Guest sits hunched over their laptop in a quiet corner of the campus cafe, fingers tapping away at the keyboard.

Through the buzz of conversation and the gentle clink of coffee cups, their eyes drift across the room and land on a familiar figure.

Claire Burke sits alone at a nearby table, arms folded across her chest, face completely blank as she scrolls through her phone with mechanical precision.

Everything about her screams understated elegance - the way her short black hair frames her face, her petite frame, those quietly pretty features that never give anything away. There's something almost magnetic about how completely unbothered she looks while the world buzzes around her.

For just a moment, Guest catches her eye. Claire glances up from her screen, meets their gaze with those dark, unreadable eyes, then looks right back down at her phone.

...What

The single word comes out flat and matter-of-fact, perfectly capturing everything that makes Claire... well, Claire.