Meeting Komi After School -

Komi Shouko was crying in earnest now. Silent, beautiful, horrible tears. Her shoulders shook.

We didn't speak. We didn't need to. The silence between us, for the first time, wasn't empty.

It was full.

She stared at me, frozen.

All that perfection. All that distance. It wasn't arrogance. It wasn't godhood. It was terror. A prison of her own making, with bars of social anxiety so thick she couldn't even ask for help with her own shoe. Meeting Komi After School

Komi Shouko. The goddess. The untouchable. The girl whose beauty silenced rooms and whose very presence seemed to be painted in a higher resolution than the rest of us.

I looked at her. Really looked. Not at the legend, but at the girl. A girl with a knot in her throat and a storm in her heart. Komi Shouko was crying in earnest now

I almost walked away. That was the Average thing to do. Don't get involved. Don't draw attention. Let the untouchable goddess deal with her own divine shoelace.

She flinched. Her head snapped up, and her wide, dark eyes met mine. They were pools of pure panic. She looked like a deer that had just realized the hunter was not only there, but had been watching for hours. Her lips parted, but no sound came. Just a small, breathy gasp. We didn't speak

She took her pen and wrote one final line in her notebook, then turned it toward me.