You woke up to the worst taste in your mouth and the unfamiliar weight of someone else’s blankets.

For three seconds, you didn’t know where you were.

White ceiling. Dark curtain. The faint smell of smoke and laundry detergent and something warm.

Then the memory hit: the porch, the fight, his hands on your back, your face in his T‑shirt, the steady murmur of I’ve got you until you stopped shaking.

You were in his bed.

You shot upright so fast your vision went white at the edges.

“Easy,” a voice said from the doorway. “Try not to concuss yourself. I don’t feel like filling out incident reports on top of everything else.”

You blinked.

Choso leaned against the doorframe, mug in hand, hair tied back, sweatpants low on his hips and a soft, washed‑thin T‑shirt clinging to his shoulders. He looked…tired. Less like Professor Kamo, more like someone who’d been awake half the night worrying.

You looked down.

You were still in your dress from last night, twisted around you, tights half‑peeled, one shoe missing. The comforter was pulled over your legs. A glass of water and two pills sat on the nightstand.

“Did we—” You swallowed. “Did anything—”

“No,” he said immediately. “You cried on me and then passed out sideways. I exerted myself by dragging you two feet higher onto the mattress and finding your other shoe before you kicked me in your sleep.”

Heat crawled up your neck.

“Great,” you muttered. “Love that for me.”

He pushed off the frame and came closer.

“Take the pills,” he said. “Before your headache realizes it has options.”

You fumbled for the glass. Your hand shook just enough to slosh the water.

He sighed, took the mug to your nightstand, then sat down on the edge of the mattress, facing you.

“Give it,” he said, palm out.

You glared, but handed the glass over. He didn’t drink from it. He held it steady while you tipped the pills into your mouth, then lifted it so you didn’t spill on yourself.

“Small sips,” he reminded you.

“Bossy,” you said, muffled.

“Yes,” he said. “Annoyingly for both of us, it seems to be effective.”

You swallowed, then sank back against the headboard, eyes squeezed shut for a second.

“Do you always feel this bad after a hangover?” he asked.

“I don’t always drink like that,” you said.

“Good,” he said. “I prefer you conscious.”

You cracked an eye open.

“You’re very chatty this morning,” you said.

He exhaled, looking at you for a long moment.

“I was an ass last night,” he said. “At the door.”

You stared at him.

“That’s one word,” you said.

“There are others,” he said. “None of them flattering.”

You pulled your knees up, wincing at the way the dress dug in.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” you said.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But you did. And I opened the door. That part is on me.”

You didn’t know what to do with that.

He set the empty glass down and stood.

“Come on,” he said. “Kitchen.”

“I can walk,” you said.

“After you stop looking like you’re about to fall over,” he said. “Up.”

You swung your legs over the side. The room tilted.

His hand was there, firm around your wrist, steadying you.

“Barely functional,” he muttered. “And yet you thought porch hopping was a great idea.”

“Don’t,” you said, shame flooding back. “Please don’t start.”

He went quiet.

“Fine,” he said and apparently that was that.

He led you down the hall, fingertips at the small of your back, just enough contact to keep you moving in a straight line.

The kitchen smelled like coffee and toast. A plate sat on the table: toast, scrambled eggs, something bland and gentle.

“You cooked,” you said.

“I heated,” he corrected. “Calling this cooking would offend several cultures and my grandmother’s ghost. Sit.”

You sank into the chair.

He put the plate in front of you, added the mug of coffee, then stood there for a second, watching you like you were a lab rat he’d just presented with a maze.

“Eat,” he said.

You picked up the fork.

Your stomach rebelled for the first few bites, then cautiously agreed. The coffee helped.

He stayed standing, leaning back against the counter, arms folded. It should have made him look closed off. It didn’t. His gaze kept twitching back to your face, your hands, the way you were holding yourself like everything hurt.

“You remember last night,” he said finally. “All of it?”

“I remember enough,” you said.

“Define ‘enough,’” he said.

“I remember the porch,” you said. “Them. You. The door. The part where you were cruel. The part where you…weren’t.”

His mouth tightened.

“I saw more than I should have,” he said. “From here.”

“I know,” you said. “You made that very clear.”

Silence.

He pushed off the counter suddenly, came around the table, and stopped beside your chair.

“Move,” he said.

You frowned. “What?”

He hooked a finger in the back of your chair and pulled it a few inches away from the table, then sat down in it himself and tugged you, with annoying ease, sideways into the space he’d just vacated.

You landed half on, half off his lap, caught by surprise, hands braced on his shoulders.

“What are you doing,” you hissed.

“Preventing you from sliding off the chair onto the floor,” he said. “Calm down.”

“I can sit in a chair like a normal person,” you said.

“You are currently at war with gravity,” he said. “Humor me.”

You shifted, trying to get off. His arm came around your waist automatically, holding you in place. It wasn’t rough but it anchored you.

“Eat,” he said. “Before you talk yourself into vomiting on my kitchen tile.”

“You can’t just—” you started.

He picked up a piece of toast with his free hand, broke off a corner, and held it near your mouth.

You stared at him.

“You’re kidding,” you said.

“I watched you drizzle liquor down your throat like it was a sport,” he said. “You can choke down dry bread for me. Open.”

“Absolutely not,” you said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“You are hungover, underfed, and incapable of walking a straight line,” he said. “You came to my door because some part of you knows I’m annoyingly good at keeping you alive. Stop fighting me on this.”

Your cheeks burned.

“That doesn’t give you the right to treat me like—”

“Like someone I’m trying to keep upright,” he cut in. “Yes, it does. Bite.”

You should have gotten up. You should have thrown the toast at him and left.

You opened your mouth.

He fed you the small piece, watched you chew, then nodded like you’d passed a test.

“See,” he said quietly. “Not so terrible.”

“This is humiliating,” you muttered once you swallowed.

His arm around you tightened for a second.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

The words were so soft you almost missed them.

You twisted slightly to look at him, your shoulder pressed against his chest. Up this close, you could see the faint shadows under his eyes, the way his hairline dampened with the heat from the kitchen.

He looked…fond. Aggravated, worried, but still undeniably fond.

“Why are you being nice,” you asked before you could stop yourself.

He huffed.

“You cried yourself to sleep on me,” he said. “You’re currently hungover in my Tupperware empire. And I called you a liar and a user and God knows what else at my front door. Being nice is the bare minimum.”

“You don’t have a Tupperware empire,” you said. “You have three containers and one lid that doesn’t fit anything.”

“Eat,” he said, but there was a smile tugging at his mouth now, small and unwilling.

You picked at the eggs with the fork still in your hand. His chin brushed your shoulder once when he shifted, just enough to make your head feel light.

“Why did you come here,” he asked suddenly. “Not the drunk answer. The real one.”

You stared at the fork.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” you said. “And I didn’t want to be with them, not like that. I didn’t— it didn’t help. It just made me feel worse.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

His thumb rubbed idly over the ridge of your hip bone where his hand rested.

“You come here when it’s that bad,” he said finally. “Not to pick another fight. Not to test me. Just…knock. Sober.”

“You literally told me not to show up at your door,” you said.

“I told you not to show up blind drunk while half the street is watching,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re sending mixed signals,” you said. “You know that, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “I am aware.”

You could feel his breath against the side of your neck now, warm and steady.

“Why did you ignore me all week,” you asked. “If you were just going to end up—” You gestured weakly at the plate, the kitchen, his hand on your side. “This.”

He let out a slow breath.

“Because looking at you felt like standing at the edge of a ledge,” he said. “And I was stupid enough to think that if I didn’t look, I wouldn’t jump.”

“And now?” you asked.

He hesitated, then leaned in, just enough that his nose brushed your hairline.

“And now the ledge is in my kitchen,” he said. “Eating toast on my lap.”

Your heart stuttered.

“You’re going to give me a complex,” you muttered.

“You already have several,” he said. “One more won’t make a difference.”

“You’re mean,” you said again, but there was no real heat in it.

His mouth ghosted near your temple.

“Easy, pretty girl,” he murmured, so low you might have imagined it. “You’re still shaking.”

You went very still.

“What did you call me,” you asked.

His hand paused.

“Nothing,” he said. “Eat.”

“Say it again,” you said, surprising both of you.

He swallowed.

“No,” he said. “Once was a mistake.”

“You don’t say things by mistake,” you said.

“Apparently I do now,” he said. “Finish the toast, then we can argue about my vocabulary.”

You made a face, but you took another bite.

He let you eat in silence for a bit, just his arm a steady band around you, his heartbeat a slow, infuriating drum under your shoulder.

When the plate was empty and the coffee mostly gone, he took both, set them in the sink, then came back and, to your surprise, didn’t push you off.

“You should shower,” he said. “You have raccoon eyes.”

“You’re very rude for someone who just made breakfast for me,” you said.

“I made you powdered eggs,” he said. “Set your standards higher.”

You shifted, testing his grip.

“Can I get up,” you asked.

“In a minute,” he said. “You stand too fast, you’ll faint, and then I’ll have to explain why my assistant has a concussion and was found unconscious in my kitchen in last night’s dress.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” you said.

“It is,” he said. “All of this is a me problem. You’re just the…unfortunate beneficiary.”

“Beneficiary,” you repeated. “That’s one way to put it.”

He huffed against your hair.

“You need to go home after this,” he said. “Nobara is probably planning a funeral.”

“She’ll plan yours when she finds out where I slept,” you said.

His arm tightened reflexively around you; then he forced himself to loosen it.

“No one needs to know,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of taking care of you. I’m ashamed that you needed it because of me.”

Your throat went tight.

“You keep saying you’re protecting me,” you said. “From you. From this. You know that’s not how it feels, right?”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“And still,” you said.

“And still,” he echoed.

You turned your head just enough to see his face. He was looking at you like you were something he wanted to put in a glass case and also something he wanted to shake.

“You can’t keep doing this,” you said softly. “Ignoring me until I break and then holding me together. It’s not sustainable.”

“I am painfully aware,” he said.

“Then what,” you asked.

He stared back at you, something like decision flickering in his eyes and then smoothing out.

“Then we try not to make it worse,” he said. “One day at a time.”

“That’s not an answer,” you said.

“It’s the only one I have,” he said.

You huffed, defeated.

“Fine,” you said. “But if you’re going to keep sitting under me while I’m a wreck, you don’t get to pretend I don’t exist in class.”

He almost smiled.

“Is that a demand,” he asked.

“Consider it a boundary,” you said.

He looked at you for a long moment, then nodded once.

“Fine,” he said. “No more pretending you don’t exist.”

He brushed a thumb absently over the ridge of your hip again, like he didn’t realize he was doing it.

“Annoyingly hard to do anyway,” he added under his breath.

You ended up finishing the toast in his lap pretending not to hear him.

You weren’t sure when, exactly, you stopped fighting him and just let your body go slack against his chest, but at some point the fork ended up abandoned on the table and your head tipped back against his shoulder, eyes half closed.

“You’re going to fall asleep on me again,” he said, voice near your ear.

“I’m listening,” you mumbled.

“To what,” he asked.

“You complain,” you said.

He huffed, the sound almost a laugh.

“Eat one more bite,” he said.

“You said that three bites ago,” you protested.

“Last one,” he lied, and you could hear that he was lying and still opened your mouth when he lifted the toast.

When the plate was finally empty, he shifted you carefully off his lap and onto the chair.

“Stay,” he said, like you were a skittish cat. “Don’t faceplant.”

He rinsed the dishes, set the mug aside, moved through his own kitchen like he wasn’t used to someone else in it. You watched him, the length of his back under that thin T‑shirt, the way his hands looked bare, without chalk or ink or a pen.

You realized, with a sudden jolt, that you felt…safe.

He turned back and caught you staring.

“What,” he asked.

“Nothing,” you said. “You just look weird without the tie.”

“Weird,” he repeated.

“In a good way,” you added. “Human.”

“Don’t spread that rumor,” he said, but his mouth curved.

You swallowed.

“I talked to the bursar,” you blurted, before you could lose your nerve.

The almost smile disappeared.

“When?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” you said. “I didn’t want to— I didn’t want it to ruin last night more than it already was.”

He came back to the table, braced his hands on the edge.

“What did they say,” he asked. Calm. Too calm.

You twisted your fingers together.

“There’s a number,” you said. “The balance. I have until the end of next month to pay it or I lose my registration for next term. Housing follows after that.” You forced the words out. “It’s…a lot.”

“How much,” he said.

You told him.

You watched the number land in his face: the faint tightening around his eyes, the way his jaw set.

“And you can’t cover it,” he said. Not judgmental. Just a fact he already knew.

You shook your head.

“Even if I picked up more shifts at the café and begged for extra hours here and sold a kidney behind the student union, it’s not—” Your voice cracked. “I’m drowning in two hundred dollar increments. That’s a tidal wave.”

He stood there for a second, staring at the table like it had personally offended him.

Then he straightened.

“Get up,” he said.

You blinked. “What?”

“Get up,” he repeated. “We’re going out.”

“I look like hell,” you said automatically, touching your face.

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll deal with that later. Now.”

“Where?” you asked, suspicious.

“The bank,” he said.

Your stomach dropped.

“No,” you said. “No, absolutely not. You’re not—”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

You stared at him.

“Sometimes,” you said.

“Trust me now,” he said. “Get your shoes.”

“Choso, I’m not letting you just write a check for—”

“You don’t get to ‘let’ me,” he cut in, a spark of real irritation in his voice. “You told me what the problem is. I’m telling you what I’m going to do about it.”

Your throat burned.

“This is too much,” you said. “Rent is already— this would be—”

“Rent is what I should have charged you from the beginning,” he said. “I spent ten years being paid obscene amounts of money to have my name on spines. If paying your balance means I get to sleep at night knowing they won’t drag you out of this place, it’s not ‘too much’ for me. It’s basic math.”

“I’ll owe you,” you said, small.

He exhaled.

“You already do,” he said. “This just puts a number on it.”

“That’s not comforting,” you said.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he said pointing to the vicinity of his front door. “Shoes. We’re on a schedule.”

You stood up because your knees were shaking anyway and arguing with him like this felt too much like the ledge he’d mentioned.

The bank was fluorescent and impersonal and smelled like printer ink.

You sat in the chair beside him in the little glass‑walled office, your name and student ID number a blur of digits as the woman behind the desk clicked and printed and told you what you already knew: cleared balance, account current, you’re all set for next term.

“See?” Choso said when you stepped back into the hallway. “Tidal wave, meet drainage system.”

“You can’t just—” You broke off, pressing your hand over your mouth.

You wanted to be sick.

You also wanted to fall on your knees and thank him.

Instead, you felt your eyes prick hot.

He noticed.

“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t cry in here. I refuse to add ‘public spectacle’ to my list of sins today.”

You let out a wet laugh despite yourself.

“You can’t afford this,” you whispered.

He glanced down at you.

“You don’t know what I can afford,” he said. “And you don’t need to. This is mine to carry. Let it be.”

“That’s not fair,” you said.

“What part of your life has been fair so far?” he asked. “Take the win.”

He steered you toward the parking lot with a light touch at your elbow, as if he knew your legs might forget how to work.

In the car, you sat with your hands in your lap while he started the engine.

“Thank you,” you said finally, hoarse. “I don’t know how to— I don’t have language for—”

“Then don’t use any,” he said. “No speeches. No blood oaths. No bargaining.”

“I’ll pay you back,” you said, unable to stop yourself.

He smiled, small and crooked, like you’d confirmed something he already knew.

“Of course you will,” he said. “You’ll punishingly overachieve yourself into it. In the meantime…listen.”

He glanced over, waited until you were looking at him.

“You don’t tell anyone,” he said. “Not your mother, not your friends, not anyone you’d describe as ‘pretty chill, actually.’ This is between us.”

You nodded.

“I won’t,” you said. “I wasn’t planning to brag about having a patron.”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

“That’s not what this is,” he said.

“What is it then?” you asked.

He thought for a second.

“Me trying,” he said. “For once, to use what I have in a way that doesn’t just make things worse.”

You looked at him.

“That’s a very dramatic way to say ‘I paid a bill,’” you said softly.

“You’re very dramatic,” he countered. “It’s contagious.”

You couldn’t help it; you smiled.

He saw it. His own mouth twitched in answer like a reflex he hadn’t meant to reveal.

He swallowed.

“We’re not done,” he said. “Buckle up.”

You realized where he was going only when he pulled into the parking lot of a department store you’d only ever walked past to feel poor.

“Oh, no,” you said. “Absolutely not. This is where the line is. The tuition thing is already—”

“We’re here,” he said. “Might as well take advantage of the parking.”

“I have clothes,” you said.

“You have a dress that you bought with guilt and poverty and a pair of boots that look like they were in a war,” he said. “You need a coat. Decent shoes. Pants without holes in strategic places. Come on.”

“Do you hear yourself,” you said. “You sound like—”

“Responsible,” he said. “It happens.”

He didn’t wait for your agreement. He got out, came around, and opened your door like you were going to bolt.

You didn’t.

Maybe you should have.

Inside, it smelled like new fabric and money you didn’t have. You kept reaching automatically for the clearance racks; he kept steering you away with a hand at the small of your back.

“That one’s half off,” you said, pointing.

“That one will disintegrate after two washes,” he said. “Pick things that look like they might survive a season.”

“You’re impossible,” you said.

“You’ve said that before,” he said. “It has yet to change my behavior.”

He pulled a coat from a rack—black, structured, heavier than anything you owned—and held it up in front of you, measuring.

“This,” he decided.

“That probably costs more than my entire closet,” you said.

“Probably,” he agreed. “Try it on.”

You took it from him, the weight of it real and solid, and retreated into the fitting room.

When you came out, you felt absurd. Like you’d borrowed someone else’s life along with their clothes.

He looked up from his phone.

Whatever expression he’d been wearing dropped off his face.

He just…stared.

“What?” you said, suddenly self‑conscious. “Is it ugly?”

He blinked once, slow.

“No,” he said. “Turn around.”

You did, cheeks heating.

He watched you in the mirror, his face unreadable.

“It fits,” he said finally. “And you don’t look like the wind is going to kill you anymore. That’s an improvement.”

“Glowing review,” you said.

“You want glowing?” he asked. “Buy a sequined jacket.”

Despite yourself, you laughed.

You turned back toward him and, on impulse, reached up to straighten the collar where it sat slightly askew from when you’d pulled it on.

His hands were in his pockets. He didn’t move.

You smoothed the lapel, fingers brushing the back of his knuckles where they peeked out.

“Thank you,” you said, quieter.

He smiled.

It was small and reluctant and beautiful, like you’d tricked it out of him.

“Don’t thank me for basic weather protection,” he said. “My selfishness likes you alive.”

“That’s a weird way of saying you care,” you said.

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

He cleared his throat, stepped back.

“Keep it on,” he said. “We’re not done.”

He bought you boots next, ignoring your protests about the price, making you walk up and down the aisle until he was satisfied they wouldn’t ruin your knees.

He added two pairs of jeans, a couple of sweaters, a dress you touched once and then pretended you hadn’t, thinking he hadn’t noticed.

He had.

He waited until the end, then added it to the pile at the register without comment.

“Choso,” you hissed. “No. That one is—”

“You looked at it like a starving person looks at a bakery window,” he said. “It’s already in the cart. Don’t fight me.”

“You can’t keep doing shit—”

His look shut you up.

At the checkout, while the clerk scanned and bagged and the total climbed into numbers that made your head swim, he took his card out like it was nothing.

You watched his face as he signed.

You expected tension. Regret. Something.

What you saw was…satisfaction.

Like he’d found a lever that actually moved something and was surprised how good it felt.

“This is getting dangerous,” he murmured when you stepped away, hands laden with bags.

“For who?” you asked.

“For my bank account,” he said. “For my sanity. Take your pick.”

You shifted the bags, trying to redistribute the weight.

“Give me those,” he said, taking half out of your hands without waiting for agreement.

“I can carry them.” you started.

“I know you can,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you have to.”

Your chest did a stupid, painful thing.

You reached up before you thought yourself out of it.

You kissed his cheek.

It was quick, clumsy— you had to rise onto your toes a little— and you felt him go very still under your mouth.

“Thank you,” you said, pulling back. “For all of it. Not just the…stuff.”

He turned his head slowly, looked at you like you’d just moved a piece on a board he’d thought he understood.

“Careful,” he said.

“You already paid my tuition,” you said. “I think we’re past careful.”

His mouth twitched.

“Still,” he said. “I’m only one man. My self‑control has limits.”

“That’s reassuring,” you said lightly, because the alternative was admitting that your heart was pounding at your own daring.

He shook his head, the ghost of a smile still there.

“You’re trouble,” he said, not unkindly.

“You keep saying that,” you said. “And yet you keep doing this.” You lifted the bags pointedly.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Back at his house, it felt weirdly natural to carry the bags into his kitchen instead of your own.

You set them on the table. He started sorting without being asked—this goes with you, this stays here.

“This stays?” you echoed, holding up a second mug you didn’t remember putting in the cart.

“I only had one decent coffee mug,” he said. “If you’re going to keep sitting in my office pretending to work while I’m grading, I’d rather not share.”

You blinked.

“You bought a mug for me,” you said.

“I bought a mug for my sanity,” he corrected. “You benefit. Drink.”

“You’re very bad at pretending this is all purely practical,” you said.

He gave you a long look.

“I’m aware,” he said. “I’m also done pretending you’re just a line item on my budget.”

Your breath caught.

He looked away first, picking up the bag with the coat and boots.

“These come with you now,” he said. “You’ll wear them to class. If I see you in that old jacket again, I reserve the right to be offended.”

“Yes, sir,” you said, automatic, before your brain caught up.

His eyes snapped back to yours.

“Don’t,” he said, low.

You swallowed.

“Sorry,” you said.

“You’re not,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

You stepped closer without quite deciding to.

“Maybe I like when you take care of me,” you said. “Is that so terrible?”

His jaw worked.

“It is for my blood pressure,” he said. “And your future.”

You lifted your hand, fingers hovering near his chest.

“You keep saying you’re bad for me,” you said. “I’m starting to wonder if you actually believe I get a say.”

He let out a breath that sounded like it hurt.

“You are going to ruin my life,” he said softly.

“You already said that,” you reminded him.

“Still true,” he said.

You hesitated, then stepped in, closing the last bit of distance, pressing your forehead lightly against his collarbone.

His hands hovered at your sides for a second, shaking just enough that you felt it.

Then he let them settle— one on your back, the other curling over the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair.

He held you like that, breathing you in.

“You’re going to have to stop doing that,” he murmured into your hair.

“Doing what,” you asked, voice muffled.

“This,” he said. “Being soft with me. It’s…not good for my resolve.”

“You’re soft with me,” you pointed out.

“Against my better judgment,” he said.

You felt him smile, just barely, where his cheek brushed your temple.

You smiled too, into his shirt.

For a moment, there was no bursar, no mother, no porch, no Kings. Just the two of you in his quiet kitchen, standing in the wreckage of his good intentions and your bad decisions, wrapped in a warmth neither of you could quite justify.

He pulled back first, reluctantly.

“Go home,” he said. “Before I do something we both regret.”

“You already did something,” you said. “Several somethings.”

“And I’m trying to stop the list from getting longer,” he said. “Take your things. Text Nobara before she mobilizes a search party.”

You gathered the bags, your new coat already heavier on your shoulders, your heart somewhere back on his kitchen floor.

At the door, you paused.

“Choso,” you said.

He looked up.

“Yeah?”

You chewed your lip, then decided to jump.

“You did good,” you said. “With me. Today.”

You watched his throat bob.

He looked away, then back.

“Get out of here, pretty girl,” he said quietly.

You should have left when he told you to, yet you didn't.

You hovered in the doorway, bags gathered in one hand, the other still curled around the strap of your new coat.

“Say it again,” you said, and you weren’t sure if you meant pretty girl or you did good or something else entirely.

He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh if he weren’t so tired.

“No,” he said. “You’re already insufferable enough.”

You stepped back toward him instead of toward the porch.

“Then I’ll say it,” you said. “You did good. With me. Today.”

He looked at you like you were a problem set he didn’t have the key for.

“That’s not how this is supposed to work,” he said. “You don’t reassure me.”

“I’m allowed to,” you said. “You can’t stop me from…feeling things.”

You heard your own voice crack on the last two words and immediately wanted to die.

He did, too. You saw it.

“Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” you asked, stepping closer anyway, until the bags brushed his leg and you were looking up at him from too close.

“Maybe I just like you,” you said, and the honesty of it made your stomach flip.

His fingers flexed at his sides.

“Stop,” he said, but it came out wrecked, not stern.

You reached up and laid your hand flat over his chest.

His heart jumped under your palm.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” you said quietly. “And I’ll walk out that door.”

You watched the war happen behind his eyes.

He could have lied.

He didn’t.

“Wanting isn’t the problem,” he said hoarsely. “It’s all the things I do when I forget I’m not allowed to.”

“Then forget,” you said.

For a second, nothing moved.

Then his hand shot up, caught the back of your neck, and pulled you in.

The kiss wasn’t careful this time.

He kissed you like all week had been a held breath he couldn’t keep in any longer, like he’d thought about this too many times and hated every single one of them. His mouth met yours hard enough to make your teeth click, his other hand dropping to your hip, fingers digging in just shy of bruising.

You made a sound into his mouth, something helpless and needy, and felt him shudder.

He walked you backward until your shoulders hit the wall beside the door. The bags slipped from your hand and thumped to the floor, forgotten.

His body pressed along yours, solid and hot. You could feel how much taller he was, the way he had to tip his head down, the way your toes curled in your boots trying to get closer.

You fisted your hands in his T‑shirt, dragging him down.

He let you.

His tongue slid against yours once, filthy and slow, and you swore you felt his restraint snap like a wire.

He kissed you like that for a long, suspended moment— deep and hungry and too much, not enough— until you felt it, unmistakable: the hard line of him against your hip where his body had betrayed him completely.

You froze first.

He froze right after.

“Shit,” he breathed, tearing his mouth away like he’d been burned. He didn’t go far, his forehead rested against yours, his fingers still buried in your hair but the air between you felt suddenly cold.

You swallowed, chest heaving.

“Is that—” you started, then stopped, because there was really only one thing it could be and you weren’t that naive.

His jaw clenched.

“Well last time I checked I am a man,” he said, voice rough. “So... yes.”

Heat flooded your face, your whole body.

He squeezed his eyes shut, like maybe if he couldn’t see you, this would somehow be less real.

“This is where you leave,” he said, very quietly.

Your stomach dropped.

“You’re kicking me out?” you asked, hating the wobble in your voice.

“I am asking you,” he said, opening his eyes, “to go home before I stop feeling sick about how much I want you.”

You stared at him.

He looked wrecked. Not cold. Not disgusted. Just a man who’d run straight into the limit of his own control and was terrified of what came after.

You swallowed. “You’re not mad at me?”

His thumb stroked the curve of your skull, gentle.

“At you?” he repeated. “No.”

“Then who?” you whispered.

He huffed out a humorless laugh.

“Take your pick,” he said. “Myself. The university. Whatever god thought this was funny.”

“Choso,” you said, and the way his name sounded in your mouth made his eyes darken again.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please.”

“Don’t what?” you asked.

“Say my name like that and expect me to behave,” he said. “I can’t. Not right now.”

You could feel him still half hard against you. The knowledge did something awful and electric to your insides.

“Does it hurt?” you asked before your brain could stop your mouth.

His head thunked back softly against the wall.

“You are actually trying to kill me,” he muttered.

“I’m just—” you said, flustered. “I don’t know how this works. Not like this.”

He looked at you then, really looked, and some of the sharpness left his face.

“It doesn’t have to be complicated,” he said quietly. “I am going to walk away from you, and you are going to pick up your things and walk out my door, and we are both going to pretend, for the rest of the day at least, that I didn’t just press you into a wall and forget what century I live in.”

“That’s your idea of not complicated,” you said.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the only one that keeps my job and your degree in the same universe.”

You chewed your lip.

“Do you regret it?” you asked softly. “The kissing. Not the…other.”

His eyes flicked to your mouth, then back.

“No,” he said. “That’s the worst part.”

Your chest twisted.

“Then why—”

“Because liking it doesn’t make it less wrong,” he cut in. “And if I keep going, ‘wrong’ becomes ‘irreversible.’”

He eased his hand out of your hair, fingers trailing along your jaw like he was memorizing the shape.

“Pretty girl,” he said, and this time you knew he meant to, “if you stay, I am not going to stop at kissing you. And I don’t get to do that to you. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

Your breath stuttered at the implication buried in there— yet— and you saw the instant he realized he’d said it.

“Go,” he said quickly, almost pained. “Before I say anything else I shouldn’t.”

You bent, hands shaking, and scooped up the shopping bags.

He didn’t open the door for you; he stepped aside, gave you a clear path, like every inch mattered.

You paused with your hand on the knob.

“Text me,” you said, without turning around. “Later. Just…something normal. So I know you don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” he said immediately. “That’s the problem.”

“Prove it,” you said.

His answer came after a beat.

“All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll prove it.”

You stepped out into the cool air, heart pounding, cheeks burning, his taste still in your mouth and the ghost of his body against yours.

The door clicked shut behind you.

By Friday, you convinced yourself he was over it.

Or you tried to.

He’d been…fine all week. Not warm because he was never warm, but precise, controlled, exactly within the boundaries of “Professor Kamo,” like he’d pulled the skin of his job back over himself and sealed the seams.

In class, he called on you when he had to and not an extra second more. At work, he gave you tasks in short, clipped sentences. He never let his gaze linger on your mouth.

He also never said anything about his living room.

By Friday, you almost believed that meant it had mattered less to him than it did to you.

Almost.

“You’re spiraling,” Nobara announced, tossing herself onto your bed. “Again.”

“I’m changing,” you said, tugging at the hem of your shirt in the mirror.

“You changed your shirt three times and your entire personality twice,” she said. “We’re going out. I am not letting your mother turn you into a ghost.”

Of course, Nobara assumed you were wrecked over your mother, not over the professor who’d kissed you and then spent the week acting like you had the bubonic plague.

“I have class,” you said.

“You had class,” she corrected. “Past tense. How was it, by the way? Did he smite you?”

You thought of the way he hadn’t looked at you, how he’d passed back graded work without your fingers touching, how your name had sounded like it belonged to a stranger.

“It was fine,” you said.

She stared at you in the mirror.

“Liar,” she said. “Good thing you have me.”

Your phone buzzed on the desk. GOJO lit the screen, accompanied by more emojis than should have been legally allowed.

round 3 tonight curb girl 🍻♠️ get your ass over here

“He’s unkillable,” you muttered.

“Thank God,” Nobara said. “Get dressed. Megumi says he’s actually drinking this time, and I want to witness it for myself.”

You hesitated.

“I don’t know if—”

“Before you say you can’t,” she cut in, “did he give you work?”

You opened your mouth, then closed it.

“No,” you admitted.

“Did he say you couldn’t go?” she pressed.

There had been no email, no “come in,” no envelope slid across the desk. Just a normal, brutal Friday: discussion, a half‑nod when you answered correctly, a stack of essays left on his desk with your neat handwriting at the corner.

“No,” you said again.

“Then he can survive four hours without you,” she said. “You’re coming.”

You looked at your reflection.

You didn’t look like a ghost. The dress— his money, your choice, a shared sin— sat right on your body. Your makeup made your eyes look more like a choice and less like an accident. You looked like someone who could walk into a house full of boys and not shatter at the first laugh.

“Fine,” you said. “I’ll go.”

Nobara grinned like she’d won a war.

“Good,” she said. “Plus, you have two distractions for the night, and their names are Gojo and Megumi.”

You didn’t answer that.

Choso ignored you in class.

That was the worst part: how deliberate it felt.

You watched him, the way he paced, the way he gestured with the marker, the way he pushed his hair back when it fell into his eyes. You watched his hands on the desk, the board, the podium. You watched him not look at you.

He called on the girl three seats over three times in a row.

He corrected someone in the back row with a little rant that made half the class laugh.

When your hand went up, he hesitated a fraction too long before saying your last name, flat and clean.

You answered. You did it well. You heard it in the way the room went quiet, in the way a couple of people wrote down your phrasing.

“Fine,” he said. “Yes.”

That was it.

No follow‑up. No “good.” No “exactly.” Just fine. Yes. Next.

You stared down at your notebook until the lines blurred.

By the time class ended, your skin felt too tight.

He gathered his papers. Students trickled out. For the first time in weeks, you didn’t linger.

You could feel his gaze on your back as you left.

You refused to turn around.

The Kings’ house was already alive when you climbed their steps that night.

Music pulsed under your feet, bass rattling the old wood. Someone had strung fairy lights haphazardly across the ceiling, casting everything in soft gold and chaos. The smell of beer and frying something hovered in the air.

“Hey!” Gojo crowed the second he spotted you. He was cross‑legged on the living room floor, surrounded by cards and empty bottles, sunglasses on despite the fact that it was night and you were indoors. “Come lose all your fake money.”

“You don’t even play with real cash,” Megumi said from the armchair, long legs folded under him, a beer resting untouched on his knee. “It’s just an excuse for you to shout.”

“You wound me,” Gojo said, pressing a hand to his chest. Then, to you: “You look criminally good. Did you dress up just to break my heart?”

“Yes,” you said, because it was easier than saying you’d dressed for a man who wasn’t here. “Consider it broken.”

He grinned.

“Sit,” he said, patting the empty space on the carpet between him and Megumi. “We’re playing something that Megumi insists is poker but I’m pretty sure he made up the rules for.”

“They’re literally the rules,” Megumi said. He glanced at you, eyes flicking over your dress, the earrings you’d borrowed from Nobara, the effort. Something like relief crossed his face. “You came,” he said.

“Apparently it was mandatory,” you said.

“Good,” he said, simple. “You’ve been weird.”

You made a face. “Everyone keeps saying that.”

“Because you’ve been weird,” he repeated.

“Shut up and deal,” Gojo said, already shoving a stack of chips toward you. “Let her be weird on my time.”

You laughed, the sound a little more brittle than you wanted. You let yourself be dragged into the game, into their orbit, into the safe stupidity of arguing over hands and accusing Gojo of cheating when he clearly had no idea what he was doing.

Someone pushed a drink into your hand. Then another.

You weren’t keeping track.

The third time Gojo leaned over your shoulder to peek at your cards, his breath warm at your ear, you swatted him with the stack.

“Boundaries,” you said.

“Rude,” he said. “I’m helping.”

“You’re distracting,” you said.

“Same thing,” he said, and mouthed a dramatic kiss at the air near your cheek.

“That doesn’t even count,” you said.

“You want me to make it count?” he asked, joking, lazy.

Your heart did a weird skip. For a stupid second, you imagined another mouth, another angle, someone saying this is a mistake and kissing you anyway.

You swallowed more liquor instead.

An hour in, the room was a little too warm and you were a little too soft around the edges.

Megumi had shed his hoodie and rolled his sleeves, revealing forearms that made half the room take notice and made him deeply uncomfortable. Gojo had lost three games and declared himself the moral victor. Nobara and Maki had taken over aux and refused to relinquish control

You’d laughed more in the past hour than you had all week.

It didn’t stop the thought that kept looping in your head: he ignored me.

“You’re zoning,” Megumi said quietly, leaning toward you as Gojo faked his dramatic death on the floor.

“I’m fine,” you said.

He gave you a look that said he didn’t buy it but wasn’t going to push in front of everyone.

“Come get air,” he said instead. “You’re flushed.”

“It’s the alcohol,” you said.

“And the room,” he added. “Come on.”

You followed him, weaving through bodies. Gojo noticed you leaving and popped up like a badly timed jack‑in‑the‑box.

“Where are my favorite people going?” he demanded.

“Outside,” Megumi said. “She needs air.”

“I’ll chaperone,” Gojo declared. “For safety.”

“You’re the least safe person here,” Megumi said.

“And yet,” Gojo said, draping an arm around your shoulders as if to prove a point. “Come on, curb girl. Let’s go back to where it all began.”

You let them steer you out onto the porch.

The night air hit your skin, cool and damp. You exhaled like you hadn’t breathed properly in an hour.

Across the street, the brick house stood quiet, windows lit warm from inside. You looked away quickly.

“Better?” Megumi asked.

“Yeah,” you lied.

Gojo hopped onto the railing, balancing with one foot on the wood, one on the column, because he had never met a surface he didn’t want to climb.

“You’re weird tonight,” he said, swinging one leg idly. “Not bad weird. Just…elsewhere.”

“You’re all very observant for Frat guys,” you said. “It’s annoying.”

“Occupational hazard,” he said. “We’re nosy.”

He leaned down suddenly, face close to yours, his sunglasses pushed up into his hair now, eyes bright and a little too fond.

“You know you can tell us if someone’s messing with you, right?” he said. “We do violence recreationally.”

“Speak for yourself,” Megumi murmured.

“You literally threatened a ref last week,” Gojo said.

“He deserved it,” Megumi said.

“You see?” Gojo said to you. “We’re a great team. Come on, what’s wrong? Is it money? Nobara said something about the bursar. We can—”

“It’s not that,” you cut in.

He studied you.

“Then what?” he asked.

You shook your head.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you said. “I came here to not think.”

Gojo considered that, then nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “We can do not thinking. I’m great at that.”

He slid down from the railing until he was standing inches in front of you.

“Let me help,” he said.

“How?” you asked, wary.

He grinned.

“Like this,” he said, and leaned in.

You had half a second to decide.

He smelled like good cologne and cheap beer. His mouth was soft, a little slippery with alcohol, warm against yours. His hand came up to cradle your jaw, thumb brushing your cheekbone with surprising gentleness.

You let yourself sink into it.

It was easy. Gojo was easy— loud and ridiculous and uncomplicated in the ways that mattered in the moment. There was no power over your housing in his hands, no job in his mouth, no grade behind his teeth.

He was just a boy kissing you on a porch under bad fairy lights.

You kissed him back.

Someone made a noise behind you.

“Of course,” Megumi said dryly.

You broke away, laughing, breathless and a little dizzy.

“You’re late,” Gojo told him. “We were having a moment.”

“You were mauling her,” Megumi said.

“How do you know she didn’t maul me?” Gojo asked.

You were suddenly aware of how hot your face was. How your heart was hammering. How…off it felt.

It wasn’t that it was bad. It wasn’t.

It just wasn’t him.

A different porch, a different house, a different man saying this is a mistake and still kissing you like it hurt.

You swallowed.

“Come here,” you said to Megumi before you could chicken out of it.

He blinked. “What?”

“Equal opportunity,” you said, reckless. “You were complaining.”

“I wasn’t—” he started, then faltered when he saw you weren’t joking.

Gojo’s eyebrows went up to his hairline.

“Oh, this I gotta see,” he said, stepping back like a spectator.

Megumi hesitated for half a second too long, then stepped in.

He was careful with you, almost painfully so, one hand hovering near your shoulder like he was giving you a chance to change your mind. When you didn’t, he cupped the back of your neck and kissed you.

It was different.

Gojo was chaos and noise; Megumi was quiet, focused, the kind of kiss that made you feel like he’d thought about it more than he wanted to admit.

It still wasn’t right.

You kissed him back anyway.

You were aware, dimly, of how stupid this was. Of the way your brain had gone fuzzy, liquefied by alcohol and the need to not think about the man across the street.

You pulled back first.

“Okay,” you said, breathless. “That’s— that’s enough. Sorry.”

Megumi searched your face, as if checking for regret or revulsion.

“We’re not going to be weird about it,” he said quietly. “Right?”

“Only Gojo is going to be weird about it,” Gojo said cheerfully. “But that was always true.”

You laughed, weak.

“It’s fine,” you said. “We’re fine.”

You could feel eyes on you from somewhere you couldn’t pinpoint.

You didn’t look across the street.

He saw everything.

Of course he did.

He’d been at his desk, trying and failing to focus on anything but the memory of your mouth, when the noise from outside had finally gotten under his skin enough to make him stand.

He told himself he was just going for a smoke.

He stepped out onto the porch, lit the cigarette, and followed the murmur of voices without meaning to.

Across the street, bathed in cheap light and laughter, you stood between Megumi and Gojo, your dress a bright slash in the dark.

He watched Gojo lean in. Watched your head tip up. Watched your mouth meet his.

The smoke tasted bitter.

He should have gone back inside then.

He didn’t.

He watched you pull Megumi in next, watched the way the boy’s shoulders tensed before he relaxed into it, watched your fingers curl in his shirt.

He felt sick.

He dropped the cigarette into the dirt and crushed it under his heel.

He went back inside before he could see anything else.

The echo of you against someone else’s mouth followed him all the way up the stairs.

You didn’t mean to go to his house.

That was what you told yourself later.

You meant to go home. Your house, your bed, your room with its too thin curtains and too loud hallmates. You meant to brush your teeth and wash your face and pretend the taste in your mouth was just alcohol and not failure.

Your feet didn’t get the message.

You said goodnight to Gojo— he kissed your cheek this time, loud and exaggerated, making a show of it— and Megumi, who just squeezed your shoulder and said, “Text when you’re inside, or Nobara will kill us.”

You stepped off their porch and onto the sidewalk.

Home was to the left.

You went right.

By the time you realized where you were going, you were already in front of his steps.

Your heart pounded loud enough to drown out the music.

“Bad idea,” you muttered to yourself.

You climbed the stairs anyway.

You knocked.

For a second, there was nothing.

Then footsteps, muffled through the door. The deadbolt turned. The handle twisted.

He opened the door.

He wasn’t wearing his armor, no button‑down, no tie, no jacket. Just a worn T‑shirt and sweats, bare feet, hair pulled back messily. He looked younger like this. Softer. More dangerous.

His eyes took you in in one long, unbroken sweep.

The dress. The smeared lipstick. The red blooming at your throat where someone’s mouth had been. The way you swayed, just slightly, on your feet.

His jaw tightened.

“Of course,” he said.

It wasn’t a greeting.

“I—” You swallowed. “Hi.”

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“Observant,” you said. Your tongue felt thick in your mouth. “Can I— can we talk?”

“This isn’t the time,” he said.

“It never is,” you said. The words came out sharper than you meant. “You made that pretty clear.”

His eyes narrowed.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Specifically. Don’t come to my door like this and pretend you don’t know.”

You flinched.

“I just—” Your throat burned. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“You have an entire house full of people who were just climbing all over you,” he said. “Try them.”

There it was.

You blinked at him, the world tilting.

“You saw,” you said.

“I’d have to be blind not to,” he said.

Shame crawled up your spine, hot and thick.

“It was nothing,” you said. “It was stupid. I was—”

“Drunk,” he supplied. “And what? Bored?”

You stared at him.

“Why do you care?” you demanded. “You’ve been pretending I don’t exist all week.”

“That’s not—” He broke off, exhaled hard. “You think this is easy?”

“You’re the one who said it was a mistake,” you said. “You kissed me and then you spent five days acting like it was— like I was—”

“A lapse in judgment,” he said, voice flat.

You laughed once, brittle.

“Exactly,” you said. “So what does it matter if I kiss someone who’s actually allowed to want me?”

The line lodged in his chest like a splinter.

So what does it matter if I kiss someone who’s actually allowed to want me?

Allowed. That was the part that made him want to put his fist through the door. Of course they were allowed. The Kings with their stupid easy smiles and stupid easy lives, who could drag you into a corner at a party and come away with nothing worse than a hangover and a story. No rosters. No org charts. No student conduct code breathing down their necks.

They got to want you for free.

They got to put their hands on your waist, your throat, up the back of your dress, and it was just boys being boys, college being college. Nobody asked what it would cost you. Nobody asked what it would cost them, because the answer was nothing. They could kiss you on a porch in front of half the street and still show up to practice like nothing had happened.

He couldn’t touch you in his own goddamn office without mentally calculating how fast his life would burn down if anyone found out.

That was the part you didn’t see. Maybe you couldn’t. From where you were sitting, it probably did look like a lapse in judgment: one bad kiss, one bad week, easily filed away.

From where he was standing, it was a fault line.

He’d spent years teaching himself not to want anything he couldn’t control, and then you’d moved in across the street and blown that to pieces by existing. The Kings were background noise until they weren’t, until their hands were on you, their mouths on you, and every possessive, ugly thing he’d tried to suffocate snapped awake all at once.

He didn’t think about them as people. He thought about them as hands. On you. Where he wanted to be.

He hated them for being careless with you. He hated you a little for letting them. Mostly, he hated himself for wanting you badly enough that watching you give pieces of yourself away to boys who’d never have to carry the weight of it made him feel sick.

Allowed to want you. As if that had ever been his problem.

The words hung between you like smoke.

Something in his face flickered— hurt, anger, something darker.

“Is that what that was?” he asked. “Allowed?”

“They’re my friends,” you said. “They’re my age. They don’t have my rent and my job and my grade in their pocket.”

“So you use them instead,” he said. “That’s better?”

“I’m not using anyone,” you snapped. “I’m trying not to think about you.”

Silence.

It landed like a confession.

His hand tightened on the edge of the door.

“Go home,” he said finally, voice low. “Sleep it off.”

You laughed, wet.

“Right,” you said. “Like I can sleep.”

He closed his eyes for a second, like he was counting something invisible.

“This is exactly why I shouldn’t have—” He cut himself off, opened his eyes again, sharper now. “Do you have any idea what you looked like out there?”

“Like a girl kissing her friends on a porch,” you said. “It’s not a crime.”

“You looked like you were trying to prove a point,” he said. “And then you came here.”

Your throat closed.

“So?” you said.

“So,” he said, “what do you think that does to me?”

You stared.

“You don’t get to make this about you,” you said, voice breaking. “You don’t. You’re the one who— who kissed me and then pretended nothing happened, and I’m supposed to just sit across from you and be grateful when you toss me crumbs?”

His jaw clenched so hard you could see the muscle jump.

“I am trying,” he said, each word clipped, “to protect you.”

“By ignoring me?” you shot back.

“By not dragging you further into something that will ruin your life,” he said. “And mine.”

“I don’t need you to decide what ruins my life,” you said. “I’m doing fine on my own.”

“Tonight says otherwise,” he said.

“That’s low,” you whispered.

“So is showing up at my door like this,” he said, and the line landed like a slap.

Your eyes stung.

“I shouldn’t have come,” you said.

You turned, vision blurring, feet unsteady on the first step.

The world tilted harder than it should have. The porch dipped.

Your hand missed the railing.

You felt yourself list sideways.

His arm was around you before you hit the ground.

“Careful,” he snapped, pulling you back upright. “God, you’re going to break your neck.”

“Maybe that’s what it’ll take for you to—” You choked on the rest.

His grip on you gentled by degrees.

“Hey,” he said, voice lower now. “Stop.”

You realized, distantly, that you were crying.

Not pretty tears. Ugly, hot ones that blurred your vision and made your nose sting. You tried to swipe them away, only making your mascara smear worse.

“I hate you,” you said, which you didn’t mean, which you absolutely meant.

“I know,” he said.

His hand slid from your arm to the small of your back, steadying you.

“You hate that I ignored you,” he said softly. “You hate that I saw you and them. You hate that you came here anyway.”

You made a noise that wasn’t a word.

“I hate that you make it so hard,” you forced out. “To do the right thing. To— to breathe. To be anywhere you’re not.”

The admission ripped itself out of you.

He went very, very still.

Then he exhaled, the fight going out of his shoulders.

“Come inside,” he said. “You’re going to wake half the street.”

“I don’t want—” you started.

“You don’t have to want anything,” he said. “Just walk. I’ve got you.”

He guided you over the threshold, one hand on your back, the other hovering near your arm like a failsafe. The door shut behind you with a soft click that felt too loud.

The house was dim and quiet. No music. No TV. Just the hum of the fridge and the sound of your ragged breathing.

He steered you to the couch.

“Sit,” he said.

You dropped onto the cushions, hands in your lap, eyes fixed on a point on the coffee table so you didn’t have to see his face.

He disappeared for a moment.

When he came back, he had a glass of water and a clean towel.

“Here,” he said.

You took the glass with both hands, fingers shaking.

“Small sips,” he said. “You don’t need to add vomiting to the list of tonight’s humiliations.”

He sat on the coffee table in front of you, close enough that your knees brushed his.

“Breathe,” he said. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth. You've done it with me before.”

You obeyed.

The room steadied by inches.

He watched you the whole time, eyes sharp but not cruel now. Guilty, if anything.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said finally, voice quiet. “At the door.”

“Which part?” you muttered. “There were a lot of options.”

