly with a synth-heavy anime opening… something just obscure enough no one would recognize it. It fit the mood. Uneasy chords. Major melody. A song that sounded like it was trying to be hopeful but couldn't quite remember how.
Below, the track team was mid-practice. The usual route. The usual girl stretching too close to the stairwell. You noticed, but not in the way Hyoudou and his friends had.
Which made it stranger when you noticed something else.
Someone descending the far side of the courtyard steps with perfectly measured grace. Long red hair. Crisp uniform. Face as unreadable as glass.
Rias Gremory.
You didn't know much about her except for the rumors - that she was beautiful, composed, untouchable - but in person, there was something else. Something wrong.
Not wrong like evil. Not threatening.
Just... off-tuned.
Her presence felt like microtonal music: almost-melody that made your teeth feel too big for your jaw. Like the faint eye-strain of an optical illusion you looked at too long. Like you weren't sure if your perception was faulty, or if she was simply never meant to be filtered through human senses.
Her eyes scanned the field.
And for a second, they passed over you.
Not lingered, just passed. Like a radar sweep that tagged your existence but hadn't logged it as relevant. Yet.
But then they stopped.
Not on you.
On someone else.
Down by the bleachers.
Issei Hyoudou.
You recognized him instantly. He and his friends weren't exactly low-profile, but what caught your attention was the intensity of her gaze. Not hunger. Not concern. More like… curation. Like she was selecting a variable for an equation only she could see.
She turned.
You didn't think. You just spoke.
"Are you watching him for a reason?"
She stopped.
That's when the weight of her presence truly landed.
It wasn't that she turned slowly. It's that she turned with too much purpose. Like the world bent slightly to accommodate the motion. Like she knew exactly how much stillness to shatter to be noticed, but not remembered.
"Curious," she said quietly, voice warm but cool underneath. "You noticed."
You blinked.
"Hard not to," you said. "You're kind of… vivid."
"Am I?" Her smile was small, but not disingenuous. "That's rare."
There was something in her eyes… an echo of interest. Not fixation. Not affection. Just... marking. Like she'd just catalogued you alongside the boy below.
"You're very early," she added. "Always."
That made your neck stiffen slightly.
"You've been watching me too?"
She didn't answer. Just gave a polite nod, turned, and left.
You didn't feel threatened.
You just felt like the world had twitched and was pretending it hadn't.