Chapter Text
Observation 1:
“I am not in love; I am experiencing a biochemical response to proximity and familiarity.”
Till knew his friends were rather unique, but this really took the cake.
Instead of being back in his apartment—surrounded by half-finished art projects and overdue deadlines—he was sitting in a chemistry lab on campus. The sharp smell of chemicals lingered in the air, fluorescent lights buzzing softly overhead. He slouched in his chair, wedged between Hyuna and the end of the row.
Mizi and Sua sat pressed close together on his other side, knees brushing, quietly sharing space in that effortless way couples did. In front of them, Luka and Ivan were busy setting up a projector, murmuring to each other as cables were plugged in and unplugged again.
Till sighed loudly. “How long do we have to be here? I want to go home.”
Hyuna barely looked bothered. She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, completely relaxed. “Calm down. Luka and Ivan asked us to help. It’s not that bad.”
Till scoffed. “Of course you don’t mind helping Luka. He’s your boyfriend.”
Hyuna smiled, unapologetic. “Exactly.”
Mizi leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. “Oh, come on, Till. We’ve only been here for like twenty minutes.” Then she added gently, “And Ivan needed help too. He’s your friend. Don’t you want to help him?”
Till let out an even longer sigh. “Help? The last time I helped him with a project, he monitored my sleep for a week.”
Sua turned to him slowly, eyebrow raised. “And you let him?” she asked, tilting her head.
Till hesitated. “Well… yeah.”
Everyone looked at him.
“But,” he added quickly, “he didn’t tell me it was going to be a whole week.”
From the front of the room, Ivan glanced back, eyes glinting with interest. “The data was very informative,” he said calmly.
Till groaned and sank lower in his chair.
Luka dragged a table closer and began setting bottles and instruments on top of it, lining them up with careful precision. “Ivan got lucky,” he said, clearly sulking. “I wanted the polysomnography study. I got stuck with bacteria instead.”
Till snorted under his breath. He knew damn well that wasn’t the real reason. Luka hadn’t wanted the study for the science—he’d wanted an excuse to watch Hyuna sleep.
Hyuna shot Luka a look. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I was robbed,” Luka replied flatly.
After a while, Ivan and Luka finished setting everything up. The lights dimmed, and the projector hummed to life. A PowerPoint slide appeared on the screen.
THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE
Mizi, Sua, Hyuna, and Till all stared at it.
Till felt a strange knot form in his stomach. This was bizarre—even for Ivan and Luka.
Ivan stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back. “You’re probably wondering why we asked you here,” he said evenly. “Recently, I’ve been experiencing a series of irregular physiological responses.”
The four of them stiffened.
“My dopamine and norepinephrine levels are elevated,” Ivan continued. “Oxytocin spikes have been frequent. Serotonin levels have dropped, while cortisol has increased. Additionally, I’ve observed an irregular heart rate and impaired concentration.”
He paused, as if waiting for the data to settle.
“Taken together, these symptoms lead to only one plausible conclusion.” Ivan looked straight ahead. “I am in love.”
Mizi’s jaw dropped. Sua’s eyes widened, unblinking. Hyuna nodded slowly, as if she were processing something far away.
Till, however, felt caught off guard. In love? There was no way. Ivan had never shown interest in anyone—not since high school. Back then, people used to admire him from a distance, whisper about his looks, his confidence, the mystery of him. Ivan never cared. He’d always dismissed love as irrational, a misinterpretation of chemical processes.
A lab rat, they’d called him.
…Okay. A good-looking lab rat.
And yet, the idea of Ivan being in love left a sour taste in Till’s mouth, sharp and unexplainable.
Ivan cleared his throat. “Since Luka and I required a new project for our chemistry course, we decided to take advantage of this anomaly.” He gestured toward the screen. “This time, I will be the subject.”
He said it the way someone might pitch a perfectly reasonable proposal.
Till swallowed. Something about this didn’t feel scientific at all.
Luka stepped in before anyone could respond. “The objective of the project,” he said, clicking to the next slide, “is to expose the subject to controlled stimuli—specifically, the individual responsible for triggering these symptoms.”
Till’s stomach dropped.
“We’ll observe changes in behavior, reaction time, speech patterns, heart rate, and cognitive function,” Luka continued calmly. “All data will be recorded.”