“‘Showing up like this,’” he said. “That was…unfair.”

You stared at him.

“You think?” you asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Silence stretched.

“I saw you,” he said. “With them.”

You swallowed.

“I know,” you said.

“It made me angry,” he admitted.

“Why?” you asked, exhausted. “You’re the one who doesn’t want—”

He cut you off with a look.

“Don’t finish that sentence,” he said. “You have no idea what I want and don’t want.”

“Then what do you want?” you asked, the question torn from you.

He shut his eyes like it hurt.

“Less of this,” he said. “Less of you at my door crying because I can’t control my temper. Less of you using boys who can’t possibly know what they’re touching. Less—”

He broke off, shook his head.

“Forget it,” he said. “You’re drunk. This isn’t the conversation we’re having.”

Your lip wobbled.

“What conversation are we having?” you asked.

He exhaled slowly.

“The one where I tell you I’m sorry,” he said. “For ignoring you. For snapping at you. For sitting on my porch judging you like I have any right.”

You blinked.

“You’re…sorry,” you repeated.

“Yes,” he said.

“You don’t say that,” you said.

“I know,” he said. “Don’t get used to it.”

Despite everything, your mouth twitched.

He noticed.

“That’s better,” he murmured.

You put the glass down before your hands shook it out of your grip.

“I didn’t like it,” you said quietly. “Kissing them. Not the way I thought I would.”

His throat worked.

“You don’t owe me that information,” he said.

“I know,” you said. “I’m telling you anyway.”

“Why?” he asked.

You met his eyes.

“Because I keep measuring everything against you,” you said. “And I’m starting to hate myself for it.”

Something broke in his expression.

He reached out before he could stop himself, thumb brushing the damp track under your eye.

“You are going to make me do something unforgivable,” he said softly. “If you keep saying things like that.”

You leaned into his touch like an idiot.

“You already kissed me,” you said.

“That was the first unforgivable thing,” he said. “There are worse.”

Your breath hitched.

“You’re mean,” you said, but it came out small.

“I know,” he said. “I’m working on it.”

He slid his hand from your cheek to the back of your head, fingers threading gently into your hair, guiding you forward.

“Come here,” he said.

You went.

He pulled you into his chest, careful, letting you bury your face in the softness of his T‑shirt. He smelled like soap and smoke and something that was just him. His hand moved slowly up and down your spine, grounding.

You broke.

The sobs came in a rush, ugly and loud, all the things you’d been holding together all week spilling out at once— about him, about your mother, about money, about being tired, about being seen and unseen in all the wrong ways.

He didn’t shush you. He didn’t tell you to calm down.

He just held you.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, over and over. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

It was both everything you wanted to hear and the worst possible thing.

Eventually, the sobs tapered into hiccups. Your head throbbed. Your eyes felt swollen.

“Sorry,” you mumbled against his chest. “Got snot on you.”

He huffed a small, almost‑laugh.

“I own more than one shirt,” he said. “You’re fine.”

You tried to pull back.

He let you, but his hands stayed on your shoulders, steady.

“You should sleep,” he said.

You glanced at the couch.

“I’ll take this,” you said. “You can—”

“No,” he said immediately.

You frowned. “Why not?”

“Because if you wake up on my couch with a hangover and the memory of me being an ass at the door, you’re going to crawl out of your skin,” he said. “And because the cushions are garbage.”

He stood, gently tugging you to your feet.

“Come on,” he said.

You blinked, unsteady.

“Where?” you asked.

“My room,” he said. “Don’t make it weird.”

“You’re the one making it weird,” you said, but you let him lead you down the hallway.

His bedroom was darker, cooler. The bed was neatly made, sheets pulled tight. He let go of you long enough to pull the comforter down.

“Lie down,” he said.

“You?” you asked.

“I’m not leaving you alone in my house like this,” he said. “I’ll take the couch. Door stays open.”

You hesitated, brain trying to catch up with the situation.

“You’re sure,” you said.

“No,” he said. “But I’m doing it anyway.”

You managed a weak smile.

“Okay,” you said.

You climbed into his bed. The sheets were cool against your skin. You rolled onto your side, facing the doorway. He handed you a glass of water and a couple of pills.

“For the morning,” he said.

“Thanks,” you murmured.

He stood there for a second, looking at you like he was committing something to memory and hating himself for it.

“If you need anything,” he said, “call my name. Don’t go wandering.”

“Bossy,” you said, half‑asleep already.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Sleep.”

You closed your eyes.

You heard him walk away, the soft creak of the floorboards, the rustle of the couch cushions in the other room.

You fell under fast, exhaustion and alcohol dragging you down.

You didn’t see the way he sat in the dark for a long time, elbows on his knees, hands pressed over his face like he was praying or cursing.

You didn’t hear him whisper, to no one in particular:

“What am I doing to her.”

You didn’t see him get up twice to check that you were still breathing.

Your mother called twice before you listened to the voicemail.

The first time, you watched her name light up your screen while Nobara stood on your bed, rifling through your closet like a raccoon. You let it go to missed call. The second time, you were in the shower, phone buzzing against the tile like it was trying to chew its way through.

By the time you were in clean underwear and an old T‑shirt, it had graduated to a notification.

1 new voicemail. 1 new text.

You sat on the edge of your bed, towel around your shoulders, and hit play.

“Hi,” your mother’s voice said, in that flat way that meant she was already irritated. “I got an email from the school about your account. Again.”

Your fingers tightened around the phone.

“You told me you had it handled,” she went on. “You told me you weren’t going to keep putting this on me. Well, the bill still has my name on it, so guess who they’re sending the notices to.”

Paper rustled, like she wanted you to hear the proof.

“I’ve paid what I can,” she said. “I am not going to keep bleeding myself dry so you can play around in that little dorm and pretend you’re in some movie. If you can’t manage your money, that’s on you.”

Your jaw clenched.

“I’m done being the bad guy in your life story,” she spat, voice sharpening. “If this doesn’t get resolved by the end of the term, you’re coming home. You can work full‑time, pay off what you owe, and then we’ll talk about whether you’re actually ready to be an adult. I’m not going to watch you ruin your life because you think you know better.”

A beat.

“Call me when you’ve figured it out,” you could hear the eye roll through the call. “Don’t wait until they’ve kicked you out to cry about it. I won’t have sympathy.”

The voicemail clicked off.

It took you a second to breathe.

You tapped over to the text.

Forwarded: BURSAR’S OFFICE – ACCOUNT DELINQUENT. Underneath, in her words: This is what I’m talking about. I cannot keep fixing this. Figure it out or come home.

Your chest hurt like someone had stuck a fist in it and ripped your heart out.

“Is it bad?” Nobara asked from the doorway, eyeliner in one hand, one of your dresses in the other. Her voice was too casual. She’d heard the voicemail tone. She knew.

“It’s my mom,” you said, which was an answer and not an answer. “She’s just…being her.”

Nobara’s mouth tipped, sympathy and irritation weirdly mixed. “Do you want me to block her for you?” she asked. “I’ll do it. I’ll take the sin.”

You huffed something that wanted to be a laugh.

“She’d call campus security for a wellness check,” you said. “Tell them you’d kidnapped me.”

“True,” she said, grimacing. “Weaponized concern. Love that for us.”

She shook the dress at you.

“Okay,” she said. “So we go out. We get you drunk enough that her voice in your head has to shout to be heard. Then tomorrow you can spiral with fresh brain cells.”

“Therapeutic brain damage,” you said.

“Exactly,” she said.

You flipped your phone face down on your pillow like that could pin the words there.

When she zipped you into the dress, you pretended the tightness in your chest was just the fabric.

The Kings never needed a reason.

By the time the sun dipped, their house was already awake, music thumping through the walls, people on the porch, Gojo yelling something about “round two” and “this is a redemption arc,” even though he was probably the one who fucked up in the first place.

“You showed up,” he said when he spotted you on the steps. “My faith in humanity is restored.”

“You have faith in humanity?” you asked. “That seems off brand.”

“I have faith in you,” he said, dramatic, hand over his heart. “Come inside, curb girl. Let me pour you a drink I can’t legally charge you for.”

Megumi leaned against the railing, hands in his pockets, eyes flicking over you once in a quiet, assessing sweep. He gave you a small nod. You felt weirdly better for it.

Inside, the air was hot and damp, full of sweat and cheap liquor and too many bodies. Nobara dragged you into the kitchen. Someone shoved a cup into your hand. Maki claimed a corner of the couch and some girl from her stats class.

For a while, it worked.

You laughed when Gojo fell off a chair trying to impress a freshman. You shouted along to a chorus you barely knew. You let the bass rattle your ribs until your thoughts fuzzed out at the edges.

Your phone stayed in your bag.

When it buzzed against your hip, you told yourself to ignore it. It was probably Nobara texting from two feet away or Maki sending you a cursed meme.

Then you thought about your mother’s voice saying don’t wait until they’ve kicked you out, and your fingers were already closing around it.

You stepped sideways, out of the direct blast of the speakers, and thumbed the screen awake.

New email.

From: bursar@*** Subject: FINAL NOTICE – ACCOUNT DELINQUENT

You opened it.

The language was clinical, but the meaning wasn’t.

Payment deadline has passed. Your registration for next term may be suspended. Unpaid balances may result in loss of university housing. Please contact your responsible party immediately.

Responsible party.

That was supposed to be you now. You’d made it your job. You’d bought the anthology instead of groceries. You’d taken the assistantship. You’d rewritten the response at one in the morning and watched your 0 turn into a full score on Canvas like a magic trick.

You’d done everything you were supposed to do, and you were still here, staring at an email that said, in institutional font: your mother was right to doubt you.

Someone jostled you, causing your drink to slosh cold over your knuckles.

“Sorry!” a girl shouted in your ear. Her laugh was too loud.

Near you, somebody was yelling about professors.

“My roommate had Kamo last year,” a guy said. “Dude’s a psycho. Failed her for missing one essay.”

“He’s hot, though,” a girl replied. “I’d take the F.”

You flinched like you’d been slapped.

The room tilted.

The music was too loud. The lights too bright. People’s voices blurred into one long noise. Your heart was suddenly everywhere: throat, ears, fingers.

You tried to inhale and got nothing.

“I need air,” you said to no one in particular.

No one stopped you.

You pushed through the crowd, down the stairs, out into the night.

The cool air hit your skin. It didn’t help.

Your hands tingled. Your vision went fuzzy at the edges. You could taste metal behind your tongue.

You crossed the street without really seeing it.

Your house glowed soft and warm. Someone sat on the porch railing, a cigarette ember winking in their hand. You could hear music from upstairs, laughter punched through with shrieks.

Home, your brain said. Door. Bed. Hide.

You climbed the front steps and reached for your keys.

Your fingers met empty fabric.

You dug into your bag. Phone. Lip gloss. Dead pen. No keys.

You swore under your breath.

Then you remembered Nobara dangling the keyring in front of you earlier, clicking it into her little sequined purse. “I’ll hang on to these,” she’d said. “Drunk you can’t lose what she doesn’t have.”

You pictured turning around. Crossing back to the Kings’. Hunting her down in the crowd. Her seeing your face like this— eyes too wide, breathing too fast— and going full emergency mode.

You couldn’t do it.

You took one step back off your own porch.

Then another.

Then you were in the shadow between your house and the brick one next door, sliding down until your back hit the side of the concrete step, knees pulled up, dress bunched around your thighs.

The grass was cold against your calves. The noise from the party was muffled here, but it was still there, a distant thump with no edges.

“In,” you told yourself. “Out.”

Your lungs didn’t listen.

Your heart was a fist punching the inside of your ribs. Your fingers went numb. Your chest hurt like it was about to crack open.

Figure it out or come home, your mother’s text said, neat and cruel.

If you fail, she wins, something in you added. She gets to stand in the doorway and say “I told you so” for the rest of your life. She gets to call this whole thing a phase.

He’ll let go, another uglier voice said. Why wouldn’t he? You’re a line item on a budget and a problem he volunteered for. He can un‑volunteer.

You pressed the heels of your hands into your eyes.

You didn’t realize you were crying until your breath hitched on nothing.

“[Your first name].”

You flinched.

The voice came from above you, low and close enough to cut through the noise.

You looked up.

Choso stood on the little path between his porch and the sidewalk, jacket half on, keys in his hand. The porch light behind him made a halo around his hair and threw his face into sharp relief— the scar, the line of his mouth, the tired focus in his eyes.

He took you in in one sweep: the dress, the bare knees, the way you were practically folded into yourself on the concrete.

For a second, no one moved.

“Hey,” you said. It sounded wrong in your own ears, too bright.

His frown deepened.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked. The words were brisk; the tone wasn’t.

“I—” You tried to assemble something that wasn't an entire breakdown. “I can’t get in.”

His gaze flicked up to your house, to the open windows, the silhouettes passing, the porch light. Back to you.

“Locked out?” he asked.

You nodded, the motion jerky. “Keys are with Nobara,” you said. “Inside. I just— I don’t want her to—”

You gestured vaguely at your face, which you were suddenly, painfully aware was damp and probably a mess of mascara.

Your chest tightened again. Your next breath came too fast.

He stepped off his own path, closer.

“Okay,” he said, quiet. “Breathe.”

“I am,” you said, except you weren’t. The air scraped in and out in short, useless bursts.

“You’re not,” he said. “You’re hyperventilating.”

“I’m fine,” you lied, because that was the only script you knew.

He swore under his breath. You’d never heard him sound like that in class.

“Stand up,” he said.

You stared at him. “I don’t— I can’t—”

“You can,” he said, not unkind. He held out a hand. “Take it.”

Your fingers closed around his before you decided to.

His hand dwarfed yours, warm and steady. He pulled, gentle but firm, and you unfolded from the ground more by his momentum than your own strength.

The world tilted. Your knees buckled.

His other hand came up, catching your elbow, solid as the brick behind him.

“There,” he said. “Good.”

You realized, belatedly, that you had a fistful of his shirt, wrinkling the front of it.

You tried to let go. Your body didn’t cooperate.

He looked down at where you were clinging to him, then back up at your face.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes,” you said.

Your knees disagreed.

He didn’t argue. He shifted his grip, thumb circling lightly around your wrist. His hand hovered near your back, not quite touching.

“You’re not staying out here,” he said. “Come on.”

It took you a second to understand he didn’t mean back into your house.

You glanced up at his.

“I shouldn’t,” you said. The list of reasons was long: professor, boss, neighbor, your name on his roster and his payroll.

His jaw tightened.

“You also shouldn’t be sitting on the ground having a panic attack where every drunk idiot on this street can trip over you,” he said. “I’ll pick my ethical failure.”

He tugged, gentle.

You went.

The inside of his house was quieter than you’d imagined.

No television. No music. Just the low buzz of the refrigerator and the muffled thump of the party across the street.

The entryway opened into a living room that looked like it had been built to be left alone in. A dark couch. A low table with stacks of books. A lamp casting warm light instead of the overhead glare.

It smelled like coffee and soap and something you recognized now as him.

You stood just inside the door, heart still hammering like it had lost track of the memo.

He turned the deadbolt with a soft click. It sounded louder than it should have.

“I shouldn’t be here,” you said. It came out small. “You— I’m not supposed to be here.”

He glanced back.

“Right now,” he said, “you’re supposed to sit.”

He tipped his head toward the couch.

You sat.

The cushions were firmer than they looked. Your dress pulled weirdly as you tried to tuck your knees together and not take up space.

He disappeared into the kitchen. You heard the cabinet, the rush of the tap, the clink of glass.

When he came back, he had a water glass and a folded dish towel.

“Here,” he said.

You took the glass with both hands. Your fingers knocked against the rim.

“Slowly,” he said. “Sip, not inhale. I don’t feel like cleaning your vomit off my rug.”

You made a weak noise that might have been a laugh and did as you were told.

He sat down on the coffee table in front of you, forearms braced on his knees. It put him lower than you, but the way he was watching you made you feel like you were the one under a microscope.

“Look at me,” he said.

You dragged your eyes up from the water.

“Good,” he said. “Now breathe.”

“I am,” you started.

“In through your nose,” he cut in. “Out through your mouth. Count to four on the inhale, six on the exhale.”

You stared at him.

“This isn’t yoga,” he added. “It’s basic physiology.”

Despite everything, your mouth twitched. “Bossy,” you said.

“Yes,” he said. “Do it anyway.”

You tried.

In. Two. Three. Four.

Out. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Your chest still felt too tight. The edges of the room were still a little fuzzy. But the buzzing in your fingers eased a fraction.

“Again,” he said, softer.

You obeyed.

“You’re not dying,” he said, after a few cycles. “You just convinced your nervous system the sky is falling.”

“It kind of is,” you said, voice hoarse.

He let out a breath you almost didn’t hear.

“I’ve done it,” he said, like he was admitting to cheating on a test. “More than once. In a faculty meeting. In a grocery store. Once on a plane.” His mouth twitched, humorless. “It feels like you’re about to pass out or explode or both.”

You blinked.

“You?” you asked.

“Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a robot,” he said. “Your body decides you’re under attack, so it hits the alarm. It’s terrible at math, that’s all.”

You huffed a shaky laugh. The idea of him panicking in a grocery store was so surreal it almost helped.

“You scared me,” he added quietly. “For someone who keeps insisting she’s fine, you’re very good at looking like she’s not.”

“No one’s…ever said that,” you said.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said. “But noted.”

He watched you for another beat, like he was making sure the color was coming back into your face.

“What happened,” he asked, “Besides the usual poor taste in parties?”

Your throat tightened.

“Email,” you said. “From the bursar. Final notice. And my mom. She forwarded it to me. With commentary.”

His mouth flattened.

“Let me guess,” he said. “A supportive essay about how proud she is of your resilience.”

You laughed once, sharp.

“She said she’s done ‘bleeding herself dry’ so I can ‘play around’ here,” you said. “That if it’s not fixed by the end of the term, I’m coming home to ‘clean up the mess I made’.”

You swallowed.

“She said she won’t have sympathy when I get kicked out,” you added. “Because she warned me.”

His jaw worked.

“You’re not the first person I’ve met whose family confuses control with care,” he said slowly. “My parents were the same. Every threat wrapped in ‘we just want what’s best for you.’” He huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Funny how what’s ‘best’ always looked suspiciously like what was easiest for them.”

You stared at him.

“They had a plan for me,” he went on. “Degree, job, marriage, the acceptable number of children. When I didn’t follow it, they called it a phase. Kept waiting for me to come home, apologize, and let them finish the script.”

“Did you?” you asked. “Go back?”

“Once,” he said. “Briefly. It did not improve anyone’s character.”

Your lips twitched despite yourself.

“She says she’s just trying to keep me from making a mistake,” you said quietly. “Like leaving was the worst thing I ever did.”

“Mine said that too,” he said. “About writing, moving out, anything that didn’t look like their version of success. ‘You’ll regret this, you’ll see.’”

He shrugged, small. “Turns out staying and trying to be who they wanted wasn’t great for my mental health either.”

You looked down at your fingers on the glass.

“I’m so tired,” you said. “Of being the problem. Of being the bad decision. Of everyone acting like the universe warned me and I ignored it and now whatever happens is just…my fault.”

Your throat burned.

“I did everything right,” you said. “I got out. I work. I study. I rewrote the stupid essay, I bought the stupid book. And somehow it’s still hanging by a thread and she still gets to say ‘I told you so’ if it snaps.”

His hand moved.

He reached out and set two fingers under your chin, tilting your head up until you had to meet his eyes.

His thumb settled lightly against the soft skin there, just under your lower lip.

“Listen to me,” he said.

You did.

“That woman is not the arbiter of whether you’re allowed to have a life,” he said. “She is not the voice of God. She is a person who made choices, and now she wants to pretend the consequences are all on you.”

“Trust me,” he added quietly. “I spent years letting my parents’ choices dictate mine. It doesn’t make you safer. It just makes you feel smaller.”

You blinked, hard.

“If you skip assignments, if you lie, if you decide to stop showing up—that’s on you,” he went on. “You haven’t done that. You’re drowning in a system that assumes everyone has a parent who can write a check and call it a day.”

His eyes didn’t leave yours.

“You’re not the problem,” he said. “You’re just the easiest one to blame.”

You made a small, involuntary sound.

“You shouldn’t…” You swallowed. “You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

“Why,” he asked, “because she’s your mother?”

“Yes,” you said. It came out like an apology.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“You are allowed to be angry with her,” he said. “It doesn’t revoke your daughter card.”

Your vision blurred.

“I’m scared,” you said. The words felt like they’d been pried out of you. “If I lose this, she wins. She gets to say she was right about me, about all of this. That I can’t handle anything by myself.”

Your voice dropped.

“And if you—” You stopped yourself.

“If I what,” he asked, quietly.

You swallowed.

“If you decide this is too much trouble,” you said. “If you decide I’m too much trouble. Then it all goes with you. The job. The rent. The excuse to stay. All the parts of my life that work now…they’re tied to you.”

It was the first time you’d said it out loud. It tasted like shame and relief.

His thumb moved, the barest stroke.

“Then I have to be more careful with it,” he said. “That’s all.”

You stared at him.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” you whispered. “You’re my professor. My boss.”

He didn’t look away.

“I am,” he said.

“This is wrong,” you said.

“Yes,” he said.

He said your name like a touch.

“Look at me,” he added, though you already were.

You did anyway.

Your heart climbed into your throat.

You weren’t sure who moved first.

One second there was air between you; the next, his mouth was on yours.

It was not gentle. It wasn’t rough, either. It was the kind of kiss people have when they’ve been holding themselves back for so long that restraint turns into pure desire.

His hand slid from your jaw to your cheek, fingers spreading warm against your skin. The other tightened on your arm once, like he was pinning you to this moment.

Your brain lit up.

You made a sound you didn’t recognize.

He swallowed it.

You leaned into him, glass forgotten on the table, your free hand catching in his shirt. The angle was awkward, him on the table, you on the couch— but you didn’t care. You were aware of nothing except his mouth, his breath, the way he kissed you like he’d been trying very hard not to.

He tasted like coffee and smoke.

He kissed you like he hated himself for it.

When he pulled back, it was barely an inch, his forehead almost brushing yours. His breath was uneven.

You chased him without meaning to.

His fingers tightened on your arm.

“Don’t,” he said, voice rough.

You froze.

He shut his eyes for a second, jaw clenched like he was holding something in place.

“This is a mistake,” he said. “For both of us.”

Your stomach dropped.

“Do you regret it?” you asked. You hated how small you sounded.

His eyes opened. There was something like anger there, but it wasn’t aimed at you.

“No,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

Your chest twisted.

“I’ve made a lot of bad decisions,” he said, staring at the wall over your shoulder like he couldn’t stand to look at you and still think. “Most of them only cost me. This one has your name on it too.”

The words landed heavy.

“You need to go home,” he said, softer but no less firm. “It’s late. You’re exhausted. If you stay, I am going to keep doing things I shouldn’t.”

Heat crawled up your neck.

“You just kissed me,” you said, because your brain was apparently two steps behind your mouth.

“I know,” he said.

“You said—”

“I know what I said,” he cut in. “I’m not taking it back.”

Your pulse skittered.

He stood. The space he left felt cold.

He scrubbed a hand over his face once, hard, like he wanted to erase something.

“This is exactly what I told myself I wasn’t going to do,” he muttered, more to the bookshelf than to you. “Christ.”

He held his hand out again, palm up.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to your door. Your house should be quieter by now.”

You stared at his hand.

“Everyone will see,” you said. “If they’re still on the porch—”

“I’m not dragging you across the lawn,” he said, frustration flattening his voice. “You can walk ahead of me and pretend I’m not there.”

You snorted, helpless.

You took his hand.

His fingers closed around yours, warm and sure. He didn’t squeeze. He didn’t have to. You felt it anyway.

He was quiet as he led you back out, checking the street like a reflex, keeping half a step behind you like that would help if the ground decided to tilt again.

At your door, he stopped.

“Lock it behind you,” he said. His voice was back to its usual flatness, but his eyes were not.

You nodded.

You stepped inside, the familiar smell of your house— cheap perfume, old carpet, someone’s burnt popcorn— washing over you.

You turned the deadbolt. The click sounded too loud.

Through the peephole, you saw him wait a heartbeat longer, jaw tight, like he was arguing with himself, before he turned back toward the brick house.

He didn’t look back.

