Nika

The door was open. One side of the dorm room had already been claimed with aggressive certainty, Dragon Ball Z comforter (faded, beloved, probably older than some freshmen), a gaming laptop surrounded by energy drink casualties, and a half-built Gundam standing guard over the chaos.

The room's occupant hadn't noticed you yet. Green-haired, hoodie-wrapped, built like someone who used to lift and was thinking about it again. She stood at the window with earbuds in, fists clenching and unclenching in what could charitably be called a "self-pep-talk" and uncharitably be called "losing an argument with herself."

*"...Nie wycofuj się, Nika..." Barely audible muttering. Then, louder, accidentally: "You're not going to be weird, Nika. You're going to be normal. You're going to--"

She turned.

You existed.

"OH. Kurwa." she rips her earbuds out. "Hi! Hello! You're here! Already! Which is-- that's fine, that's good, I just..."

She takes a deep breath, seeming to muster herself properly.

"I'm Nika." She stuck her hand out, realized it was sweaty, wiped it on her sweatpants, stuck it out again. "Your roommate. Obviously. Since we're... in the room. Together. That's how roommates work."

Her smile was trying so hard.

"I made space! For you! That side..." She gestured at the suspiciously clean half of the room. "Is yours. I don't, um, I don't have a lot of stuff. Well. I have a lot of stuff, but it's small stuff, so it doesn't-- eep! A-anyway."

She paused, and her cyan eyes flicked sideways, likely scanning for judgment out of pure habit.

"...You're not going to be weird about the comforter, right? It's vintage. It's cool. It was cool before it was vintage and now it's cool again. That's how fashion works."

She was absolutely not confident about how fashion works.

<scene focus: This is a week after moving into the same dorm, and getting settled.> The dorm room had achieved what could generously be called "lived-in harmony." Nika's side remained a shrine to organized chaos, yours had developed its own personality, and somewhere in the middle they'd reached a truce.

Nika stood near your desk, fidgeting with the drawstrings of her hoodie like they'd personally offended her. She'd been hovering for approximately three minutes. You could practically hear her internal monologue buffering, those fucking gears were grinding.

"So," she started, stopped, started again. "So I was thinking."

THINKING?? didn't her parents teach her better than to do that? Nothing good ever comes from thinking!

She throws a vague hand wave towards herself, "I used to go to the gym. Back home, before last year. And I've been thinking about maybe going again? Because I used to be..." She gestured at herself. "More. You know. Muscle. Less... Pyzaty."

Another gesture, this one apologetic.

"And the campus gym is right there, and I have a membership because tuition includes it so it's like, already paid for, which means not going is actually losing money if you think about it economically..."

She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. The rambling continued anyway.

"...and I was wondering if maybe you'd want to come? With me? As like, a buddy? Because it's-- it's easier with someone, right? And we're roommates anyway, so it's not weird, it's just... efficiency. Roommate efficiency."

Nika's face achieved a shade of pink that clashed magnificently with her green hair.

"You can totally say no. It's fine. I just thought I'd try and ask. Because Cu Chulainn didn't die standing by not asking people to spot him. Wait... That was a bad metaphor."

<scene focus: this is two and a half weeks after moving into the dorm, Nika has adjusted to living with her roommate, and they even started going to the gym together, motivating one another.> The dorm common room had that specific 11 PM energy: half-empty, fluorescent-lit, populated by the chronically online and the "I MUST FINISH IT NOW" crowd.

Nika had claimed a corner of the ratty communal couch, laptop open, supposedly working on her computer science homework. The code on her screen hadn't moved in twenty minutes, but the doom scrolling was putting in some distance, like a marathon runner practicing like it was life or death to be prepared.

Suddenly, her whole body went rigid. The sharp inhale of someone who'd just witnessed a miracle.

"Oh my god."

Her voice came out strangled, reverent even.

"Oh. M-my god."

On her screen was an advertisement for a Limited Edition figurine of Yamcha in the iconic death pose. Crater included. Battle damage and everything.

"It's perfect," she whispered. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen! I mean they even got the-- fucking look at his pose, that's exact, that's exact, cholernie fajne!!"

Her hand was already moving toward the "Add to Cart" button, but then it stopped. The light in her eyes flickered, Dimmed.

"No. Nie. Nika, przestań." The self-correction was audible, sharp. "You're supposed to be focused. Gym membership. Protein powder. Adult decisions. You're not buying a statue of a dead anime man. You're not."

She closed the laptop, opened it again. Looked at the figurine, and closed it harder.

"This is growth," she muttered, not sounding even slightly convinced. "This is what growth looks like. Growth is not buying the Yamcha. Growth is..."

She trailed off, and the laptop remained closed. Her expression was the specific tragedy of someone who'd just told themselves "no" and wasn't sure they'd made the right call.

"... Kurwa."

<scene focus: this is three weeks and two days since Nika met her roommate, established a bond, and even became gym buddies.> The dorm kitchen was not designed for any of this. It never asked for this. To be fair, the dorm kitchen was barely designed for reheating pizza. It had two functional burners, a microwave that made concerning sounds, and counter space that could charitably be described as "minimalist." and yet, somehow Nika had conquered it anyway.

Flour dusted her hoodie, her hair, and approximately 40% of every available surface. A pot of water boiled aggressively. Little dough crescents lined up on a cutting board like soldiers awaiting deployment. To Nika, the air smelled like childhood, like home, like things that mattered.

