I will never forget that day.

School just ended. I was sitting on my table, waiting for my friend to finish shoving books into his backpack. My eyes wandered around the classroom to see what everyone else was doing.

That’s when she first caught my eyes.

While everyone else in the classroom was showered with the fiery golden ray from the window, she alone, standing near the black board, had a calm azure light enveloped around her whole body. My eyes were drawn by the tranquility of the light, and my heart was captivated by its beauty. It was as if the world around us had vanished, leaving only the two of us surrounded by that light. Noticing my continuous gaze, the girl looked back at me from underneath her hair bangs.

It was the first time our eyes met.

She broke eye contact almost immediately after, probably while thinking how creepy I was for staring at her. But I couldn’t shift my gaze away from her. Only after the girl walked out of the class, and out of my sight, that I snapped out of my trance. I immediately received a slap on the back from my friend. He told me that he had been calling my name repeatedly but I never responded. I just apologized and walked home with him, keeping what I saw and the fact I didn’t hear his voice at all, a secret to myself.

As soon as I got home, I tried to find an explanation about the blue light on the internet through my computer. Making throw away accounts to ask around. Looked into some scientific papers. Researching stuff about cults, and even the mages. Though there were very few of them due to the new law implemented recently. But, in the end, none of them could explain what the light was, let alone why I only saw it around that gloomy girl.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Frustrated, I threw myself to my bed, and my mind wandered to the girl. We never talked with each other. Hell, like many others, I barely noticed her existence before that. I just knew that her name was Aoi and that she liked reading novels.

Something changed in me that day. I felt it. But I didn’t know what changed until the very next day.

At school, I tried to not pay attention to Aoi or the light, keeping them out of my sight as often as possible. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, my eyes kept unconsciously drifting back toward her. Even when I cover or close my eyes, I still see the azure light in the shape of her. It was like the light was in my eyes rather than actually around her

On PE, I got laughed at because a single glance of her made me trip in a relay run. Another time I accidentally caught a glimpse of her, I crashed into the class door. But those were not the worst part. Since Aoi sat near the door in front of class, she and the light kept appearing in the corner of my eyes, taunting me to look at her and causing me to lose focus in class.

My friend noticed my odd behavior and teased me, but I just brushed it off as an effect from lack of sleep. There was no way I could tell him I saw the loner gloomy girl in the class surrounded by a blue light that kept drawing me in.

It became clear to me that the light wasn’t a coincidence. No one else beside me saw it, and no one else had that light. It must have meant something. I realized that, perhaps, the girl would know about the light, and maybe how to stop it so I could return to my old life. The only problem was, there’s no way I could just walk up to her and ask. Best case scenario, she would just ignore me.

So, I started thinking of a way to get closer to her...