"Opposites attract."

I sat at one of the long, solid-wood tables in the school library, as if this old piece of furniture had been carved specifically to accommodate my silences. It was my sanctuary of tranquility nestled in the heart of adolescent turmoil. Here, no one ever came to talk to me. For that alone, this library was more than worth all the other rooms in the building. It was probably the only place in the entire school where peace still reigned.

Beneath my fingers, the slightly uneven surface revealed the passing years, the countless footsteps, the absent-minded gestures of hundreds of students who had come here seeking a little escape. Without thinking, I traced the wood’s grain, those unpredictable lines that crossed and disappeared like paths with no destination. The open book before me no longer really looked like an object. It was an opening, a gateway to a world far removed from the mundane realities of school.

The sentences passed before my eyes without me having to force myself to read them, and little by little, the voices outside faded away, becoming nothing more than background noise. It was my ritual during breaks: to isolate myself in this haven of silence, where the smell of paper and dust lingered in the air, muffling the distant echoes of crowded hallways, the shouts and the overly noisy lives stirring elsewhere.

The laughter of the other students reached me in fragments, distorted, incomplete. Snatches of conversations about unimportant things, who was dating whom, which teacher was the strictest, stories that did not need to be remembered. All of it passed in the distance, as though filtered through a thick pane of glass.

The wide-open window cut the room with a sharper light. The warm summer wind rushed in without asking permission, lifting the light white cotton curtains, making them float slowly, lazily, making them dance like ghostly sails, as though they were hesitating between two worlds. The air it carried smelled of freshly cut grass, and of wildflowers crushed somewhere in the courtyard.

Outside, beneath an unforgiving sun, a group of boys were indulging in their favorite pastime: an improvised game of soccer on the asphalt. Their shouts of encouragement echoed through the courtyard, punctuated by muffled curses that betrayed their frustration with every missed pass.

“Come on, go for it, shoot!” one of them shouted, while another complained,

“What the hell are you doing? Pass properly, for God’s sake!”

Among them, there was always the same boy who caught my attention. A boy with blond or brown hair, cut short like spikes, a little too messy to be perfectly styled, a little too lively to stay in place. His skin, slightly tanned by the summer sun, contrasted with his cheeks, which reddened especially whenever our eyes met.

Every time, by chance, his gaze wandered back toward the window, something about him changed. The slightest shift. A hesitation in his body, as if the movement itself had suddenly taken the wrong direction. At those moments, he would turn his head away with almost comical haste, as though merely meeting my gaze had caught him in the middle of some action without me knowing exactly what.

I no longer really knew how long my eyes had been returning to him. That day, however, instead of going back to my book as usual, I could not help but watch him for longer. He dribbled the ball with concentration, but I could feel his gaze drifting toward the window, toward me. Suddenly, he gave me a tense smile, the kind that concealed a deep discomfort.

His lips twisted into a forced grimace, revealing a row of white, perfectly aligned teeth. His eyes seemed to search for mine... then fled them almost immediately.

“Stop staring at me like that,” that forced smile seemed to say, or perhaps, “Leave me alone, please. I don’t know what to do with your gaze.” The more our eyes locked, the faster he broke the contact, pivoting on his heels as if I were some kind of threat.

I thought he was an idiot, frankly. Why was he so uncomfortable? Was I the one making him nervous, with my silent, observant presence, or was he simply an awkward person by nature? A sharp curiosity came over me. I continued staring at him, intrigued, my fingers tightening around the edges of my book as if to anchor my thoughts.

The ball eventually came back toward him. A rather weak pass, sent without much precision by one of his teammates, a tall boy with broad shoulders. The ball hit the ground with a dull thud, then slowly rolled toward his feet with an almost mocking slowness.

Instead of controlling it with a precise kick, his foot remained suspended above the ball. A fraction of a second. Then another. His gaze drifted, first, not quite all the way, toward the library. Then toward the window. And... toward me.

I waited. A second, or perhaps two. His already-red cheeks flushed even deeper, and his eyes widened slightly. He quickly looked away, but raised them again almost immediately, as though he had forgotten why he had lowered them in the first place.

What does he want? I thought, holding his gaze without blinking.

I could not say exactly when, but the air between the window and the library had changed. Not heavier. Not warmer. Just... tense, like a thread pulled too tight that neither of us dared brush against anymore.

He moved forward absent-mindedly, the ball rolling ahead of him without him paying the slightest attention to it, his hesitant steps resembling those of a sleepwalker.

His eyes remained fixed on the window, on me, ignoring the game unfolding around him. He scratched the back of his neck. I held his gaze, unable to understand why it was lasting this long. And yet, neither of us looked away.

