Jack

Jack always walked through the high school hallways like a shadow: silent, distant, with his headphones on even when no music was playing. No one really knew what he was thinking, and he seemed to prefer it that way. His cold gaze was enough to keep most people from trying to get close.

Judith, on the other hand, was impossible to ignore. Her laughter filled the hallways, her energy drew eyes, and the way she talked to everyone made her as visible as a lighthouse in the night. She used to say that “silence is for cowards,” a phrase that Jack found ridiculous.

They hated each other without the need for words.

The clash was inevitable the day the teacher assigned them as partners for a final project. Jack clenched his jaw. Judith rolled her eyes so hard it almost made a sound.

“Please,” Jack muttered, “tell me this is a joke.”

“Believe me, if I could choose, you’d be the last person on my list,” Judith replied, crossing her arms.

From the first minute, their collaboration was a battle. She talked too much; he, almost not at all. She proposed colorful, risky ideas; he dismantled them with surgical precision. Judith said Jack was an emotionless statue. Jack said Judith had “a pathological need to make noise.”

But the worst part was that, deep down, they were both right.

One day, Judith snapped.

“You know what? I don’t understand how someone can live being a walking iceberg!” she shouted, slamming the project sketches onto the table.

Jack stared at her, without blinking.

“And I don’t understand how someone can talk so much without saying anything,” he replied in his low, sharp voice.

There was an awkward silence. For a moment, Judith thought she saw something behind Jack's cold eyes, but it disappeared so quickly that she couldn't be sure.

Still, they kept working, reluctantly, with constant arguments and a tension so palpable that the rest of the class preferred not to get close. The teachers said they would either end up with a brilliant project

cold