Suspensions came swiftly.
Jason and Michael were barred for two weeks. The whispers came faster — sharp, cruel, relentless. Emma's name was passed around like a rumor on fire. "Jason's girl." "The flirt." "She asked for it."
Andrew heard it all.
He stopped speaking in class. Stopped sitting beside anyone. He arrived early, left quickly. His notebooks became cleaner, neater — filled with observations no one else would read.
Kate tried.
"Andrew, I—"
He walked past.
She waited after lectures.
"Do you want to talk?"
He didn't answer.
Days passed. Then a week.
Emma didn't return his glances in the hall. She didn't come to their café spot. Didn't share her playlists. Her seat beside him remained empty.
One evening, Kate found him in the library, alone. His coat was draped over a chair, his eyes sunken with exhaustion.
"You haven't said a word in days," she said, gently.
"I've had nothing worth saying."
"You're punishing me."
He looked at her. "You stopped me."
Kate inhaled. "I didn't want to see you hurt. I didn't want you suspended."
"I could've stood up for her."
"She wouldn't have seen it that way."
He didn't answer.
"She already thinks you chose silence," Kate added.
And that hurt more than he could admit.
Snow fell again that night, blanketing the school in white hush. Andrew stood at his window, watching the courtyard darken. He could still hear the moment — Michael's words, Jason's fists, Emma's silence.
He was caught in the middle. Always.
Too gentle to fight. Too broken to be brave.
And somewhere in the stillness, the voices returned — not from the students, but from within:
You failed her.
You let her down.
You let Kate believe she mattered.
Outside, laughter rang out from passing students. A snowball fight erupted between dorms. Life moved. But inside Andrew's room, nothing did.
He sat down at his desk, pen in hand.
And began to write.
Not to Emma. Not to Kate.
To himself.
A letter of sorts. A reckoning.
And in the quiet hours before dawn, he whispered:
"Maybe it's time I stopped standing in shadows."
The snow did not stop for days.
It piled against the stone walls of the academy like forgotten intentions, blanketing the pathways, softening footsteps and voices alike. Life went on — lectures resumed, bells rang, notes passed hands. But beneath the surface, the school pulsed with rumor and judgment.
And Emma walked alone.
Once surrounded by laughter, shoulders brushing against hers in the halls, now her presence drew silence. People turned slightly as she passed. Not rudely — never openly. But enough to be felt. Enough to sting.
She sat in the far left corner of each class, away from where she once sat beside Andrew, away from the window where she and Jason used to whisper between lectures. Her books were pristine, untouched by marginal doodles or shared notes.
There were no more shared playlists. No more coffee breaks. The quiet had become a wall.
Jason's absence was as loud as his presence used to be. And though he was only suspended — not expelled — his name echoed down corridors like smoke: dangerous, reckless, obsessed.
And hers?
Slut.
That's what they whispered when they thought she wasn't listening. That she had "played them," that she was "asking for it," that she "loved the attention."
Emma never cried in public.
Instead, she sat straighter. She looked ahead. She laughed softly to herself at things no one else heard. But at night — alone, beneath her covers — her pillow muffled the shaking.
What hurt most wasn't Jason's violence.
It was Andrew's silence.
---
Jason sat in a small rented room above a bar near the outskirts of town. The suspension papers were folded on the floor. His knuckles still ached. He hadn't returned home — hadn't contacted his parents. They'd expected this eventually, hadn't they?
"You'll never stay long anywhere, Jason."
He had proved them right again.
His breath fogged the cold window as he stared out into the snowfall. The streets below were alive with students and townsfolk, but none of them mattered. Not now.
He remembered Emma's face when he threw the first punch. She hadn't been scared. Not of him. But of something unraveling. Like a cord she couldn't hold tight enough.
He hadn't meant to hurt her.
Jason had seen it coming — Michael's mouth, the cruel laughter around her name, the sideways glances. He couldn't let it go. Not when someone spoke like that about her.
He didn't love her. He barely understood what love was.
But she was real to him.
Emma was one of the few people who didn't ask him to change. She laughed at his stories without checking for truth. She touched his shoulder like she meant it. She asked about his bruises and didn't press when he said, "I don't want to talk about it."
And that meant something.
He hadn't expected the fight to cost him her.
---
Back at school, Emma sat by the window in the empty music room. The piano was untouched. She traced her finger across the dustless keys, thinking of songs she used to hum without thought. Now everything felt like a performance.
A knock startled her.
She turned, half-expecting Andrew. Or maybe hoping.
It was Kate.
They looked at each other — strangers in the same orbit.
Kate didn't sit. "He's not angry with you."
Emma tilted her head, not understanding.
"Andrew," Kate clarified.
Emma turned back to the piano. "He didn't say anything."
"He was trying to protect you. In his own way."
Emma's laugh was small and sharp. "By not doing anything?"
Kate crossed her arms. "If he had stepped in, he'd have been suspended too. Maybe worse."
"I didn't ask for him to fight."
"Didn't you?"
That landed harder than intended.
Kate softened. "He's hurting too, Emma. He just doesn't know how to show it."
Emma closed the piano lid. "We used to talk about everything. Now he won't even look at me."
Kate hesitated. "Maybe you should be the one to look first."
Emma nodded slowly, but she didn't turn around. Kate left without another word.
---
Jason lit a cigarette on the balcony of the bar, leaning on the railing as snow drifted lazily. He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl into the dark.
He thought of going back. Just to see her. To apologize. Not with words, maybe — he was never good with those. But something real.
He imagined walking into the academy, finding her in that music room, placing his coat over her shoulders like an offering. Maybe she'd forgive him. Maybe not.
The idea faded.
He was chaos. He always had been.
Emma didn't need more chaos.
---
The music room grew colder as the day wore on. Emma remained by the window, notebook in her lap, though she hadn't written a word. Her mind drifted back to the bookstore.
Jason's voice. Andrew's silence. Her own confusion.
She had told Andrew, "He's just interesting."
She had meant it — and not. Jason was interesting. But more than that, he was alive. A spark in a world that often felt grey. And she needed a spark.
But now she wasn't so sure.
Jason had fought for her. Andrew hadn't. And yet, when she lay awake, it was Andrew she missed.
Not his protectiveness. Not his absence.
Just… him.
The way he used to walk her to class, headphones shared, coffees clutched between frozen hands. The way he looked at her when she wasn't watching. The silence that used to feel safe.
Now silence was a chasm.
She stood and left the music room.
Snow fell again that night, heavier this time.
Emma walked back to her dorm, her coat clutched tight, steps slow. A few students glanced at her but said nothing. One girl muttered under her breath. Emma didn't flinch.
At the corner of the corridor, Andrew passed by.
Their eyes met for the first time in a week.
She opened her mouth.
He kept walking.
And the silence closed again.
---
Jason, back in his room, tossed his cigarette and closed the window. He looked at the suspension paper again.
Two more days.
He didn't know if he'd come back.
Not because he was afraid. But because he wasn't sure if returning would change anything.
Still…
He looked at the small note tucked into his coat pocket — the one Emma had scribbled weeks ago: "You make everything feel less cold."
He ran a thumb over the words.
And for the first time since the fight, Jason whispered to himself:
"I wish I hadn't ruined that."
The snow fell silently.
In the quiet, all three of them wondered the same thing:
Is it too late?