Later, in your own bed, with the party finally wound down and the house humming the low, exhausted notes of sleep, your phone buzzed.

Nobara: you ghosted??? Maki: pls tell me you didn’t die in the bathroom

You stared at the screen until the words blurred.

I’m home. I’m fine, you typed.

You hovered, then added:

Got locked out. Neighbor let me in.

You erased the second sentence.

You hit send.

Then you turned your phone face‑down, pressed your fingers to your mouth like you could hold the feeling there, and let the thought you weren’t ready to say out loud echo anyway:

He kissed me.

You’d been terrified, for weeks, of everything falling apart, of failing, of being dragged home, of your mother being proved right.

Lying there in the dark, the new, sharper fear was this:

Whatever this was, he hated himself for it.

By Friday afternoon, you almost convinced yourself you had a life again.

Nobara had declared it mandatory morale night and refused to hear arguments. Maki had actually put something besides black on, which you took as a sign from God.

“We’re going out,” Nobara said, flopping onto your bed while you hunted for mascara. “Real drinks. Real boys. No Canvas. No crying about bursar emails. You, me, Maki, and the Kings.”

“I have work,” you said automatically.

“With who?” she scoffed. “The professor who owns your soul now? It’s Friday. He’ll survive one evening without you alphabetizing his traumas.”

You laughed, weak.

“You know he pays me to alphabetize his traumas,” you said. “It’s different.”

“How much?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

“Enough,” you said, which was a mistake.

Her jaw dropped when you finally gave her the number.

“You’re kidding,” she said. “That’s not an assistantship, that’s…alimony.”

“It’s not that much,” you protested. “Half goes straight to rent. The rest is food and the book I should’ve bought weeks ago.”

“Still,” she said. “If he’s throwing that kind of money around, he can survive without you for one night.”

Maki leaned in from the doorway, earring half in.

“Do you actually have to be there,” she asked, “or is this the part where you invent work so you don’t have to face the concept of fun?”

You opened your mouth to joke and found yourself hesitating.

“He didn’t…say anything,” you admitted. “But he usually throws something at me to do over the weekend. And if I fall behind, I don’t have a safety net.”

“We’re not telling you to stop working,” Nobara said. “We’re telling you to come out for three hours and remember you’re a person who’s allowed to be stupid sometimes.”

You looked at your reflection.

You did look more like a person and less like a ghost. The new dress—bought with your paycheck, his advance, and approximately ten gallons of guilt— actually fit. Your hair was doing something on purpose. Your eyes had color instead of just exhaustion.

You thought of Gojo’s last text— something about “round two tonight, curb girl” and a string of emojis that should have been illegal. You thought of Megumi’s quieter, “Make sure Nobara doesn’t die.”

You thought of Kamo’s last email, the one that had hit your inbox at 9:03 a.m. the morning after you turned in your rewritten response.

Returned. Much better.

You’d stared at that for a full minute, then checked Canvas and almost fallen off your chair when you saw the 0 turned into a full score.

“Fine,” you said now. “If there’s nothing urgent when I go in, I’ll leave at five and we can go.”

“Victory,” Nobara said, throwing an arm in the air.

You smiled and tried not to think about the fact that even your free time required his permission in your head.

He clocked you the second you walked in.

You barely got past the threshold of his office before his eyes flicked up, dragged over the dress, the makeup, the effort, and went a little colder.

“That’s new,” he said.

You glanced down at yourself. “It’s just a dress.”

“For class?” he asked.

“For after,” you said, then wished you hadn’t.

He set his pen down.

“Sit.”

Your body obeyed before your brain did. You dropped into the chair, clutching your bag strap.

“I’m not keeping you long,” he said. “Unfortunately, I do need you.”

“For what?” you asked. “If it’s something I can do over the weekend, I have plans tonight and—”

He cut you off with a look.

“Your plans are irrelevant to me,” he said. “This is about mine.”

Your jaw tightened. “Okay.”

He opened a drawer, took out a blank sheet of department letterhead, and laid it flat on the desk.

“You’re going to write something for me,” he said. “Tonight.”

You laughed, short. “I already have homework.”

“This isn’t homework,” he said. “It won’t go on Canvas. It won’t be graded. It’s for me.”

The way he said for me made your pulse jump.

“What kind of ‘something’?” you asked.

“Three, four pages,” he said. “First person. No cover, no title. You write about the last time you said yes to something that wasn’t fair because you didn’t like the alternative.”

You stared at him.

“That’s specific,” you said.

“That’s the point,” he said.

“And this can’t wait until tomorrow?” you asked. “I can do it after I go out—”

“No,” he said. There wasn’t room in it for argument.

Annoyance flared. “You can’t tell me not to go.”

“I’m not your parent,” he said. “I’m telling you what you’re going to do if you want to keep what I’ve given you.”

You went still.

“So this is a threat,” you said.

“This is clarity,” he said. “You want the job, the rent covered, the groceries, my name on your transcript? You go home after class. You write. You bring it to me Monday in an envelope. No one else sees it.” A pause. “Or you go get drunk and scream on your porch. Pick one.”

“That’s not a choice,” you said quietly.

“That’s exactly what it is,” he said. “For once, no one’s lying to you about the cost.”

You swallowed.

“I already told them I’d go,” you said. “They’re expecting me.”

“They can survive one night without you buying their shots,” he said. “You, on the other hand…”

He let it trail off.

You hated how much you understood.

“You know I can’t afford to lose this,” you said. “You’re using that.”

He didn’t deny it.

“You asked me to pick you,” he said. “You did, when you walked into this office, took the envelope, signed the papers, and sent me a revised response at two in the morning because you couldn’t stand the zero. I’m just making sure you meant it.”

Your fingers dug into your knee.

“I don’t like feeling owned,” you said.

An obvious lie.

He watched you for a beat.

“You’re not owned,” he said. “You’re claimed. There’s a difference.”

Your chest tightened.

“That’s worse,” you said.

His mouth twitched. “For who?”

You glared at him.

“This is messed up,” you said. “You know that, right?”

“Probably,” he said. “Do it anyway.”

You stared at him, then at the empty sheet between you.

“I hate you,” you said.

He looked at you like he was taking inventory.

“You hate needing me,” he said. “It’s not the same.”

You didn’t answer.

You already knew which way you were going to go.

You didn’t go out.

You sat at your desk while the house shook with bass and laughter, while Nobara spammed you with increasingly dramatic selfies from the bathroom mirror, while Maki sent one text:

You good?

and then left you alone.

You wrote.

You wrote about saying yes to jobs that underpaid you because the alternative was nothing. About letting your mother guilt you into gratitude for things she should have done without a fight. About the way your stomach had dropped when he slid that first envelope across the table and how fast your hand had moved anyway.

You wrote about the class response you’d half‑assed— the one he’d bled red ink over. How you’d actually gotten the anthology, read the story, rewritten the whole thing on your floor at 1 a.m., furious, and hit send with that pathetic little if it’s not too late in the body. How your phone had buzzed the next morning with Returned. Much better, and how that stupid, stingy praise had sat under your skin all day.

You changed names. You didn’t change much else.

By the time you were done, your hands ached and your throat did too.

You printed it. Folded it once. Slipped it into the envelope he’d given you and wrote your name on the front with a hand that still trembled.

You slept hard and badly.

He didn’t make you wait.

You walked into his office Monday with the envelope in your hand and the urge to turn around already in your chest.

He held out his palm without looking up. You put it there.

“You did it,” he said. Not a question.

“Yes,” you said. “Like you told me to.”

He opened it, slid the pages out, and started reading while you sat there and tried not to watch his face.

He didn’t skim. His eyes moved line by line, jaw working, thumb smoothing the edge of the paper when he went back to reread a sentence.

Once, he huffed— almost a laugh. Once, his mouth tightened. Once, he glanced up at you, quick and sharp, before dropping back to the words.

Your heart pounded so loudly you were sure he could hear.

When he finished, he set the pages down and looked at you properly.

“Stand up,” he said.

You blinked. “What?”

“Stand up,” he repeated.

You did, more out of reflex than obedience.

He circled the desk slowly, came to lean against the front of it, close enough that you had to tilt your head back to meet his eyes.

For a second, he said nothing.

“You stayed home,” he said. “You wrote this. You brought it to me first thing.”

“That was the deal,” you said.

“You could have lied,” he said. “You could have gone out, hammered this together Sunday night, handed me something empty.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten away with it,” you said. “You always know when I bullshit you.”

He made a low noise at that.

“True,” he said.

He tapped the pages against his thigh.

“This,” he said, “is not empty.”

You swallowed.

“It’s…fine?” you guessed.

“It’s ugly,” he said. “Which is exactly what I asked for.”

You exhaled sharply. “You’re welcome.”

He ignored the sarcasm.

“You did what I told you,” he said, like he was testing each word. “Exactly how I told you. You let yourself be honest. You let me see it. That’s not nothing.”

You tried to shrug, but your shoulders felt tight.

“It was three pages,” you said. “Not a blood oath.”

He tilted his head.

“You’re shaking,” he said softly.

You hadn’t realized you were.

“Cold,” you lied.

He hummed.

“No,” he said. “Nerves. Good.”

“How is that good?” you demanded.

“Means it cost you something,” he said. “I don’t want what you can give everyone for free.”

Your face went hot.

“Don’t say it like that,” you said.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like—” you faltered. “You know how.”

His mouth curved, faint and dark.

“You did well,” he said quietly. “You were…very good.”

The words sank under your skin, hot and humiliating.

“Don’t,” you said, voice thinner than you wanted. “Don’t call it that.”

His gaze lingered on your face, the flush, the way your hands had curled at your sides.

He leaned in just enough that you could feel the warmth of him, not touching, but close.

“I tell you when you’ve done badly,” he said. “I’m not going to withhold this, too. You did exactly what I wanted. You were good.”

Something in your chest twisted.

“You’re messing with me,” you said.

“I’m rewarding you,” he said. “You hate being told what to do. You did it anyway. For me. That matters.”

Your pulse jumped at the way he stressed it.

“For you,” you repeated, because your mouth liked pain.

“For me,” he confirmed.

Silence buzzed between you.

“You know that response you rewrote?” he added, almost offhand. “The one you mangled the first time.”

You stiffened. “I remember.”

“It was actually good,” he said. “The version you sent at two a.m., not the cowardly one you turned in first. If you’d given me that, you’d have had full marks from the beginning.”

“Why are you telling me that now?” you asked.

“Because it proves my point,” he said. “You do better work when you stop trying to give me what you think I want and actually give me what you have.”

Your throat went tight.

“I thought you wanted me to be…good,” you said. “Perfect.”

“I want you to be honest,” he said. “Perfect is boring.”

He straightened finally, breaking the tension, and walked back behind the desk. You sat without being asked this time.

He opened a drawer, took out a thin folder, and slid your pages in. You glimpsed your own handwriting on other sheets as he did.

“What is that,” you asked, “my permanent record?”

“Call it a collection,” he said.

“You’re keeping it,” you said. “You didn’t even ask.”

“You gave it to me,” he said. “You wrote it under my instructions, with my time, on my dime. It stays here.”

“It’s mine,” you said.

He looked up.

“Is it?” he asked. “Do you want it back?”

You hesitated.

If you said yes, he’d hand it over. You’d walk out with three flimsy pages that felt heavier than anything you owned and have to decide where to hide them from your roommates, from yourself.

You shook your head.

“No,” you said. “Not right now.”

He nodded once.

“Smart,” he said. “It’s safer with me.”

“That’s debatable,” you muttered.

He let that go.

“Since you followed instructions,” he said, picking up his pen again, “you can go out next time they drag you. Assuming you’re not behind. I’m not interested in having a miserable little nun for an assistant.”

You frowned.

“You’re…allowing it,” you said.

“I’m acknowledging you earned it,” he said. “Try not to do anything that will embarrass us both.”

“Us?” you echoed.

“My name is on your paychecks,” he said. “Like it or not, you’re attached to me now. Act accordingly.”

You tried not to show how that word landed.

Attached.

You stood, legs still a bit unsteady.

“So that’s it?” you asked. “I humiliated myself on the page, you hoard it, I get one night out as a treat?”

“For now,” he said, already looking back at his notes. “We’ll see what I ask for next time.”

You stared at him.

“You’re unbelievable,” you said.

“Go to class,” he said without looking up. “And [First name]—”

You paused in the doorway.

“Yeah?”

He glanced over, eyes catching yours.

“You did well,” he said again. “Don’t ruin it by apologizing for it.”

You swallowed.

“Okay,” you said. It came out small.

You left before he could see your face.

You didn’t expect to see his name in your inbox on a Sunday.

You were still in bed, hair a mess, last night’s makeup smudged at the edges, when your phone buzzed against your cheek. You blinked gritty eyes open and squinted at the notification.

From: choso.kamo@faculty.*** Subject: Come in.

No greeting. No explanation. Just:

Bring the piece we talked about. My office. 4 p.m. Don’t be late.

You stared at it for a long second, then at the time on your screen. 12:07 p.m.

Four hours to decide whether you were actually going to go.

You thought about ignoring it. Pretending you hadn’t seen it until later, claiming you were “away from your email.” It would be true. It would also be a lie and you both knew it.

You rolled onto your back and stared at the ceiling.

He’d already gotten what he wanted. You’d stayed in Friday. You’d written the thing. You’d handed it over. He’d read it, praised it in that quiet way that made your skin feel too tight, and put it in his drawer.

This was extra.

You bit your lip, opened your laptop, and pulled up the copy you’d printed for yourself just in case. You slid it into a clean folder. Your hands shook more than they should have.

At 3:42, you were outside Brick Hall, wishing the wind would knock some sense into you.

At 3:58, you stood in front of his door.

You knocked.

“Come in,” he said.

You stepped inside and instantly knew this wasn’t standard office hours.

The door was closed. The blinds were tilted half‑shut, muting the light. His jacket hung on the back of the chair, sleeves rolled, tie loose. The building was nearly empty; the usual murmur of other faculty and students was noticeably absent.

He looked up from his desk.

“You’re on time,” he said. “Good.”

You held up the folder.

“You said to bring it,” you said. Your voice sounded smaller than you wanted.

“Shut the door,” he said. “Then sit.”

You did.

He reached out and took the folder from you, sliding the pages free like he already knew exactly what they contained.

“You read it again?” he asked.

“Yes,” you said.

“Good,” he said. “You’re going to read it one more time.”

“I thought you already—” you started.

“I did,” he said. “Now I want to hear it.”

The way he said want made your pulse skip.

You tried to joke. “You can read, you know.”

“I want your voice,” he said. “Not mine.”

Your mouth went dry.

“Up,” he said, gesturing to the small open space in front of his desk. “Stand there.”

You hesitated.

“Why?” you asked.

“Because if you stay sitting, you’re going to fold in on yourself until I can’t hear anything,” he said. “And because I told you to.”

You swallowed and pushed to your feet, stepping into the space he’d indicated. It was only a few feet from his chair, close enough that you could track every change in his expression.

He handed the pages back to you.

“Start,” he said.

You stared at the first line, the words you’d already agonized over once.

“I don’t like this,” you said.

He leaned back, arms folding loosely.

“You like plenty of things that are bad for you,” he said. “Consider this balance.”

“Professor Kamo—” you caught yourself.

His eyes flicked, sharp.

“You’re stalling,” he said.

You took a breath, the paper crinkling slightly in your grip.

“The last time I said yes to something that wasn’t fair,” you began, voice unsteady, “I didn’t even realize I had a choice until afterwards.”

“Louder,” he said. “I’m not across the hall.”

You swallowed and tried again, pushing the words out.

You read about the café. The hours cut. Your mother’s voice in your ear calling consequences what other people called abandonment. You read about the envelope sliding across his desk, your hand reaching for it like you’d been waiting your whole life for someone to offer you something solid, even if the cost was written in invisible ink.

You hated hearing your own sentences in the air. They sounded too naked. Too much.

At some point, you stopped hearing your voice and started hearing how quiet he was. No pen scratches, no paper shuffling. Just silence and the occasional soft exhale.

You got to the paragraph where you’d written about him without actually writing his name. The professor with the scar who kept making you choose him over yourself.

You faltered.

He noticed.

“Keep going,” he said. “Don’t edit.”

Your fingers tightened around the page.

“‘He doesn’t have to ask twice,’” you read, your cheeks burning. “‘He doesn’t even have to ask. He says it and I do it, and I hate that, and I like it, and I don’t know what that makes me.’”

The room felt too small.

You finished the last sentence. The final period landed like a drop.

Silence stretched.

You kept your eyes on the page because looking at him felt impossible.

“Look at me,” he said.

You did.

He was still leaning back in his chair, but his attention was like a hand on the back of your neck.

“Again,” he said.

Your stomach dropped.

“I’m not—” you began.

“The last paragraph,” he clarified. “From ‘He doesn’t have to ask twice.’”

Heat crawled up your throat.

“No,” you said.

“Yes,” he said. “You can do it.”

You hesitated long enough that you saw his expression shift—something like disappointment, something like expectation.

You took a breath that shook.

“He doesn’t have to ask twice,” you read, softer. “He doesn’t even have to ask. He says it and I do it, and I hate that, and I like it, and I don’t know what that makes me.”

Your voice cracked on the last four words.

He let the silence sit heavy for a few heartbeats, then pushed his chair back and stood.

Your body reacted before your brain did, a tiny step back that had nowhere to go.

He didn’t touch you.

He came around the desk and stopped just behind your shoulder, close enough that you could feel the heat of him, the faint brush of fabric when he breathed.

“Again,” he said quietly, near your ear.

Your heart hammered.

“I can’t—” you started.

“You can,” he said. “And you will. Third time’s easier.”

You closed your eyes for a second.

“He doesn’t have to ask twice,” you whispered. “He doesn’t even have to ask. He says it and I do it, and I hate that, and I like it, and I don’t know what that makes me.”

His hand came up, slow, and settled— not on your skin, but on the back of the chair in front of you, caging you in without technically touching you.

“You know what it makes you,” he said. “You just don’t want to hear it from me.”

Your pulse kicked.

“What does it make me?” you asked, hating the way the words came out small.

He hummed, low in his chest.

“Honest,” he said. “Finally.”

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.

“That’s not—” you started.

He reached around you then, fingers brushing the edge of the paper as he plucked it from your hands. The backs of his knuckles grazed your wrist, light, nothing, too much.

“You got this done fast,” he said, eyes flicking over the page. “You had it ready the next day.”

“You said you needed it,” you replied.

His mouth did that almost‑smile that never quite made it.

“Right,” he said. “I forget that’s all it takes with you.”

“That’s not....” you started.

“You don’t negotiate,” he went on, like he was cataloguing evidence. “You don’t stall. You don’t pretend you didn’t see it. I ask, and you move everything else around without making me drag it out of you.”

Heat crawled up your neck.

“That’s not normal,” you muttered.

“For me it isn’t,” he said. “Most people need convincing.”

He finally looked up, gaze catching yours and holding.

“You don’t,” he added. “You hear me and you just…do it. Exactly how I asked.”

His voice had gone softer, almost thoughtful, like he’d surprised himself.

“It’s my favorite one you have,” he said quietly.

He stepped a fraction closer, close enough that you could smell his cologne under the coffee and paper, something dark and clean that made your head feel light.

“And it’s exactly why,” he murmured, almost to himself, “I shouldn’t keep seeing what else you’ll say yes to.”

He was close enough now that you could smell his cologne under the coffee and paper, something dark and clean that made your head feel light.

His hand lifted, brushed your shoulder as if to move a stray hair out of the way. His fingers just barely touched your neck before he dropped them again.

You froze.

He didn’t apologize. He didn’t explain.

“You shake every time,” he said quietly. “You ever notice that?”

“Maybe I’m cold,” you said.

He huffed, faint.

“You’re not cold,” he said. “You’re wound up.”

You swallowed.

“That’s your fault,” you said.

“I’m aware,” he said.

You could feel your own heartbeat in your fingertips.

“Is this—” you started, then stopped.

He waited.

“Is this still…professional?” you asked, and forced yourself to say it. “Whatever this is.”

He was quiet for a moment. You could almost hear him decide.

“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”

Your breath caught.

“You’re not supposed to say that,” you whispered.

“I’m not supposed to do a lot of things,” he said. “Here we are.”

You turned your head, just enough that you could see him out of the corner of your eye. He was close enough that if either of you leaned a fraction more, you’d touch.

“You’re going to ruin my life,” you said. There wasn’t much heat in it.

He looked at you like he was cataloguing all the ways that was already true.

“You’re doing a decent job of that on your own,” he said. “I’m just…redirecting it.”

“That’s not comforting,” you said.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he said.

He stepped back then, sudden enough that the air felt cooler.

“Sit,” he said, moving back behind the desk.

You sat, limbs still shaky.

He tapped the pages into a neat stack and slid them into your folder.

“I’m keeping my copy in the drawer,” he said. “This one stays with you. In case you forget what you’re capable of when you’re not busy trying to make everyone else comfortable.”

You stared at him.

“You’re giving it back?” you asked.

“For now,” he said. “Consider it a loan.”

You clutched the folder in your lap.

He watched you for another moment, then said, almost casually:

“You did well.”

You looked away.

“Don’t say it like that,” you muttered.

He tilted his head.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like you’re…happy,” you said.

“I am,” he said simply. “You did exactly what I wanted. I don’t get that often.”

There was a beat of silence where you couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Then, softer:

“Good girl.”

Your fingers tightened so hard around the folder you were surprised it didn’t crease.

“Don’t,” you said, a little desperate.

“Don’t what?” he asked, voice mild. “Tell the truth?”

You wanted to argue. You didn’t.

He picked his pen back up, as if the conversation had ended.

“Go home,” he said. “Eat something. Sleep. Come in on time tomorrow. I made space in my schedule for you; try not to make me regret it.”

You stood on unsteady legs.

“You can’t just…drop that and go back to grading,” you said.

He looked up once more, eyes steady, a hint of something softer there that he wasn’t bothering to hide anymore.

“Get used to it,” he said. “You asked for this.”

You left with your heart in your throat and his words echoing in your head, the word good replaying like he’d pressed a thumb to a bruise and called it a compliment.

Later, sprawled on your bed with the lights off, your phone buzzed twice in quick succession.

Nobara: you alive??? Maki: was it worth ditching us

You stared at the messages until they blurred.

Then you typed, thumbs hovering for a second before you committed:

Yeah. I think so.

You didn’t add: He said I was good.

You’d never been on the fourth floor of Brick Hall before.

You’d had classes in the building, sure. Damp seminar rooms and overheated lecture halls, but the elevator with the little “FACULTY OFFICES” placard above it felt like it was meant for other people.

You almost took the stairs out of spite. Then you remembered you hadn’t slept properly in three days, and your legs were still bruised from where the porch step had nearly taken you out last month. You pressed the elevator button and tried not to think about omens.

The doors slid open onto a narrow hallway lined with identical doors and mismatched nameplates. Some had hours posted neatly. Some had passive‑aggressive signs about not knocking. One had a cartoon of a cat with fangs.

Halfway down, in small, precise letters:

DR. CHOSO KAMO MODERN LITERATURE

Office hours: Mon/Wed 11–1. Or by email.

Underneath, in fresh tape, your handwriting from yesterday:

Student Assistant: [Your First Name] [Last Name]

You wanted to peel it off and run.

Instead, you knocked.

“Come in,” came his voice, muffled.

You pushed the door open and stepped into the space you’d only ever imagined.

It was…less sterile than you expected. Books everywhere, of course—lined up on shelves, stacked on the floor, a few open on the small table by the window like he’d been in the middle of reading three things at once. A plant clung stubbornly to life in the corner. The desk was big, old wood, scarred in places. His laptop sat open, flanked by two sad‑looking departmental monitors. There was a mug with a ring of condensation at the bottom, and three uncapped pens within reach.

He was behind the desk, sleeves rolled, hair half pulled back, the rest falling around his face. He glanced up, took you in, then looked back at his screen.

“You’re three minutes early,” he said. “Try not to make a habit of it. It sets expectations I don’t intend to meet.”

“Good morning to you too,” you said, because apparently you had a death wish.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

He gestured vaguely at the chair opposite his.

“Sit,” he said. “If you pass out, I’d rather not have to step over you.”