His friends were beginning to notice his absence, murmurs rising around the field:

“Hey, what’s gotten into you?” one of the players shouted as he started running. But the blond heard nothing, lost in this silent duel of gazes.

Suddenly, someone else complained, his shout ringing out from the courtyard and breaking the moment like a clap of thunder:

“What the hell are you doing, idiot?! Where are you going with the ball like that? Send it over here, damn it! Watch where you’re putting your feet, we’re playing, not daydreaming! Get your ass moving, or we’re gonna lose because of you!”

It was one of his friends, gesticulating impatiently, his arms waving around like windmills. He pointed toward the ball slowly rolling away, his eyes shooting daggers at the distracted blond.

The latter jolted so violently that one would have thought he had just been pulled out of a deep sleep. His shoulders flinched, his eyes finally leaving the window and returning to the field, but a second too late. Another player, a short, skinny boy with light brown hair, had already lunged forward. In a cloud of dust, his foot hooked the ball with precision and sent it rolling between two other players.

The blond stumbled over his own momentum. He barely managed to regain his balance, muttering something under his breath, his hands clenching into fists before he shook his head sharply, as though hoping to make the distraction that had just cost him the ball disappear.

I could not suppress a mocking smile, my lips stretching despite myself as a muffled laugh rose in my throat. What an idiot, I thought, shaking my head in amusement. Before plunging back into my book, I cast one last glance toward the courtyard, where the game resumed with renewed intensity, but my mind was still wandering, imagining what was going through that boy’s head.

I turned a page of my book, realizing that I had been reading exactly the same sentence for thirty seconds. Except I could no longer remember what it said. I exhaled quietly through my nose before returning to my reading with an almost forced concentration.

The words danced across the page, the plot weaving itself like a spider’s web, but my thoughts escaped outside again. I turned another page deliberately, feeling the paper crackle beneath my fingers, while outside, the shouts continued to ricochet against the walls of the building.

“Come on, get back in the game!” another player encouraged.

But the tension persisted inside me, a growing curiosity that made me lift my eyes from time to time.

Finally, I was reading quietly, absorbed in the plot unfolding around a hero tormented by his secrets, when a dull thud made me raise my head one last time, my heart beating with an inexplicable anticipation.

Right at that moment, the ball shot toward the blond like an uncontrollable projectile, kicked with brutal force by the stocky redhead who was already laughing. The ball slammed straight into his face with a sharp smack.

“ARGH, FUCK!” he screamed in a plaintive voice, the cry tearing through the relative silence of the courtyard.

He immediately brought both hands to his face, doubling over as though he had been punched in the stomach.

“THAT HURTS SO FUCKING MUCH! WHY DID YOU AIM FOR MY HEAD LIKE THAT? WHY MY HEAD?! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING SOCCER GOAL OR SOMETHING?! Seriously, dude, you could’ve aimed somewhere else!! My nose, for fuck’s sake, I think it’s broken! It burns, fuck, it burns!”

He hopped around in place as though trying to shake off the throbbing pain, unable to remain still, alternating between little jumps and disordered steps. His feet danced a frantic jig across the asphalt, and his eyes were already shining with pain as a thin trickle of blood slipped beneath his fingers.

Around him, the game had vanished. His friends stopped dead, some frozen in surprise, others rushing toward him with expressions that were half-amused, half-concerned.

“Shit... your nose! It’s bleeding!”

“I told you to watch where you were going!”

The one who had taken the shot, the stocky redhead with a teasing smile that did not quite hide a hint of guilt, immediately raised his hands in feigned innocence.

“Shit... I-I didn’t mean to, dude! Seriously, I was aiming for the goal, not your face! And besides, it’s your fault too, you know. You’ve looked completely lost in your thoughts this whole time!”

The others burst out laughing and talking all at once.

“You look like you’re somewhere else, or like something’s bothering you,” one of his friends said, pretending to be concerned.

“Well? What’s going on, huh? Are you in love or something? You gotta concentrate!”

Another one sighed, looking annoyed and exasperated.

“So, are we gonna keep playing, or are you gonna go cry to your mommy?”

The others burst into laughter, a collective roar rolling through the courtyard like thunder, some of them openly teasing him with friendly slaps on the back.

“Hey, soccer poet! Were you composing a sonnet for someone?” called a tall, thin boy with glasses, while another, more sympathetic, patted the blond on the shoulder to comfort him.

“Come on, it’ll pass. Take a breath. You don’t look too beat up.”

But the blond still did not react, too absorbed in his pain. The boy insisted.

