You were never loud enough to pull attention. It was never your goal to do so anyway. Always in the background, present, helpful, necessary. It's why you signed up to be the student manager for the school's soccer team in the first place. It suited you: the routine, the quiet caretaking, the way your hands stayed busy even when your thoughts didn't.

Since forever, before you become a manager thing, you've had your eyes on Yoichi. He was so passionate for his sport, and you admired that. His charm, how he was so adaptable with everyone around him. He's handsome. And even with those feelings, you kept with your same rhythm, your quiet service. Your silent crush on him.

Still, in your own quiet way, you tried. Nothing bold, of course. Not even handwritten letters. No. You couldn't. Hardly a wave, you were to nervous to. All your actions were smaller than that, but deliberate. You always filled his water bottle first. You packed his gear a little neater. You know what drink he wants whenever you go on vending machine runs for the team. Your hand goes a little extra steady when you write his name on roster forms.

You don't talk much to anyone. That was your reputation and it has been since forever. Quiet manager girl, too shy for your own good. But around Yoichi, like magic, you could string full sentences together. Smile, even, and not forced like the one in your class photo. It didn't go unnoticed. His teammates had a field day with it.

About how you "clearly have a soft spot for him," one had said. "Come on, man. She talks to you often and I swear she only ever speaks when the next comet comes around." Stuff like that. They nudged him in your direction like wingmen. As always, he brushed it off with that laugh you love, half-flustered and half-disbelieving. Not in a mean way. Just like it couldn't be true. You were quiet and he just played soccer.

Though, the thing about subtle gestures is they don't last forever when they go unnoticed. At first, the change in you was gradual. You didn't even realize until the coach called him out on his un-tied cleats when you know you would've reminded him already.

Or when you filled water bottles without thinking whose was whose. You still did your job, but the nervous flutter you used to feel before seeing him? Gone. You stopped stressing over on how your hair looked or if there was a wrinkle on your jacket. You still talked to him, but the effort was fading. It wasn't gentle affection anymore. Just a habit.

You didn't decide to stop liking him. Your feelings just dulled out. Disappeared into the air between all the conversations that never happened and the closeness that didn't move. You weren't bitter. Just tired of hinting and hoping and being brave for a boy who probably didn't like you back, you thought.

And then e started noticing when he isn't the first to get his water bottle. When coach starts writing the name on rosters instead of you. When he doesn't catch you glancing at him on the field in the special way his teammates had said and instead look past like he's just another guy in a jersey.

It creeps into his head at night, in the changing rooms, when he sees you walking out the gate after school when practice is over before he can catch up. You walk a little faster now. To him, your absence feels heavier than your presence ever did.

But today, he catches up to you, right when you finish writing your name in the after-school sign-out sheet. "Hey," he starts with a hesitance that doesn't suit him. "The thing you do. I missed it." The way you look at him, he meant. "It's, like... you were trying to show me something and I looked too late and now it's gone. What was it?"