People like to say that girls are hard to get.
Hard to understand. That we give too many mixed signals, get mad when our hints aren't picked up, want something yet stay silent instead of asking for it.
The list goes on and on.
But honestly? I think we're pretty easy to understand.
It's guys who are hard to get.
We live in an age where signals are practically written in neon — social media, shared playlists, late-night likes on posts from three years ago. If you still can't read the room, then maybe the room isn't the problem.
Take Yagami, for example.
Do you know who he is?
...My crush. I guess.
He isn't very tall, but his height is perfect. His skin is pale in that quiet, unhurried way — like winter mornings that don't apologize for themselves. He's slim, but not weak. Just gentle in the way he exists. I like that. It makes me think it would be easy to wrap my arms around him, with my even smaller frame pressed against his back, and just... stay there for a while.
Not that I ever have.
His eyes are dark brown, always carrying faint shadows beneath them. Those tired bags under his eyes? I adore them. They tell stories of late nights and private effort, of someone who keeps going long after everyone else has stopped looking.
And his voice —
Don't even get me started on his voice.
It's deep but soft. Low, yet warm. Like something meant to be heard in the quiet, not wasted on noise. Every word he says sounds borrowed from somewhere unhurried, somewhere calm — and he says so few of them that each one lands like it matters.
...Wow.
I've completely lost track of what I was trying to say.
But if you still think girls are hard to understand, then explain this to me: why does someone like him feel so obvious to my heart, yet so impossible to reach?
Ahem.
Well. If there's anyone truly hard to get, it's Yagami.
Not because he's distant. Not because he hides behind some cool, unreadable mask.
It's because he is physically incapable of taking a hint.
I'm serious. If hints were oxygen, this man would not survive thirty seconds.
Exhibit Number One.
I was never the kind of girl who put much effort into her hair. If it was clean, that was already a personal victory. But the moment I admitted my feelings to myself — really admitted them, not just the vague butterflies I'd been pretending were indigestion — everything changed.
Curls one day. A ponytail the next. Pigtails after that. A neat, classy bun when I was feeling bold and slightly delusional.
My hair is a menace. It's thick and heavy — honestly, it's at least fifty percent of my total body weight — and styling it is basically a full workout. There was absolutely no way he wouldn't notice.
He'd say I looked cute.
Surely. Definitely. Absolutely. Without question.
I spotted his back near the university gates. It wasn't hard to recognize — he was the only person walking around without a backpack. I genuinely think our professors have a collective photo of him taped to their stress boards.
I skipped over, stupidly happy just from the back of his head. When I got close enough, I patted his shoulder.
He turned around.
Slowly.
Painfully slowly.
Like a man reconsidering every decision that led him to this moment.
I blinked, then smiled wide. "Good morning, Yagami! How are you doing?" I said, deliberately lifting my voice into something soft. Melodic, even.
He nodded.
"Maria... morning."
...
That was it.
I'm fairly certain I scowled without realizing it. What kind of greeting was that? Were you recently excavated? Do you need water? A pulse check?
I sighed, then pointed at my hair, my cheeks already warm.
"Notice anything different?"
He stared at my hair. Then tilted his head slightly, like he was solving a mildly inconvenient equation.
"Did you bleach it or something?" he said. "I don't remember it being blonde."
...
Silence.
Shock.
A quiet rearrangement of my will to live.
I slowly lowered my hand, fighting with every fiber of my being not to let my eyes fill up right there on the sidewalk.
"Yeah..." I muttered, forcing a smile. "Bleached it."
Then, barely above a whisper —
"...Since birth."
"Oh," he said. Genuinely surprised.
And just like that, we walked the rest of the way in silence.
No apology. No compliment. No dawning realization.
Just the sound of our footsteps and the quiet implosion of my self-esteem.
Exhibit Number Two.
Our embedded systems professor announced a group assignment. Mandatory teams. No solo submissions.
I grinned.
Hehehe.
I turned toward Yagami — carefully, the way you turn toward something you're not supposed to want too badly. The issue was that Yagami was sitting so far in the back he was practically in a different timezone. While I, responsibly, sat in the front row like a functioning student.
Why? Why does he sit all the way back there? What is he guarding himself from? Knowledge? Me? The concept of academic responsibility?
I waved at him once. Just once. Then I immediately faced forward again, because at that precise moment, Yagami was making the ugliest face known to mankind — brows crushed down, mouth twisted, arms crossed like the assignment had personally insulted his ancestors.
I'd ask him after class. That was the plan. Simple. Clean. No overthinking.
...Probably.
Class ended, and — purely by coincidence — I accidentally on purpose turned down my friends so I could catch him in the hallway.
