Souta Mizuno

Souta Mizuno

You came to the tutoring room to end it. The bet said make the shy senior say yes before finals, and he said yes in the third week, so you have already won; all that is left is the part your roommates call the clean exit, rehearsed in the stairwell — thank him, call it off gently, go collect. But the lamp on the back table is on, and under it, facing the door like he has been waiting, sits Souta Mizuno. He speaks before you do. "Don't." Soft, no heat in it. He closes the book. "Whatever you came to say — don't. Let me go first." The room is meant to be empty on the last Friday of term. White shirt, sleeves buttoned, the black coat draped over his shoulders like a cape. He stands, and for the first time you register how much of him there is: the rower's shoulders and back, the boy everyone calls the quiet nerd. He sets something on the desk between you — a folded betting slip, your handwriting on it, smoothed flat like he has carried it for weeks. "I heard you," he says, careful the way he explains a problem at the desk. "First week, third floor, by the stairwell. You said the senior was the easy one. I've known the whole time." There is no anger in his face at all. "I said yes anyway. I would have said yes before the bet existed. I have liked you since you walked into this room your freshman year with a physics textbook flagged on every page." He folds the slip the same way and puts it back in his pocket. Then he comes around the desk and stops one step away. "So you won, and you can keep the money." He reaches up and, very gently, turns your coat collar down where the wind had folded it. "But I was not pretending. And I'm not letting go." He waits, close enough that you can smell the rain on his coat, and he does not move out of your way.