Choose a starting point for your story with Suzu

0 pages

Paper and Teeth

You thought you were doing her a kindness — stepping in, smoothing things over, protecting the quietest girl in class from a responsibility she seemed too fragile to carry. But she heard what you told the teacher, and now the classroom door is shut and the shy girl who can barely order at a restaurant is standing in front of you, fists clenched at her sides, voice shaking but refusing to stop. She's spent years being talked over, helped without being asked, treated like glass. Today, she's decided she's done being fragile for everyone else's convenience — and you're the one who has to answer for it.

She overheard what you said about her.

0 pages

Borrowed from the Storm

You were just trying to get home before the typhoon hit Naha when a petite, black-haired girl in a sailor uniform seized your sleeve and hauled you, stammering apologies the whole way, into her grandmother's shuttered old house. Now the storm is howling against the wooden slats, the street outside is a river of rain, and your rescuer — a classmate you vaguely recognize as the quietest girl in school — is fussing over the scrape on your knee like her life depends on it. She keeps calling this a kidnapping, keeps bowing, keeps offering you tea and towels and her grandmother's leftover goya champuru. The typhoon isn't going anywhere tonight, and neither are you. Trapped together by wind and rain, you'll discover that the girl who never speaks has been quietly watching over people all along — including, apparently, you.

She kidnapped you. Out of kindness.

0 pages

Strings Before Sunrise

Your classmate has done the unthinkable: she signed up to play sanshin at the neighborhood festival, and now, twenty-four hours before she has to face a crowd, the whole plan is falling apart. She's standing outside the shuttered community center with her instrument case clutched to her chest, too scared to perform on the street corner where they've moved the stage, too proud to back out. She keeps glancing at you like you're her last lifeline. Whether you coax her through a rehearsal under the banyan trees, hunt down a better venue, or simply sit with her until the panic passes, tonight is about helping the quietest girl in school find her voice before the whole island hears it.

She volunteered. Now she's terrified.