Chapter Text
There had been something bothering Kuafu for a while now, something he couldn’t quite stop thinking about no matter how much he tried to ignore it. About two weeks ago, he’d come to a realization that explained the strange distraction that had been following him around ever since.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, he had caught feelings for Goumang.
It had started simply enough. She’d asked him if he could take a look at her computer since it had been acting up lately. Kuafu had always been pretty good at fixing things, and since he didn’t have any real reason to say no, he agreed to help. What he hadn’t expected was that it would turn into the first time the two of them had ever spent time alone together.
Considering how often Goumang and Yi argued, Kuafu had been a little nervous walking over to her place. He half expected her to be just as sharp with him as she usually was with Yi. Instead, when he arrived, she was surprisingly normal about the whole thing. She greeted him politely, offered him something to drink, and sat nearby while he worked, chatting with him in a way that felt casual and easy.
As the conversation went on, Kuafu began to realize just how much they actually had in common. They both loved cooking, which somehow turned into a long conversation about different recipes they liked to try. Goumang even mentioned that she grew some of her own vegetables, proudly explaining which ones she’d had the most success with. From there the conversation drifted to games, where they discovered they liked a lot of the same ones. By the time they started talking about how excited they both were for the upcoming release of Pokopia, Kuafu had gotten so caught up in the conversation that he’d completely stopped working on the computer without even realizing it.
At that point neither of them seemed to care very much about the computer anymore.
They kept talking about whatever came to mind, games, cooking disasters, strange things that had happened at work. At one point they even started joking about Yi, which Goumang seemed to enjoy far more than Kuafu had expected. Somewhere during all that talking, Kuafu had begun to notice little things about her he hadn’t really paid attention to before. The way she laughed when something genuinely amused her. The way her voice sounded when she got excited about something she liked.
The more time he spent sitting there with her, the more he realized something else.
She was actually… really pretty.
By the time they both finally noticed how late it had gotten, the computer was still very much broken. Kuafu had immediately started apologizing, but Goumang didn’t seem upset in the slightest. If anything, she seemed amused. She simply told him it was fine and asked if he could come back in a few days to finish fixing it.
Kuafu had agreed a little too quickly.
Over the next few days, while he waited for an excuse to see her again, Kuafu found himself thinking about how he might ask her out. Unfortunately, that thought led him to another one that made things much more complicated.
Despite the way they constantly argued, Goumang and Yi were actually pretty close. They worked together often, and it wasn’t unusual to see the two of them hanging out on their own. The more Kuafu thought about it, the more he started to wonder if maybe the two of them were already dating and just hadn’t told anyone.
So when Yi asked if he wanted to come over and hang out, Kuafu figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“So… you and Goumang aren’t, like, together, right?”
Kuafu nearly fell out of his chair when Yi spun around so fast it was a miracle his tiny body didn’t get launched across the room.
Yi stared at him like he’d just suggested eating wet garbage.
“Absolutely not,” he said immediately. “Not even remotely. I can’t stand that woman. You know that.”
Kuafu nodded so quickly his neck almost popped.
“Right. Yep. Crystal clear. No standing, zero standing, got it.”
Yi kept staring at him for another second, as if making absolutely certain Kuafu wasn’t about to say something even dumber. Apparently satisfied, he turned back to his computer and resumed typing, because clearly whatever spreadsheet he was staring at was more important than spending time with his best friend like he was supposed to.
Kuafu scratched the back of his neck.
“So… you wouldn’t mind if I asked her out?”
Yi spun around again so violently that Kuafu briefly wondered if Solarian vertebrae were supposed to make that noise.
“What?”
Kuafu winced a little at the sheer offense packed into that single word.
“I’m just saying,” he said carefully, “since you don’t like her-”
“I don’t.”
“Right. Since you don’t like her, and you two definitely aren’t together-”
“We are not.”
“Then hypothetically, if I were to-”
Yi slowly turned his chair the rest of the way around, narrowing his eyes.
“Kuafu.”
Kuafu paused.
“Yes?”
“If the next word out of your mouth is ‘ask her out,’ I am going to throw this keyboard at you.”
Kuafu glanced at the keyboard.
Then back at Yi.
“…Ask her out?”
Yi’s eye twitched, and Kuafu barely had time to duck before the aforementioned keyboard smacked directly into his face.
“You actually threw it?!”
