And Kian, smiling through it all.
Had the curse scrambled his brain that badly? Or was that just what love did—short-circuited a person’s common sense?
She pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead.Enough moping.
She bent over her notes, clicking her pen open. The library’s steady buzz—pages turning, keyboards tapping—wrapped around her like a balm. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend everything was normal.
At least until she opened them again and caught Akash Kumar two tables over, waggling his eyebrows her way.
Riya shot him a look sharp enough to draw blood, and he fled.
Minutes later, another presence broke her peace:
“Hey.”
Riya didn’t bother looking up as she sighed.
“Hello, Kian.” She kept her eyes fixed onLong’s Histories ofMagicks, which offered nothing but fevered nonsense.
After a beat, she gestured at the empty chair.
Kian slid in, cautious. He pushed something across the table: a carton of iced tea.
“In case you needed a pick-me-up,” he said.
Riya stared at it. Still cold. Beads of condensation clinging to the sides.
She nudged it aside with two fingers and flipped a page.
“I—” Kian started, then faltered. “I don’t want to make you upset again.”
Finally, slowly, Riya met his eyes.
It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to approach her today. Earlier, in the hallway, she’d caught him staring as she was talking to Mrs. Kang, their Student Council adviser, about setting up a new suggestion box by the office. But the moment she caught him, his eyes watered and he fled.
Up close, the shadows under his sunken eyes were deeper, and his hoodie hung loose, like he was retreating inside it.
Guilt flickered in her chest.
“You look awful,” she said, not unkindly.
He laughed once, brittle. “Thanks. Haven’t slept much. Probably doesn’t help that I have detention for the next two weeks.”
Riya lowered her pen. Given what he’d pulled, he was lucky it wasn’t worse.
“Thank you for the iced tea. But you didn’t need to bring me anything.”
He shrugged. “I wanted to.”
Silence fell. Riya clicked her pen against the table, restless.
“You shouldn’t want to,” she said finally. “You still don’tknowme. You just like the idea of me that the curse gave you. It’s probably why you keep trying these... grand gestures. Things you’d never try if you actually knew me.”
Kian looked down, biting his lip.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I just—I can’t help it. I want to try. Everything. Anything.”
“That’s a terribly inefficient strategy,” she muttered. “Trial-and-error approaches have one of the highest failure rates in systems testing.”
