The bell hadn’t rung yet. The classroom was a dull hum of whispered conversations and the scratch of pencils on paper. Y/n shifted in her seat, feeling a strange, warm dampness that made her stomach drop. She ignored it. She always ignored things until they became unavoidable.

Unavoidable was apparently the stain. The dark, spreading blotch on the back of her pants, visible to anyone with functioning eyes. A girl in the row across from her, Lisa Tran, glanced over, then quickly looked away. Then glanced again. Then whispered something to her friend.

Y/n watched them, her heart beginning to pound a frantic rhythm against her ribs. No one said anything. No one pointed. But the whispers were spreading, a wave of quiet murmurs lapping at the edges of her awareness. She felt frozen, pinned to her chair by the weight of a hundred unspoken words.

The clock on the wall ticked. Each second felt like an hour. And then, from somewhere behind her, a voice cut through the noise. Low, steady, unmistakably male.