*Some plans begin in a corridor. Some end in a locked room.*

  ---

  The corridor was long and lazy with the late-morning light, the kind of quiet that exists only between classes — half-asleep, waiting to be broken. Mrita stood near the wall with her arms loosely crossed, watching the far end of the hallway with patient, curious eyes. Then she saw her.

  Suzie came walking around the corner with easy confidence, her steps unhurried, her hair slightly loose around her shoulders. Beside her walked a junior — a boy, young, a little uncertain the way juniors always are around older students. He kept pace half a step behind her, like he wasn't entirely sure he'd earned the right to walk beside her yet.

  Mrita's eyes lit up immediately. She pushed off the wall and a grin spread wide across her face.

  *"Your boyfriend is nice,"* she announced, loud enough that the junior would have definitely heard.

  Suzie didn't even flinch. She barely blinked. *"Not like that,"* she said simply, casting Mrita a sideways glance that. *"He's my friend."* Casual.

  ---

  The two of them drifted toward the classroom together. It was somewhere between the corridor and the door that Suzie said it — lightly, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

  *"We're going to search for the tiger that news has shown and Take a photograph of it. You interested in coming?"*

  Mrita stopped walking for exactly one second. *"A tiger."*

  *"A tiger,"* Suzie confirmed, as if they were discussing a weekend walk.

  *"That tiger is Not from any zoo?"* Mrita said laughingly , because that mattered enormously.

  *"Not from a zoo."*

  Mrita was quiet for a moment. She thought about the mountain — that wide, wild slope she had climbed years ago, the trees so thick they swallowed sound, the air that smelled like something alive and ancient. She hadn't been back since. Something about the memory made her chest feel wide open.

  *"I'll come,"* she said.

  And that was that.

  They filed into the classroom. Chairs scraped, the teacher talked, notes were written — but Suzie's mind had already left the room entirely. It moved instead through the trees of that mountain, calculating, planning, tracing paths she hadn't walked yet. Classes passed like minutes beneath her distraction. She barely tasted them.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  ---

  The moment the final bell rang, Suzie was already moving. She turned to Mrita in the hum of chairs and chatter and said firmly, *"Meet me at the foot of the mountain. Exactly five o'clock. Don't be late."*

  Mrita nodded, already reading the urgency in Suzie's posture.

  Then Suzie found Gill in the stream of students filing out and walked him to his usual spot — the little corner near the old shop where he always seemed to end up. She gave him the same instructions. Same place, same time. Five o'clock sharp. Gill listened carefully, nodded once, and that was enough.

  With both of them briefed, Suzie turned and practically ran.

  ---

  Her house was a blur — bag dropped on the desk, shoes kicked aside, barely a pause to breathe. She was back out the door in minutes, moving through the warm afternoon streets toward Marie's clinic with the focused energy of someone on a mission they hadn't yet fully explained to anyone, including themselves.

  Marie's clinic was never truly quiet. Even now the small waiting area hummed with the sounds of animals — a soft nervous whine, the shuffle of paws on tile, the occasional sharp bark that made the air vibrate. Pets of every breed occupied the chairs and carriers around the room. The place smelled like antiseptic and something warm, like fur in sunlight.

  Suzie pushed inside and found Marie in her checkup room, hair pinned back, expression focused.

  *"I need a packet of blood,"* Suzie said without ceremony. *"Dog blood. Any breed."*

  Marie looked up sharply. *"A dog was hit by a car an hour ago. It needed everything I had. It was an emergency."*

  Suzie absorbed this without blinking. *"Then human blood,"* she said.

  Marie stared at her. *"What on earth do you need blood for, Suzie?"*

  *"It's an emergency. I'll explain when I'm free, I promise."*

  Marie studied her for one long moment — read the sincerity in her face, the urgency sitting just beneath her calm — and made a decision. She reached for her phone.

  ---

  He arrived within minutes. Judo — Marie's boyfriend since one year — was the kind of person who entered a room and somehow made it feel slightly warmer. Fair-skinned, unhurried, with eyes that caught light in a way that made people look twice. He was already smiling when he came through the door, the easy smile of someone who didn't need to know why he'd been called — only that she had called.

  Marie met him at the entrance, wrapped her arms around him briefly — something fast and grateful — then led him through to her private room. The door clicked shut behind them, locked from the inside, and Suzie settled into a chair in the waiting area with her arms folded.

  Inside the room, the only sounds were the hum of the refrigeration unit and the soft clink of Marie setting a syringe on the tray. Clinical. Efficient. She was good at this.

  Judo settled into the patient's chair across the small examination table — the one reserved for checkups, for careful assessments, for Marie's measured professional gaze. He rolled up his sleeve and watched her prepare with calm, amused eyes.

  Then — just before the needle touched skin — he spoke.

  *"I'm not giving my blood,"* he said pleasantly, *"unless you give me a kiss first."*

  Marie looked at him flatly. *"This is not the time."*

  *"It's always the time,"* Judo said — and stood up from the chair with the slow, theatrical confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. He moved toward the door, reaching for the handle with entirely too much calm.

  Marie's hand shot out and caught his arm.

  A breath. A pause. Something shifted in the room — the clinical air thinning into something warmer, more complicated.

  She pulled him back. Not forcefully, but with intention. His back met the wall and she was in front of him both their eyes met at sight and he can feel her breath before he could say another word, both her hands coming up to cup his face with a tenderness. She looked at him for one quiet second — really looked — and then at sudden she kissed him in a way that last for atleast 20 seconds

  It was supposed to be quick. A deal struck and closed. But the moment their lips met, quick became impossible. There was a year of knowing each other folded into the way he kissed her back — careful and certain at once, his hands finding her waist without hesitation. The syringe sat forgotten on the tray. The clock on the wall kept moving. Neither of them noticed.

  Then — sharp and sudden — a phone buzzed.

  Marie pulled back, breathless, her cheek flushed. She glanced at the screen.

  *Suzie.*

  Judo laughed — a low, quiet sound — and reached up to straighten his collar. *"Perfect timing,"* he murmured, entirely unbothered.

  Marie pressed her lips together, composed herself in the space of a single inhale, and answered the call.

  *"How much longer?"* Suzie's voice came through — patient but pointed. The voice of someone who had a mountain to reach by five o'clock and a tiger to find before dark.

  Marie looked at Judo. Judo was already sitting back down in the chair, sleeve rolled up again, offering his arm with a grin that said he had won something and they bo

  th knew it.

  *"Two minutes,"* Marie said into the phone, steady and professional. *"Give me two minutes."*