Work Text:
She had never been brave.
Even as she sat in her usual back-corner seat, the one that gave her a perfect diagonal view of the second row, her fingers twisted nervously around her pen. The pen wasn’t writing anything useful—not the lecture points, not the assigned problems she should've been solving—just soft loops over and over in the margin of her notebook.
Mikage Reo.
She always wrote it neatly, each letter deliberate, as if the act itself deserved care. Even if no one else would ever see it, it felt private, something entirely her own.
From here, she could see the sunlight catching on his lavender hair, the way it seemed to glow in certain angles. His posture was perfect—not stiff, just confident—and his voice carried whenever he spoke, warm and easy. He laughed often, and when he did, it felt like the entire room brightened.
She had decided weeks ago that she would confess to him someday. Not immediately, she wasn’t that brave, but someday. Maybe after practice, when his jersey clung to his back and his hair was damp. She could imagine how he’d pause, surprised, before smiling kindly at her.
But if she was going to confess, she told herself, she had to learn more about him. Learn about what kind of girl he liked, about what made him smile.
So she began to watch him closer.
And that was how she started to notice him.
Snoozy.
That was what they all called him, because, well, he's always sleeping. And when he wasn’t, he still looked like he might drift off at any second.
Nagi Seishiro.
He slouched into class as though gravity worked harder on him than everyone else, hair a soft, uncombed cloud, eyes half-lidded in perpetual drowsiness. At first, she thought he and Reo-sama were an odd pairing. Reo-sama was a firework—bright and impossible to ignore. Snoozy was… the exact opposite. Slow, quiet, unbothered.
But then she saw it. The way they fit without trying.
She noticed how Reo-sama always seemed to know where Snoozy was, as though he carried some invisible radar tuned to one person alone. If Snoozy came in late, Reo-sama would glance over the door, subtle but quick, and sometimes a small smile would tug at his mouth before he returned to whatever conversation he was in. If Snoozy forgot his pen (which was often) Reo-sama would pass him one without a word, and Snoozy would take it without thanks, just a slow blink, as though the exchange was muscle memory.
And then there were the moments when Reo-sama was talking to someone else, laughter bubbling bright, and Snoozy would look over with this… quiet attention, like he was cataloguing the sound in his mind.
Once, during a break, she watched Reo-sama stretch his arm lazily along the back of Snoozy’s chair. He wasn’t even speaking to him, but Snoozy leaned back just enough that their shoulders brushed, and neither moved away. It felt oddly intimate. Like they had done it a hundred times before.
Her pen stopped moving on top of her notebook that day.
After that, it became impossible to unsee.
At lunch, she saw Reo-sama break a sandwich neatly in two without looking, handing half to Snoozy. Snoozy took a slow bite, as if eating was a chore, but when Reo-sama started talking about a football match, his eyes stayed on him the whole time, chewing silently like he was listening more than anyone else in the room.
After practice, she lingered near the gym doors pretending to scroll through her phone. Reo-sama was surrounded by teammates, his energy magnetic as always. Someone called Snoozy’s name from down the hall, but Snoozy didn’t move until Reo-sama glanced at him and called him over. Then he followed—no hesitation, no questions—and they left side by side, their strides naturally matching.
It made something tight coil in her chest.
She told herself it was nothing, just close friendship. She still had her chance. But even as she repeated that, her eyes kept catching on the smallest details. The way Reo-sama always angled his body toward Snoozy when they sat together, the way Snoozy’s gaze softened whenever Reo-sama spoke, the unthinking ease between them.
Then came the rainy afternoon.
She had been trapped under the gym’s awning with a few others without an umbrella. The rain fell hard enough to blur the view beyond the courtyard, but through it, she spotted them under a single black umbrella. Reo-sama’s voice carried faintly over the rain, lively as ever, his hands moving with the story. Snoozy walked close, so close their shoulders brushed under the small shelter.
And then she noticed it. The umbrella wasn’t centered. It leaned, just slightly, so that Reo-sama remained perfectly dry while Snoozy’s far shoulder was exposed to the rain. Water traced steady lines down the umbrella's edge, dripping onto his jacket.
He didn’t shift. Didn’t even seem to notice—or maybe, she realized, he noticed perfectly well. His grip on the handle stayed steady, his stride unbroken. The only time he adjusted was when Reo-sama leaned closer in a burst of laughter, and then the angle changed, not for himself, but to shield that bright face from the windblown spray.
Reo-sama never looked up. He was too lost in his story, eyes dancing. Snoozy’s head was tilted toward him, gaze half-lidded but steady, as if the rain and the world and everything else didn’t exist.
It was then that she knew, in that quiet, inevitable way: she had never been in the running.
And strangely, she wasn’t angry.
It was bittersweet—the quiet ache of giving up before she’d even tried. Letting go of feelings for someone as magnetic as Reo-sama would not be easy, and she knew the sting would linger for a while. But alongside the loss, there was a kind of awe. Watching them felt like glimpsing something rare and private. They had the kind of connection that didn’t need to be explained, only understood by those within it.
She still found herself writing his name in the margins of her notebook sometimes, but it felt different now. Less like a wish and more like a keepsake, folded away in the back of her mind—a small, tender proof of the way she’d once felt.