[Leroy]

I could hear the ticking of a clock when there was none, seizing the inside of my head and making it drone like a bad summer heat that needed a swim. The meeting was slow and stupid; repeating instructions that were sent across several emails in the past week and acting as another form of social interaction for the new thirty-five. Compulsory.

"So the exhibition booths must be up and running by three and that gives us about half-an-hour for setup after getting the equipment downstairs. Shifts are voluntary, but promoting the student union is one of the main..." They were dragging.

Could have been worse if it was student-run but having a student union admin from the school's admissions staff wasn't going to command any respect from the students. Not when all thirty-five were ranked at the top of the school. And had better things to do.

"We have elected ambassadors according to the booths and since the exhibition is featuring outdoor cooking, we need volunteers for..." I turned. Some members were already headed to the equipment room where the portable stations were.

I stood and joined them to look for brainless carrying that I could wash my hands off after doing since staying for long was only going to be a waste of time. That, and I had other plans.

"Oh. They put you on setup?" Some girl directed at me. She had a list on a clipboard. "I mean with your skills, they should've put you at the grill or it's going to be a waste. I'll check with—"

"No need," I grabbed the end of a table and headed out the door with some other people on the other end. They looked at me weird and down to the table. I needed them to pick up the pace, so I stared back. They picked up the pace and didn't look at me another time.

"Um. If you say so."

The girl with the list started directing others to the equipment and left us alone. Which was ideal. So along with some other union members who used setup as an excuse to leave the room early, we got the tables and grills down to the side entrance of the main building before assembling them at the bottom of the stairs. Then heading to the plaza.

I was itching to send a text, but I was on my third trip down with two tables stacked on top one another and my phone was in my back pocket. I felt it vibrate. Picking up the pace and assembling them faster than the other third years who were taking their time, I fixed up all the shit they didn't do and got directed by some other logistics member to the exact spot in the plaza. They said Birchwood would be there.

"She's a first year," I stated, implying that she couldn't be part of the student union.

The guy shrugged like it didn't matter to him. "Yeah, but she's the valedictorian of our middle school division and the director's daughter, so. Voluntary ambassador for the pastry booth."

I stopped listening after 'valedictorian' and started towards the plaza with the assembled tables. Some others followed with grills and boxes of fliers. The venue was average; meaning that there was decent shade and sufficient benches for other students to sit around during the exhibition, but the only concern would be a zero-plan for wet weather. Which was stupid since the sky was dark as fuck.

"... leave. Don't worry."

The voice was like a beat. I turned and he was there, and I never imagined anything other than his hair being so easily recognizable but here I was, knowing how he sounded like twenty feet away.

He was talking to Birchwood, gaze raised from the bench he was sitting on and she, standing over him with something over her shoulder. I couldn't tell if it was a bag or a shiny red Lego but at least her face made it obvious that she wasn't in a good mood. I left the tables stacked atop one another and turned behind to direct the rest. Then approached.

But out of no fucking where, Birchwood had her hands on his arm like she was about have him murdered. "I asked you a question," and then she was saying words through her teeth in a voice I never heard her use when she talking to me. "Your name."

"I'm sorry Miss Birchwood but isn't my name unfortunately splayed across every article there is on—"

So I grabbed her wrist and held it there. Forgot to mention how I closed the distance but that doesn't matter and I don't really think about that kind of stuff. Either way, she let go because I had arm fixed in an uncomfortable position and turned to me looking as though she was a shocked victim that had been attacked. It was funny. I let go.

"Leroy, you... um," she must have had something stuck in her throat all of a sudden because her pitch raised and her tone softened to one that wasn't sharp and aggressive. "I didn't know you were here."

"That matters?" I raised a brow, glancing at the way she kept her hands behind her back. "You're not supposed to be here so early." All this while, I could tell he was looking at me but when I turned to meet his gaze, he averted it and pretended to be adjusting his glasses. It was cute.

Birchwood had a lot of excuses up her sleeve but I wasn't really in the mood to listen so I had her directed to the other people assembling the booths for the exhibition and got her to leave with her tail between her legs. This gave me some time to speak to him.