Mizi frowned. “That sounds… invasive.”
“It’s efficient,” Luka replied.
As he spoke, Luka moved to the table and began mixing liquids, glass clinking softly against glass. A pale solution swirled as he stirred it, completely unfazed by the way everyone else stared.
“So you’re just going to,” Sua said slowly, “put yourself in situations with your crush and… what?”
“Analyze it,” Ivan replied at once. “Of course.”
Till watched the chemicals shift color beneath Luka’s careful hands. Controlled stimuli. Subject. None of this sounded like a good idea.
“Wait,” Till said, sitting up. “To do this, you’d need the consent of the person Ivan is… crushing on.” He hesitated. “Right?”
Luka nodded. Ivan, however, spoke first.
“That is why we are here,” he said calmly. “Naturally.”
Till’s stomach sank.
“I—I’m confused,” Mizi said, her voice small. “What do you mean, that’s why we’re here?”
Everyone turned to Ivan.
“Well,” Ivan began, tone steady as ever, “the individual currently responsible for these symptoms is…” He paused just long enough to be deliberate. “Till.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Then—
Mizi squeaked.
“Huh?” Sua blurted.
Hyuna snorted, sharp and disbelieving.
The room erupted into overlapping voices, questions stacking on top of one another, disbelief filling the air. No one noticed Till.
He sat frozen, the world narrowing to the sound of blood rushing in his ears. His heartbeat stumbled, then raced. Something light and restless fluttered in his stomach, spreading upward until he felt dizzy. Everything was too loud, too bright, too close—
And yet, beneath it all, he felt strangely weightless.
Like he might float if he stood up.
Until Ivan’s voice cut cleanly through the noise. “But don’t worry. I only need your help to prove my hypothesis.”
Sua crossed her arms. “Hypothesis?”
“Yes,” Ivan said, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “That love is caused solely by chemical reactions in the brain. What I’m experiencing isn’t real—just science.”
Till’s thoughts derailed all at once.
“What?” he blurted, louder than he meant to.
He didn’t know why it hit him so hard, only that it did. Ivan saying it—saying that whatever he felt wasn’t real—left something sharp and uncomfortable twisting in his chest.
Till clenched his hands. “You can’t just—” He stopped, breath unsteady. “You can’t say that like it doesn’t matter.”
The room went quiet again.
Ivan looked at Till the way he looked at everything else—measured, curious. Then he turned back to the projector and clicked to the next slide.
“Till, don’t you see?” Ivan said. “This is a good thing. If we can prove that what I feel for you isn’t real, then you won’t be burdened by it.”
Till swallowed. “Burden?” The word came out smaller than he intended. “You really think I’d be burdened by them?”
Ivan only smiled faintly, as if the question itself had already been answered.
He gestured toward the screen. “These are the instances in which my symptoms reached their peak.”
A list appeared, neat and methodical.
Dates. Times. Locations.
Till’s chest tightened as he recognized more than a few of them.
- September 14 — 10:42 p.m.
Till offered Ivan his jacket outside the library. Ambient temperature: low. Heart rate increase observed.
Till’s ears warmed. That was just common sense, he thought. It was cold.
- October 2 — 1:17 a.m.
Extended study session. Subject fell asleep at shared table. Ivan remained awake to monitor breathing patterns. Dopamine elevation recorded.
“Oh,” Mizi murmured softly.
Till shifted in his chair, suddenly very aware of how close that night had been.
- October 19 — 6:03 p.m.
Physical contact initiated by Till (hand to wrist) during lab project assistance. Duration: 2.6 seconds. Temporary loss of verbal fluency.
Hyuna’s lips twitched. “That’s… specific.”
Till’s pulse jumped. He remembered that moment—how Ivan’s skin had been warm, how neither of them had pulled away right away.
- November 5 — 11:56 p.m.
Text received: “Did you get home safe?” Serotonin decrease noted. Cortisol increase followed.
Till swallowed. He’d almost deleted that text before sending it.
- December 1 — 9:08 p.m.
Till laughed. Unprompted. Sustained eye contact for 4.1 seconds. Cognitive disruption severe.
