She held eye contact just a little too long.
Not in a manipulative way. More like she didn't realize she was doing it, like she was trying to understand you, or memorize something she saw in your face. *The Romantic* had that effect. She felt… deliberate. Even in silence.
Tonight, she sat in the back corner of a café just off campus. The others were scattered around the same park from last week, some playing card games on a picnic blanket, some reading or sprawled in the grass.
But she had peeled off. Said she needed a quiet space to write.
And now, her journal sat open next to a half-finished latte, and her headphones played an indie playlist that had at least three songs about fictional love.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Spark:
[Spark]: You disappeared again
[Romantic]: I'm writing.
[Spark]: So. You disappeared again.
She smiled. Tossed her phone face-down.
She was known for slipping away like that. Not because she didn't care, but because feeling "too much" sometimes made her want to be alone, so no one could see it.
She grew up romanticizing everything.
The clouds. Her school library. Strangers on buses. That one guy in tenth grade who held the door open and accidentally became a poem in her notes app.
Love, for her, was more than romance. It was attention. Intention. She felt it in the way people handed you something with both hands. In the way Mediator always refilled her water bottle without asking. In the way Observer sometimes just sat nearby, not talking, but present.
People didn't always know what to do with her.
She could be dreamy. Unpredictable. Quiet one moment, passionate the next.
She loved deeply. But rarely said it.
Not directly.
Instead, she left handwritten notes in library books.
Painted small canvases she never showed anyone.
Sent Spotify links with captions like "this reminded me of how you look at people."
Once, she thought she liked someone in Room 304.
He was quiet, detached, deeply in his head.
She found it magnetic. Not in a swoony way, more like she wanted to *understand* him.
But when they talked, it was like their wavelengths missed each other by just a few beats.
He looked at her and saw intensity.
She looked at him and saw restraint.
It hurt.
But she turned it into art.
That's what she always did.
Back at the café, she wrote something down in her journal:
There's a kind of intimacy in watching someone not know you're watching them."
She didn't know what she meant by that.
Maybe she just liked the way it sounded.
The door jingled.
Guardian stepped in.
Spotted her.
Walked over.
"Everyone's heading back. You okay?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Just… needed to untangle my brain."
Guardian smiled. "Untangle fast. They're trying to convince Virtuoso to climb a tree again."
She chuckled softly, closed her journal, and stood.
Outside, the sky was cotton candy pink.
And as they walked back toward the dorm, Guardian ahead of her, she paused.
Just for a second.
Turned around.
Looked at the sky.
Then whispered quietly, as if to no one:
"Please let something beautiful find me before I forget how to feel it."
Later that night, she placed her journal back on her shelf.
Watched the glow of her fairy lights flicker across the ceiling.
Then came the knock.
Soft. Familiar.
"Good night," someone said.
She didn't ask who.
Didn't need to.
"Night," she said back.
And if she wrote about the moment later, she wouldn't say who it was.
Because sometimes, not knowing was more beautiful than the truth.