"You okay?"

"It was nothing," he dismissed with a wave, putting on the PR-smile he'd somehow mastered over the years. He was good at it. "Birchwood was just informing me about the exhibition and that I had to leave the premises. She asked for my name afterwards on an unrelated note but I suppose everyone's curious about my tongue nowadays. Oh, did you receive the text I sent?"

I got out my phone and checked the screen. Shit.

"I... didn't." Looking over my shoulder, I counted the number of booths that needed setting up and the averaged out the time I would spend before I could leave. "If you still have time, I'll meet you at Spice Lodge. The study's on the second floor."

Over his shoulder was Birchwood in the distance, squinting at us from afar and forgetting that people other than herself needed privacy too. She had her eyes fixed primarily on me, raising a brow when she noticed I'd seen her too so I moved out of the way, turning my back towards her and blocking her view of us both.

"Spice Lodge isn't located on the campus map," glasses mumbled to himself, navigating around the picture he'd taken. "There's only cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne... and the other residence halls for senior students oh but there's a common building right over here with a—"

"Yeah," I pointed it out in the distance, since it was the only building that poked a little above the trees separating the campus and residence area. "That's the one. Spice Lodge refers to all the spices. Cinnamon, so on. We all share a study, gym, game room, whatever."

He seemed to light up at this. "A game room! I suppose you spend some time with your friends in there every now and then? You used to like those very much." They were blue; his eyes. And excitement was the colour of the sky while happiness was the shade of a summer pool. They were very nice to look at.

"Sometimes," I lied. "We can see if you got any better."

He gave his glasses a mandatory fix, clearing his throat. "We could, sometime in the future. But first we should concentrate on salvaging whatever's left of your AB grades so that you wouldn't be left with a guilty conscience throughout the rest of the year. I'll see you at the study." He had a couple of texts in his arms and his bookbag on the other shoulder but I wasn't surprised to see that he waved regardless—poised, back straight, everything in place.

I watched him go.

"How do you two know each other?"

It was her again and I couldn't be bothered to answer since it would waste the energy I'd conserved to think later on so I waved her aside and got to setting up the grills. Mise en place fifteen minutes. Heating the grill another five or ten. If someone takes over the last step I could leave in twenty. They can't mark me down if I did everything in the first place.

"Because you got him to the infirmary that time? Or did you guys know each other before that?"

The school promoting outdoor cooking all of a sudden was something new and although refreshing, sounded suspicious enough. If we'd done it the way we had last year, the stations wouldn't have needed assembling and the budget we spent on new grills could have been cut. They were enough to spend on a month's worth of hospital bills.

"He's in some of my joint classes and I'm not surprised that everyone finds him a little stuck up. It's the articles getting to his head, don't you think? Just because he's been gifted with something special he didn't even cultivate."

I fixed up the first grill before getting someone else to watch over it and moving on to the next one. The brand new models required some time heating up and they couldn't have put me as the only chef on duty. Either way, randomly finding someone else to replace me would suffice—I'll just drop some over the grill and leave before they notice. Being in the top thirty-five must mean something.

"I mean, at least he's read a lot of books or probably holed up in his room all day studying until he's developed that huge of a brain. Makes him so weird."

I turned to Birchwood.

"Makes him smart." Watching her blink in confusion gave me a headache so I got back to finishing up the assembling. "It's hot." I hovered a hand over the grill top.

Cold. Doesn't work. Kind of like her brain.

*

It was drizzling by the time I got to the study and already, I could foresee a ton of people asking me where I had been. Reason being, they hadn't thought of a wet weather plan for an outdoor cooking exhibition when I'd told them days ago that it wouldn't work. I wasn't going to save their asses this time.

Holding my fob over the card reader for a second, I waited for it to beep before entering the room and spotting him in the leftmost corner, laptop open. Typing away. He was seated between two other tables occupied by separate groups of people I've maybe seen around. They were talking.

