The sun slowly began to drift westward, casting golden-orange light through the windows of the third-floor hallway at Nusantara High School. The bell signaling the end of the first day of School Environment Orientation rang sharply, breaking the quiet of the afternoon and sending hundreds of students streaming out through the gates toward waiting vehicles or public transit.
Yet in the hallway outside the art room, tucked away near the end of the school's west wing, the atmosphere was strangely quiet. The place was surrounded by shady angsana trees that made the air cool and slightly damp. Inside the spacious room, thick with the distinctive scents of turpentine, linseed oil, and acrylic paint, a girl in a gray-and-white school uniform stood before a blank canvas, her shirt sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
Kirana Paramitha did not look like someone serving a harsh punishment. Instead, she hummed softly while holding a palette knife in her right hand, mixing cerulean blue and titanium white on a wooden palette. As ordered by that cold-blooded Student Council President, her task for the day was to organize the painting-supply storage room and clean the art room floor. But of course, Kirana was not about to waste her time without enjoying the atmosphere of her favorite place in her new school.
"Jeez, that kid is taking forever. He said he was going to check on my punishment, but I haven't seen him at all," Kirana muttered to herself. She turned toward the wide-open dark green wooden door, revealing the now-empty hallway outside.
Meanwhile, a few yards away, Reyhan Arkananta was walking down the third-floor hallway with steady, measured strides. After making sure all the main gates were locked and submitting the day's School Environment Orientation report to the supervising teacher, his duties as Student Council President were not quite finished. There was still one mandatory item on his schedule that afternoon: checking on the rebellious student's punishment, Kirana Paramitha.
Reyhan adjusted his glasses with his index finger. He wore his white uniform shirt, now stripped of its formal tie, leaving only the gray knit vest characteristic of the Student Council's core officers wrapped around his athletic frame. In his right hand, he carried a plastic clipboard containing a list of problem students. His steps came to a stop right at the threshold of the wide-open art-room door.
The moment he stepped inside, the sharp smell of oil paint stabbed at his senses. Reyhan blinked slowly and waved one hand in front of his nose; he was not accustomed to the smell of painting chemicals. His eyes immediately caught sight of Kirana standing with her back to him, absorbed in brushing paint onto the canvas with nimble, energetic strokes.
"Kirana Paramitha," Reyhan called, deliberately raising his deep voice to break the silence of the room.
The girl he called did not look surprised in the slightest. She slowly stopped what she was doing, then turned around as she wiped the hand faintly stained with pink paint on the grimy rag tucked into her skirt pocket. She looked at Reyhan with her trademark crooked smile—a smile that always managed to get under the Student Council President's skin.
"Wow, our ice prince finally showed up. I thought you forgot you had a prisoner here, President," Kirana greeted him casually, leaning her hip against the edge of a large worktable covered with used paintbrushes. "Sit down. Don't be so stiff. This room isn't going to infect you with my rebellious nature or anything."
Reyhan ignored the invitation. He walked farther into the room, carefully scanning his surroundings. The wooden cabinets used to store paint tubes were now neatly arranged by color, and the ceramic floor, which had previously been covered in clay dust and splattered paint, was now clean and gleaming. Clearly, Kirana had done a fairly good job cleaning, even if she had gone about it in her own disorderly style.
"I didn't come here to make small talk," Reyhan said coldly, stopping exactly six feet in front of Kirana. He stared straight at the canvas she was working on. "I'm here to make sure you properly complete the sanction I gave you, not take advantage of school facilities for your personal hobby."
Kirana followed Reyhan's gaze to the canvas behind her. She gave a soft snort, then clicked her tongue. "My personal hobby? Hey, I finished cleaning this art room starting at three this afternoon, long before you finished that boring Student Council meeting. And now I'm using the rest of my free time to pour out some inspiration. Is it wrong for a student to express her creativity in a place meant for it?"
"Rules are still rules, Kirana," Reyhan countered emphatically, his jaw tightening. "This art room is a public school facility, not your private studio. If every student were free to use facilities outside class hours without special permission from the extracurricular supervisor, the school's inventory system would fall apart."
"You know what..." Kirana snorted sharply, then straightened. She stepped toward Reyhan, drastically shortening the distance between them once again, just as she had in the Student Council room that morning. "Is your whole life run by a stopwatch or something, Rey? Every second has to follow a schedule, and every action needs a legal clause behind it. Don't you ever get tired of always being right and stiff as a robot?"
The question slipped out without warning, but it succeeded in making Reyhan freeze. It was not merely a casual taunt; curiosity and sincerity glimmered beneath the gaze of Kirana's pitch-black eyes. For a fraction of a second, Reyhan felt as if the protective layer of ice he had painstakingly built over the years were being slowly scraped away by the eyes of the girl standing before him.
But Reyhan quickly pulled himself back to his senses. He stared sharply into Kirana's eyes, maintaining his defensive wall so it would not appear fragile before anyone—especially not before the new student who had caused him the most trouble.
"I have never grown tired of doing the right thing," Reyhan replied in a low voice, carefully forcing it to remain steady. "People like you are exactly what throw the world into chaos by treating rules as nothing more than suggestions."
Kirana fell silent for a moment. Instead of getting angry or responding with a sharp argument as usual, the corners of her lips curved into a small smile hinting at even greater curiosity. She raised one eyebrow, studying every inch of Reyhan's face from so close a distance—from those thin-rimmed glasses, to his sharp nose, to his slightly quickened breathing.
"Then prove it to me," Kirana challenged in a soft whisper, her voice gentle yet mesmerizing in the afternoon silence of the art room. "Prove that living by the rules really makes you happy, and that it's not just an escape because you're afraid to step outside your comfort zone."
Reyhan felt his heartbeat surge into an abnormal rhythm. The dimming afternoon, the distinctive smell of paint, and the distance between them being far too close made his common sense scream a warning. Before the situation could spiral further out of control, Reyhan immediately took one step back, breaking the distance and straightening his posture again.
"Your time is up, Kirana Paramitha," Reyhan said, forcing his voice louder to conceal the nervousness that had briefly swept through him. He took the report sheet in his left hand and crossed out Kirana's name with a ballpoint pen to mark the completion of her first-day sanction. "Today's sanction is complete. Tomorrow afternoon, you still have to come here to help take inventory of the watercolor brushes. Don't even think about being late."
Without waiting for any response or protest from Kirana, Reyhan turned around and hurried out of the art room without looking back. His footsteps struck the hallway floor in a rush, reflecting how badly he wanted to escape the strange atmosphere the girl had created.
Left alone in the room, Kirana could only grin as she folded her arms across her chest. She watched Reyhan's back slowly disappear around the hallway corner, then let out a soft laugh.
"Call me whatever you want, President," Kirana murmured as she turned back to her canvas. "But sooner or later, I'll make you realize that this world is much bigger than that boring Student Council rulebook."
Outside the school building, the afternoon sky slowly turned pitch-black, leaving only the first stars beginning to appear above the city skyline. And for Reyhan, the long journey through the next hundred chapters would apparently never be the same after that afternoon.