The Girl Who Stayed.

The school halls were quiet, the kind of quiet that made every creak of the floorboards echo like a warning. Celena Vanchie Myers moved through them with the ease of someone who had always been unnoticed, her brown hair brushing lightly against her shoulders. She was small, unassuming, a shadow that lingered on the edges of every group, every conversation.

No one seemed to notice her, not really. Not like they noticed Emily laughing with Grace, or the boy who always slouched in the library corner, headphones tucked over his ears, lost in some invisible world.

Celena didn't mind. She liked watching. Liked seeing things others didn't, hearing the quiet hum of the school when it wasn't alive with chaos.

But something had changed. She felt it the moment she stepped into the library that afternoon: a presence she hadn't noticed before. The boy looked up, meeting her gaze with eyes that didn't quite belong to the empty, ordinary world.

He smiled, casual, almost lazy, like he had nowhere else to be. And in that smile, something unspoken passed between them - something fragile, fleeting, and entirely magnetic.