Concentration was his main forte. I've seen him finish an encyclopaedia of trees in a single seating when he was four and back then, I thought he was crazy. Turns out, he's just doing something he likes. Nothing wrong with that since he wouldn't even notice if I snapped a picture of him right now, so I did that and sent it to Annie. She would have thought he looked the same.

I crossed the room and tapped the side of his screen. "Hungry?"

He tore his eyes from the screen and blinked twice to register my presence. I almost laughed, sliding over the paper bag that contained an ube donut I got him at the bakery.

"They postponed the test." I sat across him, taking out the one I got for myself. The textbook I lent him to review last night was on the table, colour-tagged and marked. It would have been empty and untouched by the end of the year had it been up to me.

He reached for the paper bag after nodding in thanks and gingerly peeked inside. "Oh. That's great news isn't it." I could tell he'd seen the colour of the snack from the way his eyes lit up. Regardless, he folded the top and put it aside. "You wouldn't need to have me over so often."

"Let me finish," I wasn't going to let him off the hook so easily, taking out a set of documents from my bag and dropping it onto the table. "He replaced it with a financial analysis report due on Friday."

I watched him pick up the papers and flip through, scanning the details and required data sets. It was hard to hide an oncoming smile when the outrage was so clearly displayed on his face.

"Well," it was his signature word. "At least it doesn't seem very hard. I'm sure you can do it yourself after a quick run-through of the basics today."

Again, I couldn't resist. "That's cute. You're overestimating my abilities."

He was indignant about me teasing but continued to insist that what he had faith in was his teaching skills and not my innate ability to do math. Fair justification. Helped that he was cuter being defensive. "This will be nothing like before when I tried to explain those distribution concepts over the phone at one in the morning. It was your fault for sending that picture of your assignment so late and mind you, explaining things over the phone isn't the easiest thing to do." This was yesterday.

"I'm okay with this," I said, referring to whatever it is we were doing now.

Closing his laptop, he seemed to be veering himself back on track with the help of the textbook. "Then we should get on with it. First things first—the best way to study is knowing what you don't know. Or as the saying goes, knowing your enemy." He was at it again; doing the cute thing he does, pushing up his glasses and enthusiastically talking about studying. Such a nerd. "Please read this question and tell me what you don't understand."

He flipped to a page of the textbook he'd marked out earlier on, pointing to one of the examples. I paused, taking some time.

"Everything."

He gave me a look. "You're not being very cooperative about this." Pushing the textbook a little closer in my direction, he prompted again. "Surely, you must know what the first step to forming the distribution equation for this question. They've already given you the numbers."

My turn to give him a look. "The fuck is a distribution equation."

He had to take a deep breath and although I wasn't actively trying to tease him, I was admittedly trying to keep my laughter in check. After all, I couldn't deny that his reaction to being teased was part of what I looked forward to everyday, and now that he was obliged to tutor me for a couple of hours, I could see it becoming a sustainable source of entertainment for myself. Although the word 'entertainment' didn't really make the cut but it's not like I had an extensive vocabulary like glasses sitting across me... all I could do was cook.

"Alright," he exhaled after a while. "This is worse than I thought."

"Told you," I leaned back against the chair, taking a bite out of my own ube donut. Unsurprisingly, I caught him glancing at it as though he was momentarily tempted to copy whatever I was doing but then decided against it.

"I'm not giving up," he said, tearing his gaze away from the paper bag and instead, flipping through the textbook to the next tagged question. "There must be something we can start with. How about we go through the steps to forming a distribution equation while I explain what it is so that you, one, know what it is in definition and two, know how and when to apply it."

He was good at this. Patient, calm, detailed—everything a student could ever wish for in a teacher. So much so that I would at least stay awake during his classes should he ever conduct any and besides staring at his face, actually learn something theoretical. I'm not a theory kind of person.

Either way, I finally managed to understand the concept of forming the equations under his guidance and even did up the basics for some questions after a few minutes of listening to him. Then, I went on to complete one question on my own and for a moment, I was duped into believing that I could do it.

I could do math.

