Ch.1 The way she notices
Every morning, Elena Hart chose the same route to school.
Not because it was shorter.
But because it passed the senior building.
And almost every day, at exactly 7:40 a.m., Adrian Vale walked through those doors.
Two years older.Final-year student.Captain of the basketball team.And completely out of reach.
Elena was only a sophomore.
To most people, Adrian Vale was simply the kind senior everyone admired from afar. Calm, smart, effortlessly charming without trying too hard.
But Elena noticed the smaller things.
The way he held doors open for juniors.How he stayed after practice to help first-years clean the court.How he smiled with his eyes before his lips.
She noticed everything.
Even though he barely knew she existed.
“Elena,” Iris whispered beside her, “you’re staring again.”
Elena immediately looked away from the senior hallway. “I wasn’t.”
“You literally slowed down walking just to see him.”
“I did not.”
“You almost walked into a trash can.”
Elena groaned while Iris laughed uncontrollably.
It was embarrassing.
Especially because Adrian wasn’t some random boy in her grade.
He was older. More mature. Already planning universities and future careers while Elena still struggled through algebra homework.
Still—
Every morning, she searched for him without meaning to.
—
One afternoon, Elena stayed late in the library to finish an English assignment.
The school was quieter than usual, most students already gone home.
That was when someone pulled out the chair across from her.
“Is this seat taken?”
Elena looked up so quickly she nearly dropped her pen.
Adrian Vale.
Up close, he somehow looked even more unreal.
“Oh— no,” she stammered.
“Thanks.”
He sat down casually, opening a notebook filled with messy handwriting and basketball schedules.
Elena tried to focus on her work.
She really tried.
But Adrian kept tapping his pen against the table softly while reading, and somehow even that distracted her.
After a few minutes, he sighed dramatically.
“I’m going to fail literature.”
Elena blinked.
“You take literature?”
“Unfortunately.”
She let out a small laugh before she could stop herself.
Adrian looked up immediately, smiling slightly.
“There,” he said. “At least someone finds my suffering entertaining.”
Elena’s heart almost forgot how to function.
“You’re not failing,” she said quietly. “Your essay looks fine.”
“You understood this?” he asked, pointing at his notebook. “Because I’m pretty sure I wrote nonsense.”
Elena leaned forward carefully. “This paragraph is actually good… you just repeated the same point twice.”
Adrian stared at her for a second before smiling again.
“Well,” he said, “looks like I found my lifesaver.”
And just like that—
The senior boy Elena had admired for nearly two years finally learned her name.