“Come on, shake it off, it’s not the end of the world. Here, take a tissue and stop whining like a kid.”

The blond was still fidgeting in every direction, hunched forward, his hands pressed against his nose, which was now bleeding somewhat more heavily, staining his fingers bright red. He grumbled under his breath, caught between physical pain and burning humiliation. The ball, meanwhile, continued rolling peacefully toward the fence.

“Shaddup, all of you! It’s not fucking funny! I’m hurt, really hurt! And yeah! Maybe I was distracted, but that’s no reason to aim at me like I’m a fucking clay pigeon! Next time, I’ll kick it straight into your face, you asshole!”

I could not help laughing, a brief and quiet chuckle that made my shoulders shake. Shaking my head to chase those thoughts away, I finally pushed my chair back. My footsteps echoed between the bookshelves as I approached the window.

My hand closed firmly around the handle. The window resisted for a moment beneath the pressure of the wind, then gave way, taking with it the echoes of the courtyard, the lingering laughter, the encouragements, and the blond’s complaints.

It was as though someone had suddenly turned down the volume of the world.

The silence settled again like a soothing cloak. I returned to a table farther away from the window, in a corner where the sunlight barely reached the books anymore. Savoring the calm that had returned, I reopened my novel, the pages coming back to life beneath my eyes. The outside world had disappeared, dissolved like sugar in hot water, behind the pages of the book I held in my hands.

When I finally looked up at the clock, nearly an hour had passed. The sun had shifted. Golden rectangles had moved across the wooden floor, shaping the shadows that drifted along the walls of the library. Dust slowly swirled through the air, each particle suspended as though time itself had granted it a brief reprieve.

I was immersed in a captivating chapter, turning a page, when suddenly, the door flew open with a resounding crash, with such force that the entire building seemed to jolt along with me. The noise echoed between the shelves. It was as though someone had shoved it open with a hard shoulder, nearly sending it crashing into the wall.

I was so startled that my book nearly slipped from my hands. I jerked my head up, my finger still caught between two pages, and saw him.

Him. The blond.

He stood in the doorway, slightly bent forward, his hands braced against his thighs as though he had just sprinted through the entire school.

His chest rose and fell rapidly, each breath loud, ragged, almost dramatic, as though he were sucking in air with all his might to keep his heart from bursting out of his rib cage.

A thin sheen of sweat made his skin glisten beneath the light.

He had taken off his bright red sports jacket, which was tied around his waist. The white tank top he wore, slightly fitted, hugged his broad, athletic shoulders and outlined the clean lines of his arms. His red shorts, edged with two white stripes, revealed firm thighs, slightly dusty, streaked with dry marks left by the field.

Long socks came up to his calves, stained with dirt, and on his right knee, a fresh bandage stood out against his tanned skin. It was only then that I noticed the rough bandage, a little too tight and poorly adjusted, wrapped around his left hand.

Strange. I hadn’t even noticed it earlier.

He tried once again to catch his breath, straightened up, then bent forward again. His eyes swept across the room from right to left, looking almost frantic. Finally, he turned his head in my direction, and his eyes stopped dead when he saw me.

He blinked several times, surprised to find me there, as though he had finally found something he had been searching for for several minutes.

Or perhaps for several hours, judging by how breathless he was.

He straightened up. He scratched the back of his head with his good hand. The other rested on his hip, in an awkward attempt at appearing casual, but the gesture betrayed an obvious nervousness.

“Um, HELLO!” he called in a booming voice that literally exploded through the empty library like a popped balloon. It ricocheted off the bookshelves and bounced against the hardcovers.

Then, as though realizing how loud he had been, he abruptly lowered his voice.

“Er... I mean, hi, kid!”

Kid...

The word hung between us for a few seconds. I blinked, and my gaze slowly rose to meet his, with a coldness I did not even bother to hide.

Kid?

I frowned as I stared at him, feeling a flicker of irritation rising inside me.

We had to be around the same age. Who did he think he was, talking to me like I was some child?

I closed my book with a measured gesture, slipping a finger between the pages to keep my place.

“Hi... what are you—” I began, but he cut me off before I could finish.

He had taken one confident step forward. Then another, his eyes sparkling with barely contained excitement. In two strides, he was standing in front of my table.

His sneakers squeaked slightly against the wooden floor as he stopped directly in front of me.

“YOU WANNA JOIN THE SPORTS CLUB, RIGHT?” he shouted, a huge smile plastered across his face.

He raised his thumb in the air, holding it right in front of my face with absurd energy. He shook it several times, as though expecting me to return his almost aggressive enthusiasm, his entire body practically vibrating with energy.