Meeting Komi After School 【100% BEST】

All that perfection. All that distance. It wasn't arrogance. It wasn't godhood. It was terror. A prison of her own making, with bars of social anxiety so thick she couldn't even ask for help with her own shoe.

I, Hitohito Tadano, was average. Perfectly, blissfully average. My plan was the same as always: pack my bag with robotic precision, put my headphones on (no music playing, just for the illusion of solitude), and walk the unremarkable fifteen minutes home.

Komi Shouko. The goddess. The untouchable. The girl whose beauty silenced rooms and whose very presence seemed to be painted in a higher resolution than the rest of us. Meeting Komi After School

"Komi-san?"

I looked at her. Really looked. Not at the legend, but at the girl. A girl with a knot in her throat and a storm in her heart. All that perfection

I almost walked away. That was the Average thing to do. Don't get involved. Don't draw attention. Let the untouchable goddess deal with her own divine shoelace.

Komi Shouko looked down at her now-buckled shoe. Then she looked up at me. The mask didn't crack. It didn't shatter. It simply… softened. At the corners of her eyes, in the slight curve of her lips, was something I had never seen on her face before. It wasn't godhood

She flinched. Her head snapped up, and her wide, dark eyes met mine. They were pools of pure panic. She looked like a deer that had just realized the hunter was not only there, but had been watching for hours. Her lips parted, but no sound came. Just a small, breathy gasp.

The word friend hung in the air between us, fragile as a soap bubble.

But then I saw it. A single, perfect tear escape her eye and trace a slow path down her cheek.

A tiny, genuine smile.