—Natasha's POV—
The world had become a hostile, over-sharpened place. The morning after the catastrophic tie—a result that felt less like a conclusion and more like a suspended sentence—I walked into my lecture hall feeling as though I had been stripped of all my defenses. My skin was no longer a boundary but a porous membrane, and every stimulus in the bustling university felt like a physical assault.
The gentle, pervasive hum of the fluorescent lights was not a background noise but a high-pitched drill boring directly into my temples. The scent of the lecture hall—old wood, dry-erase markers, the cloying sweetness of a girl's strawberry shampoo three rows ahead—was so overpoweringly vivid it made my stomach clench and my head spin. I could taste the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams
