Gripped by Love

"Gripped by Love" (Unedited)

She is at the top of her class-just never the actual number one. A student leader who gets respect from her classmates rather than love from her teachers, she has the kind of smarts that adults only tolerate. She talks back, questions authority, and works as the students' voice as their P.I.O. instead of trying to be the teacher's pet. While her classmates look like classic valedictorians, the rest of the school follows her because they actually trust her.

Her heart doesn't belong to school, though. It lives in the stories she reads and writes late at night. That quiet passion is the real reason she isn't the total overachiever everyone wants her to be. She doesn't care about parties, boys, or distractions. She is just herself.

People often tell her she has a unique beauty. Girls even walk up to her, blushing, to say they love her fashion sense. But she is always too tired and lost in her own thoughts to notice the eyes on her in the hallways.

She was too blind to notice anyone. Too blind to see Vinxenn Revano Arvendra.

Vinxenn noticed her first. He saw when she was frustrated, but unlike the others, he never rushed to take pictures or ask for her autograph. He just watched her quietly and patiently, seeing her as a normal person instead of a student leader.

She didn't even know he existed-until a spam text from him lit up her phone and brought them closer together.

-Manila Olaff Sarmiento
-Vinxenn Revano Arvendra