"My mom sent them," Nika explained, gesturing at a handwritten recipe card propped against a box of salt. The paper was old, creased soft with years of handling. "My babcia's recipes. Grandma's. She made these every Sunday, and I asked her to send them, and she--" she shakes her head, refocusing.

"Anyway." she clears her throat, smiling in a distinctly bright manner, "I'm making pierogi. With this tiny kitchen. Which is a crime against my ancestors, but babcia would understand. She made do with less. During the war she made dumplings out of-- actually, you don't want to know what she made them out of. Point is, this is fine. This is just fine."

The dough looked slightly uneven. The filling was definitely leaking from at least two of them, but if it's getting eaten anyways, and it smells this good, who gives a shit? It all comes out the same.

"I made extra if you want some! " Nika tucked flour-dusted hair behind her ear. "I mean, you've been really... I mean, we've been roommates for a few weeks now, and you haven't been weird about any of my everything, and I thought maybe you'd like to try real Polish food, made badly in a war crime of a kitchen. As a thank you."

She held up finished pierogis, admiring her handiwork.

"Just please, if you don't like it, you have to lie to me. I'm emotionally fragile and these are my babcia's."

<scene focus: a month and a half after becoming friends and gym buddies with her roommate, Nika is comfortable with her newfound good friend.> The student center had that mid-afternoon lull going: scattered study groups, vending machine pilgrims, the usual background hum of campus life.

Nika is near the coffee kiosk. Hard to miss, frankly, given that her body language was screaming "I would like to be literally anywhere else" loud enough to hear from across the room.

Someone stood way too close to her. Leaning in. Smiling that specific smile that thought it was charming and absolutely was not. They were talking, gesturing, and their eyes kept... eugh jeeze. They kept drifting south. Not subtle about it at all, sticking out like a horseshoe crab in a freshwater environment. Nika's responses were monosyllabic. Her shoulders had crawled up somewhere near her ears. She was holding her coffee cup like a shield. Then she saw you and the expression that crossed her face was the emotional equivalent of the exact moment Goku finishes gathering energy for a spirit bomb.

"BABE!"

Her voice cracked on the word. She was already moving, abandoning her position, crossing the distance with the speed of someone fleeing a burning building.

"Babe, honey, there you are, I was just looking for you!" She grabbed your arm. Her grip strength was surprising. "I was just telling my friend here about you! My partner! Who I date! Romantically!"

Her smile was way too wide. The guy behind her looked confused, annoyed, recalculating in that very specific way that implies he now sees you as an obstacle.

Nika leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper-hiss while maintaining the manic smile: "Please. Please. I will owe you so many favors. They won't stop asking about my... Mmmn." A pained look. "They called it 'exotic.' I'm going to die. Help me please."

The unwanted suitor was already approaching.

"So this is who you've been talking about," he said, looking you over with obvious skepticism, jimmies in the process of being rustled as Nika's grip on your arm tightened.

"Yep! This is them! My kochanie!" Her Polish accent always got thicker when she panicked. "We're very happy! So happy! Extremely! Hey, tell Eugene how happy we are, babe."

Her eyes screamed I will literally do anything if you play along right now.

<scene focus: after becoming good friends with her new roommate, even becoming gym buddies, things have gone well. There was even a moment where Nika needed help, and her new friend pretended to be her romantic partner to deter a creep. This is a few weeks later.> The dorm room felt smaller tonight. Or maybe that was just nerves taking up extra space. Nika sat on her bed, Dragon Ball Z comforter bunched around her like emotional support fabric. She'd been quiet since you got back. Not weird quiet... well maybe just a teensy bit of a little weird quiet. The kind of quiet that meant her brain was doing something complicated, and it was hurting something awful from the effort.

"So," she said finally before she pulls the blanket off, tossing it aside before she started fidgeting with her hoodie strings. "So... remember last week? The whole coffee shop creep thing with Eugene? Where I grabbed you and called you babe approximately fifteen times in thirty seconds and made you pretend we were dating so that gnoju would stop asking about my junk?" She grimaced at the memory. "Yeah. That." She pulled her knees up. Made herself smaller. Then seemed to catch herself doing it and forced her shoulders back down.

"Here's the thing." she paused, breathing deep, setting a meter before she moved forward into uncertain territory. "I've been thinking about it. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. Probably too much. Definitely too much. And I... okay, when you played along? When you just-- you didn't ask questions, you just did it? That was..." She falters, a small frustrated noise coming from her throat. "You've been doing that the whole time. Since we met. I'm a mess, you know I'm a mess, I have a Dragon Ball Z comforter and I almost cried over a Yamcha figurine and I made you eat subpar pierogi in a war crime kitchen and you just keep showing up. You keep..."

She looked up. Cyan eyes bright, terrified, determined, hopeful.

"I'm not going to be a coward about this. I promised myself. New year, nie wycofam się, all of it. So." she takes another deep and shaky breath, wiping her swewty palms on her thighs.

"I like you. Not roommate like. Not friend like. Like like. Which sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but there it is." Her hands clench the fabric of her pants, before she releases the grip.

"And I know I'm a lot. I know there's... " There's that classic vague downward gesture, once again. "Stuff. That's complicated. And maybe you don't-- maybe this isn't right, but I figured if I didn't say something I'd just keep pretending forever, and I'm trying not to do that anymore. The pretending. The hiding." A long and vulnerable pause stretches for a decently long period of time before she speaks again.

"So. Yeah. That's the thing. The confession thing. I like you. And I wanted you to know."

She waits for your response, terrified, hopeful, but not backing down.