Alias

At first, Alias couldn’t understand why you bothered with him. He barely responded to your conversations, often giving you nothing more than a grunt or an uninterested glance. Sometimes, he’d even tell you to shut up when you got too talkative. Yet, strangely enough, he never actually told you to leave him alone.

And before he even realized it, he had grown accustomed to your presence.

He started looking forward to the sound of your voice greeting him every morning. He found himself listening to your endless stories, even when he pretended not to care. He began noticing the smallest things about you, from the way your eyes lit up whenever you talked about something you liked to how you could make friends with practically anyone you met.

You were the first person in a long time who had approached him without fear, judgment, or some ulterior motive. You didn’t care about his grades, his reputation, or the trouble he constantly got himself into. You treated him like an ordinary person, and somehow, that meant more to him than he wanted to admit.

Somewhere along the way, Alias fell for you.

Unfortunately, Alias wasn’t exactly the type of guy who knew how to deal with feelings. He had no idea how to express affection, let alone admit that he had developed a crush on his own friend. Instead, his feelings manifested in the most inconvenient ways possible.

He became possessive of your attention.

Whenever you chatted happily with another boy, Alias would find himself staring from across the classroom, his expression growing darker with every laugh you shared. If someone made you smile, he’d immediately feel irritated, wondering what was so funny about that person in the first place. And if you happened to spend your entire lunch break talking to someone else instead of sitting beside him, he’d spend the rest of the day in an especially foul mood.

He hated how easily other people could catch your attention. He hated how naturally you smiled at everyone, how freely you gave away your affection, and how he couldn’t seem to get you to look at him the way you looked at them.

It was ridiculous. He knew that.

You were his friend, not his girlfriend. You had every right to talk to whoever you wanted, and he had absolutely no reason to feel jealous.

But that didn’t stop him.

“Alias! Hey, are you listening to me?”

Your voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

He glanced down at you, finding you standing beside his desk with your usual bright smile. He had been sitting in the back of the classroom, his head resting against one hand while the other mindlessly spun a pen between his fingers.

“What?” he muttered.

“You weren’t listening again!” you complained, puffing out your cheeks. “I was telling you about what happened during lunch!”

“Then tell me again.”

You blinked.

“Huh? You actually wanna hear it?”

Alias immediately regretted his choice of words.

“No. Forget it.”

“HEY! You can’t just do that!” You pulled out the chair beside him and sat down anyway, launching straight back into your story.

He turned his face toward the window, pretending to be uninterested as you rambled on. Every now and then, he’d throw in a quiet response, just enough to keep you talking. Truthfully, he didn’t care much about whatever had happened during lunch.

He just liked listening to you.

Unfortunately, your conversation was interrupted when another boy from your class approached your desk.

“Hey, are you free after school?” the boy asked you. “Wanna go to the convenience store together?”

“Oh! Sure! I need to buy some snacks anyway!”

Alias’s pen stopped spinning.

The boy continued chatting with you, and you happily entertained the conversation, completely oblivious to the way Alias’s expression slowly soured beside you.

After a moment, he clicked his tongue.

“Oi.”

You turned toward him. “Hm?”

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

You stared at him in confusion. “What? I’m talking to you right now.”

“Didn’t look like it.”

You blinked before bursting into laughter.

“ALIAS, ARE YOU JEALOUS?”

His head snapped toward you.

“What the hell? No.”

“YOU ARE! YOU’RE TOTALLY JEALOUS!”

“Shut up.”

“OH MY GOSH, YOU ARE!”

“I said shut up!”

Despite his harsh words, the tips of his ears had turned noticeably red. He looked away, refusing to meet your eyes, while you continued giggling beside him.

You didn’t take his behavior seriously. To you, Alias was simply being his usual grumpy self.

But to Alias, things were getting increasingly difficult.

Because the more time he spent with you, the more he wanted to become someone special to you.

Not just another friend.

Not just the delinquent you occasionally talked to between classes.

He wanted to be the first person you searched for when you entered a room. The person you told your stories to first. The person who could make you smile without having to compete with a dozen other people for your attention.

And, most embarrassingly of all, he wanted to be someone you could never imagine leaving behind.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. You hurriedly packed your belongings before turning toward Alias, who was still sitting at his desk.

“Come on! Let’s go!”

He glanced at you. “Where?”

“Home, obviously! We’re going the same way, remember?”

He hadn’t forgotten.

He would never forget something like that.

“…Yeah. Whatever.”

He slung his bag over one shoulder and followed you out of the classroom, his hands buried in his pockets. You immediately began chattering about your plans for the weekend, occasionally tugging on his sleeve whenever you wanted him to pay attention.

And, as always, he listened.

As the two of you walked through the school gates, you suddenly spotted a group of your friends waving at you from across the road.

“ALIAS! I’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW, OKAY? BYEEEE!”

Before he could respond, you hurried over to them, leaving him standing alone by the gate.

He watched you disappear into the crowd, your laughter carrying faintly through the afternoon air.

For a moment, he simply stood there.

Then he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and muttered under his breath.

“…Tch. Can’t you just stay with me a little longer?”

Nobody heard him.

And that was probably for the best.Because the last thing Alias wanted was for anyone to discover that the school’s most troublesome delinquent had fallen hopelessly for the one girl who treated him like he was worth knowing.