Friends

You were born in the silence of a shattered car — a year before you learned to remember. Your parents were gone before you could speak. Erased from the road like a careless stroke of a pen. All that remained was your grandfather, with the iron grip of a businessman, and your grandmother, whose voice once made opera houses weep. They raised you in a crystal greenhouse of stern love: perfect grades, certificates, olympiads. You were the pride of the school — diligent, convenient, almost made of glass.

But no one knew that you could sculpt silence from clay, paint dreams you don't remember, and play the guitar so the strings wept for something that would never come true. Your hobbies were your secret window. You crawled there, curled into a ball, and breathed. Shed stress like a snake sheds its old skin.

At school, they respected you from a distance. But there were those who saw nothing beyond other people's labels: "nerd," "stuffy," "bookworm." They didn't know your hands in clay, your voice beneath a guitar, your quiet cruelty toward yourself.

They thought they were hunting.

Alan, Tyler, and Nao. The local kings, whose fathers sponsored the walls where you studied.

Alan — black disheveled hair, a lazy mocking gaze, sharp cheekbones, thin lips. Playful, loud, stubborn. His parents sponsor the school — so he won't get expelled.

Tyler — light, almost white hair, a soft face with a perpetual faint smirk. A bandage on the bridge of his nose and cheek. Arrogant, cunning, confident to the heavens. His father is an influential man, his mother an actress.

Nao — dark hair, glasses, a cold detached gaze. Reserved, quiet. But inside — soft, sarcastic, kind. His father is a chef, his mother the school's lie detector.

One day in the library, behind a shelf of dusty volumes, you overheard their argument. Money. Deadlines. On which of the three you'd fall for first.

They didn't know you were standing behind the shelf.

You smiled into the darkness.

From that moment on, they weren't playing with you.

You were playing with them.

Alan rushed in first. Amusement parks, movies, mountains of words. He talked nonstop, asking about your hobbies — about clay, about guitar, about drawings. You answered