Kuafu clutched his face as the keyboard clattered to the floor beside his chair, a few loose keys popping free and skittering across the ground like tiny plastic casualties. Yi, meanwhile, didn’t even flinch. He simply lowered his arm and looked at Kuafu with the calm, unbothered expression of someone who had just followed through on a very clearly stated warning.
“I warned you.”
“You didn’t say you were serious!”
“I picked it up,” Yi said flatly. “That was a pretty strong indicator.”
Kuafu groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose while leaning back in his chair, still trying to process the fact that Yi had actually thrown the thing. “You could’ve been bluffing!”
“You know I don’t bluff.”
Kuafu opened his mouth to argue, but then stopped himself. There wasn’t really a point. For all the poise and maturity Yi liked to project, he could be spectacularly immature when the mood struck him, and when he made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.
“…You are unbelievable.”
For a moment, the room fell quiet. Yi turned back toward his desk out of habit and placed his hands where the keyboard normally sat, his fingers hovering over the empty space as though his brain hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that he’d just launched it across the room. After a second he slowly looked down at the desk, clearly noticing the absence.
Kuafu followed his gaze.
“…You know you can’t work now, right?”
Yi turned his head and gave him a look that suggested Kuafu had just volunteered himself for a second round of target practice.
“You threw it,” Kuafu added helpfully, a smirk beginning to creep across his face.
“I am aware.”
“You threw your keyboard.”
“I know.”
Another pause stretched between them. Yi deliberately kept his eyes fixed on the computer screen, clearly refusing to acknowledge Kuafu’s growing smugness. Kuafu, meanwhile, leaned down and retrieved the keyboard from the floor, brushing a few stray keys aside before placing it carefully back on the desk like he was returning a mildly aggressive animal to its enclosure.
Several keys were still missing.
Yi looked down at it. Then at Kuafu. Then back at the keyboard again.
“…You’re buying me a new one.”
Kuafu blinked, his smirk vanishing instantly.
“I wasn’t the one who launched it across the room!”
“You provoked me.”
“That’s not how responsibility works!”
Yi leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms like the matter had already been settled in a court of law and Kuafu had just lost his case.
“Why do you want to ask her out?”
The sudden shift in topic caught Kuafu completely off guard.
“Uh… because I like her?”
Yi squinted at him skeptically. In his defense, now that Kuafu was certain Yi and Goumang didn’t secretly have something going on, he could understand why Yi sounded so doubtful about the whole thing.
“You like her.”
“Yes.”
“The same Goumang who laced my coffee with soy sauce.”
Kuafu tried, and failed, to hide a smile.
“That was funny.”
“It was not funny.”
“She labeled the bottle ‘creamer’, Yi. That takes commitment.”
Yi dragged a hand slowly down his face, clearly regretting every life decision that had led him to this conversation.
“You are defending the woman who sabotaged my breakfast.”
Kuafu shrugged.
“She’s nice.”
“She is not nice.”
“She was nice to me.”
That made Yi pause. He stared at Kuafu for a long moment, like he was genuinely trying to determine if he had somehow misheard him.
“You have bad taste,” he huffed finally.
“I do not!”
Yi ignored the protest and leaned forward slightly, his expression shifting from annoyance to suspicion.
“…How long were you at her place?”
Kuafu hesitated.
“A while.”
Yi’s eyes narrowed immediately.
“How long, Kuafu.”
“…All day.”
Yi raised an eyebrow at that.
“I wasn’t aware it took you all day to fix a computer.”
Kuafu winced. Yi knew perfectly well that with his skills it should have taken him an hour at most to fix whatever problem Goumang was having, less if he rushed. It wasn’t Kuafu’s fault he’d gotten distracted by pleasant conversation and even better company.
“Well, we were talking!”
“You obviously weren’t working,” Yi replied dryly. “Did you at least fix it?”
Kuafu looked down at his hands.
“…Not exactly.”
Yi stared at him in complete disbelief before slowly leaning back in his chair again.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“What?”
“She invited you over to fix her computer.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t fix it.”
“Technically not yet.”
“And you talked all day.”
“Yes.”
Yi lifted a hand and pointed directly at him.
“She likes you.”
Kuafu blinked.
“…What?”
Yi gestured vaguely through the air like the answer should have been painfully obvious.
“She invited you over. You talked all day. She asked you to come back. Kuafu, come on.”
