The next time he saw her, her right hand was wrapped in gauze.
It was two days later, in the back row of the school library, where sunlight filtered through tall windows dusted with chalk-grey grime. The air smelled of glue-binding, old paper, and pencils worn to stubs. Ren sat hunched over a thick math textbook, but he wasn't reading. His eyes flicked to the same line again and again, while his pencil hovered over the margins, sketching the curve of a hoodie, the shape of a clenched fist.
He hadn't been able to stop drawing her.
He didn't know her name, but she lived in the pages of his notebook now.
The girl with wild courage.
The girl with fire in her bones.
And then, as if summoned by thought alone, she slid into the chair beside him.
Her presence was like a breeze through a closed room—unexpected, sharp, impossible to ignore.
She dropped a history book onto the table. Thick. Used. Its spine was patched with tape. Then she leaned back in her seat with a grunt, resting her elbow on the table as she turned the pages with her left hand.
Ren's eyes were drawn to the right—wrapped in a bandage from palm to knuckles.
He tried not to stare. He failed.
"It's not broken," she said without looking up. "Just sprained."
His heart thumped.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then finally found enough breath to whisper, "Was it… because of me?"
She snorted, flipping a page. "No. It was because that idiot tried to swing at me after I put him on the ground. I blocked wrong. Bad angle."
"You still… fought him."
Her gaze lifted, amused. "Of course I did."
"You didn't have to."
Now she looked at him fully—head tilted, brow raised. "Why does everyone keep saying that?"
He didn't have an answer. Only the awkward silence of someone not used to being seen.
She nodded at his open textbook. "You any good at this stuff?"
He blinked. "At math?"
"No, at pretending to read while drawing girls in hoodies." She smirked, gesturing to the sketch in his margin.
Ren's ears turned red. He quickly shut the book.
"I'm Aika," she said after a beat. "You're Ren. Right?"
His head jerked up.
"You were the only one who didn't look away when I slammed that jerk into the pavement," she added. "Most people flinch. You just watched. Calm. Like you'd already seen the worst of it."
He didn't know what to say to that.
So he said nothing.
Aika leaned back again, one hand behind her head, the other resting lightly on her wrapped wrist. "I used to get in trouble for fighting," she said conversationally. "Still do, sometimes. But my grandfather says it's not the fists that matter. It's who you use them for."
She looked sideways at him.
"You didn't ask me to step in. You didn't cry. You just took it. That's… kind of impressive."
Ren lowered his eyes. "It's not."
"It is," she said, like it was fact.
They sat in silence after that. A comfortable silence. The kind where breathing didn't feel like a mistake.
That day became two days. Then three. Then a week.
Aika began showing up in the same places Ren did—not always with words, but always with presence.
The library. The quiet courtyard by the broken vending machine. The second lunch bench near the maintenance shed, where no one bothered to clean the fallen leaves. She sat beside him like she belonged there. Not asking questions. Not filling space. Just being there.
He learned that she wasn't always loud. Not when it was just the two of them.
She read war books and martial arts manuals. She ate faster than anyone he'd ever seen, often finishing before he'd unwrapped his bento.
She didn't ask about his drawings. But she did glance over sometimes and give a tiny nod, like she was filing it away in her mind.
And he, in turn, watched her with the quiet awe of someone witnessing something too bright for their world.
One Thursday, during lunch, Ren arrived at their usual bench to find her seated and surrounded by three younger boys. One of them was crying. Another was clutching a scraped knee. The third looked ready to punch a wall.
Aika didn't say much. She crouched low, checked the wound, and wordlessly tore the plastic wrapper from her onigiri to make a makeshift ice pack using cold rice. She wrapped it in a napkin, handed it over, and gave the crying boy a look so direct that he immediately began breathing slower.
She noticed Ren then and waved him over without hesitation, like this had always been their bench.
"Got bullied near the gym," she said. "Second time this week."
Ren sat beside her. The boys stared at him—at the glasses, the hunched posture, the silence.
"Ren's not a fighter," she added. "But he's smart. He'll help you figure out where to avoid getting cornered."
He glanced at her, startled.
"Math genius," she added, grinning. "Also, really good with maps."
He swallowed. Nodded slowly. Pulled out a sheet of notebook paper. And started sketching safe routes around the school buildings.
Aika didn't smile at him—but she leaned just a little closer.
And that was enough.
"Why do you keep sitting with me?" he asked one afternoon under the Sakura tree, after everyone else had gone inside.
Aika peeled the wrapper from her snack, biting into it before answering.
"You're easy to sit with."
"I don't talk."
"Exactly."
She smiled faintly. "It's peaceful."
He stared down at his lap. "You don't seem like someone who needs peace."
"I need it more than you think," she replied.
She leaned back, arms crossed behind her head, eyes closing briefly beneath the dappled sunlight. "When I was little, I got in fights all the time. Not just here. Everywhere. People said I had a temper. I said I had standards."
Ren smiled without meaning to.
"I don't like watching people get crushed," she said. "Especially when they don't deserve it. I don't care who they are."
"You always fight?"
"Only when I have to."
She looked at him then. "I didn't sit with you because I felt sorry for you, Ren. I sat with you because you didn't expect anything from me. That's rare."
He felt his throat tighten. Not in pain. In something else.
Gratitude.
Something deeper.
That night, he opened his sketchbook again.
He drew her sitting under the cherry tree, arms behind her head, eyes closed to the world. Peaceful. Powerful.
A girl with bruised knuckles and a tired smile.
And for the first time, he wondered—
Not just who she was.
But who he might become…
if someone like her kept sitting beside him.
She never asked for thanks. Never needed praise.
But Ren would spend the rest of his life remembering every moment she stayed.