You sat, the folder you’d signed tucked under your arm, the envelope with what was left of the advance in your bag. You’d spent more of it than you wanted to admit—anthology, rent hole, actual food—and it still felt like too much.

You slid the folder onto the desk.

“I read it,” you said. “And signed. I’m…in.”

He took it, flipped to the last page, scanned your signature like he was checking for forgery, then set it on a neat stack at the corner of his desk.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re officially part of the bureaucracy.”

He pulled a short spiral notebook from his drawer and opened it, pen poised.

“Ground rules,” he said.

Of course.

You sat up a little straighter.

“One,” he said, eyes on the page, “this is not a pity hire. You do not treat it like charity. You treat it like work. If you don’t, I’ll fire you.”

“Got it,” you said. “No slacking, no sob stories.”

“Two,” he went on, “you do not talk about my office, my habits, or my personal life to your friends, your house, or whatever social media disease you’re on. I don’t want to hear that the Kings know what coffee I drink.”

“I’m not going to tweet your coffee order,” you said.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t have Twitter.”

You bit back a smile.

“Three,” he said, “you are my student and my assistant. That means two sets of lines. In here, you can ask me things about work you’d never ask in class. In class, you are not special. You turn things in on time. You participate like everyone else. You don’t say ‘but I work for you’ if I grade you like you deserve.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” you said. “I like living.”

He ignored that.

“Four,” he said, “if something in your life is going to interfere with your ability to do the job— here or in the classroom— you tell me before it becomes a crisis. I’m not a mind reader. I will not guess. I will also not chase you. If you disappear, I replace you.”

You swallowed.

“Understood,” you said.

He finally looked up from the notebook, eyes clicking over your face like he was checking whether anything he’d said had dented you.

“Questions?” he asked.

You chewed your lip.

“What exactly…counts as ‘tasks’?” you asked. “You said admin and errands, but like, scope? Am I grading? Am I going to your house to water your plant? Am I—”

“Slow down,” he said. “You’re not grading. I don’t trust you that much.”

You made a face. He pretended not to see it.

“You’ll keep track of attendance,” he said. “Upload files to the course site, handle the parts of email that don’t require my voice. When I say ‘send that handout’ or ‘post that announcement,’ you do it before you go get drunk on a king's porch.”

You flushed.

“And,” he added, “once a week, you go to the store.”

You blinked.

“For…what?” you asked.

He opened a drawer, pulled out an envelope identical to the one he gave you yesterday down to the thickness, and slid it across the desk.

You stared at it like you’d learned nothing.

“I’m not—” you started.

“An advance,” he cut in, “is for past and future services. This is neither. This is petty cash. Housekeeping. You will buy coffee, office supplies, things I forget, and whatever basic groceries you need so you stop looking like you’re surviving on air.”

Your throat went tight.

“That’s not in the job description,” you said.

“It is now,” he said. “I’m writing it down.”

He scribbled “weekly supply run” in the notebook.

“I’m not your kept woman,” you blurted.

He actually choked.

“Believe me,” he said, fighting a grimace, “if I were keeping you, it would not involve toner and staplers.”

You wished the floor would open.

“That’s not what I meant,” you said quickly. “This is a lot. The pay. The extra. It feels…”

“Unfair?” he supplied. “Good. It is. I get to decide the terms. That’s one of the only perks of this job.”

“It feels like I’m taking advantage,” you said, quieter.

His eyes cooled.

“You think I don’t know how much my time and patience are worth?” he asked. “I am very aware. If I thought you were taking advantage, you’d be out the door before you finished that sentence. I’m telling you to take it. That’s different.”

You looked down at the envelope and then back up.

“You’re very bad at accepting gratitude, you know that?” you said.

“I’m worse at tolerating martyrdom,” he said. “Pick your poison.”

You huffed out a breath.

“Fine,” you said. “I’ll do the runs. But I’m buying cheap coffee.”

“We’ll negotiate brand loyalty later,” he said. “For now, your first task.”

He pushed a stack of papers toward you. Attendance sheets. Old syllabi. A list of student names with scrawled notes next to some.

“Sort these,” he said. “By course, then alphabetically. Make a spreadsheet with contact info and any relevant disasters they’ve already confessed to me. Save it on the desktop under something I can’t accidentally delete.”

“Relevant disasters?” you echoed.

“Health issues. Work schedules. ‘My grandmother is on her third life,’” he said. “Anything that might become an excuse later. I prefer to see it coming.”

You flipped through the stack.

“And me?” you asked, because you were apparently incapable of survival instincts today. “What’s written next to my name?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

You glanced up.

He tore a scrap off the corner of a sheet, scribbled something, and slid it toward you.

You looked.

Next to your name, in his sharp handwriting:

[Your Last Name], [Your First Name] – loud, competent, trouble

Heat flushed up your neck.

“Loud?” you protested. “I’m not that loud.”

“You live on Greek Row,” he said. “Yes, you are.”

“Competent is…nice,” you said cautiously.

“It was a temporary lapse,” he said. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Trouble?” you repeated.

He met your eyes.

“If you weren’t trouble,” he said, “you wouldn’t be here.”

You didn’t know what to do with that.

You folded the scrap and tucked it into your notebook before your brain could decide whether that was pathetic.

“Anything else?” you asked, trying to keep your voice steady.

“Yes,” he said. “Office hours.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall.

“Once your sorting is under control, you sit in here during my posted hours unless you have class,” he said. “If students show up and I’m not here yet, you make sure they don’t set anything on fire. You are not my therapist, advocate, or priest. If they start crying, you offer tissues and tell them to wait.”

“And if I start crying?” you asked, only half joking.

“Then you go to the bathroom and do it there,” he said. “My office is a no‑cry zone. I don’t have the paperwork for that.”

You snorted before you could stop yourself.

“That’s not very trauma‑informed of you,” you said.

“I teach modern lit,” he said. “I contain enough trauma in these four walls without yours.”

You smiled, small and real.

“Got it,” you said. “No crying. Alphabetize your disasters. Haunt the office.”

“And,” he added, “you text me a picture of the receipts when you do the weekly run. I don’t care what brand of cereal you buy. I care if you suddenly start spending six hundred dollars a week at a liquor store.”

You stared at him.

“I’m not going to steal from you,” you said.

He held your gaze.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.”

It landed heavier than anything else he’d said.

You cleared your throat.

“Okay,” you said. “Where’s the scanner? And…do you want me to set up a shared drive for your classes? It’s easier than juggling USBs.”

He blinked, like you’d said a spell he’d heard of but never seen.

“You know how to do that,” he said. It wasn’t quite a question.

“I’m not a grandma,” you said. “I can set up folders.”

“Fine,” he said. “Impress me.”

You took the stack of papers and your laptop, moving to the small side table under the window. It had just enough space for you to spread out without encroaching on the chaos that was his desk.

For the next hour, the office settled into a rhythm: the soft clack of your keys, the scratch of his pen, the occasional sigh when a student email made him want to set something on fire. You asked where he kept things; he grunted directions. When you tried to stand to reach a high shelf, he appeared behind you, plucked the book down effortlessly, and muttered, “You’re going to break your neck,” before retreating to his seat.

At some point, he slid a mug toward the edge of his desk.

“Here,” he said. “Drink that before you pass out.”

You looked up.

The mug was chipped, steam curling faintly from the top. It smelled like actual coffee, not whatever off‑brand sawdust you brewed at home.

“I thought you didn’t do favors,” you said.

“I don’t,” he said. “You’re more useful conscious.”

You wrapped your hands around the mug.

“Thank you,” you said anyway.

He didn’t answer, but the line of his shoulders eased a fraction.

You worked until your eyes blurred, the spreadsheet filling with names and notes, tiny portraits of other lives crashing into his.

When you finally saved the file and told him you were done, he spun his laptop toward himself, clicked through your work, brows moving minutely as he read.

“This is…organized,” he said, like the word was new. “Color‑coded.”

“Yes,” you said. “Welcome to the twenty‑first century.”

He hummed.

“This might almost make my life easier,” he said. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

You smiled.

“Do I…go?” you asked, glancing at the clock. Your shift time, such as it was, had technically expired ten minutes ago.

“For today,” he said. “Take the envelope. Do the run tomorrow. There’s a list on the board by the door.”

You turned. There was, in his same tight handwriting:

coffee tea staples printer paper whatever you need to stop looking like a ghost

You bit your lip to keep something stupid from happening to your face.

“Subtle,” you said.

“I’m not wasting tuition money on a student who passes out in week four,” he said. “It looks bad on my evaluations.”

You slung your bag onto your shoulder, tucking the new envelope carefully inside.

“I’ll send you the receipts,” you said.

He nodded once.

“And [Your First Name],” he added, just as you reached for the door.

You turned.

“Yes?”

“Don’t thank me in class,” he said. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

You snorted.

“I was going to throw myself at your feet and cry,” you said. “But sure, I’ll tone it down.”

“Get out,” he said, but there was the ghost of a smile in it.

You stepped back into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind you.

For the first time in weeks, the weight on your chest felt the slightest bit lighter.

You were still broke. Your mother was still…her. The house treasurer still had your name underlined in red.

But you had an anthology in your bag, a job that might actually keep you here, and a professor who looked at you like you were more than a name on a roster.

You kept waiting for the week to bottom out and it kept finding new floors.

First, the café.

You were wiping down the counter when your manager came out from the back with her “I practiced this in the mirror” face on.

“Hey, can we talk for a sec?” she asked, like you had a choice.

You untied your apron with hands that already knew.

“We’re cutting back more hours,” she said, not meeting your eyes. “Corporate wants us to go lean until midterms. I tried to fight it, but…”

You stared at the schedule printout she pushed toward you. Your name was missing entirely.

“So that’s…no hours?” you said. It came out thin.

“For now,” she said quickly. “We’ll reach out if we need extra coverage. And you’re great, seriously, this isn’t about performance, it’s just—”

“Corporate,” you finished for her.

She winced. “Yeah.”

You signed the stupid acknowledgment form with the little pen on a chain and tried not to do the math out loud.

Rent. Dues. Kamo’s book you still hadn’t bought. Food.

You left with your apron in a plastic bag and your last free stale muffin in your hand.

Then, your mother.

You knew better than to answer her calls without checking your emotional armor first. The problem was you were already cracked.

She didn’t bother with hello.

“So,” she said, “I saw your bank notification.”

You closed your eyes.

“You still have access?” you asked. “I thought we turned that off.”

“I’m still listed on the account,” she said, unbothered. “And I see you’re overdrafting again. Tell me why I fought with financial aid for you to play pretend at that party school if you’re just going to burn through money and drop out.”

“I’m not dropping out,” you said. “I just— work cut my hours. I’m figuring it out.”

“Mm,” she said. “That’s what you said last semester. And the one before that. Maybe college isn’t for everyone.”

Heat crawled up your throat.

“I have a 3.6,” you said. “I’m on track to graduate. I just need—”

“What you need is a reality check,” she snapped. “If you come home, you can get a job that isn’t coffee and boys and maybe learn how the real world functions. We’re not bailing you out again.”

You swallowed hard.

“I didn’t ask you to,” you said, even though you had considered it, late at night, staring at the zeroes on your screen.

“Good,” she said. “Because we can’t. Your brother actually listens, so that’s where our extra money’s going right now. You chose to go out there. You can lie in the bed you made.”

There was a static‑heavy pause.

“Okay,” you said, because anything else would crack. “Thanks for calling.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. “And don’t call me crying when it all falls apart. I’m telling you now: there’s a room here if you’re done playing at being an adult, but I’m not paying for your mistakes.”

You hung up before she could say anything else.

You stared at your phone until the low battery warning popped up, then set it face‑down on your desk and laughed once, sharp and humorless.

By the time the sun went down, you were wound too tight to be inside.

The porch wood was warm under your bare legs. You sat on the top step with your knees drawn up, an unopened drink sweating in your hand. The string lights buzzed overhead, one bulb blinking like it couldn’t commit to existing.

Maki sat two steps below, back against the post, cigarette unlit between her fingers. Nobara sprawled sideways on the swing, hair in a messy knot, scrolling with her thumb while she rocked.

“You’re quiet,” Nobara said eventually, not looking up.

You picked at the tab on your can until it bent.

“Got fired,” you said.

That got their attention.

Maki turned. “Hours cut?” she asked.

“Hours erased,” you said. “They said they’ll ‘reach out’ if they need me. Which they won’t. It’s cheaper to pretend we don’t exist.”

Nobara’s face twisted. “That’s illegal,” she declared. “It’s— okay, it’s probably not technically illegal, but it should be.”

You huffed out something that might have been a laugh if you weren’t so tired.

“And your mom?” Maki asked, like she already knew there was more.

You stared out at the street. The row of houses was a jagged silhouette against the darkening sky. The brick place at the end had one upstairs window lit; it made the whole structure look like it was watching.

“She said,” you mimicked your mother’s clipped tone, “‘don’t call me crying when it all falls apart.’ She thinks I’m— wasting her money by being here. Which is funny, since she hasn’t sent me any in months.”

“Jesus,” Nobara muttered. “What, does she think you’re just…vacationing? With Canvas quizzes due at 11:59?”

“She doesn’t care,” you said, the words slipping out before you could soften them. “She cares about being right. She wants to say ‘I told you so’ more than she wants me to actually finish this.”

You took a breath that shook on the way in.

“If I go home, she gets to tell everyone I ‘couldn’t hack it,’” you said. “If I stay and drown, she gets to say she warned me. There’s no version where she’s proud of me. I think she’d honestly be annoyed if I pulled it off without her.”

Silence hummed.

Maki’s unlit cigarette snapped in half between her fingers.

“You’re not going home,” she said.

You shrugged one shoulder.

“I might not have a choice,” you said. “Café’s gone. Dues are due. Rent’s due. Kamo’s anthology is apparently bound in gold leaf. The house said they’ll lock my door if I don’t pay by Friday. When they say lock, they mean it. You miss enough payments, you’re out.”

“You have us,” Nobara said. “We’re not letting them put a lock on you like you’re a broom closet.”

“You two barely have yourselves,” you said, trying to make it a joke and failing. “I’m not dragging you down with me.”

“Oh my god, you’re insufferable,” Nobara groaned. She kicked lightly at your foot. “We’re a package deal. If you go, who am I supposed to complain about boys to? Maki? She’ll just tell me to take their wallets.”

Maki didn’t deny it.

You smiled, small and brittle.

“It’s fine,” you said. “I’ll figure something out. I always do, right?”

“You say that like it’s not killing you,” Maki said quietly.

You opened your mouth to make another joke, to smooth it over, and what came out instead was:

“I’m so tired.”

The words hit the air and hung there.

“I am so tired,” you repeated, softer. “Of pretending I’m fine. Of promising everyone I’ll make it work when I don’t even believe myself. Of having to be clever or funny so people don’t get uncomfortable. Of my mom acting like basic care was a loan I haven’t paid back.”

Your throat burned.

“She never…” you started, then stopped. “When I got my acceptance, she didn’t even say congrats. She said, ‘I hope you appreciate what we’re doing for you.’ Like I asked to be born into their mess.”

You pressed the heel of your hand against your eyes.

“I keep thinking if I just do everything right, someone will finally…pick me,” you said. “Like— stay. Have my back. Mean it when they say they’re proud. But my mom won’t, and my job doesn’t care if I eat, and the school will drop me the second I miss a payment. I’m just—”

“Hey,” Nobara said sharply, shifting up to the top step. Her hand landed firm and warm on your shoulder. “We pick you, you idiot. We’re right here. Always."

Maki nodded once. “You’re not nothing,” she said. “You’re annoying as hell, but you’re ours.”

You laughed, and this time it cracked.

A tear slipped out before you could stop it. You wiped it away angrily.

“Sorry,” you muttered.

“Don’t be sorry,” Nobara said. “Be mad. Then let us help.”

Help how, you didn’t ask, because you already knew their numbers were just as bad as yours.

You looked back out at the street instead.

The brick house’s upstairs window was still lit. A shadow moved behind the glass.

You had no idea he was there.

Choso had been on his way outside for a cigarette when he heard your voice.

He stopped just inside his front door, fingers on the deadbolt, and listened.

Greek Row was never quiet, but there were layers to the noise. He’d learned them faster than he’d wanted to. The bass from the Kings’ speakers. The shriek of someone losing a drinking game. The periodic howl from the house with the broken door.

Your laugh.

He hadn’t heard that last one in a few days.

Tonight, what drifted up the row wasn’t laughter. It was the frayed edge of your voice, pitched low in an attempt to keep it together.

“…she doesn’t care,” you were saying. “She wants to be right more than she wants me to actually finish.”

He opened his door a crack, enough to feel the cooler air, not enough to be seen from the porch line.

He could hear you better than he should have.

He told himself to leave it alone. To walk past, light his cigarette, and let your life be your problem the way he’d told you his was his.

He stayed where he was.

You kept talking.

“There’s no version where she’s proud of me,” you said. “If I go home, I’m a failure. If I stay and drown, she was right. I’m so tired.”

He stared at the wood grain of his own door, jaw tight.

He’d heard plenty of students complain. About roommates, unfair grades, parents who texted too much, parents who texted not at all. It was background noise.

This wasn’t.

You sounded like someone standing on the edge, trying to decide which way to fall.

When you said, “I keep thinking if I just do everything right, someone will finally pick me,” something ugly and familiar cracked in his chest.

He remembered being twenty with a scholarship letter in one hand and a duffel bag in the other, standing outside a dorm where no one had bothered to learn his name yet. He remembered sitting in offices asking for extensions, for exceptions, for mercy, and seeing nothing in the faces across from him but boredom and inconvenience.

He’d done it alone.

He’d told himself that was a point of pride.

He wasn’t sure why hearing you describe the same shape of loneliness made him feel less like he’d survived and more like he’d just been abandoned more thoroughly.

Out on your porch, your friends rallied around you in the clumsy, earnest way people your age did. Jokes. Promises. The word “ours” was said like a small spell.

You laughed and cried and apologized for crying and laughed again.

He loosened his hand on the doorknob and stepped back, letting it shut quietly.

He didn’t light the cigarette.

He went back to his office instead, the urge to do something gnawing like a bad tooth.

The assistantship email blinked at him from his inbox. The one the department chair had sent last week, subject line UNDERGRAD POSITION – MODERN LIT. Flexible hours. Decent pay. “Ideal for students with strong writing and organizational skills.”

He had skimmed it, grimaced, and closed it. He didn’t want a student hovering around his space, messing with his routines, reminding him of how old he was not.

He opened it again.

He thought about your empty desk. Your admission—“I couldn’t afford it this week”- was steady even as your face burned. The way you’d taken his criticism without flinching, then gone home to a mother who saw your effort as an inconvenience and a job that saw you as a number.

He thought about the way you’d said pick me without saying those words.

He started typing a reply before he could talk himself out of it.

Position filled, he wrote. I’ll take one. I have someone in mind.

He hit send.

His own pettiness annoyed him. He could have left it to the chair. Let them assign some eager early‑major who’d never set foot on Greek Row.

Instead, he’d just volunteered to bring his worst temptation into his workspace and pay you for the privilege.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat back.

“Idiot,” he muttered— to himself, to you, to whatever part of him still thought he was capable of drawing clean lines.

When the confirmation email came ten minutes later, the job was his to offer.

He waited until after class on Monday.

You came in looking like you’d slept in your clothes. Your hair was in a half‑hearted knot. There were shadows under your eyes that hadn’t been there the first week of term.

You still answered when he called on you.

You still made a point no one else had, even if it was rushed and rough around the edges.

When the clock hit fifty, he capped his marker.

“Read the next two essays for Wednesday,” he said. “Bring one question that doesn’t insult both of us.”

Chairs scraped. Backpacks zipped.

“Ms. [Last Name],” he said, just as you slung your bag over your shoulder.

Your head snapped up.

“Stay a minute,” he added.

The other students flowed around you, out the door, into the hall. In under a minute, it was just the two of you and the hum of the projector.

You approached his desk like it might bite you.

“If this is about the book, I’m getting it,” you blurted, before he could speak. “I borrowed a copy from the library. I’ll have my own by the end of the week. I’m not asking for an extension or anything, I—”

He held up a hand.

“If this were about the book, I’d tell you to get it and stop wasting my time,” he said. “You’ve already done that.”

You swallowed.

“Okay,” you said slowly. “Then what did I do?”

He almost smiled at that. Almost.

“You assume this is about you doing something wrong,” he said. “Interesting.”

He let the observation hang there just long enough to make you squirm, then reached into his bag and pulled out a thin folder.

“I need an assistant,” he said. “For the rest of the term. Administrative work. Sorting papers, managing the course site, keeping track of who’s turning things in late. Occasional errands.”

You blinked.

“You…need,” you repeated, like it was a foreign word in his mouth. “From me?”

“No, from the floor lamp,” he said dryly. “Yes, from you.”

“I’m not qualified,” you said immediately.

“You’re a lit major with passing organizational skills and an unfortunate tendency to speak your mind,” he said. “Congratulations, you’re qualified.”

You stared at him.

“Why me?” you asked.

He looked at you for a long moment.

He could have said, Because I overheard you bleeding all over your porch about money and mothers and how no one picks you. Because I see too much of my worst selves in you to pretend I didn’t hear it.

He said, “Because I don’t like strangers in my space, and I already know you’re irritating. I prefer known quantities.”

Your mouth opened, closed.

“That’s—” you started. “Is this a joke?”

“I don’t make jokes this early in the week,” he said. “It’s a paid position. Department funds plus whatever I decide you’re worth not driving me insane.”

You swallowed.

“How much?” you asked, before you could stop yourself.

He named a number.

Your fingers tightened around your bag strap.

“That’s too much,” you said. “For what you described.”

He arched a brow.

“You’re arguing against money?” he asked. “That’s a choice.”

“I just don’t want to owe you,” you said quietly.

“There it is,” he murmured.

He looked down at the forms, then back at you.

“You’ll owe me work,” he said. “Hours, tasks, competence. Not your soul. I’m not interested in your soul.”

His eyes said he was lying about at least part of that.

You hesitated.

“My mom thinks asking for help means I’m failing,” you said before you could swallow the words.

“Your mother sounds exhausting,” he said, without missing a beat.

Your throat tightened.

“You don’t know her,” you said.

“I don’t need to,” he said. “I know the type. People who call support ‘spoiling.’ Who’d rather be right than useful. You’re here in spite of her, not because of her. Don’t give her credit she hasn’t earned.”

A tear you did not authorize burned at the corner of your eye.

You blinked hard, looking up so it wouldn’t fall.

“Don’t,” he said softly. “If you cry, I’ll have to pretend to be nice about this, and I don’t have the training.”

You let out a startled, watery laugh.

He set the folder on the desk between you and tapped it.

“Take it,” he said. “Look it over. If you’re not interested, tell me no. I’ll find some other idiot to alphabetize things. But if you are, and I strongly advise you to grow enough self‑interest to bring it back signed on Wednesday. You’ll start next week.”

You picked it up with careful fingers, as if it might dissolve.

“What if I suck at it?” you asked.

“Then I’ll tell you,” he said. “Loudly. And you’ll fix it. That’s how work functions.”

You nodded, numbly.

“Why are you doing this?” you asked again, softer.

He met your eyes, something sharp and unwilling in his.

“Because,” he said, “I need an assistant. And I’d rather pay you to be in my way than wait until you disappear from my class because the bursar got to you first.”

It was the closest he was capable of coming to I don’t want to watch you drown.

You looked down at the folder, then up at him.

“Okay,” you said, voice small but solid. “I’ll…bring it back.”

“Good,” he said. “In the meantime, buy the anthology.”

“I told you,” you started, “I will by the—”

He cut you off by sliding an envelope across the desk.

It was thicker than it should have been.

Your stomach dropped.

“I’m not taking your money,” you said instantly.

“It’s not a gift,” he said. “It’s an advance. On work you haven’t done yet. If you waste it, you’ll make my life harder, and I don’t let people make my life harder twice.”

You stared at the envelope like it might bite.

“It’s too much,” you said.

“That’s the point,” he said. “You’re behind, not short on coffee money.”

You felt the first tear actually escape and swipe down your cheek before you could catch it.

He watched it trace the line of your face, jaw tight.

“Don’t,” he said quietly. “You start sobbing, and I’m going to have to email HR and ask what the protocol is.”

You sniffed, scrubbed at your cheek with the back of your hand.

“Sorry,” you said.

