ғᴜɴᵏʙᴏᴀʀᴅ

• Unfortunately, this is partially why I think Trey would be very prone to getting "he's like a brother to me"-d.

• He's just naturally quite caring and protective of everybody, always making sure their needs are met, and is liable to over-indulge them at times, especially you. But because of his unwillingness to make a move in fear of making you uncomfortable or ruining the bond you two already share, anything he does is unlikely to actually come off as romantic, because he seemingly just acts this way with everyone.

• Then there's this paired with him being a very passive man, to a fault. If you were to start getting close to someone else, he does nothing. Go on dates with someone else, he does nothing.

• His passiveness is probably his biggest flaw and his most frustrating feature too. And I can absolutely see it leading to him losing his chance with you.

• Once again, the simplest answer here would be to confess to him yourself.

RUGGIE BUCCHI

• He knows he has a thing for you pretty early on, but denies it being serious for as long as he possibly can. To everyone, including himself, he'll insist it's just a tiny crush and nothing more. He might even turn it into a running joke.

• I can see him playfully flirting with you to the point that it just becomes your dynamic. You'll banter, he'll flirt, maybe even jokingly ask you out. But that's just it; as far as you know, it's a joke. And he'll try to convince himself it is too, that you rolling his eyes at his horrible pick-up lines and your rebuttals - all meant to be jokes - don't sting at least a little bit.

• He brushes it off for as long as he possibly can. The point where he can't anymore is when people notice him starting to give you things. Namely food.

• Leona catches him handing you something off of his own plate in the cafeteria and just the look his Housewarden gives him is enough to send Ruggie spiralling. This is serious, and he really can't deny it anymore.

• Would he confess? Yes, I think so, but only after a long while of hyping himself up, and he wouldn't be doing it with any expectations whatsoever.

• He knows he has to tell you if he wants any chance at moving on from this, because all this time being your friend has proven that these feelings aren't going away. And he'd understand if it makes things awkward, or even if you don't want to hang out with him anymore, given that the playful flirting your dynamic is built around might get a little weird now.

• But, even though it might seem contradictory to him confessing, he has next to no hope that his feelings might actually be returned.

• Weirdly for Ruggie, I get the feeling he approaches it from a coldly logical angle. He's got this idea stuck in his head that there's no reason you would want him. He has nothing to offer you, not in the sense of money, ambition, or anything that he assumes you would want for a stable future. And he's so deep into this mindset that it's like he's already gotten over a rejection that hasn't come yet.

• Anyway, accept the confession and watch his whole world change before your very eyes.

JADE LEECH

• Oddly, I think it's very obvious.

• Not just to Azul and Floyd either - though they are the ones who notice the most changes in him - I mean literally everyone, including you, can tell he's taken a liking to you. Which is strange for a man with such a famed poker-face.

• Unfortunately though, his liking to you presents itself almost like scientific fascination with a specimen. He likes to experiment with you.

• He'll say and do things specifically to get you to react, sometimes very frustrating things. But then he'll also give you objects - random rocks he picked up while hiking, mushrooms, coins, food if you're lucky. And then he walks away to see from a distance what you do with it, which you can't imagine is that interesting, but he seems to find endlessly entertaining.

• He feels like he's observing you in an enclosure and tossing in objects just to see what happens.

• I don't think Jade would confess, but it's not for the same reasons as some of the others. He still fully intends to enter a relationship with you, he just wants to see what he can do to push you into confessing first.

• If he starts being more overtly flirtatious and spending more time with you, will that change anything? What if he starts getting closer to another student, does that spark any jealousy within you? He likes going to places alone with you so that strangers can mistake you two for a couple and he can stare you down to see how you react to that.

• I think if he realises it isn't working, he'll confess himself, and have no issues doing so. He just wants to see if this little science experiment will work first.

JAMIL VIPER

• Well. Unfortunately there are endless things getting in your way here.

• His servant status poses a multitude of complicated roadblocks. His life is essentially devoted to serving Kalim, and if something comes up that distracts him from this job for long enough for anything to go wrong, not only will he suffer the consequences, but his family will by extension.

