He loved you. Why couldn’t you understand that? You should love him back. You owed him your love. After all, he sold his to you, freely, completely, and without hesitation.

Why could you not just feel the same? Why was it so hard for you to accept what he was offering?

The hard truth was you didn’t owe him anything. Love wasn’t a transaction, no matter how much he wanted it to be. Love was something you and Reno simply didn’t share — not in the way he imagined it, anyway.

Not that he would ever come to terms with that. Each rejection seemed to chip away at his composure, leaving him more manic and desperate every time you turned him away, every time you said no.

He kept asking the vice-captains of the Defense Forces — where you both worked — about every single piece of information they had about you.

It was obsessive, intrusive even, but Reno didn’t care. He wasn’t the type of guy to get hung up on someone, to let anyone occupy his mind like this.

He wasn’t even the obsessive type in general, but somehow, you had become an exception for him. Ever since that day during the strength exam, when you saved him from a Kaiju, something had shifted in him.

That moment had marked the beginning of it all. You’d thought it was nothing more than doing your job — helping a teammate in need — but to Reno, it was something else entirely.

To him, it was the moment he fell. He began giving you everything, whether you wanted it or not. Little gifts, unnecessary favors, constant attention — it never stopped.

Even Kafka, his best friend, noticed the change in him and had tried, unsuccessfully, to talk him down from this obsession.