The ringing of the school bell woke Maya up from his nap. He let out a small yawn.

“Math is over. Good.” he thought.

He got out of his seat and made his way outside to go to the toilet. On his way back to class, as he was about to turn at one of the more isolated corners of the school, he heard an angry voice. He stopped to listen.

“…Father, stop trying to force me to be ladylike! I can’t-” Her voice abruptly cut off and Maya could hear a sigh.

He heard footsteps in a distance and came out of hiding just to see a girl with short cropped hair walking away, her back towards him.

“I guess those rich girls have problems too…” he mumbled to himself.

----

He was lounging around in the room where he and his friends usually hung out when Shohei came in with a gleeful grin on his face.

“Shohei-san,” he greeted. “What’s up?”

Noticing that Shohei was hiding something behind his back, Maya raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Ta-da!” Shohei brought out a copy of the school magazine into view. “They released the pictures of all the Cattaleya girls under the ‘New Students’ section!” He flipped the magazine open.

Out of curiosity, Maya looked over Shohei’s shoulder. Scanning through the page, his attention was grabbed by the picture of the girl he saw earlier. Her cropped hair stood out in the sea of ponytails and bobs.

He looked at the name beneath the photograph.

 Tokimune Sayuri.

“That would mean that her family owns the huge Tokimune Group,” He could not help but imagine how her relationship with her father was like, having recalled what he had heard earlier.

Beside him, Shohei eyed his friend. His eyes had been trained on the picture of one particular girl for a while now. “Oh~ Have you fallen in love, Maya?”

His train of thoughts interrupted, Maya snapped back into reality.

“E-eh?! No way!”

----

The next day, Maya found himself watching the Tokimune girl from across the room. Unlike him and his friends, she was attentively listening to the teacher drone on about Chemistry and diligently taking down notes. He then looked over at his friends. Some of them were sleeping, others doodling or engrossed in some other activity. Averting his gaze back to her, Shohei’s teasing rang in his head. “Well, she doesn’t look too bad I guess…” he admitted to himself.

----

As soon as the bell rang for break, Soichi dragged him out to the convenience store near their school to get some lunch.

“You sure eat fast!” Soichi commented as he finished the last of his sandwich.

Maya laughed. “No, it’s just that you’re slow.”

Out of the blue, a white shoe landed in front of them. Picking it up, Maya looked up. It came from the roof. He did not know why, but the face of Tokimune Sayuri flashed in his mind. Did her problems get too unbearable for her to handle? He tightened his grip on the piece of footwear and ran towards the stairs that led up to the rooftop.

----

He opened the door and looked around. Spotting her almost immediately, he quickly made his way towards her. Seeing her standing at the edge of the roof, he was reminded of himself. He had destroyed the fantasy his mother had deluded herself into living- that she had raised four well-mannered young ladies and after the day that her world came crashing down to reveal the harsh truth that she had been running away from all this while, she perhaps decided that since she could not avoid the truth about her life anymore, she might as well just cut away the parts that she hated. Hurt, he had run away from home and almost took his life in a similar fashion.

“What?” she said coldly as she turned to face him. “Did you think that I was going to jump?”

He stayed silent.

Taking her shoe from him, she scoffed.

“As if I would.” And with that, she walked off, leaving him alone on the roof.

Watching her leave, he wondered if it was just a cruel trick the gods were playing on them. Did they think it was amusing to watch humans suffer till they become suicidal?

If so, then he would not stand for it. He would not let her suffer alone and play into the gods’ hands that easily.

----

A/N: Hope you enjoyed reading! ^^