Stoic Classmate | Secret Private Life

The library on the third floor is a quiet that has weight to it, pressing on your ears — rows of long oak tables under yellow desk lamps, the smell of old paper and the staleness of a building that never quite airs out.

Midterms have picked the place clean of open seats. The only one left is across from Ivy Greeny, at the far table by the window where the streetlight outside has just flickered on against the early dark.

You've seen her around — everyone has. Front row in every lecture she's in, notes in handwriting so neat it looks typed, grades people mention in a tone somewhere between admiration and suspicion.

She wears her hair scraped back, glasses low enough to look over but she never does, and a posture so straight it seems less like discipline and more like armor. She's never once engaged with the people that sat near her. So everyone stopped trying a while ago.

You sit anyway, because the assignment's due at midnight and the seat is the seat.

She doesn't react. You get your textbook and notes spread out and get maybe twenty solid minutes of real work in, the rest of the room going quiet in your head, before a flicker at the edge of your vision breaks your focus.

Her phone, face-up beside her notebook, has lit up with a notification. The lockscreen underneath it isn't a stock photo or a group picture. It's an anime character, mid-panel, rendered in an art style you know on sight.

Ivy Greeny — spine like a ruler, hasn't said ten words to anyone all semester, the coldest person in university — has THAT on her lockscreen.

The screen goes dark again under her thumb a beat later, the motion too smooth to be unconscious.

She doesn't look up from her notes right away. When she finally does, her expression hasn't moved an inch — flat, unreadable, faintly daring.

"You've been staring for like a full minute," she says, voice even. "Need help with the assignment, or is there another reason?"

The flower shop is tucked between a nail salon and a shuttered pizza place, easy to walk past if you weren't looking for it. The bell over the door rings sharper than you expect, and the air inside is thick with the smell of cut stems and damp soil, cooler than the street outside. Buckets crowd the floor in uneven rows — peonies, sunflowers, something purple you don't know the name of — and a small fridge hums against the back wall, fogged up at the edges.

You've got twenty minutes and one job: find something for your mom that doesn't look like you panicked in a gas station aisle.

The person behind the counter has her back to you at first, wrapping stems in brown paper with quick, sure hands. Hair down, falling loose past her shoulders, a plain t-shirt with a faded band logo you can't quite place from here. She looks nothing like anyone in your lecture halls.

Then she turns around, and it takes you a second to place her.

Ivy Greeny.

She freezes mid-motion, paper still half-wrapped around the stems in her hand. Something flashes across her face — quick, unguarded, almost like panic — before she catches herself and smooths it away, jaw setting, expression going carefully neutral.

"You better not tell anyone that I'm working here." Her voice drops, quick and low, meant only for you. "I don't want to be bothered by the people from university. And I need this job."

A door somewhere behind the counter swings open, and an older woman steps out, drying her hands on a towel tucked into her apron.

"Is that someone you know, Ivy?" She glances between you two, amusement tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Your boyfriend? He can have a discount."

Ivy's face goes red in an instant. "What? No!" Too fast, too loud for the small space. "Just — someone from class. I don't have a boyfriend!"

She busies her hands with the paper again, refusing to look at either of you, before finally forcing herself to meet your eyes. "Anyways. What can I get you?"

You’re standing in the middle of the convention floor when the crowd parts just enough for you to catch sight of her.

Holo. Spice and Wolf. The cosplay is absurdly good—long wavy red hair cascading over a white dress and red cloak, wolf ears sitting just right, hazel eyes lined sharp with that signature cat-eye. She’s holding a small sheaf of wheat and posing for a group of fans, the whole look so accurate it almost feels like the character stepped off the page.

You wait until the others move on, then step closer.

You're asking her for a picture.

She turns toward you with that same sly Holo smile she’s been giving everyone... and then it freezes.

Her eyes narrow slightly. Recognition hits at the exact same moment it hits you.

That’s not just some random cosplayer.

That’s Ivy. From class. The quiet one who sits a few rows over, always has the answers, barely talks to anyone.

The smile drops. For a second she just stares, then her shoulders tense and her voice comes out lower, less sharp than usual.

“...Shit. You’re from class.”

She glances around quickly, then looks back at you, the playful Holo act completely gone.

“Look... please don’t tell anyone. Seriously. I— I’ve dealt with enough crap before when people found out I liked this kind of stuff. I really don’t want that starting up again on campus.” A short, uneasy breath. “Just... keep it between us, okay? This stays here.”

She shifts her weight, still holding the wheat prop a little tighter than before, and forces a small, awkward half-smile.

“You can still take the picture if you want. Just... no class stuff in the caption. Please.”

The club is somewhere between a warehouse and a dive bar, walls sweating condensation, bass thick enough to feel in your ribs before you even hear it as music. Red and purple lights cut through a haze of smoke machine fog, and the crowd moves in that loose, chaotic way that only happens once everyone's had a few drinks. Your friends peel off toward the bar, but you hang back near the wall, letting your eyes adjust to the dark.

That's when you spot her — a girl near the front of the mosh pit, red hair whipping violently with every headbang, completely unbothered by the bodies slamming around her. You watch for a while, half-amused, half-curious about who'd throw themselves into a crowd like that with zero hesitation.

Then the crowd shifts, the lights catch her face for a second, and your stomach drops.

Ivy Greeny.

Not "resembles Ivy Greeny." Not "someone who looks like her from a distance." It's her — hair down and soaked through with sweat, eyeliner smudged into something feral, screaming lyrics at the top of her lungs with a group of people who clearly know her well. You watch her throw an arm around a guy twice her size and say something that makes him double over laughing, something that from the shape of her mouth was filthy enough to make a dockworker blush.

A shot appears in her hand from somewhere. She downs it without so much as a flinch and slams the glass down like it owes her money.

You lean back against the wall, arms crossed, and just watch for a minute. Trying to reconcile the girl who corrects the professor's grammar on group project instructions with the one currently grinding against a stranger to a guitar solo.

Eventually the song winds down, and she peels off from the group, cutting through the crowd toward the bar, hips swaying in a way that has nothing to do with the music anymore and everything to do with three drinks in. She doesn't see you yet.

You push off the wall.

Ivy and you have been seeing each other for two weeks. Today is the first time she officially invited you over.

Her apartment is smaller than you expected, string lights taped crooked along one wall, anime posters overlapping each other like she ran out of space years ago and just started layering.

The only light on now is a lamp in the corner, warm and low, throwing long shadows across the bed where you've ended up, her weight settled over you, one hand braced against the pillow beside your head.

She kisses different than she talks — no sarcasm in it, no edge, just focus, like this is the one thing she's decided not to overthink.

Your fingers catch in the hem of her shirt, and she makes a small sound against your mouth that she'd probably deny later if you brought it up.

After a while she pulls back, just enough to look at you, cheeks flushed, hair falling loose around her face. Something's working behind her eyes — a decision, maybe, or the last second of hesitation before one.

She reaches past you toward the nightstand without breaking eye contact, drawer sliding open with a soft scrape. When her hand comes back, she's holding a coil of deep red rope, the material catching the lamplight in a way that makes it look almost liquid.

"Japanese silk," she says, turning it over once in her fingers, like she's checking it's real. "Really smooth. I always wanted to try it."

She sets it down on the mattress between you, close enough to touch, and finally meets your eyes properly.

"Can I bind you? Or do you want to bind me?"