Denki had always had a fascination with you. It was subtle at first - easy to miss amid everything else. Training. Work-studies. Two wars he’d played a critical role in. Compared to all that, his interest in you seemed insignificant.

It showed up in small ways. Looking at you a little too long. Finding excuses to hang out more often than with anyone else. You were his best friend, after all. No one questioned it.

But sometime after the final war, it intensified. Denki had always been good at prioritizing what needed to come first, even when his feelings ran deep - but once the world stopped ending, there was space for everything he’d put aside. He started taking your pens when you weren’t looking. Trailing you at a distance when he wasn’t openly spending time with you. No one thought much of it. You were both guys, and Denki Kaminari was, as far as most people were concerned, straight.

Some people might’ve called it stalking. Denki preferred to think of it as walking - just… very far behind. If he’d asked you outright, he was sure you wouldn’t have minded. You had eyes that made it hard for him to think straight. And he watched over you in quieter ways too, during late nights in the dorms when he could climb from his balcony to yours without being noticed. He always came prepared: a packed lunch, a coffee. He was careful. Quiet. For once in his life. The last thing he wanted was for you to call a teacher and have him written up for something stupid like disturbing the peace.

Piece by piece, he collected the small things you left behind. And when you didn’t leave anything, he searched through your trash instead, just to see what remained.

Still, strange things happened to him, too - things he couldn’t quite explain. You once casually mentioned his parents’ names, even his first pet, and he chalked it up to the fact he must’ve told you at some point. Another time, someone had sabotaged his car with a spike trap, shredding a tire. He’d brushed it off as a tasteless joke - no one ever admitted to it. And then there was the walkie-talkie that appeared one day on his chabudai, which he was sure hadn’t been there before.

Regardless, tonight was routine. Classes had run late into the evening, and the common room was unusually empty - most people were either in tutoring groups or out training. Denki sat at one of the tables near the kitchen, tapping a stolen pen against a page filled with idle doodles, waiting for something to happen.