“Stop apologizing,” he said, irritation back as a shield. “Sign the papers. Show up. Do the work. That’s all I’m buying.”

You nodded, clutching the folder and the envelope like they were the only solid things in the room.

“Thank you,” you said, because your mother would have sooner swallowed glass and someone in your life had to model basic gratitude.

He looked away, like the word made him physically uncomfortable.

“Wednesday,” he said. “Don’t be late.”

You left before you could embarrass yourself more.

Behind you, he sat down heavily, staring at the space you’d just occupied.

He’d meant to keep you at arm’s length.

You’d forgotten how fast a week could disappear when you were trying very hard not to think about someone.

Every time you walked into Kamo’s class, you told yourself you were going to focus on the board, not the scar. On the syllabus, not the hand that had once slid a cigarette between his fingers. On the seat in front of you, not the memory of his voice telling you not to “confuse” what happened on the street with what happened in his classroom.

You were failing.

It didn’t help that he was good at this.

He talked about the first few stories like he’d lived in them— picking apart a single line, making people squirm over half‑formed opinions, asking questions that felt less like “what did you think?” and more like “have you thought at all?”

You’d never been so annoyed to respect someone.

At the end of Wednesday’s class, he capped his marker and turned to the room.

“Before you flee,” he said, “there’s a short response due next week. One to two pages. Pick any passage from the first two stories, explain what you think it’s doing, and why the author chose to do it that way. Not a summary. Not a diary entry. An argument.”

He wrote the due date on the board and underlined it once.

“Treat it like a test run,” he added. “I’ll be reading these closely.”

You’d felt that last sentence aimed squarely at your head.

Now it was Sunday night, and your cursor blinked on a blank document like it was mocking you.

The problem wasn’t the assignment. You’d written a hundred of these. You knew how to talk about theme, tone, and structure. You could bullshit with the best of them as long as you’d actually read the thing.

Your problem sat in a tab on your browser: the campus bookstore’s order confirmation page, a reminder popping up every time you opened a new window.

Payment declined.

You’d bought the required texts for your other classes. Lab manuals. Access codes. A used anthology that had, frankly, seen some things. When you’d added Kamo’s book to your cart and done the math, your bank account had laughed in your face.

You’d told yourself you’d wait until your next paycheck from the café.

Then the café’s espresso machine had died, and the owner had slashed everyone’s hours until he could afford repairs.

So.

No book.

No money.

And a professor who’d already promised he was “reading closely.”

You clicked through three different “study guide” sites and a couple of blogs, trying to cobble together something that sounded like you’d read the opening story.

By midnight, you had a page and a half of vaguely intelligent nothing.

“Theme of alienation,” you typed. “Unreliable narrator.” “Ambiguous ending.” You strung the words together in sentences that almost made sense, each one a little more disconnected from the text you hadn’t seen.

You knew it was bad.

You sent it anyway.

You told yourself you’d fix it when you had the book. This was just to show you were trying.

You hit submit and closed your laptop like you’d just shoved a body under the floorboards.

He always started with the easy ones.

Choso sat in his campus office Monday afternoon, the building’s ancient radiator clanging half‑heartedly behind him, a mug of coffee cooling by his elbow as he clicked through the online submissions.

First assignments were diagnostic. You weren’t supposed to learn anything from them except who was hopeless and who had been lying about their major.

He’d decided, in a rare fit of generosity, to treat this one like a completion grade. Show up, write something coherent, get credit. He could be cruel later, when they knew what he expected.

Halfway down the list of names, your file appeared.

He caught himself sitting up straighter.

Pathetic.

He clicked.

Your name sat at the top of the page, neat and familiar now. He’d seen it on his roster, on his attendance sheet, on the syllabus he’d handed you in front of thirty other people. It still did something absurd to his blood pressure.

The good feeling lasted three sentences.

You wrote like someone assembling furniture without the instructions—pieces that should have fit together left floating in space, key parts missing, everything wobbly.

You mentioned none of the details that anchored the story. You misidentified the narrator’s relationship to the events. You used phrases like “relatable” and “very emotional” in ways that made his teeth hurt.

He’d seen lazy work before. This wasn’t that, exactly. Lazy implied you’d read and chosen not to engage.

This smelled like you hadn’t opened the book at all.

He imagined you the night before, hunched over your laptop in that stupid oversized T‑shirt, clicking through free summaries while your roommates shouted about shots down the hall. He imagined the cursor blinking while you tried to remember whatever your high school teacher had said about motifs.

Heat crept up the back of his neck.

Of course, he thought bitterly. Of course the first piece of writing he’d been morbidly curious to see from you turned out to be nothing.

He scrolled to the bottom of the document and sat there for a moment, watching the little page number arrow blink.

He could give you the pity points. Seventy, maybe. Enough that you’d scrape by, tell yourself you could try harder next time.

Or he could tell you the truth.

His fingers moved before the argument finished.

0.

It glared up at him from the gradebook, small and red and cleaner than any compromise.

He hesitated over the comment box. He could write a paragraph breaking down why your work was useless. He’d done it before. He was good at it. It felt like something.

He didn’t want to do it in public, on a screen you’d read half awake in bed.

Instead, he opened his email.

The message was short.

Please come to my office hours tomorrow. – Dr. Kamo

He read it twice, decided anything more would be unnecessary, and hit send.

For a moment, his cursor hovered over your name in the roster. He wondered where you were—library, house, some disgusting couch across the street.

He minimized the window before he could tab over to his front door camera feed like a lunatic.

You woke up to thirst, a headache, and a red circle.

Canvas loaded slowly on your phone, the campus wifi staggering under the weight of everyone else’s first‑week panic. When it finally did, your stomach dropped.

Assignment 1: Reading Response Score: 0/10

Below the grade, the little mail icon glowed.

You clicked.

Please come to my office hours tomorrow. – Dr. Kamo

No explanation. No “let’s talk about it.” Just a summon.

You stared at the screen until the words blurred.

Nobara yelled something from the hallway about someone stealing her eyeliner. Maki told her to buy her own. Your house was already moving, the day pulling you forward.

It didn’t feel entirely real until you were standing in front of his office door, reading his name on the little plaque on the wall.

C. KAMO – ENGLISH

The building was older than the others on this side of campus, all linoleum and humming fluorescent lights and bulletin boards with curling flyers. The hallway smelled faintly like stale coffee and old paper.

You checked your screenshot of the syllabus again, even though his name and room number were already burned into your brain.

Your palms were sweating.

You wiped them on your jeans and knocked.

“Yes,” came the answer, muffled through the door. Same voice. Same drawl.

“It’s—” You caught yourself before saying his first name like a complete maniac. “Um. It’s me. From 163.”

There was a rustle of paper, the scrape of a chair. The doorknob turned.

He opened the door halfway, filling the frame.

It was disorienting, seeing him in a space that wasn’t your street or his classroom. The office was small, the ceiling low enough that he seemed too big for it.

He looked…casual, for him. No tie, just a dark shirt rolled to his forearms, the top button undone. His hair was tied back. His glasses were on. They made him look softer and sharper at the same time.

His eyes swept over you once, quick and automatic, taking in your T‑shirt, your jeans, the messy ponytail you’d shoved your hair into.

“Come in,” he said.

You stepped past him, trying very hard not to brush his arm and failing. The contact was minimal. Your brain still shorted out for half a second.

The office was a strange mix of cozy and impersonal. Bookshelves lined one wall, full enough that some volumes were stacked horizontally on top of the vertical rows. A plant you couldn’t identify drooped in the corner. His desk took up most of the opposite wall— solid wood, laptop open, a stack of papers to one side, a mug with cold coffee rings on its coaster.

He gestured at the chair across from him.

You sat, setting your bag on the floor, trying to arrange your knees so you didn’t look as nervous as you felt.

He didn’t sit right away. He leaned back against the edge of the desk, arms crossed, looking down at you.

“Why do you think I asked you to come by?” he asked.

You fiddled with the hem of your sleeve. “My assignment?” you said. It came out thin.

“Your assignment,” he agreed.

He pushed off the desk and sat in his own chair, folding his hands together on the blotter in front of him. The position made him look more official. It also put a strip of desk between you that you weren’t entirely sure you liked.

“What did you think of it?” he asked.

You blinked. “Of…what I wrote?”

“Of your work,” he said. “Yes.”

“It was…” You swallowed. “Not my best.”

His mouth ticked, almost a smile, almost a wince.

“That’s generous,” he said. “It was very bad.”

Heat rushed to your face.

You forced a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “Okay,” you said. “Honesty. Cool.”

“I’m not saying that to be cruel,” he said. “I’m saying it because you’re an English major and I assume you know the difference between something you can stand by and something you would be embarrassed to put your name on.”

You didn’t look at your hands, but you wanted to.

“I was trying,” you said, and you hated how defensive it sounded.

“If that was trying,” he said mildly, “we have a problem.”

Silence pooled between you. The radiator popped in the corner.

“You didn’t read it,” he said at last. It wasn’t a question.

You opened your mouth to deny it. Closed it again.

“I couldn’t,” you said. “I don’t have the book yet.”

He watched you for a moment, thumb rubbing slowly over the side of his index finger.

“You didn’t order it in time?” he asked. “Or you didn’t order it at all?”

“I tried,” you said. “The payment didn’t go through.”

He didn’t say anything. The single blink felt like judgment.

You took a breath.

“I had to pick,” you said, words tumbling faster now that the dam had cracked. “There were lab manuals and an access code and a stupid fifty‑dollar thing for a class I don’t even want, and I get paid on Fridays and my hours— I thought I’d have time before you wanted us to..."

You stopped yourself before you said, “impress you.”

“—before you assigned anything that needed it,” you finished lamely.

“So your solution,” he said, “was to turn in three paragraphs you scraped off the internet and hope I wouldn’t notice.”

You winced. “I wasn’t scraping,” you said. “I mean, I didn’t copy. I just…guessed.”

“That is not better,” he said.

You sank back in your chair.

“I figured something would be better than nothing,” you muttered.

“It isn’t,” he said.

He let that sit until you wanted to slide under the desk and live there.

“I gave you a zero,” he said.

“I saw,” you said quietly.

“You’ll survive it,” he added. “It’s ten points. It looks uglier than it is. What bothers me is not the number. It’s the attitude.”

You flared.

“It’s not an attitude,” you said. “I’m not blowing off your class to party. I just literally didn’t have—”

“Be very careful with that sentence,” he cut in. “You don’t know what I do and don’t see.”

You bit your tongue.

He watched the realization land that he’d heard more of your life through his window than you’d recalled.

He exhaled through his nose, some of the edge leaving his shoulders.

“Look,” he said, voice shifting. “I’m not interested in punishing you for being broke. I am interested in whether you’re capable of doing the work when you have what you need.”

He tapped the desk once, a small, decisive sound.

“When you get the book, rewrite the response,” he said. “Actually read the story. Pick a passage. Make an argument. If it’s competent, I’ll replace the zero.”

You stared.

“Really?” you asked.

He shrugged once, as if it cost him nothing.

“I’d rather grade something you’ve thought about than whatever that was,” he said. “Consider this your free mistake. You don’t get another one.”

Something in your chest loosened.

“I will,” you said. “Do better.”

The phrase came out before you could stop it. His eyes flicked up to yours at the wording.

You felt your face heat. “I mean, I’ll— actually try,” you corrected.

He hummed, noncommittal.

“Do you have any income at all?” he asked, referring back to the hours you’d mentioned. He didn’t like the possibility that you were keeping something from him.

You hesitated. You could lie. Say yes. Say you’d figure it out. You didn’t want his pity. You also didn’t want to admit how little was sitting in your checking account.

“Sometimes,” you said. “I’m picking up shifts where I can. I’ll get it.”

He watched you for another long beat, something unreadable moving behind his eyes.

“Fine,” he said. “Make sure you do. I won’t accept ‘I guessed’ again.”

You nodded, throat tight.

“Thank you,” you said. It felt inadequate. “For…letting me redo it.”

“It’s not a favor,” he said, a little too quickly. “It’s an exercise. I need to know whether you’re lazy or if this was a logistical problem.”

“And if it was laziness?” you asked.

“Then I’d tell you to drop,” he said.

You flinched.

He didn’t apologize.

“I have another student coming in ten minutes,” he said, glancing at the clock. “You should go.”

You stood, hands clumsy on your bag strap.

“I’ll get the book,” you said. “And I’ll fix it.”

“Good,” he said.

You hovered a second too long at the door.

“I really am sorry,” you said. “I know it was…bad.”

Something complicated flickered across his face—annoyance, maybe, or something softer trying to get through.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Just don’t waste my time.”

You nodded, swallowed, and fled.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that you didn’t have the book. He’d been exactly where you were once— broke, trying to choose between food and paperbacks, hoping professors wouldn’t notice when he faked his way through early readings.

He’d turned out fine, hadn’t he?

He pulled your assignment back up on his screen.

On paper, your excuses didn’t matter. It was still a bad response. Zero was still the right grade. He’d meant what he’d said about not wanting to be lied to.

But the image of you in his office, wrinkled T‑shirt, smudged eyeliner, fingers worrying the hem of your jeans, admitting you couldn’t afford his syllabus— pressed against the narrative he’d been building of you in his head.

Predatory, he’d thought at first. Dangerous. The kind of girl who dragged trouble everywhere she went.

You hadn’t seemed dangerous sitting in that chair. You’d seemed…young.

He hated that it made it worse.

He minimized the assignment and opened the class roster again, clicking on your name almost against his will.

Year. Major. Completed courses. GPA.

You weren’t coasting. You weren’t failing your other classes. You were doing fine. Better than fine, in some cases.

You just didn’t have the book.

He sat there, staring at the little “required materials” line on his own syllabus in the corner of the screen.

The price at the bookstore flashed through his memory. One copy of the anthology. Then the one for his other course. Then whatever else your other professors had decided was essential without considering whether anyone could afford it.

He could fix it in two minutes.

He could walk to the bookstore between classes, buy a copy, leave it in a bag with your name on it at the department office. Or drop it in your mailbox like a coward in the dark. You’d never know which line on his credit card statement it had been.

It would be easy.

It would also be one more thing binding you together that shouldn’t exist.

He closed the window before the thought could settle into a decision.

He told himself you’d find a way on your own. Borrow from a classmate. Pick up a shift. Walk to the library and fight three other students for the reserve copy.

He told himself that helping you would only make everything worse.

He didn’t entirely believe either version.

Down the hall, someone laughed. The radiator hissed. The office clock ticked.

He reached for the next assignment in the queue, someone else’s bland two pages about “relatable characters,” and forced his attention onto it.

You weren’t his problem to solve.

Yet somehow you already were anyway.

You did what you always did when someone drew a line and said jump: you told yourself you would.

Two days later, when your tiny paycheck finally hit, you stood in the bookstore aisle and bought the stupid anthology that had started all this, watching the total eat the last of your balance.

That night, sometime after one in the morning, you actually read the story. No tabs, no summaries, no cheats— just you and the text and a highlighter that kept drying out.

You opened a new document and rewrote the response from scratch, hands cramping, eyes burning. By the time you finished, it was twice as long and meaner, in a way that felt more like you than anything you’d turned in all week.

You hovered over the “attach file” button for a full minute before you added it to an email addressed to him.

If it’s not too late to fix it, you typed, then immediately hated yourself. You hit send anyway and slammed the laptop shut.

The email hit his inbox at 1:53 a.m.

By the time he saw it, sometime after nine, the coffee in his mug had already gone lukewarm. He clicked your name, expecting an excuse, maybe a screenshot of a declined payment or a half‑hearted promise.

Instead, there was a clean attachment and six words in the body:

If it’s not too late to fix it.

He opened the file.

This time, you’d actually read the story. It showed. The sentences were still rough around the edges, a little too breathless in places, but the bones were there: specific details, a real argument, a line or two he almost wished he’d written himself.

It took him less than thirty seconds to pull up the gradebook, change the 0 to full credit, and hit “save.”

Returned. Much better, he typed back, then deleted three other things he almost said and sent it as is.

He turned the fan on. The office was suddenly too warm.

Choso sat back, watching the handle for a second like he expected it to turn again.

You really didn’t want to start senior year trying not to throw up in a classroom.

You’d done everything right last night—picked out an outfit, packed your bag, set three alarms. You’d even printed your schedule and taped it to your wall like a responsible person.

You just hadn’t read the line that mattered.

ENGL 163 – Critical Approaches to Modern Literature. Mon/Wed/Fri, 9:00–9:50. Building: Huxley. Room: 204. Instructor: (blank, in your memory, because you’d skimmed)

You found the room easily enough. It looked like every other lit classroom: too bright overhead lights, whiteboard at the front, desks with those insultingly small tablet arms. A few people were already there. Laptops open, pens lined up, headphones half‑in while they waited.

You took a middle‑row seat, dropped your tote at your feet, and dragged the stapled packet on your desk toward you.

Your eyes tracked the familiar pattern of course title, requirements, and office hours without fully engaging. You were too busy thinking about the brick house at the end of your street, about the man with the scar and the cigarettes and the way his hand had closed on the blind cord last night.

You didn’t get to the instructor line.

The door at the front of the room opened.

Whatever you were thinking about fell straight out of your head.

He walked in like he’d been doing this his whole life. Button‑down shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, dark slacks. Hair pulled back neater than you’d seen it, no stray pieces falling into his face. No cigarette, no porch, no warm streetlamp. Just fluorescent light and the faint squeak of his shoes on linoleum.

The scar under his eye looked starker inside. The eyes looked the same.

He set a stack of papers and a book on the desk, uncapped a marker with a practiced flick of his thumb, and turned to the board.

You watched his hand move.

K A M O, he wrote in dark strokes. Then, smaller underneath: Dr. Kamo.

Your stomach dropped like you’d stepped off a ledge.

Of course, you’d never asked his name. On the porch, he had just been the pissed‑off neighbor with the good arms and the terrible patience. You hadn’t needed more than that.

Now his name was on the board.

He turned back to the room.

His gaze moved across the rows, slow, taking people in. You could feel it coming down the line. You had exactly one second of hope that maybe he’d skim right past you.

Then his eyes hit your row.

They stopped.

You saw it then. The porch, the curb, your near‑fall flash across his face for a heartbeat. Recognition, sharp and hot. His fingers tightened around the marker.

Then it was gone. His expression went smooth and bored, as if you’d never met.

“Good morning,” he said.

The voice was the same. It sounded worse in here.

“I’m Dr. Kamo. If you’re in the wrong room, now’s the time to leave.”

No one moved.

He let the silence go just long enough that it felt pointed.

“ENGL 163 is a requirement for Literature majors and an elective for a few of you who wanted more work on purpose,” he said. “It’s a capstone. You fail it, you delay your graduation. If that sentence made your stomach hurt, you’re paying attention.”

It did. You were.

He began to walk them through the sheet in your hand.

“Attendance,” he said. “If you’re sick, email me. If your grandmother dies three times in one semester, withdraw and re‑enroll when your family’s finished cloning themselves.”

A few people laughed. He didn’t smile.

“Weekly responses,” he went on. “A midterm essay. A final paper. A group project no one will enjoy, including me. Laptops are fine. Phones are not— if your screen lights up during discussion, I reserve the right to share whatever’s on it with the room.”

Uneasy laughter rippled again.

You finally looked down at the header of your packet.

ENGL 163 – Critical Approaches to Modern Literature. Instructor: Dr. Choso Kamo. Office: Brick Hall, 204. Office hours: Mon/Wed 11–1.

Brick Hall. Brick house. Same brick, different problem.

“Why are you here?” he asked suddenly.

Your head snapped up.

He’d moved to sit on the edge of the desk, arms folded, ankle hooked over his knee. His eyes swept the room again.

“This isn’t a koan,” he said. “If you’re here because the course is required, say that. If you’re here because you like the texts, say that. If you thought this would be easy, now’s a good time to reconsider your life choices.”

A few polite huffs of laughter. He ignored them.

He pointed at the front row. “You.”

The girl with the perfect bun and the three highlighters straightened. “I’m an English major,” she said. “My advisor said this class would be useful for grad school.”

“Do you like reading,” he asked, “or do you just like the idea of yourself as someone who reads?”

She blinked. “I…like reading.”

“Good,” he said. “That’ll make the pain more meaningful.”

His gaze moved on. Second row. Third. He lifted his hand again, almost lazily.

“You,” he said.

It took you a full second to realize he meant you.

“Me?” you croaked.

His eyebrow twitched. “Unless someone’s sitting in your lap,” he said. “Yes. Why are you here?”

Because the registrar hates me. Because the housing lottery is cursed. Because I did something unspeakable in a past life.

“Requirement,” you said. “It’s on my degree audit.”

“What’s your focus?” he asked.

“Modern lit,” you said. “And theory.”

Something flickered, fast— interest, irritation, both.

“So you’re here by design, not accident,” he said. “Excellent. It’ll be harder to scare you off.”

You had no idea if that was supposed to be reassuring.

He left you alone after that. He moved through the rest of the faces, taking answers, tossing back follow‑ups that were half‑helpful, half‑knife.

For the next forty minutes, he did exactly what he was supposed to do: defined “close reading,” made people unpack lines they’d clearly skimmed, wrote key terms on the board in quick, decisive strokes.

He didn’t look your way again.

He didn’t have to. You could feel him in your peripheral vision like a pulled muscle.

When he finally capped his marker and said, “That’s enough for today,” the room exhaled.

“Read the first two stories in your packet,” he added over the scrape of chairs. “Come in next time with something to say that isn’t ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it.’ That’s not analysis; that’s Yelp.”

Backpacks zipped. People funneled toward the door.

You slid your notebook into your bag with hands that weren’t as steady as you wanted them to be. You could leave. You could go back to your house and pretend you’d imagined the whole thing.

“Ms. [Last Name],” he said.

You froze.

“Stay a moment.”

Your name in his mouth sounded wrong with the “Ms.” in front. Like he’d put it in a suit and tie it didn’t fit.

A few students glanced back out of reflex, saw you, saw him, and then kept going. In under a minute the room was empty except for the two of you and the distant hum of a vent.

He didn’t come to you.

He stayed where he was, hip propped against the desk, arms loosely folded, watching you close the distance.

Up close, the lights were brutal. They carved out the hollow under his cheekbones, made the shadows under his eyes look more pronounced. The faint smell of dry‑erase and coffee clung to him.

“You didn’t mention you work here,” you said, because your brain was clearly committed to self‑sabotage.

His mouth twitched, not kindly.

“You didn’t mention you live on my street,” he said.

Fair.

You stopped a couple of feet away, fingers knotted in your bag strap.

“If this is…weird,” you said, “I can try to switch. I didn’t know, when I signed up, and I’m sure there are other sections and I—”

“There aren’t,” he said.

You blinked. “I— what?”

“This is the only section of 163 that fits your requirements and doesn’t overlap with your other classes,” he said. “You’ve already discovered that, or you’d have dropped by now.”

Heat crawled up the back of your neck.

“You checked my schedule?” you asked.

“I checked my roster,” he said. “I don’t like surprises.”

The way he said it made it sound like you were one he particularly resented.

“I’m not going to ask you to drop,” he went on. “That would involve emails and forms and meetings with people I have worked very hard to avoid. I moved off‑campus for a reason.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” you said, more defensive than you meant to.

“Most things aren’t,” he said. “That doesn’t make them less annoying.”

Your fingers dug harder into the strap.

“Look,” you said. “I’m not going to…drag my house into your job. I know how to separate—”

He lifted a hand. You shut up.

“What you do on that street is your problem,” he said quietly. “What you do in this room is mine. Don’t confuse the two.”

You bristled. “You don’t even know me,” you said. “You heard one party.”

His eyes sharpened.

“I heard a lot of parties,” he said. “Your house. The one next to it. The entire row. I watched you nearly break your neck because you weren’t watching your feet.” A beat. “Forgive me if my confidence in your judgment is limited.”

Heat flooded your face.

“That was one time,” you said. It sounded weak even to you.

“You say that like it helps.”

He let out a breath, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

“I don’t care who you’re screaming at or falling off of on a Saturday,” he said. “I care whether you show up here on time, sober, and capable of paying attention. If you can manage that, we won’t have a problem.”

“You’re not…going to treat me differently?” you asked. “Because we’re neighbors?”

