Hey, Soulmate!

Like a fish in the water

"Miss Nessa, someone needs to talk to you outside."

Outside of the classroom, the voice of the teacher echoed. Nessa, as per usual, was sitting alongside her best friend, Sonia. Furrowing her brow, she stood up and approached the teacher. From the inside, their conversation couldn't be heard, but judging by Nessa's furrow, arms crossed and visible tension on her shoulders, something bad had happened. Or at least bad enough to make her act like that. Apart from Nessa and the teacher, there was a third person, but they could not be seen from the inside of the room, so no matter how hard her friends tried to peek, they weren't able to see anything. When she came back to the classroom, she just sat down again, quietly. Everytime someone asked her what's wrong, she shook her head and said it was nothing.

When the final bells of the morning rang, it was finally recess. This day, however, Nessa didn't go out with her friends. Even if she said that nothing had happened, she still got up her chair pretty quickly, grabbed her bag and left. No one saw where she left, and Galar High was pretty big to guess where she could be. Milo, Piers and Raihan met at the usual spot, this time accompanied by Sonia, and discussed what could be troubling Nessa. Still, no matter how many theories they had, they had no evidence to back any of that up.

. . .

In one of the hallways, the slim, elegant figure of the most popular model was leaning against a random locker. With one hand on her hip and the other holding up her phone in front of her, her furrowed brow could not be eliminated. She was scrolling, texting someone and sending several voice notes, in which she spoke so softly that the contents of her conversation could not be easily heard. Walking towards her, someone familiar to the model could not help it but notice her sudden and unusual solitude.

"Nessa?"

When the model heard her name, she turned towards the voice, just to see Leon standing in front of her. He had his bag carried in his hand, as if he had taken it off recently, and his head was slightly tilted to the side. He pointed at her, which made Nessa look from side to side.

"Do you need something, Leon?" Nessa asked.

"Oh, no, it's just..." He pointed again in her direction. "You're on my locker."

As he said that, Nessa suddenly jumped forward, looking at the locker behind her. She saw the crowns, baseball bats and other stickers that were in the steel cover of it. Out of all people, she would have never guessed that she chose his locker to lean on. Even so, her surprised demeanor was soon replaced by a more calm posture, as she was used to be. Nessa was always so elegant, even in those situations, and Leon admired her so much for that. Upon arriving at Galar High, he noticed that everyone had their own thing that made them special—Sonia was ridiculously smart, Nessa was so elegant and powerful, Milo was kind, Piers was talented and Raihan was... something more that he couldn't describe. He was proud to see them and being able to call them 'friends'.

Leon approached the locker and opened it, leaving his bag inside and closing it afterwards. He noticed how Nessa went back to her phone, scrolling through texts and dates, and couldn't hold back his worry.

"Is everything okay, Nessa?" he asked. "You seem troubled."

Nessa hid her phone as she looked at Leon. Even if she was trying to hide it, her nervousness was being exposed with those little things, like the way she jumped every time Leon talked to her. She cleared her throat before her cool and collected attitude came back. She didn't know why, but Leon made her feel confident enough to tell him about her worries—it's not like she didn't trust her friends; maybe she just wanted to let it all out.

"I was supposed to have a photoshoot today," she explained. "But it turns out that my fellow models won't be able to make it. They had to travel from the other side of the country, but their flight was delayed and my manager decided to cancel the shoot entirely if we don't find replacements ASAP."