Aurora walked through the afternoon crowds with her bag gripped too tight and her breathing coming faster than the pace required. Students moved past her in both directions. She registered their faces without actually seeing them. Her mind was sowhere else entirely.
His hand.
Ro’s hand wrapped around hers across that table.
The mory wouldn’t leave. The way his fingers closed deliberately. The pressure. The warmth that traveled from his palm straight through her chest and down lower, settling in a place that made her thighs press together involuntarily as she walked.
That wasn’t normal.
That wasn’t how holding hands worked.
Aurora turned the corner near Building C and nearly collided with a group of second years. She mumbled an apology and kept moving. Her palms still felt hot. The crystalline orbs embedded in her skin pulsed faintly beneath the surface, cycling energy she wasn’t consciously directing. Her Essentia was reacting to sothing. To him. To whatever he’d done during that simple contact.
She’d felt this heat exactly once before.
With Nolan.
Two weeks ago during combat drills when he’d caught her wrist to demonstrate proper blocking technique. The sa warmth. The sa spread of sensation from contact point outward until her entire body registered the touch. She’d written it off as adrenaline from training. As proximity to soone she cared about. As anything except what it actually felt like.
Arousal.
Her face burned at the thought. She walked faster, as if speed could sohow outpace the realization.
Ro did sothing to .
The coffee shop conversation replayed in fragnts. His voice saying her na. His comntary about Nolan being an idiot. The casual way he’d suggested that if she were his, everyone would know it. No confusion. No mixed signals. Just facts.
Aurora reached the library quad and found an empty bench under the trees. She sat down harder than necessary. Her bag landed beside her with a thump that startled a couple studying nearby. They glanced over, saw her expression, and quickly returned to their books.
She pulled out her phone. Three ssages from Hana about tomorrow’s battle trials. One from the student council reminding her about forms due Friday. Nothing from Nolan.
There was never anything from Nolan unless she texted first.
That detail had never bothered her before. Now it sat in her chest like a splinter she couldn’t remove.
Her mind drifted back to a few days ago. Cheon cornering her at the coffee shop with her hair down and her composure cracking. Asking questions about sex in that precise, clinical way that couldn’t hide the desperation underneath.
"Have you ever been with soone before?"
Aurora had answered honestly. No. Neither had Cheon, though sothing in Cheon’s face suggested that status was about to change. The follow-up questions ca rapid-fire. What did Aurora know about contraception? About preparation? About what happened after?
Aurora had provided what information she could. Her mother had always been open about these topics. Communication. Safety. The importance of being with soone you trusted.
Cheon had absorbed every word with laser focus. Then she’d ntioned soone from their class had asked her to have sex that evening.
The mory clicked into place now with brutal clarity.
That was the night Cheon showed up the next morning with Ro and ra. Walking through campus holding hands. Visible marks on Cheon’s neck that the uniform couldn’t quite hide. The three of them arriving together looking like they’d barely slept.
Aurora’s stomach dropped.
Cheon had slept with Ro.
The perfect class representative with the color-coded planner and the rigid posture had gone to Ro’s apartnt and stayed the night. And the night after that apparently, based on this morning’s arrival pattern.
But that didn’t make sense.
ra was Ro’s girlfriend. Everyone knew that. They’d been public about it from day one. So how did Cheon fit into that arrangent? How did any of this work?
Aurora pulled up her ssages and scrolled to Cheon’s contact. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. She wanted to ask. To demand an explanation. To understand what had happened and how Cheon had gone from perfect student to part of Ro’s increasingly complicated situation in the span of three days.
But asking would require admitting she’d been paying attention. That she cared. That Ro’s comnt about mixed signals had lodged itself sowhere she couldn’t dislodge.
She locked her phone without typing anything.
The warmth between her legs hadn’t faded. If anything, it had intensified while she sat here thinking about Ro’s hand and Cheon’s transformation and the way ra had grinned at her across the gym this morning like she knew exactly what Aurora was feeling.
This was wrong.
This was completely inappropriate.
She had Nolan. Or she would have Nolan eventually once he stopped being so focused on hero rankings that he couldn’t see what was right in front of him. They were ant for each other. Everyone said so. They trained together. Studied together. Their abilities complented each other perfectly for team compositions.
Except Nolan had never held her hand the way Ro just had.
Nolan had never looked at her like she was the only thing in the room worth noticing.
Nolan had never made her body react like this from simple contact.
Aurora stood abruptly. She needed to move. To do sothing. The battle trials preparation eting was in twenty minutes at conference room 3-A. She could review the engagent protocols again. Double-check the contingency plans. Focus on sothing productive instead of sitting here spiraling about Ro’s hands and the heat pooling in places she absolutely could not think about right now.
She walked toward Building A with her head down and her thoughts scattered. Other students passed in blurs of color and motion. She registered voices without processing words. Her entire nervous system seed recalibrated to a frequency she didn’t understand.
What did he do to ?
The question looped endlessly. His grip hadn’t been particularly strong. The contact lasted maybe ten seconds. But sothing had transferred between them during those ten seconds. Sothing that felt like electricity running through water. Sothing that made her Essentia spike and her body respond in ways that had nothing to do with combat applications.
She reached Building A and climbed the stairs to the third floor. The hallway was mostly empty. Classes were still in session. She found conference room 3-A and pushed through the door.
Nolan sat at the table already, his notebook open in front of him and three different colored pens arranged in a neat line. His ssy black hair fell across his forehead in that way she’d always found endearing. His green eyes focused completely on whatever he was reviewing. He looked up when she entered.
"Hey! You’re early."
His smile was genuine. Warm. Exactly the sa as always.
Aurora’s chest tightened.
"Yeah. Finished up quicker than I thought."
She took the seat across from him instead of beside him. The distance felt safer sohow. Like sitting too close might reveal sothing she wasn’t ready to na yet.
Nolan gestured at his notes. "I’ve been going over the rotation patterns Cheon suggested yesterday. I think if we modify the third phase to account for—"
His voice continued but Aurora’s attention drifted. She watched his mouth move. Catalogued the earnest way he leaned over his work. The complete focus he brought to everything hero-related. The way he never looked at her like she was anything more than his reliable teammate.
The door opened again. ra walked in with her tail swishing behind her and her yellow eyes bright with sothing Aurora couldn’t identify. She wore the standard uniform but sohow made it look deliberate. Calculated. Like she’d chosen each piece specifically to achieve so effect.
"Sup." ra dropped into the chair at the head of the table. She looked between Aurora and Nolan with an expression that suggested she found sothing amusing about the arrangent.
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