Kyle bounced his leg nervously, absentmindedly lifting another spoonful of cereal to his mouth as he kept staring at his notebook.
The cereal had long gone soggy in the milk, and the coffee beside him had turned cold. It didn't feel like a late breakfast or lunch anymore — more like pointless lingering at the table, something close to procrastination.
He flipped the page, scanned it quickly, then let out a long breath. Finally, he dropped the spoon into the bowl, let one hand fall onto the table, and rubbed his tired eyes with the other.
A lock clicked somewhere down the hallway. The door creaked, then shut almost immediately.
"Hey," Megan called as she walked into the kitchen.
"Mm," Kyle answered automatically, without looking up.
"Hi."
That second greeting made him flinch. Kyle lifted his gaze without meaning to.
Darren stood in the doorway, relaxed, looking right back at him.
Kyle looked away just as quickly.
"Hi," he said.
"How are you?" Darren's voice came closer.
"Fine."
He had no intention of asking the same in return.
Darren smiled faintly and took a seat at the other end of the table. Megan dropped her bag onto the chair opposite Kyle, pulled out her laptop, and opened it on the table.
She went to the fridge, took out some juice, and poured it into two glasses — before noticing the long-forgotten coffee beside Kyle and grabbing a third.
Three glasses of orange juice. Three people at the table — almost like an uneven triangle.
Megan typed quickly, focused on her screen. Darren watched it with equal concentration.
"…maybe 'cost-effective' works better than 'promising'? Or 'lucrative'."
"'Lucrative' sounds good. Fits the introduction slide better."
"And here we could add a technical and financial comparative analysis…"
"Yeah, that's a good idea."
Fragments of their conversation drifted toward Kyle as he bent over his textbook again. Another presentation, he could have guessed.
Megan's fingers paused above the keyboard for a moment. She shifted her gaze from the screen to Kyle — more precisely, to the world economics textbook in his hands and the notebook filled with uneven, crossed-out calculations.
His expression was tense, almost overly serious.
"How's it going?" she asked.
"It's fine," he replied quickly.
Megan didn't resume typing. She kept her eyes on him, waiting.
Kyle held out for a couple of seconds.
"Actually…"
She smiled. Obviously, she knew him too well.
"I don't really get one of the problems," Kyle admitted, finally lifting his eyes from the page. "Can you help?"
"You'd be better off asking Darren," she said. "That's exactly his field."
He shifted his gaze — and met Darren's, calm and self-assured. He clearly knew his worth.
Kyle let out a quiet scoff.
"Ha. Harvard, I'm guessing?"
"Yeah," Darren replied easily.
Kyle froze.
"…Wait. Seriously?"
"He graduated with honors, too," Megan added for him.
"Business and administration, like you?" Kyle asked.
"No," Darren said. "Economics."
He tilted his head slightly.
"So. Want help?"
Kyle looked back down at his notebook. The numbers were crossed out more than once, his frustration written plainly across the page. He studied the problem again and realized — again — that he didn't understand it at all. The logic still didn't click.
But he hesitated.
Darren let out a short breath, stood up, and with a faint smile stepped closer. Leaning over from behind Kyle, he glanced down at the notebook.
A quiet hum.
"So where exactly are you stuck?"
Under the table, Kyle clasped one hand with the other, rubbing his fingers nervously. His hands, as always, were cold.
Frowning slightly, he finally lifted his hand and pointed to a line.
"Here."
"Oh," Darren said after a second. "Yeah, I remember these. They're annoying."
He took the empty chair to Kyle's right.
Megan smiled to herself and quietly went back to typing.
"It's easier if you use this formula here," Darren said. "You've used it before — it works here too."
"Mm."
Darren explained calmly, going through Kyle's mistakes one by one. It was easy to tell he knew what he was talking about — but more than that, he made it sound simple. Clear.
"Got another pen?"
"Yeah." Kyle handed him one. "Here."
Darren took it in his left hand and pulled his chair closer so he could write in the notebook more comfortably.
Too close.
Inevitably, his arm brushed against Kyle's — his shoulder, his wrist— because of the way they sat, because Darren wrote with his left hand. Kyle tensed all over, instinctively trying to make himself smaller, to protect what little space he had left.
"You've got a small mistake here," Darren went on, as if nothing had happened. "But overall, your approach is almost right."
His hand shifted slightly — their wrists touched again.
Another small collision he hadn't agreed to.
At some point, Kyle stopped focusing on the formulas. His attention drifted to those brief, accidental touches instead. The words stopped making sense.
Darren wrote another line. His hand moved across the page, brushing Kyle's palm again. Another line — another light contact.
His hands were warm.
Kyle tightened his grip around his pen.
Darren's breath brushed near his ear — and a shiver ran through him.
"Got it?" he asked quietly. A beat. "You don't seem like you're listening."
"I am," Kyle replied under his breath. "I just… didn't really get it. Can you go over it again?"
A lie.
Pulling himself together, Kyle shifted his chair slightly away.
Darren noticed and said nothing. After a second, he leaned back just a little as well.
Time passed quickly after that. Eventually, Kyle understood his mistakes and, under Darren's guidance, managed to solve another problem correctly.
"Nice," his impromptu tutor said with a smile. "Now you know which formulas to use. The main thing — don't overcomplicate it. Just follow the structure. You'll make fewer mistakes that way."
Yeah. Not overcomplicating things did sound good.
"Right. Thanks," Kyle said, a little uncertain.
He looked over his own messy columns again. Then at Darren's neat, almost calligraphic numbers.
Even this handwriting felt… steady.
"Hey… can I…" Kyle hesitated, but pushed through it. "Can I come to you if I get stuck again? If there's something I don't understand?"
Darren met his gaze. His expression was hard to read.
"Not for free," he said.
Kyle frowned for a second — then his face relaxed as the memory clicked. He rolled his eyes and said nothing.
Darren broke the silence with a warm, easy laugh.
"Of course you can," he added. "I'll help if you need it."