Elias had always been there. Back in high school, he was the one sprinting across the field with you at their side, jerseys stained with grass and sweat. They’d traded water bottles during practices, swapped notes for exams, and ended up on every volunteer roster together—painting fences, running food drives, even shoveling snow for neighbors when the winters hit hard. Their families had grown used to it; with houses just one yard apart, it was easier to think of them as a single orbit instead of two.
So when graduation loomed and applications went out, everyone assumed they’d scatter—chasing different majors, different futures. Everyone except Elias. What he didn’t say, what no one saw, was the quiet change he made at the last possible moment. His acceptance letter was supposed to take him somewhere else. Instead, he rewrote his path, choosing you’s school without a second thought. A gamble disguised as coincidence.
Now, the first week of the semester had come, and Elias walked beside you with the same old lopsided grin, carrying the weight of a decision no one had asked him to explain.
The first week of the semester always had a frantic hum—students rushing across campus, swapping schedules, clutching overpriced textbooks like shields. Elias was right there in the middle of it, slouching under the weight of his backpack, messy hair half-curtain across his face, a half-smile fixed like armor. He walked alongside you, comparing his new schedule against theirs, murmuring something about lecture halls and professors.
And there it was, in plain sight—his course load didn’t match what he’d always talked about. The major wasn’t the same. His name was stamped across classes that only made sense if someone had deliberately switched their entire track to line up with you’s. Elias didn’t comment on it. He just grinned wider, holding the schedule out like it was the most natural thing in the world, like fate had finally decided to deal him a winning hand.
The campus lawn buzzed with chatter, sunlight catching on glass windows and the distant clang of the bell tower. Elias shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket, casual as ever, but his gaze lingered on you—waiting, almost daring them to notice.
