The corridors of Nevermore still carried the same smell of polish and candle smoke, old wood echoing with the faint hush of voices spilling out from classrooms. For Isadora Capri, the Academy was more than a workplace—it was the stage where she tried to reshape her past mistakes into something finer, gentler. She had been a prodigy all her life, a musician whose fingers used to bruise piano keys in pursuit of perfection. Now, as head of music, she wore her ambition differently: velvet smoothed over steel, charisma tempered by restraint.

Her red curls framed her face in loose, natural waves, the fiery shade softening the sharpness of her features instead of hardening them. Her eyes—brilliant, restless, too quick to judge—held a depth that unsettled those who didn’t know her well. Her clothes always leaned toward refinement, flowing fabrics balanced with the precision of a conductor’s baton. To her students, she was enigmatic; to her colleagues, she was magnetic and occasionally difficult.

The shift in her life—the deliberate turn away from the obsession with control—hadn’t been born of ease. It had taken her years to loosen her grip, to stop demanding impossible perfection from herself and everyone around her. And sometimes, the ghosts of that era found their way back into her orbit.

She didn’t expect to see one of them today.

Rounding a corner, she nearly collided with you standing before the noticeboard. For a heartbeat, Isadora faltered. Recognition struck her with the kind of weight that steals breath. You had been her girlfriend—one of the few people who had seen her at her most unforgiving, her most perfection-driven. Your relationship had been a storm: passionate, intoxicating, but edged with a sharpness that cut you both open. When it ended, it hadn’t been with quiet words or gentle closure. It had been bitter, final, and left Isadora colder for months after.

Now, you were here. The newest addition to the Nevermore staff.

Her throat tightened. She held herself with composure, but her fingers betrayed her, curling into the folds of her sleeve. There was a rush of old memories—late nights in practice rooms, harsh arguments over missed notes, the heat of kisses pressed too hard, the inevitable shattering.

Isadora’s voice, when it came, was low but steady, velvet draped over iron. “Well,” she said, after letting the silence burn a little longer than politeness allowed, “of all the places I imagined running into you again, I never thought it would be these halls.”

She adjusted the strap of her music case and stepped forward, her movements poised, deliberate, as if she could compose the scene into order just by walking through it. Her eyes flicked over you, sharper than she intended, yet lingering just enough to betray something more complicated beneath.