Chapter Text
2026.04.23. The new semester started on a random Thursday, and I only remembered that because I spent the entire morning wishing it hadn’t. The school courtyard was crowded with students dragging their feet toward the opening ceremony. Teachers were already yelling at people to line up properly. Somewhere near the entrance, someone had dropped an entire stack of worksheets and was desperately trying to gather them before the wind could carry everything away. Yep. A complete disaster.
In other words, school had unfortunately, officially started again. I was halfway through complaining about it to Johan when someone brushed past me. Not enough to knock me over, but just enough to steal my attention—a student I’d never seen before. A new student..?
“Cute, right?” As if my thoughts had been projected onto a giant jumbotron above my head, Johan snapped me back to reality with a knowing grin.
“Huh?”
“Totally your type, I can tell.” He crossed his arms, putting on a dramatic little pose before leaning in like he was about to share state secrets. “I heard he’s single, too—”
“What the hell are you talking about!”
I bonked him on the head before he could finish whatever nonsense he was about to say, trying to play it cool as I walked away. It probably didn’t work, because if anything, that just seemed to give Johan more confidence to fully commit to whatever matchmaking plan he was cooking up in his head.
***
The next few days should've been simple. I'd already accepted that the guy was cute. That was supposed to be the end of it, no? People noticed attractive strangers all the time and moved on with their lives.
Unfortunately for me, the cute stranger turned out to be in my class. I learned his name sometime during attendance: Arsya Kairi. Ayi for short—and God, even the name sounds adorable. Suddenly I had to hear that name five days a week, and every time someone called it, I could feel my pupil follow in curiosity even before I could stop myself.
Actually, as the class president, I had plenty of reasons to approach my classmates. Organizing group assignments, collecting forms, making announcements—I practically had a built-in excuse to talk to anyone in the class whenever I wanted.
Yet somehow, every opportunity seemed to slip through my fingers whenever Ayi was involved. Every time I considered walking over, the timing just felt wrong. Every conversation starter sounded awkward in my head. And by the time I’d worked up the courage to say something, the moment had already passed.
So instead, I found myself doing something far more embarrassing: noticing.
Yeah. I was noticing. Even worse, a lot. Somehow I noticed him arriving a few minutes before the bell rang almost every morning. I noticed the way his face lit up whenever someone called his name from across the classroom. I noticed how easily he seemed to fit into conversations, laughing with friends as though he had known them forever. It wasn’t that Ayi was unreachable. If anything, he was right there, only a few desks away. Somehow, that made things worse: close enough to notice, yet not quite close enough for a conversation to happen naturally.
At least.. that’s what I told myself.
***
The following days, our psychology teacher assigned a class discussion on self-awareness and self-respect in romantic relationships. The topic alone was enough to make half the class laugh, like it was some kind of joke, but somehow it actually turned into a real discussion.
River was already going off the moment it started. He never really ran out of opinions—so I just kind of.. ended up in the middle of it with him. One question turned into another, and before I even realized it, I was the one talking the most. I was actually arguing that love wasn’t supposed to mean sacrificing everything for someone else.
By the time the final bell rang, most students had already packed up and left while I was still at my desk, sorting through a stack of worksheets and books, humming to myself as I was still riding that weird good feeling from having everyone in the class agreeing with my spontaneous opinions—like, okay, maybe I kinda do class president-ing way better than I thought?
I was just about to stack the last few papers properly when someone stopped right beside my desk.
“Hey, Nico?”
My heart basically launched itself out of my chest.
I looked up, and Ayi was standing there with a notebook tucked under one arm like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“I wanted to ask something,” he said. “That thing you mentioned earlier about balancing self-respect and affection in a relationship? I think I get it, but not completely.”
I blinked. For one horrifying second, my brain just.. stopped.
“Oh. Yeah. Which part did you not understand..?”
Somehow—unexpectedly—I managed to keep my composure. What started as a simple question turned into a surprisingly thoughtful conversation, and before I really realized it, we were just talking like it was normal. It didn’t feel forced, not the way I always imagined it would with him.
The whole thing probably lasted less than ten minutes, but it stretched in my head like it had its own time zone, and for the first time, talking to Ayi didn’t feel impossible.
“Okay, that actually helps a lot,” Ayi said at last, closing his notebook with a grin. “Thanks, Nic. That was really insightful.”
