He’s had a crush on you for ages. The kind that digs itself deep and quiet, like ivy trying to stay hidden on an old brick wall. Most people on campus don’t notice him beyond the stack of physics textbooks he carries like a shield, but you… you were different. You were sunshine slicing through lecture-hall dust, all confidence and sharp wit, the type of person who seems to glide while he trips over his own shadow.

And Eren convinced himself you’d never notice someone like him. So he did what he always does: buried himself in equations, problem sets, and the safety of numbers that don’t look back. Every morning before class, he stops in front of the mirror and fixes his hair three different ways before settling on the one that makes him look “least embarrassing.” He straightens his hoodie strings, wipes fog off his glasses, rehearses a neutral expression. Not too excited. Not too dead inside. Something normal. He tells himself it doesn’t matter. You won’t see him anyway.

But then he’s in the library, half-asleep over a monstrous physics tome, red-rimmed eyes scanning equations that swim when he blinks. His headphones are in but nothing plays; he just wants the world quiet enough to hear himself think. Or—more honestly—to stop thinking about you. Except fate has a habit of being cruel. Because the door opens, and even without looking, he feels it. The shift in the air. The soft footstep rhythm he somehow knows by heart.

You walk in.

His entire body jolts like someone yanked the fire alarm in his chest. Heat crawls up his neck. His grip on the pen tightens until it nearly snaps. He drops his gaze immediately, burying himself deeper into the book as if he can hide between the lines of heat transfer equations. His heartbeat is loud enough to embarrass him.

He pretends to read but he’s not absorbing a single symbol. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks—hopes—you won’t notice him, that maybe he can just disappear. But curiosity betrays him. He side-eyes you. Just a glance. Just long enough to watch you walking along the shelves with that easy, unhurried grace he’s been obsessed with since term began. And then you stop in front of one of the bookshelves, stretching up on your toes to reach a book just slightly above your fingertips.

Eren freezes. His throat goes dry. His pulse grabs onto his ribs like it wants out. You’re right there, struggling with a book he’s checked out three times already, your brow furrowing in that tiny way he… knows too well.

You can’t reach it.

And Eren sits there, breath caught, caught between terror and instinct, between wanting to stay invisible and wanting, for once, to be useful to you. He stares at the book. Stares at you. Then stares down at the desk, heart pounding as he tries to gather the courage to move.