"That was fast," he said after checking my answers. "This is good progress. We're on track, so let's move on to the next—"

Our heads turned when a burst of noise and chatter invaded the study, resting on a bunch of second and third years who looked vaguely familiar. They went on to occupy the largest table directly beside ours, dragging their chairs and dropping their books and bags over the table and on the floor. We ended up eavesdropping even though we didn't want anything to do with them.

"So like there's the day trip and then the first mini-comp in the evening which means points from the first day and who doesn't want to be captain for cross-year?" They laughed. "No one." Details about SOY spilled without restraint. General sound or a melded buzz, I could handle. But high-pitched voices talking about a specific topic that involved the entire school was hard to keep out.

I reverted my attention back to the textbook, knowing that he was spending precious time trying to salvage my only subject that wasn't an A. Wasn't the time to be distracted.

"Waait. Isn't that Cox?" Not the time. "Hey! It is." Not the time. "Aaay, LC... dude, you're actually studying?" Someone had their hand on the back of my chair, leaning over my textbook as though they had the eyes of a bat and couldn't see no shit from where they were standing. I stole a glimpse at my tutor for his reaction.

He had his gaze lowered to the notepad he was writing on and didn't seem to mind the addition. Well. I'm telling him he should.

"I'm busy," I cut to the chase. Disrupter didn't get the memo.

"Since when did you start studying together with someone? I see you plugged in all the time at... waait a minute," the guy was squinting. "Aren't you that dude who broke the record for residence tasting? Like, the exam."

"Me?" He finally looked up, blinking first in my direction before turning to the other second-year. "Um. That's nice, someone who knows me for something positive instead of the biting my to—the other. Thing. Yes. I'm whoever it is you're referring to."

I couldn't tell if he was just politely entertaining this acquaintance of mine for my sake or if he was actually invested in having a shallow conversation with people like him. Knowing him, probably the former.

"Woah. How did you two know each other?" "Yeah. Aren't you a year older than him?" "You and LC friends or something?" One by one, the group of second and third years began to gather around our corner and I was pissed by this point. No other words.

Worse, his PR-smile was starting to fade and it was the first signs of unease that I could catch in a beat so I turned to the group of strangers and repeated: "Busy."

They sort of froze and did a double take; as though this needed some registering and the word 'busy' failed to exist in their dictionary so they had to find the 'add to dictionary' button and click it. I gave them another look for extra prompting. They shuffled back to their seats.

To confirm that everything was back in its original state, I returned to his eyes and searched a little. They were blank and slightly dazed; glasses reflecting the fingers of rain on the windows.

I said his name.

He blinked twice, snapping out of it. "We could move somewhere else," I suggested, phrasing it between a question and a statement so that it would be whatever he wanted it to be. Something moved in his eyes and it felt almost like the surface of the clearest freshwater pond to ever exist.

"Oh. Really? Well... if you have somewhere in mind, then."

=====================

[Vanilla]

By the fortune of princesses and pirates, I found myself standing before the main door to Cayenne Lodge—otherwise known as Leroy's residence lodge along with several other second-year students—gingerly awaiting his permission to enter. The latter himself was doing something on his phone and had yet to produce his key fob to unlock the door. Telling him to leave the matter aside and concentrate first on the task at hand was a tad too demanding for our current level of friendship however the extent of my desire to do so.

Just as he looked up from the screen of his phone and put it away, the front door clicked opened as though on cue.

"Can't believe you forgot twice in a row," said who I assumed was one of his many lodgemates, turning to me after registering that Leroy wasn't alone. "Oh hey. You're that guy."

I vaguely recalled seeing him in the hallway amongst Leroy's friends the other day, which most likely meant that they shared not only homeroom classes but other core modules as well. We hadn't had much to exchange back then but the fact that I was meeting or to a certain extent becoming familiar with the people hanging around Leroy was a major first. They were unapproachable—in my head, at the very least—and stand-offish; people from another world.

"Ooh, playdate?"

There were people lounging on the couch as soon as we entered, sharing a bag of chips while something of sitcom nature aired on the television. I noted the person who'd spoke and found his face slightly more recognizable than everyone else's. Mostly because he'd hung around Leroy's shoulder most of the time, including the walk to AB's lecture theatre the other day. It was disastrous to not have gotten his name since I never expected a situation of such nature to repeat itself, let alone by will.

