Chapter 3

Chapter 2: The Iceberg

On the first day of class, I finally met my seatmate.

He’d arrived before me. His uniform was immaculate, the top button fastened tight, his cuffs perfectly aligned. There were only three things on his desk: a black fountain pen, a notebook with a solid black cover, and a water bottle with no label.

Sunlight streamed in from the left window, catching the sharp line of his jaw. A sliver of light danced across his collarbone, and suddenly, I felt my breath hitch.

It wasn’t nervousness. It was the sheer, clean lines of his profile―it looked like it had been drawn with a precision pencil, not a single detail out of place.

“Hey,” I said as I set my bag down, trying to initiate a greeting.

He didn’t look up, but he gave a curt, “Yeah.”

One word. Not cold, not warm. Just a response, like he was answering a roll call.

I sat beside him and started stacking my books. Just as I was about to say something else, he shifted, reaching into his desk.

He pulled out a pack of tissues. Banana-scented.

He placed the pack on the corner of my desk without looking at me, then went back to his work.

I froze.

Banana-scented tissues. Last Friday, when we happened to stand in the same line at the cafeteria, I had muttered, “Banana scent is so nice, too bad the cafeteria tissues are all unscented.”

That was five days ago. I had only mentioned it once. He actually―

“Th-thank you,” I stuttered.

He didn't look up. “Yeah.”

He went back to solving physics problems. The final complex question was covered in a dense thicket of derivations that looked like they’d been printed by a machine.

I opened the pack and pulled one out to wipe my hands. The banana scent was faint; you had to hold it right under your nose to smell it. I carefully folded the tissue and tucked it into my uniform pocket.

Throughout the day, I wrote so many things in the margins of my notebooks, only to erase them all. I left just one line hidden in the margin of page thirty-eight of my math book:

“He remembers what I said.”

When the bell rang, Silas stood up and walked away. He took three steps before he turned back to glance at my desk.

His gaze lingered on the pack of banana tissues for half a second before he moved on.

I couldn’t name the emotion in that glance. But I knew one thing―he wasn’t looking at a wrong answer.