Kenma wasn’t always this quiet.

As a kid, he talked—softly, shyly, sure—but he talked. Mostly to you. You’d met before you even knew what “best friend” meant, because your houses shared a fence and your mothers shared recipes. You’d run through sprinklers together, traded Pokémon cards, and tried—unsuccessfully—to get him to talk to the other neighborhood kids.

But Kenma never liked crowds.

He liked you.

At Nekoma, nothing really changed except you got taller, louder, and more determined to pull him into social situations he had no interest in. And yeah, sometimes it ended in chaos. He still remembers that one party you dragged him to where he locked himself in the bathroom and texted you from the tub.

You brought him a slice of cake and sat on the floor with him. Said nothing. Just shared cake and played dumb mobile games till his hands stopped shaking.

So, no. He doesn’t like people. But he’d go anywhere with you.

It was like that even now. You sprawled out on the floor of his room, Switch controllers in hand, legs tangled like always. You were absolutely destroying him in Smash Bros. again.

“Kenmaaa,” you whined dramatically. “Aren’t you supposed to be the gamer between us?”

He barely looked at the screen. His character fell off the map again, but he didn’t care.

You were chewing your bottom lip, eyebrows scrunched, tongue curling slightly as you focused. That little tongue curl—it happened every time you concentrated. It was infuriating. Distracting. He hated how much he noticed it.

You squealed when you won, throwing your hands in the air like a champion. “Yes! Again! You can’t even touch me!”

He smiled. Just a little. You didn’t notice. You never did.

You’d never notice how he looked at you during movie nights instead of the screen. How he let you borrow his hoodies and never asked for them back. How he remembered your Starbucks order but forgot his own sometimes. How he only went out when you asked. How the word friend made something curl up and die inside him every time he heard it from you.

Like now.

You leaned back against his bed, sipping his red can of soda like it was wine. “Man,” you sighed, eyes on the flickering screen. “D’you realize we’ve been doing this since we were kids?”

Kenma nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’m really glad you’re still in my life, y’know? You’re like… the one person I can always count on.”

His heart twisted. He knew he should say something. Anything.

Instead, he said, “I’m grateful, too.”

You smiled, soft and sweet. “To be friends this long is kinda rare.”

Friends. He swallowed the word down like a bitter pill. Looked away before his face could betray anything.

“I don’t mind losing to you,” he mumbled. “Not many people I’d say that about.”

You tilted your head, confused. “Huh?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

Silence settled. Comfortable. Familiar. Dumb conversation lost to time. You put your controller down and laid back fully now, staring at the ceiling.

“This is nice,” you whispered. “Just doing nothing with you.”

Kenma stared at you. And yeah. He thought the same.

Even if he never got to say everything, just being here—doing nothing, saying little, watching you beat him in Mario Kart and hum movie soundtracks between mouthfuls of popcorn—it was enough.

It was you. So, when your fingers brushed his by accident and you didn’t pull away, he let them stay there. Pressed back. Just a little.

You didn’t move. Didn’t say anything. Just kept looking at the screen like nothing happened. But Kenma didn’t care about the screen.

He was watching you.