Kuafu opened his mouth.
Then closed it again, clearly struggling to process the idea.
“…Oh.”
Yi squinted at him.
“Your obliviousness concerns me.”
“I thought she just wanted her computer fixed!”
“You didn’t even fix the computer.”
“Exactly!”
Yi leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling like he was asking the universe for patience.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything.
Yi remained slouched back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling with the long suffering expression of someone who had somehow ended up mentoring the least observant person alive. Kuafu, meanwhile, sat frozen in place as his brain slowly processed the information Yi had just dropped on him.
‘She likes you.’
The words kept replaying in his head, each repetition sounding slightly more believable than the last. At first it seemed ridiculous, Goumang liking him? But the more he thought about the afternoon, the more the idea started to make an uncomfortable amount of sense.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall, replaying the entire visit from the beginning.
He had arrived expecting a quick job. Goumang had said her computer was acting up again, and since Kuafu was the closest thing their group had to a reliable technician, he’d offered to take a look. It should have taken an hour, maybe two if the problem was particularly stubborn. Instead, the moment he arrived, the repair had somehow turned into conversation. Conversation turned into lunch, which turned into an afternoon that passed so quickly Kuafu barely noticed the sun setting outside her window.
They had talked about everything. Work. Random stories from their childhoods. Ridiculous arguments about movies neither of them actually cared about. Goumang had laughed more than he’d ever seen before, and at one point she had insisted he stay for dinner because “it would be stupid to leave now when it’s already this late.”
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the broken computer had been completely forgotten.
At the time, Kuafu had simply assumed Goumang was being friendly. She had always been sharp-tongued, but she wasn’t cruel, not really unless your name was Yi. When she teased someone, there was usually a hint of amusement behind it. Kuafu had figured that maybe, for once, he was simply the person she felt like talking to.
Now, with Yi’s blunt commentary echoing in his head, the situation suddenly looked… different.
Across the room, Yi had finally lowered his gaze from the ceiling and was now watching Kuafu with the sort of quiet scrutiny usually reserved for malfunctioning machines. His expression made it very clear that he had already finished his analysis of the situation several minutes ago.
From Yi’s perspective, the entire thing had been painfully obvious.
Goumang had invited Kuafu to her house alone. She had allowed him to stay the entire day without once rushing him to finish the repair he was supposedly there for. And when the evening finally came to an end, she had asked him to come back another day to “finish the job.”
For Yi, the conclusion was so straightforward it barely qualified as a mystery.
Kuafu, on the other hand, was still catching up.
The realization slowly settled over him like a delayed sunrise. One moment he was frowning thoughtfully at the wall, and the next his posture shifted as the pieces finally connected.
“Oh.”
The quiet sound made Yi pinch the bridge of his nose.
Kuafu leaned forward again, rubbing the back of his neck while he tried to reorganize his thoughts. The more he considered it, the more the idea stopped sounding impossible. Goumang had always been difficult to read, but that didn’t mean her behavior had been meaningless.
In fact, if Yi was right, then Kuafu might have spent an entire day accidentally ignoring extremely obvious signals.
That thought alone made his face warm slightly.
Yi watched the realization unfold with the tired patience of someone who had just finished explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly stubborn student. There was no smugness in his expression, only the resigned acceptance that Kuafu’s thought process simply operated several steps behind everyone else’s.
Still, the situation was technically progressing.
If Kuafu finally understood that Goumang might actually like him, then perhaps the entire mess would resolve itself without Yi being dragged further into it.
Unfortunately, Kuafu’s next thought immediately ruined that hope.
If Goumang really did like him… then asking her out wouldn’t be strange at all.
The idea was both exciting and terrifying. Kuafu had originally asked Yi for advice because he assumed Goumang might reject him outright. Now the situation had shifted in the opposite direction, and somehow that made it even more nerve-wracking.
Because if Yi was right, then there was a real chance she would say yes.
Yi, meanwhile, had already moved on to more pressing concerns.
His gaze drifted down to the keyboard sitting on his desk, the same keyboard he had thrown across the room earlier. Several keys were still missing, and the entire thing looked slightly crooked, like it had lost the will to function properly.
The sight of it made his expression darken slightly.
Regardless of Kuafu’s romantic revelations, one fact remained absolutely certain.
Kuafu was still buying him a new keyboard.