HED ONLY BREAK YOUR HEART

Trays slammed and voices piled over each other in Highschool A's cafeteria—a weekday lunch, maybe a week after she'd only caught the hallway gossip secondhand. Mina's table and the James boys had dragged benches together until the block felt twice as wide and twice as loud as either crowd alone.

Xian threaded through the crush with her tray and dropped into the seat beside Mina—school friends since the twins had smiled at Val in front of her days back, warmth Mina had grabbed and held. Today she wasn't chasing reunion. She was following the noise.

Homework lasted three sentences. Weekend plans didn't last four. The talk bent back toward Val—the same gripes she'd been catching in pieces since early April: trying too hard, orbiting girls like he owned them, gross, weird, pick an insult. The lines sounded recycled from last week's hallway; the only fresh part was volume, broadcast across every chair at the merge.

Her stomach knotted. She stared at her plate and let the fork handle bite her palm while Karen laughed, Sel chimed in, Mina agreed, Emily piled on. Anything she said would just add fuel—and the table had plenty of kindling already pointed at whoever defended him.

Karen leaned across the gap, sweet as poisoned candy. "Do you have feelings for Val?"

She didn't pause for an answer. "You'd better drop it. He's gross. He'd only break your heart."

A few girls nodded like she'd done Xian a favor.

Sel jumped in before the echo died. Mina gave a sharp nod—or something worse, a half-laugh that said same. Emily, tucked with the James girls, weighed in too: defending Val would look pathetic; liking him would look worse.

John had his chair beside Mina's, sandwich half gone while the girls tore into Val. When Karen finished her warning, Mina nodded sharp. John kept chewing and never looked up from his tray.

No one apologized. No one fought. The bell pressure crept in while girls kept smiling over their trays and boys kept eating like nothing was wrong. Xian never put a word in for Val, she didn't need to—not before chairs scraped and the crowd broke apart, carrying the same brittle silence out with her.