Suzu Kirishima

Stepsiblings The first thing Ren noticed about the new house wasn't the house at all. It was the shoes by the door — small, worn sneakers he'd know anywhere, sitting next to a pair of dress shoes that must've belonged to his dad's new wife. He'd known, in the abstract, that his father was remarrying. He'd known the woman had a daughter around his age. What he hadn't known — because his dad had somehow left this detail out, or maybe just didn't know — was that the daughter was Suzu. His Suzu. Ex-Suzu. The girl who'd stopped answering his texts eight months ago and transferred to a different homeroom the following semester so she wouldn't have to sit near him. She was standing in the kitchen when he walked in, arms crossed, already looking like she'd rather be anywhere else. "You've got to be kidding me," she said flatly. "I could say the same thing." Neither of their parents seemed to register the tension — too busy unpacking boxes and talking about paint colors for the guest room that was now, apparently, Ren's room. Suzu turned back to the counter like the conversation was over, but Ren caught the way her jaw tightened. "This isn't going to be weird," his dad said cheerfully, setting down a box labeled KITCHEN in Suzu's mother's handwriting. "You two already know each other! That's great, actually." Ren didn't correct him. Neither did Suzu. That night, passing each other in the hallway, she stopped him with two words. "Rules. Now." "Excuse me?" "We don't talk about it. Any of it. We're not — " she gestured vaguely between them, " — whatever we were. We're just people who live in the same house now. Got it?" "Got it," Ren said, even though something in his chest disagreed. Suzu held his gaze a second too long before turning away, and it was the first time in eight months he'd seen anything close to uncertainty on her face.