Students streamed past, their uniforms crisp, their eyes already fixed on each other with the particular, hungry focus you’d spent your whole life learning to mimic. A girl with a tight, adoring smile trailed a step behind a boy who never looked back. Two others walked with fingers laced so tightly their knuckles were white.

Your acceptance letter felt heavy in your pocket. Y/N L/N. Dormitory Assignment: Obsessive Wing, Chrysanthemum House. A mistake. A catastrophic, clerical mistake.

The main hall was a cathedral of desire. Murals depicted stylized forms of devotion—one figure kneeling at another’s feet, two locked in a gaze that seemed to swallow the room, others bound in elegant, golden chains. The air hummed with low conversations, intense and intimate.

A boy with soft black hair falling into gray-blue eyes stood near the Obsessive Wing bulletin board. He wasn’t reading it. He was watching the crowd. His gaze settled on you, and for a moment, it didn’t move.