"Oh no, we're studying," I corrected with a tentative nod of my head, unsure if I should be introducing myself at this point. There were at least ten people in the room and half of them were girls despite the general rule of forbidding opposite genders from entering the residence of another.

"So... studydate?" He went on with a raise of his brow, hiding a smile from Leroy who'd produced guest slippers for me to change into.

My companion responded with a surprising show of his middle finger and I was left bewildered by this gesture, wondering if something of such offensive nature should be shared between friends and if, god forbid, I would be at the receiving end of it should Leroy and I progress to such a stage. I couldn't figure out whether it was ideal or plain distasteful.

Either way, I hadn't the brain capacity to be worrying over multiple things at once and at present, my foremost concern was remembering the guidelines to behaving at someone else's place that I once read in a book back when I was ten. 'The Science of Making Friends.' I'd found it lying around in the household on a Saturday afternoon and had sped through it by dinnertime. It was a fair read.

"He's tutoring me for AB," said Leroy to the eyes that followed us as we went. I could understand why he was obliged to say something or they would soon follow us up the stairs and into his room out of sheer curiosity.

Bouts of laughter made its way around the room at the talk of accounting basics. Again, another inside joke I didn't quite understand and resorted to smiling awkwardly by the banister of the stairs.

"What? But he's a freshie, he hasn't even taken the course." "Shut up and leave them alone." "Any genius would better than a sleeper in class." "Cox, introduce us." "Hey I'm Rosi. You remember me, right?" "You're not even supposed to be here, student union ambassador." "Cox skipped too, I'm not the only one."

I turned to Leroy for help only to see that he, too, was eyeing the stairs and itching to go. This put me in the spot and made it particularly difficult to make a snap decision of what to do.

"Your place next time," he said in a lowered voice, circling his finger for a 'get going.' Strangely nervous, I nodded a swift farewell at his other lodgemates before heading up the stairs first and hearing Leroy somewhere behind.

"Two-ten. Third down the left."

I followed his directions and arrived in front of a door with a slip of paper that had his name printed on it between an acrylic holder. Pausing, I pointed. "This?"

"One-zero-one-three." He nodded at the digital passcode lock beside the door handle.

I'd input the numbers and heard an electronic beep before realizing that Leroy had basically just given me access to his room. More pausing. "Did you just...?"

He said nothing, opening the door and holding it for me whilst flipping on the light switches. It didn't matter very much since I was soon overwhelmed by the mess that was his room instead of brooding over the passcode that he was probably going to change at the end of the night after I leave.

To say that it was a mess could almost pass as an understatement by this point. His clothes—both casual and uniform—were draped on the back of his chair and over the half-opened doors of his wardrobe, his mirror, the headrest of his bed and some, on select spots over the floor. Papers and textbooks were found nowhere near the desk in his room but instead littered around his bed; reason being, the desk was occupied by a display of his riding gear, a DSLR camera, and now rucksack, which I assumed was the most convenient place for him to pick and go.

In fact, the only thing that seemed a little more in place was the coffee table in the middle of the room, which seemed to be a replacement for his study desk instead of, well, him using the real one just several feet away.

"So," I picked up a textbook from the floor, "you can keep a station clean but not your room?"

"A station's smaller than a room." He fired back, proving his point with a smirk. Smirks do not prove points, Leroy. They don't work that way.

I watched as he randomly retrieved a shirt from the back of his bed and chucked it into a laundry bag in the far corner of his room, as though a single act could greatly improve the state of it. Standing by the door, I fiddled with the air-conditioning panel before successfully adjusting it to a suitable temperature.

"Well. If you're going to study, a clean and orderly environment would really help keep your thought-process in check, you know," I sighed. "Makes me wonder how you scored A's on every exam in your first year and got to where you are now."

Leroy raised a brow. "Because they didn't need any studying?" At this, I paused.

"Not... exactly, but I—I mean, there are assignments and reports and such but yes that would only apply to courses in my major and not yours, so. Fine. Point taken."

