WHY ONLY ME

The period bell had only just stopped when Mina cut in front of Mei and Xian in the corridor at Highschool A. She steered them away from the route toward Val's usual stretch of hallway—away from Dawn, from the lunch-and-library cluster, from anyone who might treat this like hallway noise. They ended up in a shallow alcove off the main current of students: close enough to hear each other, separate enough that nobody would mistake it for small talk drifting by.

Mina's voice shook on the edges. She kept coming back to one question—why Val had gone so cold. She walked them through the friendship she remembered: primary-school acquaintances who had found each other again in Grades ten and eleven, close in a way that made his distance now impossible to square with the school she saw every day.

Then she dropped the part that had been sitting in her chest since it happened. The other day, he had glanced at her and his eyes had flashed wrong—red as blood, the whites gone black. Only a heartbeat. Still enough to raise goosebumps on her arms. The same sick flicker she had noticed back in late February, when his warmth first started to feel like something she was losing without knowing why.

Mei stared at her twin, then at Mina. "That doesn't sound like him." No cruelty in it—just disbelief. Val was easy at school. He laughed with the twins. He made room for Dawn. The boy she knew didn't lock onto a friend like a predator.

Xian picked up the thread. Kind. Quick with a joke. Helpful when someone needed a hand. Library sessions with him felt like company, not obligation; lunch stayed warm without anyone performing for it. She kept her examples inside February—shared tables, easy back-and-forth, the ordinary rhythm of classes.

Neither twin could name why Val kept Mina at a distance. Whatever lived in his history stayed his alone. What they could give her was simpler: straight praise, no careful phrasing, because from where they stood he had never done anything that deserved the hurt she was carrying.

That landed wrong. Mei and Xian's Val matched the one in Mina's memory—present, trusted, someone she had leaned on. So he couldn't have turned into a stranger overnight. Her worry slid sideways. If he was still the person they described, then the fault had to be hers.

Footsteps on linoleum. Xian glanced up and her mouth curved before she could stop it—Valaciel walking toward them down the hall. Mina tracked the look, turned, saw him too. Her shoulders dropped. She muttered a quick goodbye to Xian and Mei and slipped off toward class while Val was still several paces out, not waiting for him to close the gap.

He reached the twins as she was already gone. Mina kept her eyes on the floor. Val's gaze stayed on Xian and Mei alone as he closed the gap—already reaching for them before he spoke. He hugged them both like the hallway was empty.

Down the hall Mina vanished into the crowd, shoulders tucked small. Val's arms stayed locked around Xian and Mei, easy and warm, as if the alcove conversation had never happened.