“If you’re asking whether I’m going to give you extra help because you live across the street, no,” he said. “If you’re asking whether I’m going to flunk you out of spite because your friends are loud, also no. I don’t have the energy for that level of pettiness.”

“Then why call me up here?” you pressed.

He looked at you for a long moment, like he was trying to decide how much of his actual thought process you deserved.

“Because,” he said finally, “I wanted to make sure you understood what you were walking into.”

The words hit heavier than they should have. You weren’t sure if he meant the class, or him, or all of it.

You swallowed.

“I get it,” you said, even though you weren’t sure you did.

“Good,” he said. “Then we’re done.”

You hovered, nerves buzzing.

“If I…make it weird,” you said, “you can tell me.”

“It’s already weird,” he said. “That’s not your fault. Just don’t make it my problem.”

You nodded, face burning.

“Okay,” you said. “I’ll…see you Wednesday.”

“You will,” he said.

You turned and walked out, feeling his gaze on your back all the way to the door.

You didn’t trip on the threshold.

You weren’t sure if that made things better or worse.

He waited until the door clicked shut before he let himself move.

The room felt bigger without you in it. Emptier in a way that irritated him.

Choso looked down at the attendance sheet in his hand. A list of names, tidy and black.

He found yours immediately.

He’d known you were on the roster before he ever saw you in the doorway. The system had gone live two weeks ago. He’d opened it out of habit, prepared to forget half the list by October, and there it had been: your first name, your last name, your ID number.

He wouldn’t have made the connection if the package on your porch last month hadn’t had the same last name in big letters. If your friends didn’t yell your first name every time you wandered into their line of sight.

It had taken him about three seconds to be sure.

You, on the other hand, clearly hadn’t bothered to read the line on the syllabus with his name on it. Watching your face when he wrote KAMO on the board had been almost entertaining.

Almost.

On paper, you were exactly the type he was supposed to want.

Senior. Literature major. Modern focus. Pre‑reqs done. GPA solid. A neat column of A‑ and B‑range grades in classes half the department used as weed‑outs.

He flipped the sheet to your transcript on his laptop—clicked, scanned, absorbed.

You weren’t a disaster. You turned things in on time. You’d passed theory with someone who still made grown men cry in office hours.

You were, academically, unremarkably good.

On his street, you were a problem.

He shut the laptop harder than necessary.

It would have been easier if you were stupid.

If you’d been failing, if you’d had a trail of withdrawals and academic warnings, he could have filed you under “inevitable casualty” and gone on with his life. If you’d been nothing but glitter and noise and empty flirting on the curb, he could have felt older, above it.

Instead, you were competent and reckless and parked directly across from the one place he’d managed to make quiet.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a second.

He’d meant to drop you.

The thought had been immediate the night he’d opened the roster, cursor hovering over your name. A simple administrative act: remove one student, let the system spit you out onto a waitlist for someone else’s section. You’d be annoyed. You’d email an advisor. You’d still graduate.

He’d opened the portal three separate times over the weekend, finger poised over the “withdraw” option.

He hadn’t pressed it.

He told himself it was because he didn’t want to hand any more favors to the department. He told himself it was because he needed bodies in the room.

He knew better.

He’d wanted to see what you did when you realized.

He’d wanted to see what you’d do now that you knew.

Through the narrow band of window at the side of the room, he could see a sliver of the quad and, beyond it, the top of the Greek Row banners. If he angled his chair, he could catch the corner of your house in the distance.

He shouldn’t know that.

He still turned his head.

After a minute, he spotted you: sweatshirt with your letters, coffee clutched in one hand, tote strap digging into your shoulder. Head down. No friends around you this time, no chorus, just your small shape moving briskly toward the path back to your side of campus.

You stepped off the curb without looking at his building.

You didn’t wobble.

So she can walk, he thought.

Of course you could. The only time you forgot how was when his eyes were on you.

He wasn’t sure if that made him feel powerful or sick.

Probably both.

He watched you until you disappeared behind the brick and banners.

He should have never let you stay on his roster.

You had sworn you were going to be boring this year.

Not boring boring. Just…less likely to end up throwing up in a stranger’s plant. A dignified kind of boring.

That resolve lasted until Friday night.

You were lying starfished on your new bed in an enormous T‑shirt, phone on your chest, half listening to the house hum around you. Someone down the hall had their speaker up, bass rattling faintly through the old walls. Laughter drifted up the staircase, doors banged, and a toilet flushed.

Your room was finally mostly unpacked. Your shelves sagged with books. Your laundry basket was half full of clothes you’d folded, then lost the will to live before putting them away.

You'd earned the right to be horizontal.

“Rise and shine.” Your door flew open. Nobara was sporting a grin. “We’re going out.”

You groaned into your pillow. “I’m dead. Go on without me. Tell my story.”

The mattress dipped as she sat on the edge, fingers already combing through your hair like she owned it. “You said,” she reminded you, “and I quote, ‘if I get weird and hermit‑y the first week, drag me.’ I am honoring your wishes, you ungrateful hag.”

Maki leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, glasses low on her nose. “Wake up,” she said flatly. “You made me promise.”

“I changed my mind,” you mumbled. “New semester, new me. She doesn’t go outside.”

“New semester, same lying bitch,” Nobara said cheerfully. She hopped off the bed and beelined straight for your closet. “Cursed Kings are throwing the first big party of the semester, half the house is already drunk, and you’re not making me show up without my favorite emotional support whore.”

“Stop harassing the roommate,” Maki said.

“It’s not harassment if she likes it,” Nobara said.

“I don’t,” you protested weakly.

All three of you knew you did.

Nobara rifled through your hangers with ruthless efficiency. “First weekend back,” she said. “We have a reputation to uphold.”

“We’ve been here two days,” you said. “What reputation.”

“The one where we’re hot and fun and don’t die on the curb,” she said, yanking out a black skirt and a tiny top with malicious glee. “Here. Put this on.”

You sat up, squinting at the outfit. “That’s not a shirt,” you said. “That’s a suggestion.”

“It’s Greek Row, not Sunday school,” she said, dropping everything in your lap. “Ten minutes. Then I start dressing you myself, and you know my taste is slut or death.”

Maki stepped into the room long enough to take your phone away before you could cling to it. “If you stay,” she said, “you’re going to text me every fifteen minutes like, ‘I miss you guys, don't die tonight, please don't get arrested,’ and it’ll be unbearable. Just come be weird in public.”

The skirt sat high on your waist, snug around your hips. The top dipped just enough that you had to keep reminding yourself not to hunch your shoulders. Nobara did your eyeliner with the focus of a brain surgeon, then slicked gloss over your lips.

“There,” she said. “Main character.”

“In a Tubi movie,” you said.

Maki’s mouth twitched. “If Gojo touches you wrong, I’m breaking his fingers,” she said.

“That’s foreplay to him,” Nobara said.

You laughed in spite of yourself.

As Nobara tugged you toward the door, you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror— eyes sharp with winged liner, hair shiny, mouth wet and bright. For a second, you didn’t look like the girl who’d almost broken her tailbone on the sidewalk.

You looked like a girl parties were for.

You wondered, briefly, horribly, if the man in the brick house would see you leave.

You told your brain to shut up and followed your sorority sisters downstairs.

The night air hit your skin like a blessing and a threat.

Your sorority porch buzzed with life—girls in tiny dresses and big hoodies, music thumping from inside, someone curled up on the swing already tipsy and declaring their everlasting love for everyone.

Across the street, the Cursed Kings’ house was fully awake.

Every string light on their porch was blazing. The sheet banner, with its letters drooping like it had given up trying to impress anyone. Bodies clustered on the steps, red solo cups in every hand. The bass was loud enough that you could feel it in your knees.

At the far end of the row, the brick house sat like a punctuation mark. Porch light off, only one upstairs window glowing.

You glanced at it once, quick, like touching a hot stove. No movement. No silhouette. For all you knew, he was in that lit room, back to the window, his attention on anything but this street.

You felt stupid for caring.

“Head up, tits out,” Nobara said, looping her arm through yours. “You look like you’re about to confess a crime or cry.”

“Those are both on the table,” you said.

“Save it for after the hangover,” she said. “Tonight is for bad choices and worse drinks.”

Maki took your other arm as you hit the bottom step. “Watch the curb,” she warned.

You watched it like it might sprout teeth. Your ankle still wobbled when you stepped off, but no one clapped this time. You crossed the street intact, up the Kings’ porch steps, and into the mouth of the party.

It swallowed you whole.

Inside, the heat was instant and sticky. The air smelled like spilled beer, sweat, something fruity that did not exist in nature, and a faint undercurrent of weed.

The living room had been gutted for battle—couch shoved back, coffee table shoved aside, a scratched folding table in the center covered in red cups and beer cans. The floor clung slightly to your sandals.

“Home,” Nobara said fondly.

“Biohazard,” Maki said.

Someone pressed a drink into your free hand. The liquid inside your cup was neon pink.

“What is this?” you asked.

“Kings’ Punch,” Nobara said. “Don’t ask what’s in it.”

“It’s sugar and malice,” Maki said.

You took a cautious sip. It tasted like melted popsicle and rubbing alcohol.

“This is going to kill me,” you said.

“That’s the spirit,” Nobara replied, clinking her cup against yours.

“New girls!”

The shout cut through the music like a fire alarm. A head of white hair popped up over the crowd, then the rest of Gojo followed as he climbed onto a dining chair, then the table, then somehow onto the kitchen counter without dying.

He spotted you and lit up.

“There they are,” he crowed. “Street royalty!”

You wanted to be annoyed. It was hard when he looked so delighted.

He jumped down with absurd grace and threaded his way to you, dodging elbows and spilled drinks like he’d been born in this house.

“Curb girl,” he said, planting himself in front of you. “You came. You’re not bleeding. You’re almost a functioning adult.”

“Thank you so much,” you smiled. “What a generous review.”

He looked you over blatantly, but not grossly, more like he was confirming some internal list. His grin tilted. “Look at you,” he said. “Ten out of ten, I approve of this outfit for my street aesthetic.”

“I dressed myself,” you said.

“Lies,” Nobara sang.

Gojo slung an arm over Nobara’s shoulders and, without asking, hooked a finger into your elbow, pulling you closer so he could talk over the music.

“Rule one,” he said. “If I offer you a shot, you say no.”

“You offer people shots constantly,” you pointed out.

“Exactly,” he said. “Protect yourselves.”

Maki snorted. “At least he’s self‑aware.”

The floor shook under your feet as people jumped in unison to some song. Lights strobed. Someone you vaguely recognized from Greek life screamed your sorority letters in your face. You smiled back on autopilot.

As the night thickened, so did the blur.

You played a drinking game you didn’t understand, lost gloriously, and ended up with a sticker that said LOSER on your forehead for ten minutes before Nobara peeled it off and stuck it to Gojo instead.

Megumi oscillated at the edges of your vision, always close enough to count as present, but never loud enough to be the problem. He showed up with water when your voice got rough. He took your phone when you nearly dropped it on the sticky floor.

Every time someone jostled you too hard, there was suddenly a hand hovering at the small of your back, ready to steady you.

Gojo was worse about touching. Not nasty, just consistent. His arm found your shoulders. His hand landed on your waist when he dragged you away from a crowd. He tugged on your wrist to pull you into a human chain that snaked around the living room, chanting something obscene to the beat.

You let him. You laughed. You told yourself it was normal.

At some point, you ended up pinned between Gojo and the wall near the kitchen doorway, the crowd pushing around you like water around a rock. The music had changed to something with heavy bass and slow, the kind of song people grind to in music videos.

Gojo leaned down so his mouth was near your ear.

“You good?” he shouted.

“Yeah,” you yelled back. “I think my organs are dissolving, but in a fun way.”

He laughed, breath warm against your skin. When he pulled back, his face was close enough that you could see every fleck of blue in his eyes.

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

You knew what was coming. There was a half‑second where you could have ducked, turned, pretended you hadn’t seen.

You didn’t.

“Can I?” he asked, surprisingly careful.

You hesitated just long enough to remember that you had joined a sorority, moved into a house across from this one, and spent an entire summer thinking about how you’d wasted last year being “responsible” while everyone else collected stories.

“Yeah,” you said.

He closed the distance.

His mouth landed on yours with the same energy he brought to everything else. It was big, showy, and a little rough. His hand slid from your shoulder to your jaw, thumb splayed along your cheek as he tilted your head just so.

He tasted like beer, fake fruit, and the ghost of some minty vape flavor. He kissed like he thought he was good at it and had never been told otherwise. His teeth scraped your bottom lip, and he laughed into your mouth when you made a surprised sound.

Someone nearby whooped. Nobara’s giggle sparked over the music like static.

You let it happen. You let him press you into the wall, let his fingers curl against your throat, careful but not careful enough. You kissed him back, because why not? Because this was what this house was for. Because kissing a hot idiot at a party was easier than thinking about the quiet man in the brick house.

It was…fine. Fun even. The kind of kiss that burned hot and then evaporated, only to be a blurry story later: "Remember when you made out with Gojo in the kitchen, and Maki threatened to call the cops.”

When he pulled back, he looked obnoxiously satisfied.

“Ten out of ten,” he declared. “You’re officially a Cursed Kings success story.”

“Work on your landing,” you said, touching your lip to check for blood. “You almost took my mouth off.”

“Rude,” he rubbed your shoulder as if to say sorry. “I am a delight.”

Megumi appeared at your side like clockwork. “You done?” he asked Gojo.

“For now,” Gojo said. He squeezed your jaw once, thumb brushing the little smear of gloss he’d left behind, then released you. “Don’t fall in love with me, curb girl. I’m emotionally unavailable and devastatingly attractive.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’ll try to survive.”

He melted back into the party. Megumi watched him go, then looked at you.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you said. “It’s a party. People kiss people. It’s in the student handbook.”

“Pretty sure it’s not,” he said.

His eyes flicked to your mouth, and away so fast you almost missed it.

You downed the rest of your drink.

By the time your feet started screaming, the party had gone from fun to completely overstimulating

The living room was packed. The floor had reached a new level of stickiness. Nobara had formed a small cult in the kitchen based around doing shots out of gummy bears. Maki was in a corner having what looked like a surprisingly intense conversation about climate policy with a guy in a tank top.

Your head buzzed. Your throat felt raw. You’d laughed so much your cheeks hurt.

You could push through. Take another drink, dance until the room blurred further, let the night smear in your memory the way everyone said college nights should.

Instead, when Megumi appeared at your elbow again, you heard yourself say, “I think I’m done.”

He studied you for a second. “Home?” he asked.

You nodded. “Before I fuse with this floor.”

He didn’t argue. Just took your empty cup, set it on a bookshelf, and said, “I’ll walk you.”

“You really don’t have to,” you said automatically.

“You’re the girl who declared war on a curb sober,” he said. “I’m not risking tipsy.”

You rolled your eyes, but your body had already decided you were leaving. “Fine,” you said. “Escort me, noble gentleman.”

You grabbed Nobara on the way out, yelled something into her ear about leaving. She screamed “traitor” at you, kissed your cheek, and promised to text you “updates.” Maki waved you off with a barked, “If a man bothers you, stab him and then call.”

The porch air felt like relief.

The music muffled as the door swung shut behind you, though the bass still vibrated under your feet. The string lights washed everything in that forgiving golden glow that made even beer stains look romantic.

You descended the porch steps carefully, focusing on each board. Megumi stuck close, ready to grab you if you took flight.

The street had thinned out. A few people smoked on the sidewalk, their laughter softer. Your sorority porch across the way hummed; two of your sisters sat on the steps, shoes off, heads tipped together.

The brick house’s porch light was on.

There was a guy standing under it.

He was half in the shadows at first, back against the doorframe, cigarette between two fingers. When he lifted his head at the sound of your shoes on the steps, the light caught the scar across his nose, the sharp line of his jaw.

You stopped short.

“Great,” you muttered. “Witness to my little walk of shame. Perfect.”

Megumi snorted quietly. “Think of it as community engagement,” he said.

You hit the edge of the lawn and stepped down into the street.

You knew he’d seen you already, earlier in the day, cardboard box in your arms and the whole world tilting. This felt worse, somehow. Like you were more exposed now, even fully dressed, because there was no excuse. No heavy box. No practical reason for being out here besides wanting to be.

As you and Megumi moved into his porch light, he straightened away from the doorframe.

“Evening,” he said.

His voice was low, a little rough, like he didn’t use it much.

“Hi,” you said, trying to sound like a normal person and not someone whose heart had just bounced off her ribs.

“Sorry about the noise,” Megumi said automatically. “We tried to keep the worst of it indoors.”

Choso’s gaze flicked over him once, impersonal, then returned to you. “You failed,” he said. “But I’ve heard worse.”

Up close, he looked even more tired than earlier. Not just “long day” tired bone‑deep, wired, the kind of exhaustion that came from too many essays and not enough silence.

He looked at you properly then.

You felt it.

His eyes dragged down your bare legs, taking in the faint flush on your knees, the scuffs on your shins. Over the line of your skirt, the way it hugged your hips. Up the curve of your waist to where your top dipped, the small band of exposed skin at your chest.

He paused there for a fraction of a second too long. Your skin prickled.

His gaze moved to your mouth last.

You knew the lipstick was smeared. You knew the gloss was half gone, probably smudged at one corner where Gojo’s teeth had caught your lip. You’d seen it in the bathroom mirror when you’d ducked in to pee: your own reflection, flushed and a little wild, not quite the person you recognized from class.

You watched him register that, watched something in his jaw tighten.

“You should watch the curb,” he said. “Again.”

You bristled automatically. “I’m fine,” you said. “I’ve had like…two drinks. Maybe three.”

“That’s a lot of confidence for someone whose life was almost ended by concrete,” he said.

Megumi made a sound suspiciously like a laugh.

Heat crawled up your throat. “Okay, rude,” you said. “I’ve been walking for twenty‑one years. I know how.”

“You’d think that,” he said. “Evidence suggests otherwise.”

He knew exactly what he was doing. You could feel it. That little shift where it stopped being about the curb and started being about you, specifically, how much he could poke before you cracked.

“I’m walking her,” Megumi said, a hint of defensiveness in his tone. “We’ll get her across.”

Choso finally let his eyes slide to him. “That’s very brave of you,” he said. “Thirty feet of sidewalk. Really putting yourself on the line.”

Megumi’s jaw flexed.

You were more aware of the space between all three of you than you’d been of anything all night. The distance to your porch. The way Megumi’s hand hovered a breath away from your lower back, not quite touching. The way Choso’s gaze kept coming back to you, assessing.

You shifted your weight. Your heel caught the edge of a crack in the pavement.

And just like before, your world tilted for half a second.

Your hand shot out on instinct, fingers grabbing for the nearest solid thing— the railing of your own porch. Your breath left you in a little hiss.

You didn’t fall. You wobbled, regained your balance, heart racing.

You looked up.

His eyes were already on you.

He didn’t move. Didn’t reach out. Didn’t say anything like are you okay or careful this time.

He just watched.

Something in his face— some tiny softening at the edges of his mouth told you he’d enjoyed that more than he should have.

You hated the way that realization made your stomach flip.

“See?” you said, too bright. “Totally fine.”

“You keep saying that,” he said. “You should examine why.”

Megumi’s palm settled lightly between your shoulder blades, nudging you forward. “Let’s get you inside,” he said. “Before you try to sue the city for emotional damage.”

You swallowed whatever retort was climbing up your throat.

“Night,” you said, not sure who you were addressing.

Megumi gave Choso a short nod. Choso didn’t bother returning it.

You took the porch steps with humiliating care. At the door, you glanced back over your shoulder.

Megumi had already turned toward the Kings’ house again. Gojo’s voice was cutting across the lawn, calling his name, loud and ridiculous.

Choso remained on his porch, cigarette between his fingers, eyes on the street.

You had the sudden, disorienting thought that you were a bug under glass and both of them were looking down.

You went inside before you could decide which was worse.

Your room felt both too quiet and not quiet enough.

The party’s bass line seeped through the walls in a dull, insistent thump. Your sorority house had its own noise; someone laughing down the hall, music from the kitchen, but it was softer.

Then your phone buzzed.

Nobara: we are WHORES Nobara: look at my children thriving Attached: a photo.

You opened it.

The Kings’ porch filled your screen. String lights glowing, cups everywhere. Gojo in the center, shirt half unbuttoned, sunglasses still on his head, flashing peace signs at the camera. Nobara leaned into his side, tongue out. Maki lurked behind them, flipping off the lens with one hand, holding a water bottle in the other.

You were between the boys, Gojo’s arm slung over your shoulders, pulling you into his side. Megumi stood a little behind you, angled toward you, head bent like he’d just said something that made you laugh.

You were laughing. Your head was tipped back, eyes closed, mouth open, the line of your throat exposed.

You looked happy.

For a moment, something warm expanded in your chest.

This was the point, right? Friends, stupid parties, pictures you’d look back on later and cringe at fondly. You and your girls and two dangerous idiots across the street, all tangled together in one chaotic, ridiculous night.

Then you remembered the way your neighbor’s gaze had dragged over your smeared lipstick. The way his voice had gone flat on “Watch your step.” The way your stomach had clenched under his scrutiny more than it had under Gojo’s hands.

Annoyance with yourself flared on top of everything else.

You tossed your phone facedown on your nightstand like that would shut your brain up, too.

It didn’t.

The urge to get up and peek out from between your curtains was a physical itch. You knew exactly where his window was from here. If you slid the fabric aside even an inch, you’d be able to see whether his lamp was still on, whether he was still at his desk, whether there was a shadow moving behind his blinds.

You stared aimlessly out the window.

“Do not be weird,” you whispered to yourself.

You didn’t even try to define weird.

Outside, chants rose and fell again, followed by a roar of approval. Someone screamed. Someone laughed. Somewhere, a bottle shattered.

You picked up one of your pillows and placed it over your head until all you could hear was your own heartbeat and the faint pulse of bass under it.

Choso knew exactly when your light turned off.

He’d had no intention of being at the window again. One cigarette on the porch, one confrontation, one reminder that he was surrounded by children and noise. He’d decided that was enough masochism for the night.

He’d gone back upstairs. Sat at his desk. Tried to drown the party out with old habits: underlines, margin notes, small, satisfying cuts through sloppy sentences.

It worked, for a while.

Then the bass dropped in a way that made the glass in his window vibrate, and he found himself halfway across the room, hand on the blind cord, before he consciously decided to move.

He cracked the slats.

The scene hadn’t changed much downstairs. The Kings’ porch was still a rotating cast of the same mistakes in different combinations. Someone was dancing on a table. Someone was being carried toward a car.

Your porch was calmer. Two girls sat on the steps, scrolling. The middle window on the second floor glowed.

Yours.

He knew that now. Had mapped it without meaning to. Sorority letters here, kitchen there, that one lit rectangle across from his office that lined up perfectly with the window he’d seen you in earlier, carrying a box too heavy for your arms.

How perfect.

He told himself he was checking that you’d gotten inside okay, that you hadn’t decided to head back across the street in the opposite direction.

The curtains were drawn, but not well. The panels didn’t quite meet. A narrow vertical slice of your room showed through.

He shouldn’t look.

But he couldn't help it.

You moved through that sliver like a half‑finished sketch. The curve of your shoulder as you tugged at the straps of your top. The ghost of your spine when you pulled it over your head. The flash of your thighs as you stepped out of your skirt.

His hand tightened on the blind.

He could close it. He should. He’d already seen more of you tonight than he had any right to.

You pulled on a T‑shirt big enough to swallow you, the hem falling almost to your knees. It bothered him, irrationally, that it hid the exact parts of you his mind was now stuck on.

Nothing explicit. Nothing anyone could accuse him of. If someone asked, he could say he’d only noticed the light.

His brain filled in the rest anyway.

You sat on the edge of your bed to take off your earrings, one knee bent, bare foot planted on the mattress. The hem rode up with the movement, exposing more of your thigh, creeping higher as you leaned forward. From here, he couldn’t see if there was anything on under it— shorts, panties, nothing at all. Just a strip of bare skin and then shadow.

You wiped at your mouth with the back of your hand, thumb dragging over the fading smear of gloss Gojo had left behind. It had gone unnoticed to Choso in the moment, but he remembered seeing the faint smear on your lips out on the porch.

Choso hadn’t seen the kiss. He hadn’t needed to.

