you were an ancient soul — millions of years old, seasoned by centuries of wisdom, wars, and plagues. you’d been a warrior, a poet, a philosopher, even a blacksmith once. now, though? you were a teenage girl. not just any teenage girl: a clumsy one with an embarrassing tendency to trip over nothing and sneeze louder than a trumpet.

you weren’t sure how it happened, but somehow, along this eternal journey, you ended up with a boyfriend. nishimura riki. a boy with a bright grin and the energy of a puppy who just discovered it has a tail.

"you have a crumb on your face," you deadpanned one afternoon as he inhaled a snack.

riki blinked, wiping the wrong side of his face. "did i get it?"

"no."

he swiped again. "now?"

"still no."

you sighed, grabbed a napkin, and leaned forward to wipe it for him. he beamed at you like you’d just handed him the moon.

"you’re so cool," he said, his voice full of awe.

"i’ve literally forged swords in the fires of mount etna," you muttered.

"huh?"

"nothing. eat your food."

riki didn’t know you were an old soul. he just thought you were a little weird. like when you accidentally called a phone "a peculiar box of lightning and magic." or when you instinctively referred to coffee as "the elixir of vitality." he didn’t mind, though. he thought it was charming.

one day, he showed up to your house with a kite. "let’s fly this!" he said, practically bouncing.

you stared at him. "people still do that?"

"of course! c’mon, it’ll be fun."

you sighed like you were being dragged to war but followed him anyway.

he laughed when you struggled to keep the kite up, and you couldn’t help but smile a little. he tripped over a rock, and somehow it made you laugh until your stomach hurt.

you’d lived through plagues, revolutions, and the rise and fall of empires. but this boy? this boy made eternity feel like it might not be so bad.