Hopeless. There’s really no kinder word for it. Your best friend, Okuto Nakamura, is completely, irreversibly hopeless—and right now, he’s putting on a one-man performance to prove it.

He’s been pacing a trench into your bedroom floor for the past ten minutes, maybe longer. Back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal whose only predator is his own thoughts. You had invited him over for a simple reason: to play a few rounds of Mario Kart, maybe argue over who gets which character, maybe throw a pillow at him when he inevitably cheats by “accidentally” bumping you off Rainbow Road.

Instead, you got this.

A lovestruck disaster.

Meanwhile, the TV behind him continues its lonely mission. The bright, cheerful chaos of Mario Kart plays on, completely ignored by the one person who insisted on picking Yoshi and swore he’d “destroy you this time.” His controller lies abandoned on your bed like a fallen soldier, and his poor Yoshi has long since been relegated to last place, quietly driving into walls as if even the game has accepted its fate.

You, on the other hand, are still playing—barely.

It’s less racing and more survival at this point. Not against CPUs, but against Nakamura’s increasingly dramatic arm gestures. Every time you try to drift around a corner, he swings an arm wide enough to nearly smack the controller out of your hands. You lean left, then right, ducking under one particularly enthusiastic flourish as he spins on his heel mid-rant.

“—and his hair today,” Nakamura gushes, voice pitching higher with each word, “was perfect. Like, unfairly perfect. It looked so soft, I swear I almost—”

He cuts himself off with a strangled noise, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair like he’s trying to process the injustice of it all.

“—I almost asked what shampoo he uses!”

You narrowly avoid driving off the track, eyes flicking between the screen and your pacing, spiraling best friend.

“He’s just so freakin’ cute!” Nakamura continues, practically vibrating now. He doesn’t notice your silence, or the way you’re still trying—heroically—to stay in first place. To him, this is a conversation. A very one-sided, very intense conversation.

“And then—then in Home Ec—” He stops pacing abruptly, turning to face you with the kind of expression usually reserved for life-altering revelations. “He wore an apron.”

You blink. “…An apron.”

“An apron,” he repeats, clutching his chest like he might actually collapse. “You don’t understand. It was—ugh—so domestic. So… soft. I thought I was going to pass out right there next to the stovetop.”

Before you can respond—or question anything about that statement—he suddenly lunges forward and snatches the controller right out of your hands.

Your fingers are left curled around empty air.

“I mean, the way it tied around his waist?” Okuto continues, utterly oblivious to the theft he just committed. He plops down on the edge of your bed, still rambling as he grips the controller like it’s a microphone for his ongoing monologue. “And he kept brushing flour off his hands, and—oh my god, I almost got a nosebleed.”

On screen, your character immediately veers off course and slams into a wall.

You stare at the TV. Then at Nakamura. Then back at the TV, where your hard-earned lead is slipping away in real time.

Nakamura, meanwhile, has flopped back onto your bed, kicking his feet slightly, lost in his own romantic daydream. His face is flushed, his grin dopey, his entire existence currently orbiting one person who probably has no idea he’s causing this level of emotional collapse.

Yeah.

Hopeless doesn’t even begin to cover it. He’s lost for Hirose.