In his version of the night, the worst of it was the quiet boy’s hand at the small of your back— there on the porch, there in the street, there when you wobbled on the crack in the concrete. Not the idiot’s mouth, not the drunken cheering. Just that quiet, possessive touch. He assumed he was the one who kissed you, not Gojo.

That was what caught under his skin: the way Megumi hovered like he’d been assigned to you. Like it was his job to walk you home, to put his body between you and the sidewalk, to be the one you leaned into when your balance went.

He wanted to break the boy’s fingers.

You flopped backward on the mattress with a sigh, phone held above your face. The motion tugged the shirt higher, flashing the curve where your thigh met the soft line of your hip before the fabric slid, imperfectly, back into place. You had no idea anyone could see you. You looked small, unguarded, nothing like the girl on the porch letting drunk boys put their hands wherever they wanted.

This was the version no one else got.

He should close the blinds. Walk away. Let you have this one thin strip of privacy in a house and on a street built to eat it alive.

Instead, he stayed there in the dark, hand on the sill, breathing turning rough and uneven as everything he’d been holding in all night— jealousy, irritation, the image of your mouth smeared and soft, the memory of you stumbling under his eyes— twisted into one thick, unbearable knot low in his gut. He knew exactly what that tension wanted from him. He knew how pathetic it was that a girl across the street in an oversized T‑shirt could do this to him. Still, he didn’t look away when the shirt inched up again with your next careless shift.

He imagined you dropping onto your bed, phone in hand, group chats glaring up at you. Imagined your bare legs rubbing together under that shirt, the remnant heat of the party still in your skin. Thought about the way you’d trembled, almost imperceptibly, when you lost your balance on the sidewalk in front of him.

He thought, in a brief, violent flash, about having you in a room where there was no one else. No music, no Gojo, no Megumi hovering like a guard dog. Just you, and him, and that mouth, and what it would look like swollen for reasons that had nothing to do with frat boy teeth.

The thought felt like crossing a line, even inside his own head.

You shifted, sitting up again, the mattress dipping under your weight. The T‑shirt rode up, just enough to tease him with the shadowed dip of your navel, the faintest hint of fabric beneath. His cock twitched, already half‑hard, already aching. He didn’t even remember sitting back down; the leather under him creaked when he shifted, and his hand drifted down, fingers brushing over the strain in his slacks.

“Look at you,” he muttered under his breath, the words low, more diagnosis than insult. “Letting any idiot put his hands on you.”

It wasn’t loud enough for anyone to hear. It didn’t have to be.

The ugliness was for him.

He pictured your pretty face tilted up toward him, just like the first time you’d met, when he’d caught you and you’d looked so impossibly innocent and sweet. But his mind, against his will, dragged itself back to you on that porch between the two of them— back to the quiet one at your side. Did you look up at him like that, too? Did your lips part when he steadied you, when his hand sat there at your waist? The thought made his stomach twist.

His cock throbbed anyway, hot and insistent against his palm.

You reached up, fingers pressing against your lips once more. Choso’s breath caught. There it was, the moment. The moment you wiped what he thought was Megumi's kiss away. His jaw clenched, teeth grinding.

“Of course,” he breathed, almost to himself. “You scrub him off the second you’re alone.”

His hand pressed harder over the ridge of his cock, testing the edge of his control. The pressure wasn’t enough. It never was.

“You don’t even know what you’re doing,” he said quietly, contempt curling through the words. “Letting them touch you like that. Letting him put his mouth on you like he’s earned it.”

He slid lower in the chair and undid his fly with practiced, irritated motions, dragging his cock out into his fist. The first stroke was almost cautious, as if there were still a chance he might stop. By the second, there wasn’t.

“You let them ruin you,” he murmured, voice roughening as you shifted and the shirt climbed another inch on your thigh. “And you think that’s the worst that can happen.”

A bitter huff of air left him, almost a laugh.

“You have no idea.”

You stood, turning slightly, the T‑shirt slipping off one shoulder, baring the clean line of your collarbone. His cock jerked in his grip, fully hard now, the stretch almost painful.

“Naughty little girl,” he said under his breath, stroking himself slowly, deliberately cruel with his own body. “So breakable. And you let him think like you’re his.”

He swallowed, eyes burning.

“You’re not,” he added, harsher now, as if he could argue it into being.

You caught the hem of the shirt, tugging it up just far enough to expose the flat plane of your stomach, the delicate indentation of your belly button. His pace faltered, then quickened, thumb smearing pre‑cum over the sensitive head.

“That’s it,” he sighed, the sound low and frayed. “That’s what you look like when no one’s watching.”

You turned toward the window.

For one suspended heartbeat, Choso froze, hand clamped too tight around his cock, pulse roaring in his ears. Had you seen him? Had he been that careless?

You only lifted your hands to your hair, fingers working the tie loose, dark strands spilling down your back.

Relief hit first. Then something heavier, uglier, hot and greedy.

“Clueless,” he exhaled, almost gentle. “You have no idea what’s staring back at you.”

His hand moved again, faster now, knuckles whitening around his shaft. His mind supplied scenes with ruthless clarity. You on your knees between his thighs, lips swollen from his cock instead of someone else’s mouth; you bent over his desk, his handprint burned into the curve of your ass, cum running down the inside of your thighs. Your voice wrecked and small as you asked him to be kind and knowing he wouldn’t be.

You slipped beneath the covers, your body disappearing, swallowed by blankets and shadow.

Choso’s grip tightened, strokes turning harsh, driven.

“No,” he snarled, the word dragged out of somewhere deep and mean. “You don’t get to vanish. Not now.”

His free hand fisted against the desk, nails biting into his palm.

“You get to sleep while I’m here—” his breath hitched, “—while I’m like this because of you?”

Mine, the thought pulsed, ugly and insistent. You’re mine.

The climax slammed into him hard enough to steal his breath. His cock pulsed in his fist as hot, thick ropes spilled over his fingers, splattering the dark wood of his desk. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to choke back the sound clawing up his throat, shoulders shuddering with the effort.

“Fuck,” he hissed, voice raw, hand softening as he milked the last aftershocks from himself.

For a long moment he just sat there, chest heaving, cum cooling tacky on his skin, his cock still half‑hard in his grip.

Then the shame came, fast and mean.

What is wrong with you.

He dragged a tissue from the box, wiping his hand and the desk in short, furious strokes before shoving himself back into his slacks. His fingers trembled as he buttoned them, the fine motor control gone.

He hated it. Hated you for making him feel like this. Hated himself more for letting you.

The chair scraped back hard against the floor as he stood. He crossed the room in three strides and yanked the blinds down with a vicious snap, the metal slats clattering together as they fell, severing the narrow sightline into your room.

Good. He didn’t need to see you. He didn’t want to.

An obvious lie.

The image of you, soft, unguarded, oblivious, was already burned into the backs of his eyelids. There was no shutting that out.

He turned back to his desk, jaw locked, expression settling into something flat and cold. The stack of essays he’d abandoned earlier waited for him, aggressively disappointing.

He sat. Picked up his red pen.

His hand was still unsteady. He tightened his grip until the tendons stood out and forced it still.

Vague. Clarify, he wrote in the margin, the ink biting a little too deep into the paper.

He tried to focus on the words. On where they failed. On how to cut just deep enough that the student might actually learn something from the wound.

His mind kept wandering back to the porch.

To the way you’d gone soft and open under a touch that meant nothing. Megumi’s steadying hand at your waist, his palm sitting there as he’d earned it. To the way your body had betrayed you in front of him— stumbling with eyes wide and uncertain in a way they hadn’t been all night.

Temptation, he thought grimly, was supposed to be metaphorical.

If hell had a student housing office, it would probably assign you to this street.

In front of you, three houses sat in a row, sagging in their own special way: your sorority in the middle, a frat with a shitty banner on one side, and a scarily quiet house that was all black down to the front door on the other that looked like it belonged in an entirely different neighborhood.

Your house was the least dignified of the three. Three stories of peeling white paint and warped porch boards, Greek letters nailed crooked over the door, string lights from three semesters ago still stapled along the eaves. Someone had left a glittery banner that said WELCOME BACK, WHORES hanging inside the front window, visible from the sidewalk.

“Gorgeous,” you muttered, shifting the box in your arms before it left a permanent indent in your skin. “Truly, breathtaking.”

“Stop complaining, it’s romantic,” Nobara said from the top of the porch steps, one hand on her hip and the other balancing her iced coffee like she was the one doing the hard work. Her hair clip sparkled violently in the sun. “It’s like a coming of age movie. You’re the main character. I’m the hot best friend. Maki’s the scary one.”

“I am not scary,” Maki said flatly from somewhere inside. Something heavy thudded against the floor. “I’m practical.”

Nobara rolled her eyes. “She’s the scary one,” she repeated, then looked back down at you. “You got that?”

You adjusted your grip. The box was labeled “BOOKS” and weighed approximately as much as your soul.

“Yeah,” you grunted. “Don't strain yourself or anything.”

“Wasn't planning on it, babe,” Nobara said with a grin, knowing you were messing around.

The scorching summer heat sat on your shoulders, sweat sliding down the back of your neck, dampening the material of your shirt. Somewhere to your left, bass thumped through thin walls, feeling the beat quite literally in your soul.

You didn’t have to look to know it was The Cursed Kings.

Their house was bigger than yours and twice as loud, with a big porch completed by a sad looking lawn, and the number of crushed cigarettes and beer bottles on it screamed bad decisions were made here. Your attention drifted to the white sheet banner drooping from the wooden railing, spray painted in thick black letters:

THE CURSED KINGS ΚΚΧ

“Subtle,” you said under your breath.

A shout cut through the music. “Bro, don’t drop it—”

The rest was drowned out by obnoxious laughter.

You refocused your attention on the path. Three steps up, box through the doorway, don’t eat it in front of your new house, and the frat with the stupid name.

It sounded easy enough.

You hit the first porch step fine. The second with a little wobble. When you tried to pivot back down to the sidewalk for another trip, your heel caught on the crack where the curb descended into the gutter.

The world tilted for a second.

The box lurched forward, your arms going with it. For something that seemed to happen so fast, it felt like you were falling in slomo, suspended for a second, and you saw the entire disaster.

Your stuff spilling all over the street wasn't even the worst of it. You were on your ass with your skirt hitched up, basically giving half the block a free show.

“Shit—”

A hand caught the bottom of the box.

Not just the box, your wrists too, fingers closing around the cardboard right where your own were slipping. The sudden aid pulled you up by your arms. Your weight rocked back into your heels instead of into the pavement.

“Careful.”

The voice was low and a little rough, like he didn’t use it loudly very often.

You blinked, peering around the edge of the box.

He wasn’t a boy. That was your first coherent thought.

He was taller than you enough that you felt it and saw it, his shadow cutting off the worst of the sun. Dark hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, a few shorter strands brushing his cheekbones, A big scar across the bridge of his nose, mouth set in an unreadable line.

He sported a plain black T‑shirt, worn soft, that clung to shoulders that looked like they’d never met a frat dumbbell curl in their life.

His violet eyes were the most encapsulating part, very dark, as if he were taking inventory and was already tired of what he saw.

His fingers tightened once on the box, testing the weight, before he handed it back to you with ease.

Heat rushed up your face.

“Sorry,” you said, breathless and half laughing, half wanting to die on the spot. “Uh. I’m not usually trying to die on the first day of the semester.”

One of his eyebrows ticked, not quite in amusement.

Over your shoulder, the Cursed Kings’ front door slammed open. “Kappa shots!” someone howled. The crowd cheered, then the bass boomed harder if that was even possible.

The man’s gaze slid past you toward the noise. His jaw tightened, barely. When he looked back, there was a faint edge to his voice. “You live with them?” he asked.

He said “them” as if it forced him to acknowledge a nuisance.

You shook your head so fast your ponytail smacked your neck. “God, no. Middle house,” you said, jerking your chin toward the sorority door. “I just get the shitty rap.”

Something almost like understanding flickered across his face. It was gone so quickly you could’ve imagined it.

“Watch the curb,” he said, and that was apparently that.

He veered the box fully into your grip with careful precision and stepped around you, boots scuffing the concrete. Up close, you caught a faint whiff of something that wasn’t frat boy cologne or cheap beer. Soap, maybe. Coffee. Paper.

You turned your head to watch him walk away.

He crossed the narrow strip of patchy grass to the quiet house at the end of the row, took the three brick steps without looking down, and disappeared inside. No name. No smile. The door shut with a soft, final click.

“Okay, rude,” you muttered under your breath, hauling the box the rest of the way up the steps.

“Who’s rude?” Nobara demanded the second you wrestled the door open with your hip. She abandoned the box of string lights she’d been pawing through and crowded your space immediately, eyes bright. “You almost died. Did somebody see? Was it funny?”

“Everything’s funny to you,” Maki said from the living room floor, not looking up from the screwdriver she had buried in the side of a cheap shelf. Her hair was pulled back, glasses slipping down her nose, tank top smeared with a streak of dust. “Did you actually break anything?”

“Just my dignity,” you said. “It’s fine.”

Nobara narrowed her eyes. “I saw a man,” she said, drawing out the last word. “Tall, dark shirt, tragic posture, walking away from my girl. Explanation please.”

You set the box down by the stairs with a thump and flexed your sore fingers. “Neighbor,” you said. “The one in the brick house. I almost ate shit on the curb, he caught the box, then glared at the Kings like they killed his whole family."

Maki snorted. “So he’s sane. That’s rare around here.”

“Was he hot?” Nobara asked.

You thought about the line of his shoulders, the way his hand had wrapped entirely around the corner of the box and still had room, the flat look in his eyes when the music across the street got louder.

“Objectively,” you admitted feeling the familiar warmth rush to your face, “Old guy energy... But like, the hot kind.”

“That’s great,” Nobara smiled. “That means you're getting dick."

“That does not mean that,” you said, even as heat crept back up your neck. “I don’t even know his name.”

“Tragic,” she sighed. “Don’t worry. I’ll find out.”

“Please don’t,” Maki said without inflection, tightening a bolt, "She already ate shit, and now you wanna stalk one of her future hoes?"

You stepped around the pile of half‑built furniture and retreated upstairs with your books, trying very hard not to replay the way that stranger’s fingers had brushed your wrists.

Let's just say it didn’t work.

By the time the sky started turning orange, your room had graduated from a mess to something that at least vaguely resembled a place a person could live. Your bed frame was up, and your mattress was on it. Your clothes were in vague piles labeled hang, fold, deal with later. That was enough.

“Closet can wait,” Nobara announced, appearing in your doorframe with two cans in hand. Her nails were already painted a lethal red, her eyeliner sharp. “Come on. Porch. We have to judge the neighbors properly.”

Maki followed, cracking her own drink, expression as unimpressed as ever. “I need to see which direction to plan my escape routes if cops bust any parties,” she said. “Also, I want to know if the Cursed Kings are actually as dumb as everyone says.”

“They are, but they're also hot,” Nobara emphasized her last point.

You ended up on the middle step, cold metal sweating against your palm as you tipped your can back. The air smelled like cut grass, and the faint metallic tang of someone grilling on another street over.

Across the way, the Kings’ house was wide awake.

String lights flicked on over their porch, washing everything in a dull gold. The front door opened and closed in quick succession as people moved in and out. Someone dragged a folding table into the yard and almost knocked over a bush. Voices overlapped, laughing, shouting, the familiar chant of a drinking game could be heard from the backyard.

“Ugh,” Nobara said, squinting at the banner. “‘The Cursed Kings.’ Who named them, an incel on Reddit?”

“Accurate,” Maki said. “Still hot though.”

“Shut up, you’re going to fall in love with one of them,” Nobara said. “I can feel it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Babe, your type is emotionally unavailable. This place is a buffet for you.”

As if summoned by her slander, a shout cut through the noise.

“HEY!”

You looked up.

A guy with white hair had climbed onto the Kings’ porch railing, one foot balanced on the wood, one hand gripping a support beam as if he weighed nothing. He was tall and lean, his shirt already unbuttoned enough to show a strip of chest. Sunglasses perched on his head like it was midday, not almost dusk.

Even from here, you could tell he was smiling.

“New sorority girls!” he called, raising his drink toward your porch. “Our street just got a lot prettier.”

Nobara shaded her eyes with her free hand. “Are you Gojo?” she yelled back.

“Unfortunately.” He grinned wider, “I see my reputation precedes me. Lucky you.”

“Oh my god,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s worse in real life.”

Gojo pointed the rim of his can specifically in your direction. “You,” he said. “You’re the one who tried to fight the ground earlier, right? Thought we were gonna have to call campus EMS.”

You choked. “You were watching?”

“Hard not to when someone almost eats it on my front lawn,” he said. “Glad the guy from down the way caught you. Would’ve been a tragic first impression towards your new neighbors.”

“Down the way?” Nobara repeated sharply. “What’s his deal?”

Gojo shrugged, balancing on the railing like it was second nature. “No idea. Moved in last term. Never comes to parties. Carries too many books. Definitely grading something at all times.” He yawned just long enough to be obnoxious. "Total buzzkill."

Maki snorted.

Behind him, another figure filled the doorway, Megumi, according to everything you’d been told last year. Dark hair falling into his eyes, black T‑shirt, hands shoved into his pockets. He didn’t climb the railing or shout. He just leaned there, gaze flicking from Gojo to your porch and back.

“Stop scaring the neighbors,” he said, not loud in particular, but somehow it carried anyway.

“I’m welcoming them,” Gojo protested.

Maki lifted her can in Megumi’s direction. “Does he always do this?”

Megumi’s mouth twitched like he was suppressing a smile. “Yes.”

Gojo hopped down from the railing with an easy, practiced motion. “Anyway,” he called, already distracted by someone waving ping‑pong balls at him. “Cursed Kings party this weekend. You, redhead, glasses, and curb girl—you’re invited. Legal requirement. Street tax. Whatever.”

“Not how any of that works,” you said.

He winked. “I’ll make it work,” he said, then let himself get swallowed by the crowd at his door.

For a second, Megumi stayed put. His eyes met yours across the distance, the noise falling away just enough that the moment felt sharper than it should have. He tipped his chin once, an understated nod, then turned and disappeared back into the house.

Nobara made an inhuman sound. “They’re so stupid,” she said. “I love it.”

“They’re not boyfriend material,” Maki said, finishing her drink and crushing the can one‑handed. “But they're really hot.”

You watched the Kings’ porch a moment longer, the lights, the moving bodies through the glass, the promise of sweat and vodka and bad decisions.

You could see yourself there, too. Pressed against a wall with Gojo’s stupid grin in your face. Sitting on the steps with Megumi, listening to everyone else scream themselves hoarse. Laughing until your voice went raw.

You took another sip and let the fizz burn your throat.

“They’re fun,” you said. “That’s all.”

“Enough fun,” Nobara said. “For now.”

You didn’t answer.

You were thinking about the quiet house at the end of the row, the one with the tired man in the black shirt who hadn’t even told you his name.

You didn’t go to the Kings’ party that night.

Nobara and Maki did, though. Practically half the house did, judging by the amount of shouting in the hallway while they changed outfits six times each. Your door swung open and shut three times in fifteen minutes as they modeled dresses and demanded opinions, ignoring the fact that you were half buried under a pile of your own laundry.

“Come with us,” Nobara said, smoothing her skirt down over her thighs. “Just for one drink.”

“One drink” in Nobara‑speak meant four, minimum, and a shot if Gojo made eye contact.

“I still have to find my toothbrush,” you said. “And my will to live.”

“Liar,” she said, but she kissed your cheek anyway. “Text me if you get murdered by a ghost or a neighbor or whatever.”

“If a guy bothers you, call,” Maki added, already shrugging into her jacket. “Or just beat his ass and then call.”

You watched from your bedroom window as they crossed the street together, Nobara laughing at something, Maki rolling her eyes but not actually pulling away when Gojo swooped in to sling an arm around both of their shoulders at the bottom of his porch steps. Megumi remained nearer the door, saying something you couldn’t hear that made Maki’s mouth hitch at the corner before she followed him inside.

You could have gone yourself. And you almost did. You stood there in mismatched socks and an oversized tee, hand on your doorknob, while the bass pressed against the walls like a repeated heartbeat.

Then your legs reminded you that you’d carried your body weight, maybe even more, in boxes all day, your head pulsed dully behind your eyes, and the thought of making small talk over the roar made your stomach tilt.

You let go of the knob.

Instead, you padded back to the window and leaned your forehead briefly against the cool glass. The Kings’ house glowed, a little too bright, a little too alive. Your house hummed at a lower frequency, Mike Sherm from someone’s speaker, and laughter from the kitchen.

At the far end of the row, the brick house had one upstairs light on, and a warm glow illuminated the window.

Someone moved behind the curtain.

A shift of shadow, a hint of a figure crossing the room. The blinds tilted slightly, as if a hand had brushed them. You couldn’t see a face. You felt some sort of peace in the sense that whoever lived there was awake, listening to the same noise, watching this dumb little street like you were currently.

You stepped back, letting the curtain fall.

Your bed creaked softly under your weight as you collapsed onto it. Your phone buzzed with a new text from Nobara, something blurry and already chaotic from inside the Kings’ kitchen, but you didn’t open it right away. The bass was a steady thump under your ribs, threaded with occasional shouts: “CHUG, CHUG, CHUG,” followed by a cheer.

You shoved your pillow over your head.

It was going to be a long semester.

The pen had left a groove in the paper where he’d stopped reading.

Choso sat back in his chair and let the student essay blur into an undifferentiated block of text. His eyes had slid off the same line three times. Some anemic thesis about a novel that didn’t deserve another half hearted interpretation.

The bass hit the wall again.

Thump.

The pencil in his cup rattled.

He counted to four under his breath, exhaled, and pushed his chair away from the desk.

The upstairs office of the little brick house had seemed like a good idea in theory. Shelves along one wall, a narrow desk facing the street, and enough distance from campus that he wouldn’t run into his students at the grocery store. No dorms, the landlord had said. “Just a few Greek houses down the block. They keep to themselves.”

He crossed to the window and lifted the blind with two fingers.

The house with the sheet banner—The Cursed Kings—glowed garishly against the deepening night. String lights cast soft halos on faces that were all variations of the same age: too young, too loud, too careless. Someone teetered on the porch rail again, arms thrown wide. Someone else poured liquor from a bottle into a line of plastic cups on the steps.

He could smell the beer from here, or maybe his brain was just filling it in. He’d spent enough time on college campuses to know what that air tasted like.

His mouth flattened.

He let his gaze slide past them.

The middle house’s porch light was on, but quieter. A banner inside the front window declared WELCOME BACK in glitter with an obscenity at the end. How flattering, he thought to himself. Empty cups had already accumulated on the steps. The door had opened and closed enough times in the last hour that he could time his own thoughts to the hinges.

Upstairs, one of the windows was still lit. The curtains were thin enough that he could see the room behind them: wall, bed, the edge of a desk.

And you, crossing the space in an oversized T‑shirt, bare legs catching the light.

He recognized you.

The girl from earlier. Box too heavy, foot on the edge of the curb, mouth forming a startled “oh” as the sidewalk tried to introduce itself to your pretty face. The way your hands had felt through the cardboard when he’d caught it, small and tense.

You paused at the window now, fingers catching the curtain edge. For a moment, he had the sense that you were looking at the same scene he was, seeing the Kings’ house in all its stupid, relentless brightness, hearing the same bass line hammering its way into the bones of the street.

Then you let the curtain fall and stepped back, vanishing from his view.

Choso stayed where he was.

He told himself he was just taking precautions: mapping noise sources, figuring out which nights he’d need earplugs, deciding how long his patience would last before he emailed the dean about “off‑campus disturbances.”

Frat house on one side: predictable.

Sorority in the middle: also predictable.

The girl between them, who claimed she “just gets the shitty rap,” who had looked at the party and chosen her bed instead: less predictable.

He could feel irritation prickling at him, something he didn’t want to name. The awareness of a new variable he hadn’t accounted for.

He dropped the blind until only a narrow strip of glass remained at the bottom. Just enough to see if someone stumbled into the street. Just enough to see when the porch lights went out. Just enough to see when your window went dark.

Back at the desk, the student's essay was waiting. Its mediocrity was very clear.

He picked up his pen.

Somewhere down the block, a chorus of voices screamed another drinking chant. The sound grated like sandpaper against the inside of his skull.

“It’s going to be a long semester,” he said quietly, to no one but himself.