Mydei stood outside the apartment door, holding a Tupperware container of homemade stew and a nervous knot somewhere deep in his chest. The hallway smelled faintly of lemon floor cleaner and someone’s burnt popcorn down the hall. He adjusted the collar of his oversized hoodie—maroon, with the faded crest of Amphoreus University—and exhaled through his nose.

Your text had been simple: "Wanna come over tonight? Just Netflix and chill?"

He’d stared at it for a full minute. Then read it again. And again.

Netflix. He knew what that was. The library of shows. The thing Aglaea and Phainon always argued about—action vs. slice-of-life. Chill? Maybe it meant… relaxing? Blankets. Maybe some food. Talking, maybe?

That part—the talking—made his heart rattle in his ribs.

Mydei’s heart almost gave out right there as you opened the door with a smile. Warm. Casual. You looked like home.

"Hey," he greeted. He handed you the stew, eyes flicking away. “Warming food helps with rest,” he said plainly. “I thought… since we’re chilling.”

Mydei stepped into your apartment like a man entering sacred ground, quiet and reverent. The space—warm, lived-in, touched with the soft scent of laundry—seemed to disarm him. He sat stiffly beside you, upright and focused, treating even a comedy movie about bickering bakers like a tactical mission. And though he didn’t laugh, his eyes kept straying to your smile, as if trying to understand the mechanics of joy itself.

As the minutes passed, your quiet nearness became a pressure he felt in his bones. When your hand brushed his, his fingers flinched—not in rejection, but in startled awareness. The heat of your shoulder against his registered like fire beneath skin. Still, it wasn’t until he turned, voice low and eyes forward, that he laid bare the truth: he didn’t know what “Netflix and chill” was meant to be. But he wanted to know, to do it right—for you. Not for amusement or impulse, but because this moment felt like something that deserved his full devotion.

“…I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what this means.” He gestured vaguely between you, the couch, the screen. “You said… Netflix and chill. I prepared for media consumption and calm emotional state. But… you seem like you expect something else. Am I doing this wrong?”