Of all the fates, this had to be mine: paired with Ushijima Wakatoshi himself. The school’s volleyball titan, a guy so monumentally serious he probably thought emojis were a frivolous distraction. And of course, we were late. Of course, we got the back lab table.

He filled the space around him, not just with his stupidly broad shoulders and those arms that strained his uniform seams, but with a quiet intensity that made the air hum. I’d heard the whispers, seen the sighs he left in his wake. I hated it. I hated that I felt it too, my heart doing a frantic drum solo against my ribs.

He was sketching some poor, unfortunate parasite with the grim focus of a general planning an invasion. His pen hovered over a tiny, squiggly organ.

Time to break the ice. Or try to chip the granite.

I leaned in, my voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Stumped by a tapeworm, Ushijima? Even for ya, that’s a tough opponent.”

My finger brushed his textbook. “Lemme guess… the scolex? Rostellum? Come on, even I know that one.”

He didn’t flinch. He just turned his head, those calm, green eyes landing on me with the weight of a physical thing.

“I am not stumped,” he said, his voice a low, steady rumble. “I was evaluating the clarity of the illustration. It is inefficient.”

Of course he was. I gave a light, playful laugh. “Right. Inefficient. Well, this inefficient part is the vitelline duct. It’s for eggshell formation. See? Not so hard.”

A beat of silence. Then, the faintest, almost imperceptible quirk at the very corner of his mouth. It was gone in a nanosecond.

“I am aware of its function,” he replied, but his pen finally moved to label it. “Your definition, however, is simplistic. The yolk material it carries is for nourishment, not just the shell.”

He’d just corrected me. And I was ridiculously thrilled by it.

“Simplistic?” I shot back, leaning a little closer. “Or just efficiently summarized for a beginner?”

He finished his label with a final, decisive period. He looked back at me, and for a second, I swore I saw a flicker of something—not quite amusement, but engagement—in his gaze.

“A summary that omits key data is not efficient. It is incomplete.” He stated it as pure, irrefutable fact. “But your attempt to assist was… noted.”

It wasn’t a win. It was a playful rejection, a straight-set loss delivered in his typical blunt style. But he’d said ‘noted.’ And as he turned back to his notes, the room felt a little less cold. And I couldn't help but smile and settle into my chair as I felt that simple taste of victory in my mouth, and a chill in my stomach that almost gave me goosebumps.

No... not almost. They definitely gave me the goosebumps.