Then he gave a quick wave and left the classroom like it was nothing, like he hadn’t just casually rearranged my entire nervous system, and the door clicked shut behind him. I stayed at my desk some moments after that, staring down at the papers I was supposed to be sorting but wasn’t really seeing anymore, my brain kind of stuck on the fact that he had just come to me first.
Maybe it was because he trusted me enough to ask for my opinion? Or maybe it was because none of it had felt as scary as I always thought it would? Or maybe.. it was just the fact that it had actually happened at all. Whatever it was, I ended up walking home that evening with this weird, quiet fullness in my chest I didn’t really know what to do with.
***
2026.05.01. The next few days got busy in a way that made everything blur together a little. Between assignments, class stuff, and just general school chaos, I didn’t really have much time to think about anything else. Not even.. that. Well, not actively, at least? It wasn’t like it disappeared completely—every now and then, I’d still flinch a little out of curiosity whenever I heard his name being called across the classroom—but it always passed quickly, like something I didn’t have time to sit with properly. And after that one conversation, there wasn’t really anything else that happened between us anyway.
It just.. settled into normal.
Or at least I thought it did?
Until the weekend comes.
Johan and I had plans to hang out, and somehow it turned into us going to a Pokémon event together. Nothing serious, just one of those random “let’s go do something stupid outside of school” kind of days. And like most friends who clearly have too much time on their hands, we ended up spamming the class group chat about it—sending pictures, joking around, basically just showing off that we were going.
I wasn’t really thinking much of it until Johan sent another message, something like us standing in line and him acting like it was some major achievement. And then, a bit later, Ayi replied.
“Ah, I want to go there too.. but I can’t.”
I don’t know what exactly went through my head after that. It wasn’t planned, not even close to it, but before I really had time to think it through properly, I found myself typing.
“We can video call you from there, if you want.”
***
And that’s how I ended up here, in the middle of a bunch of new friends from the Pokémon community, holding my phone up while the Discord voice call kept ringing and everyone around me was way too invested in whether this was going to work or not. I don’t even remember exactly when the call got picked up—just that suddenly the screen shifted, and there he was.
Ayi looked the same in that “annoying way” (/pos) where it’s like.. how do you still look adorable like that through a phone camera? Just softer somehow, a little different from how he usually looked in class, like he was somewhere outside too, with slightly different lighting and makeup that made me realize he probably had plans of his own that day. For a second I just froze, like my brain forgot what we were even doing.
Then I remembered I was the one who offered the call.
So I started talking. I showed him around the event, just walking through the venue with my phone held up like I suddenly became a tour guide, pointing out decorations and random stuff while he reacted from the other side of the screen. At some point I even let him take screenshots from the call whenever we passed the photo spots, which felt kind of stupid in hindsight but also normal at the time. Fandom things, you know?
We ended up talking more than I expected. I was reading out some of the sticky notes people had stuck on this wall—little messages and doodles from visitors—and he was laughing at some of them, asking me what they meant, like he was actually there. Then he asked which one was mine.
I don’t even know why I hesitated. I just kind of walked closer and pointed at it, like that would make it less embarrassing.
It said: “Please come home (from Pokémon trading card gacha) and I’ll be your reliable big brother, Scorbunny. You can ask kakak anything and kakak will grant it for you.”
Yeah. It was as bad as it sounds that I immediately regretted showing him, but before I could even recover, he tilted his head a little and said something along the line;
“How about me, Kakak?”
Or at least that’s what my brain registered through the sudden internal shutdown that happened right after. I think I just laughed it off—or panicked—or maybe both at the same time, and then I didn’t remember what happened next until the call ended. The second the screen went dark, I realized my face felt way too warm.
Johan noticed immediately, of course. He always does. He leaned over with that stupid knowing look.
“Okay.. you guys would actually look cute together, you know.”
I looked away too fast at that, because yeah, I did think about it. A lot more than I probably should’ve, but saying it out loud felt wrong in a way I couldn’t really explain, like it would make everything real too quickly, or force something that wasn’t supposed to be forced.
So I just shrugged.
“Well.. if we’re meant to be, we will find our way to each other anyway. Guess I’ll just leave it to the universe from here.”
It sounded like a joke when I said it, something easy to laugh off and move on from. I didn’t think much of it after that.
At least not until later—when I realized I might’ve actually meant it.