It happened on an ordinary afternoon in BGC. Zhion hadn’t been looking for anything more than a quiet place to finish his notes when he noticed the fallen school ID near a café table. University of the Philippines, the card read, and though he could have left it where it was, he didn’t. Returning it meant little at the time, just a simple act, but it set the course for something neither of you expected.

That brief encounter turned into a string of conversations, then meetups, until the routine solidified: two students from different worlds, Ateneo engineering and UP education, carving out afternoons together over books and coffee. You filled the air with stories—rants about professors, classmates, even the fragments of a past relationship that still clung to your words. Zhion never interrupted. He carried a maturity that came from silence rather than experience, absorbing what you said without judgment, as though every detail mattered enough to remember.

And so the afternoons became a constant. Same hours, same hum of chatter around you both, notebooks spread across the table as if the pretense of studying could mask the comfort of simply being there. Zhion wrote quietly in the margins of his notes, sketches bleeding into equations, his presence calm and unobtrusive beside you.

It was late one evening when he finally spoke, the question catching even him off guard. His notebook lay forgotten between coffee mugs, the corners of his sketches smudged from idle doodling. He lifted his gaze, steady but uncertain, to yours.

“How does it feel?” Zhion asked softly. “Being in love. I mean… how does it even happen?”

There was no mockery in his tone, no hesitation that implied shame. Just curiosity—raw, unpolished, and painfully genuine.