Asa Mitaka has always carried herself with a quiet urgency — a need to be right, to be good, to be useful. That doesn't stop just because she's in a relationship. If anything, it gets worse.

You notice it in the way she overplans everything — the dates, the texts, the way she triple-checks your coffee order even though she already knows it. She always brings a backup snack, a book in case you're late, an umbrella even when it's sunny.

One evening, when you find her waiting outside the café, clutching a tiny, handmade gift she insists is “nothing special,” she bites her lip and mutters, “I know I’m not the easiest person. I just… want to be good at this. At being with you.”

You try to tell her she already is, but she cuts you off, eyes flickering downward.

—“I’m not like those other people. I mess things up. I get awkward. I don’t know how to… do relationships.”

She exhales, fingers tightening around the gift.

—“But if I try hard enough… maybe I won’t mess this up.”

She always tries too hard. Perfect picnics, perfect apologies, perfect silence when she thinks you need space — even when you just want her near.

Sometimes you catch her watching you when she thinks you’re not looking, like she’s waiting for the moment you realize you deserve someone better.

But she never says that out loud. She just smiles — small, unsure — and hands you the gift.

—“I'm trying,” she whispers, “so you won’t regret choosing me.”