Till stared at the screen, heat creeping up his neck. These weren’t dramatic moments. They were small, accidental things—things he’d never meant to matter.
And yet Ivan had noticed every single one.
“I’m not saying this is emotional significance,” Ivan added calmly. “Only that the data is consistent.”
Till pressed his lips together, heart racing.
Ivan clapped his hands once, sharp and decisive. “So,” he said, turning fully toward Till, “would you be willing to participate?”
Till looked up.
“If you don’t want to,” Ivan added evenly, “that is acceptable. No harm done.”
The words were reasonable. Careful. Almost kind.
That somehow made it worse.
Every pair of eyes in the room shifted to Till, waiting. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, pulse thudding in his ears. His gaze flicked briefly to the projector screen—dates, times, moments he hadn’t known had mattered.
“I—” Till started, then stopped.
“I need time to think about it,” he said, surprising even himself.
Before anyone could respond, he stood and left the room, the door swinging shut behind him as he headed straight for his apartment.
They were left behind in the lab, all eyes drifting to Ivan. Ivan only smiled politely, thanked them for coming, and began putting the classroom back in order as if nothing unusual had happened.
…
Till paced the length of his apartment, back and forth, back and forth.
This doesn’t make sense. Ivan—in love with him? No. Impossible. And yet the moments Ivan had listed replayed in his mind, one after another. Till had never thought of them as anything important. They’d been ordinary. Forgettable.
That was what he’d told himself back then, too.
Except Ivan had remembered them.
That part made something warm and embarrassing curl in his chest, the same way it used to when Ivan laughed too close to his ear, when Till had felt the need to look away and never asked himself why.
What twisted worse was the way Ivan had talked about it—like everything he felt could be reduced to chemicals and data points. Just science. The thought left Till strangely hollow.
And then there was that word.
Burden.
Did Ivan really think his feelings would be a burden? That being loved—by him—would be something to apologize for?
Till stopped pacing.
Lucky.
The word echoed in his head, uninvited and dangerous.
Anyone would be lucky if—
Till’s breath caught. No… no, this feeling again, he thought. I thought I got rid of it a long time ago. Back when he’d been younger, when it had been easier to tell himself it was just admiration, just habit, just Ivan being… Ivan.
If Ivan looked at them the way he had looked at those moments. If someone noticed the small, ordinary things and held onto them like they mattered. If someone cared enough to measure their presence in his life, even while insisting on calling it data.
That shouldn’t feel familiar.
It did.
No wonder Till felt so upset. Ivan wasn’t rejecting the feeling—he was dismissing it. Dismissing them. And that hurt far more than any awkward confession ever could. It scraped against something old, something Till had learned early to keep buried and unnamed.
Till sank onto the edge of the couch, hands dragging down his face. The truth settled in, heavy and warm all at once: when Ivan had revealed it was Till causing those symptoms, relief had flooded him before he’d even understood why. A sharp, guilty relief. He’d been worried—quietly, irrationally—that Ivan had fallen for someone else.
The thought made his chest tighten.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
It always had.
And the way Ivan had noticed everything—the jacket, the late nights, the laughter—had made something in Till soften. Those moments had felt insignificant to him at the time, but Ivan had caught them, catalogued them, written them down. Strange, yes. But also… tender, in his own way.
He liked Ivan.
…No. He loved him.
He always had, in the quiet, inconvenient way that never asked for anything and never caused trouble—as long as he didn’t look at it too closely.
Pretending otherwise had become second nature. High school had been full of things it was easier not to examine. He’d told himself he’d grown out of it, that whatever pull he’d felt had faded with time and distance.
The list on that screen hadn’t created the feeling.
It had only proven it had survived.
Till stared at the floor, heart steady now, resolved.
Whatever Ivan wanted to call it—chemistry, reactions, data—
It was real to Till. It always had been, even when he’d refused to give it a name.
He picked up his phone, stared at the screen for a moment longer than necessary, thumb hovering like it used to when he’d almost texted Ivan for no reason at all. Then he typed:
Hey. Okay. I’ll do it.
After hitting send, Till set the phone down beside him.
His heart was still beating a little too fast, but his mind felt strangely calm. Whatever this was—experiment or not—Till wasn’t running away this time.
Not a chance.
After all, now Till had his own hypothesis to prove.