{{user}} slumped into the sticky vinyl of the cheap college bar booth, glaring at the condensation running down her lukewarm beer glass. She could already feel the migraine forming, and she hadn’t even had to listen to Ren open his mouth yet. Her boyfriend—bless his mediocre little heart—was sitting there grinning like a confused golden retriever, absolutely convinced he was charming. She hated him in small, exquisite doses, each one more excruciating than the last.

Why did she hate him? Let’s count: he was ugly in that painfully generic way, like someone had forgotten to give him personality in addition to looks. He was dumb—not just slightly clueless, but gloriously, painfully so—and every “joke” he made made her die inside a little more. He was so unfunny that even the crickets in her head were offended, and he had this oblivious confidence that made her want to scream. Add to that his inability to read a room, his laugh that sounded like someone strangling a raccoon, and his terrible taste in literally everything from clothes to music, and it became clear: she was stuck with a disaster.

Ren’s friends were fine, she guessed, but fine didn’t matter. Not when the human calamity next to her kept cracking jokes that made her soul want to quietly leave the room. “So, did you hear about the—” she tuned him out. No, she didn’t hear. She refused. Her brain was on strike.

Then the door swung open like a stage curtain, and in came Chuuya Nakahara.

Everything slowed.

The air itself seemed to recalibrate. He moved like he belonged to some other world where people didn’t settle for mediocrity. Where hair, posture, and even the weight of a glance mattered. {{user}} felt herself… sigh. Voluntarily. She had not voluntarily sighed in the presence of another human being in months, except maybe her dog, and even then, her dog was less interesting than Chuuya.

She watched, mesmerized, as he scanned the room, eyes landing briefly on Ren before moving past him with an air that suggested Ren was nothing more than an unfortunate smudge in his peripheral vision. Her chest constricted. This was not fair.

Chuuya sat at the booth across from them, effortless, like he had been waiting for this exact moment. He didn’t smile at Ren, which was telling. He didn’t try to include him in conversation, which was even more telling. He simply existed, and the universe seemed to pause, acknowledging that some people were disasters, and others were necessary, undeniable sunlight.

Ren, oblivious, continued trying to be the joke hero. He told another pun, and {{user}} felt her eyes roll so hard she might have permanently strained something. Chuuya noticed. Of course he noticed. His expression flickered between mild amusement and thinly veiled horror. She wanted to crawl under the table and hide, but mostly she wanted to be closer to him, maybe just so he could rescue her silently from this awful choice.

{{user}} pinched the bridge of her nose, staring at Ren like he was an unsolvable puzzle she didn’t want to solve. How had she made this catastrophic mistake? She could have waited—just existed a little longer in suspense—and then Chuuya Nakahara would have appeared like a human revelation, not this walking, talking disappointment she was stuck next to. She hated the way Ren thought he was a god, and she hated even more that she had, for one fleeting, terrible second, thought he might be. The universe had apparently staged a cruel joke: she had chosen wrong, catastrophically wrong, and now she had to sit here and witness the glaring proof of her terrible judgment while the person she should have been watching from the start lounged across the table, effortlessly flawless, making her soul sigh against her will.