• He also lives with Kalim, and the Asim's estate is where the rest of his family reside too. It's likely he can't leave there - not without bringing shame upon his family for abandoning his station, maybe leaving them jobless and with a sullied reputation due to the influence of the Asims - but he also may not want to bring anyone from the outside, in.

• What the Vipers do is generational, which raises the question of how they marry. I imagine it's typically arranged for them, which then brings to light a whole different set of issues that I'm not going to even attempt to dissect, given I believe arranged marriages are a cultural practice, and I don't want to say anything incorrect.

• The long and short of it is that any kind of romance with Jamil is unrealistic at best. I genuinely don't think there's much of a way around this, short of you uprooting your entire life to become a Viper yourself (if his family or the Asims would accept you), or him running away and potentially bringing ruin to his family.

• Jamil is more aware of how restricted he is than anyone. And even if it was possible to bring you back home and have you stay with him forever, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to make you continue the cycle with him.

• Even if you were to confess to him, he would be honest with you, saying that he just can't do it. But he'd still tell you that he loves you. Not for the first time either, as after your confession, he says it more and more often, and every time you hear more sadness and desperation festering behind his words.

• You hold him, whisper words of comfort and affection, and it's nice to pretend to be a normal couple. But it will come to an end, and fleeting moments of respite from his caged life will have to remain fleeting.

• He needs you to remain free. Maybe you can come to visit him in his cage from time to time, pretend to be old friends, while holding him where you're sure no-one can see like you used to. And in those moments and those moments alone, he allows himself to be happy.

ROOK HUNT

• Good luck??

• Rook will follow you around everywhere, praise your beauty constantly and has attempted to serenade you at least a couple times. I say "attempted" because he did it in a public space and you just walked away.

• He has endless poems and letters written about you, most of which he hasn't even shown you. He just keeps them stashed away somewhere.

• The question here isn't really if he'll confess, it's more about when you'll finally return his affections. He isn't remotely subtle about his feelings, he'd confess to you over and over again if you let him, but this is likely also exactly the problem he faces. He's too obsessive.

• I don't think Rook intends to be creepy or overbearing, this is very much just how he is. But given I think he falls fast and hard; it understandably takes you a while to give the benefit of the doubt to a man who, from your perspective, started stalking you the moment you met him.

• Either you or someone else (likely Vil) is going to need to have a very long chat with him about boundaries. Because although he will respect them once they're stated, they do need to be stated; he lacks any amount of common sense about this kind of thing. He is not intentionally trying to make you uncomfortable.

• Assuming he has that conversation and backs off, I think this is the point where a healthy dynamic can be built between the two of you. And now that you have your space back, maybe you will end up returning his feelings for you with time.

LILIA VANROUGE

• Lilia has been in love before. Maleanor and Raverne were his first and only loves, and he's experienced the highs and lows; as well as the heartbreak and grief that comes from losing them.

• Maybe 400 years ago, when he first lost them, he would have sworn to never fall in love again. He was convinced that the pain he experienced after losing them and being left only with Maleanor's egg - their son - to remember them by, would never be worth the fleeting joy being in love gave him.

• But hundreds of years have passed since then. In that time, Malleus has come into his own, and he's also taken in a human son, Silver. And behind the incomparable joy of watching Silver grow has always been the looming threat of the anguish that will come when he has to watch his son, the baby boy he raised, perish.

• But he's never regretted his decision. Maybe he will in the future, but as for the present, he wouldn't change a thing. If he could do it all over again, he finds that not only would he still take Silver in; but he would still choose to fall in love with Maleanor and Raverne, too.

• Lilia is far older than Malleus, and more experienced with loss. So although the realisation he loves you would still come with some necessary introspection, he wouldn't agonise over it quite as much as Malleus would. He doesn't want to waste the time he has with you by worrying so much about the future.

• So, in the name of wasting no time at all; he's as quick to start openly flirting with you as he can be. He'll spook you by hanging upside-down behind doors, before jumping down and joining you in whatever you were going to do. He asks you to teach him how to work his phone - ("you wouldn't leave a poor old man hanging, would you?") - despite knowing exactly how to use it, just to spend more time with you.