Max Miller approached you with a clipboard. That should have been your first warning.

“I need a favor,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “A controlled, time-limited, strictly platonic favor.”

You stared at him. “That’s… ominous.”

He sighed. “There are rumors. About my sexuality. About me being emotionally incapable of relationships. And while I don’t consider either problematic, they are… distracting. Also, I want to study how perceived romantic attachment affects social behavior.”

You blinked. “You want a girlfriend.”

“Pretend girlfriend,” he corrected quickly. “For science.”

Against your better judgment—and because the look on his face was half-hopeful, half-terrified—you agreed. Two weeks. Public but harmless. Holding hands in hallways. Sitting together at lunch. Minimal affection. Maximum data.

At first, it was almost funny.

Max took notes. Literal notes.

“Day three,” he murmured one afternoon. “People made significantly more eye contact with me. Also, you laughed at my joke, which statistically—”

“It wasn’t a joke, Max.”

“Oh,” he said, flustered. “Then why did you laugh?”

Because it was you, you thought. But you didn’t say it.

The longer the experiment went on, the messier it got. People flirted with you—and Max reacted. Not logically. Not calmly.

One day, when someone leaned a little too close to you in the quad, Max stiffened beside you.

“Your proximity is unnecessary,” he said sharply to them.