He gestured to have the door closed, and after obliging with that and turning back to ask if he preferred studying at the coffee table... well, I was met with the now familiar sight of him removing his blazer and tie. I averted my gaze.

Though it hadn't been as disarming as it was during the first glimpse, I was obliged to keep myself in conscious check for some odd reason and so I waited for him to finish—he tossed it aside in the general direction of his bed—before daring to meet his gaze. Needless to say, I remained standing gingerly by the door since I figured it would have been impolite to sit without being asked to.

"You like standing?"

He was seated cross-legged on one end of the coffee table and looking up at me with what seemed like amusement.

"No. I just—" Well, I was waiting for your cue, idiot. I sat across him and proceeded to pull out the accounting textbook and notepad we were using earlier. What I observed, however, was Leroy looking at me quite as though he wasn't sure if laughing was the right reaction to whatever he was finding hilarious at the moment. I asked him what the matter was.

"Nothing," he mused. "Just. You didn't even change the way you sit on the floor."

I had the gall to start blushing in front of my student, feeling the tips of my ears burn from an unknown heat spreading throughout my system. Self-conscious, I was forced to become overly aware of the way my calves were tucked under my thighs and how I preferred this to sitting cross-legged on the floor as sitting on my heels somewhat encouraged a straighter back and the polite gesture of having my hands in my lap. Whether or not I had, indeed, been sitting in this manner for the past nearly fifteen years of my life was... a mystery. Still, it didn't matter very much.

"Can we get back to distribution equations because I sense some attempt at distraction and I am not buying it," I laid out clearly, reaching for my bookbag to retrieve my thermos.

Leroy wasn't one to hide his disapproval at things and so I wasn't surprised when he snorted and looked in my direction with a rather, um, odd fire in his eyes but got back to forming distribution equations in the example questions. This time, however, he didn't seem to need my help at all.

"Done."

He slid his answers towards me; scribbled in the most illegible penmanship I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing (but was it that surprising, really) that the letters almost seemed to possess the characteristics of its owner. Taking out a pencil, I went through the steps he took to arrive at several final answers to each different part of the question. Amidst my diligent checking of his understanding, however, I noticed Leroy fiddling with his phone with the hint of a smile on his lips. I couldn't quite tell what he was doing since he had the back of his phone completely vertical and pointed in my direction, so I simply assumed he was texting someone he fancied or, well, found generally hilarious. Being part of neither categories, I decided not to get involved and kept the questions to myself.

"Heey. You two in there?" A muffled voice came through the door along with an insistent knocking. I looked up from the notepad to see ire visibly written all over my companion's face.

"What?"

The door opened. "Soo... we're heading down to the marketplace for produce and you're on dinner duty today. Did you forget?" It was the classmate who'd teased me about the playmate-playdate-studydate thing earlier on. The one who, at the very least, seemed least afraid of Leroy and therefore somehow the one closest to him.

My student cursed under his breath and got up, checking a piece of paper that was stuck to the side of his wardrobe. "Fuck it's our turn."

"Yeeah so unless you're going to treat us all to any campus restaurant with your abundant number of gold credits, we better get going." His friend held open the door to reveal a readied ecobag for grocery shopping before jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

Leroy sighed, turning to me. "I—"

"Don't apologize," I said first, gathering my things and fitting them in my bookbag. "We've done enough for the day and, well, admittedly you did get the questions correct without my help near the end, so. I should be on my way. And I'm sure you'll be okay for the report since it basically encompasses what we did today but I suppose we could arrange for maybe one or two other consultation sessions if you're unsure. Either way, you deserve a break and maybe doing what you like best would help you relax a little."

He had been searching for his wallet, I presume, when he stopped short to look at me rather strangely. His friend standing by the doorway on the other hand, seemed to be breathing fumes of laughter, smacking my back in the most surprising manner. It hurt.

"What?! Doing what he li—okay, I... dude. I'm not sure how you two got to know each other but man you gotta know how much he hates cooking for other people, right? It literally kills him to even bring finger food to parties and it takes like five minutes to fry up some chicken."

