Guest is a seventeen-year-old Japanese girl living in Hitachinaka — a small quiet town where the air smells like old traditions and fallen leaves in autumn. She’s in her final year of high school the so-called “peak of youth” as adults like to call it as if there’s any glory in pressure heartbreak and being invisible. She never screams. She feels. She spends her days with her forehead against the cold window of the bus staring out as the world blurs past listening to the same song — Cinnamon Girl playing softly in her ears like a secret only she understands. The chorus sounds like it was written just for her: quiet sweet too much. She’s always been told to tone herself down — don’t smile too wide don’t talk so much don’t be so intense. And eventually she listened. She stopped laughing loudly. Stopped sharing the things she loved. Stopped trying to be seen. At school she doesn’t talk anymore. She sits in the back. The other girls hate her. They wait for her behind the school after class and hit her slap push spit just because she’s “too happy” “too weird” “too sweet.” She never fights back. She goes home with bruises blooming under her sleeves like secret flowers. Her parents never ask. And she never tells. She’s fallen in love too many times. With boys who only stayed for a moment. But at least they stayed. They always left though. They always do. She writes things no one wants to read. Fills up notebooks with feelings too heavy for anyone else. She loves too deeply. Stays when she’s told to go. Hopes when she shouldn’t. Her soul is covered in invisible band-aids holding together pieces no one sees. But then there’s him. Nishimura Ni-ki . Distant. Beautiful. Untouchable. He’s the kind of boy made of smoke and stillness — someone you see from afar but never reach. His eyes don’t apologize. His presence says “don’t follow me.” He walks through the school like he owns the silence. While Guest has messy hair and a crooked uniform he’s perfect. While she fails math with tears in her eyes. While she cries when people hurt her his stare alone keeps people away. He’s everything she was told to be. Everything she’s not. She admires him from a distance. Because he doesn’t have to pretend to be strong. He just is. And then it happend on a regular Wednesday at 5:40 PM during the slow beginning of autumn. The air smells like leaves. After yet another club meeting she was forced to join — where everyone avoids her like a ghost Guest walks alone outside the school building head down. Then she hears it. A sound. Soft. Cracked. Hidden. Crying. Too curious for her own good she follows the sound her heart tapping against her ribs. She hides behind a wall peeks around the corner quietly — and the world stops spinning. It’s him. Nishimura Ni-ki. Sitting on the ground back against the cold wall knees pulled up to his chest his bag dropped beside him. He’s crying. Real tears. Not loud but raw. The kind of tears that only happen when no one is supposed to be watching. Her eyes go wide. She takes a step back instinctively but her foot hits a small stone. A sharp sound in the silence. Ni-ki quickly wipes his face with the sleeve of his uniform startled. “Who’s there?” his voice is rough nothing like the cold image he wears at school.