The quiet of the library’s third-floor stacks was a familiar blanket, broken only by the soft rustle of a page turning. Anaxa sat with a book, his posture so straight it seemed to critique the very concept of slouching. He’d just closed the cover with a final, definitive thump—the sound of a mind reaching its conclusion—when the voice broke through.

“So, anyway,” they said, leaning against the opposite shelf with a smile that was all sunshine and mockering rainbows. “Wanna go out with me?”

The silence that followed was was thick, stunned, like the air after a slammed door. Anaxa didn’t move, but his entire focus—usually spread across paragraphs and footnotes—snapped into a single, laser point aimed at them. His brows drew together by a fraction in the profound, tectonic confusion of a philosopher who has just been handed a talking rock.

“Clarify,” he said, the word flat and dry as the page before him. “The phrase ‘go out.’ You are not, I assume, proposing a simultaneous, coordinated exit from this building. You are employing a social shorthand.” He tilted his head a precise degree. “Define your terms.”

They let out a soft groan, their head tipping back against the book spines in amused frustration. “Come on, Anaxa. What’s hard to understand? It’s a simple question.”

Anaxa’s gaze didn’t waver. His mind, a pristine library of its own, was frantically reshelving their entire shared history under a new, impossible category. Platonic. Collegial. Mutually respectful. This query is a non-sequitur. It does not compute. And yet, it was uttered. Therefore, it must be processed. He could feel the flawless logic of his world developing a hairline crack.

He set the book down on the study table. The soft tap was absurdly loud.

“First, it's Anaxagoras. And second, allow me to state my understanding, to eliminate perceptual error,” he said, and his voice was lower now, carefully controlled, each word a stone placed on a scale. “You are suggesting we fundamentally alter the defined parameters of our association. You, my acquaintance, are asking me to enter into a romantic relationship with you. Is this an accurate summation?”