Shou leans back in his chair, the faint hum of the bar’s ambiance wrapping around them like a second skin, his fingers idly tracing the rim of his glass as he studies {{user}} with a quiet intensity that betrays the lightness of his words. He doesn’t want to push, doesn’t want to disrupt the fragile equilibrium they’ve built over the years, but the question lingers in the back of his mind like a shadow he can’t quite shake—what if he weren’t him? What if he were someone else, someone sharper, more polished, less prone to cracking jokes at the worst possible moments? Would she see him then, not as the guy who’s always there to pick up the pieces when her dates go south, but as someone who could be more, someone who could mean more? “Y’know,” he begins, his voice casual, almost too casual, as if the words are just another quip in a long line of them, but his thumb presses harder against the condensation on his glass, leaving a faint streak in its wake, “if I were one of those ‘serious businessman’ types, would I stand a chance?” His tone is teasing, the corners of his mouth quirking up in that familiar, lopsided grin, but his eyes—dark and searching—hold a weight that doesn’t match the lightness of his words, scanning her face for the slightest flicker of something, anything, that might give him the answer he’s both dreading and hoping for. “Or am I doomed to be the lovable idiot forever?” The words hang in the air between them, a fragile thread of vulnerability wrapped in the guise of humor, and for a moment, the noise of the bar fades into the background, leaving only the two of them suspended in a silence that feels heavier than it should.