"Ah shut up." He laughed and amidst exchanging middle fingers with his friend at the doorway, our eyes met.

And I could almost taste the autumn air on my tongue right then; hear the crunch of leaves, warm and toasted, under my feet; feel the seat rise and fall like the motion of a seesaw.

=================

A/N: Whee so I managed to update this week even though I updated Flight School too, thankfully :') I'm not too sure if I'm going to be able to make it for next week's update since I'm going to Indonesia for 3 days (just a chill out trip) but I'll update you guys on Instagram I guess :>  Next week's chapter features the start of the SOY (start of year) camp so!! Excited!! 

I've also been procrastinating a lot in general by obsessing myself with MikoRei my otp of otps since my exams are over weehee. 

-Cuppie.

==================

[Extra]

That night, I decided to give my godfather a call. The matter wasn't anything urgent or exciting but it was strangely pervading my thoughts and because I couldn't seem to find a solution or an answer to the questions that floated around inside, I had to find them elsewhere. Mind you, Uncle Al wasn't exactly the best person to ask.

"Good evening, Mr. Ch—Chip. I, um. I meant morning, where you are. Actually, I have something private to ask you but is now a good time to talk?"

"Anything for you Vanilla!" There was the sound of a beeping oven in the background. "I've missed you so much and I'm so sorry about the call from the other day. I really wanted to say more and—oh! Have you received my second letter? I sent you a postcard Giselle did up with watercolours and a short story Miki wrote on this old-fashioned typewriter we got him."

"I haven't," I panicked, slipping into my outdoor shoes and heading down to my letterbox just to confirm. "Maybe it's taking some time to come. Hopefully, I'll receive it by next week. Oh, and I heard from Uncle Al that your youngest sister got proposed to last week."

"Yes she did," he sounded very excited. "And I have a wedding cake to bake, plus Rose and Joe are having Saffron's baby shower on Saturday which means I have to get the cupcakes designed and ready by... um... o-oh no, there's so much to do."

I felt bad for bothering him at such a time. "I'm sorry for disrupting your schedule. I honestly could've just written it down in a letter but I guess I was just feeling a little conflicted recently."

"Nuu, please just ask away or, say whatever it is you need to! Tell me things!" Already, I could envision the ;u; on his face and knowing his husband, this was not the state I was allowed to leave him in.

"W-well, I... I was wondering. Chip. How did you... how did you come to know about your sexuality?"

There was a long pause on the other end and for a moment, I couldn't feel the beat of my heart. "O-ououh dear. Sexu—shh! I'm parenting! Okay Vanilla, are you asking this because, maybe, maybe you're a little curious about, um... boys? Maybe? Eep."

"That is a very good question and I..." Granted, I hadn't thought about why I was making this call or where this conversation would be heading. After all, the most I understood about the process of puberty or growing up was that, well, it wasn't the simplest thing that could be resolved in a questionnaire. "I'm still figuring out a lot of things."

"Don't worry Vanilla. You have all the time in the world to figure things out! No one's rushing you. But if you're curious about me realizing that I was a-attracted to, um, um... um, men... by that I mean men in general and not just Xander a-although I mean to say that love, sexuality, and sexual attraction are very different things because I love my husband and also am 'the-other-thing' to him, but but but if you happen to be sexually attracted not to a specific gender but someone because of other factors then you might have reason to believe that you aren't heterosexual or homosexual and and and oh I need to breathe."

We paused the conversation for several seconds for Chip to catch his breath and for me to register and note everything down in the form of mind maps. Naturally, I thanked him profusely for the pools of information.

"I was eleven when I had my first crush on a boy in my class and I honestly don't know why I liked him but it kinda just happened! Then, I started noticing that my gaze tended to, um rest on males instead of females. Like I'd always be following their backs and I would, y-you know, get nervous around them more than I do with girls. Very blushy. Very nervous. Hehe—o-oh no. Xander's come to pick me up from work early. I'll write more letters to you about this and and and meanwhile, don't force yourself to conclude or anything, okay? The heart can get confused!! We must talk soon!! I-I like being a parent."