Satoru wasn’t supposed to care. He told himself that every morning when he leaned into the mirror and adjusted the folds of his pristine uniform collar, blinking back at the blue eyes that were starting to give too much away. They were supposed to be indifferent. Cold. Unbothered.

But every time he passed you, alone with your books and silence, he felt that itch behind his ribs again. That spark of interest that should’ve died out when the jokes got old.

Except they never did.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ “You walk like you got nowhere important to be,” Satoru muttered under his breath the first time he saw you in the hallway freshman year, lagging behind everyone else. He didn’t expect you to look up. You didn’t. You just kept walking, shoulders hunched, headphones on. That annoyed him.

So the next day he said it louder. “Speed it up, deadweight! The school day’s already boring without watching you crawl like a slug.”

You still didn’t respond. But your shoulders tensed. That was enough. That tension became his new obsession.

Suguru noticed early. They always met behind the gym after practice to mess around or share snacks stolen from Nanami’s bag.

“You’re too stuck on this whole bully act,” Suguru said one day, voice flat as he bit into a granola bar. “You ever thought maybe you're into them?”

Satoru scoffed. “Into that antisocial gremlin? Yeah, okay. I’d rather kiss Mei Mei’s shoe.”

“Sure,” Suguru replied. “Just don’t cry when they actually hate you.”

But Satoru didn’t cry. He laughed. He made it worse. He once slipped a love note in your locker signed from “The Cafeteria Janitor.” He stuck post-its on your desk when you weren’t looking that read Missing: Social Skills and Wanted: Friends (Any Willing Participant). He even once whispered behind you during biology class, “That notebook looks like it hasn’t seen the light of day. You studying necromancy or just that boring?”

And still... no real reaction. That made it worse. It made him fixate.

In gym class, he tripped you during dodgeball, then crouched beside you with a smirk. “You fall cute,” he said. “Should do it more often.” Your eyes flicked toward him for half a second. Satoru’s pulse stuttered. He hated it.

The teasing ramped up. He’d slide into your library seat and drape his arm over your chair like he owned the air around you. “Do you read anything fun or just those textbooks that smell like old people?” Once he even snapped a photo of you asleep at your desk and edited it with a thought bubble that read “Social interaction is my worst enemy.” He laughed. But he stared at that photo a little too long that night before deleting it.

Another time he flicked a paper football at your head from across the room. “Ten points if I land it on that daydream dome of yours,” he called. When it actually landed, he grinned. When you didn’t look up, his grin faltered.

Suguru brought it up again after that.

“You know this isn’t normal, right?”

“I don’t even like them,” Satoru replied.

“You know their class schedule by heart.”

“I don’t.”

“You literally set your watch by their walk to lunch.”

“...Shut up, Suguru.”

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ But something started to shift. He began holding back in small ways. He stopped calling you names in front of others. He still teased, but softer, quieter. Less venom, more sarcasm. One time you forgot your umbrella and he dropped his beside you without a word. Just shoved it into your hand and walked off in the rain.

Suguru stared at him later. “You’re gone.”

“I’m not.”

“You gave them your umbrella.”

“It’s not like I melted!”

Eventually, the teasing became... familiarity. He started asking about your headphones. “That playlist you always zone out with—what genre is that? Depressing-core?” You didn’t answer. But the next day, he caught himself googling the lyrics he heard faintly when he walked by.

Then came the shift.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ His old group of friends, the ones who liked the cruelty, the shoving, the casual mockery—they didn’t get the memo that Satoru was done playing. They cornered you after school one day. Dragged you into the alley near the back lot behind the gym. They yanked your backpack away. One of them laughed and said, “Let’s see what freaks like you hoard in here—crystals? Voodoo dolls?”

Your voice didn’t cry out. But the panic was obvious.

Satoru rounded the corner, expecting to find you walking home like usual. What he found instead made him freeze.

“Hey,” he said, quiet. Dangerous. He walked up slow, like a storm brewing on two legs. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh, c’mon, Satoru. You’ve messed with them more than we have—”

“Yeah. Me. Not you.” His tone cracked like thunder. His fists clenched, shadows crawling under his skin.

“Touch them again and I’ll make sure you have to gum your lunch for the rest of the year.”

Silence. Then scrambling. His old crew scattered like roaches.

You didn’t thank him. You never said a word. But he turned toward you, heart still pounding, and held out your bag like it was sacred.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ That night he sat on Suguru’s porch with a soda he barely drank and said, “I think I fucked it up. I was mean for so long... I don’t even know how to start.”

Suguru stared up at the clouds. “You start by showing up different.”

So the next day, Satoru did. He showed up beside your desk. Sat down. Looked at you without a joke or insult.

“I can’t undo it all,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But... can I try being your friend?”

You didn’t speak. But you didn’t move away, either. And as you started walking toward the exit after class, his voice chased you down the hall—confident, teasing, but warm this time. Real.

“Nuh-uh, pretty miss. You’re not getting away from me that easy. Not until you say you'll give me a chance... Please."