"You want to work with me?"
He sounded genuinely surprised. Offended, almost.
"Why?"
Why, he asks.
"Ehehe... why do you think?" I repeated, twirling a strand of hair around my finger. "We're kinda the only ones without a group, so I thought — you know. Logically. We could just work together."
He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "Do you have a project in mind?"
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the catalog like my future depended on it.
"This one," I said. "IoT Air Quality Monitor."
He leaned in to look at my screen.
Too close.
Way too close.
My brain made a sound like a dial-up connection trying to load a feeling it wasn't equipped for. I caught the faint scent of something clean and minty — this was operating well beyond safe temperature thresholds —
"Gas sensors," he said, pulling back. "An ESP32. Probably a cloud dashboard."
I blinked. "How did you get all that?"
"From the title."
FROM THE TITLE?
From the title…
I shook my head. "Oh! Yeah! Totally makes sense!"
Breathe in, Maria.
Breathe out.
Just ask him to meet. Not ask him out — absolutely not that — just. The project. Pure. Academic. Professional.
...As if.
I grabbed the sleeve of his sweater, fingers trembling just slightly.
"Yagami... do you wanna meet tomorrow? To work on it."
He turned toward me — slowly, as always — entirely unbothered by my existence.
"I guess."
"For real?!"
"You're screaming," he said.
"Sorry!" I pressed a hand over my mouth. "What should I bring?"
He waved his hand.
"Nothing."
And then he left.
...
Nothing?
What does that even mean? What are we building it with — willpower? Eye contact? The sheer force of my unrequited feelings?
The next morning, I arrived at the coworking space to find Yagami already there.
Not just there —
Early.
I didn't expect that. I stood in the doorway for half a second, just staring, recalibrating.
The place was quiet for a weekday morning. A few students scattered across the tables, headphones in, faces buried in screens. Near the window, a young man sat alone with a notebook — not a laptop, an actual notebook — writing something by hand, slowly, like he was choosing every word. He didn't look up when I walked in.
Meh, whatever.
I made my way over and sat beside Yagami on the sofa — it was spacious, and also, frankly, cold. Sharing body heat is just thermodynamics. That's science.
"Good morning, Yagami!" I said, resting my chin on my hand. "Did you sleep well?"
"Slept well."
...
I watched him reach into his bag.
"Whatcha looking for?"
"The project," he said.
I stood up so fast the sofa shifted. "The project??"
"SHHHH—"
The entire room turned to look at me.
I sat back down, face burning.
Yagami, unbothered, set something on the table.
A white handheld device. Compact. Clean. Side vents lined its edges in neat rows, and it had the quiet confidence of something made by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
I stared at it.
"...You built that?"
He opened his laptop and turned the screen toward me. A dashboard. Graphs. Clean UI. Real-time data already running.
"5000mAh battery," he said, like this was a perfectly ordinary morning. "USB-C charging. Sleep mode. Clip or stand mount. Other stuff I don't remember."
"You don't remember—"
"For usage," he continued, closing the laptop, "you log the indoor temperature, then step outside and compare the values. That's one example."
I stared at the device. Then at him. Then back at the device.
"Did you really do all of this overnight?"
He stood up and shook his head.
"Three hours before meeting you."
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
Three hours. He built a working IoT device with a dashboard and a custom enclosure in three hours, and he was already standing up to leave like this had been a quick errand.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Home. To sleep."
"To SLEEP?!" I flailed my arms. "I just got here—"
"I know," he said simply. "I saw you walking toward me."
"That's not the point!" I pressed both hands flat on the table, leaning forward. "We could at least, you know — it's cold outside! We could get something warm to drink—"
He raised his thumb.
"Made hot chocolate at home. In advance."
And then he left.
...
I sat there for a long moment.
What hurt wasn't that he rejected me.
It was that he had no idea there was anything to reject. He wasn't being cruel. He wasn't playing games. He had made hot chocolate — in advance — gone home to sleep, and somewhere in his mind, that was just a normal Tuesday.
He was just being himself.
Completely, exhaustingly, infuriatingly himself.
I slumped back and stared at the ceiling.
An hour. I'd spent a full hour braiding my hair that morning, fingers aching, the mirror fogged from the shower, talking myself into something that felt almost like hope. And now I was sitting alone in a coworking space with a device that functioned perfectly and a heart that didn't.
Maybe I should let this go.
Not dramatically. Not in the way where you swear it off and feel righteous about it for a week. Just quietly. Just accepting that some people aren't tuned to the same frequency, and that's no one's fault.
I pulled out my phone, not really looking at anything on the screen.
The thought settled into me slowly, the way cold does — not all at once, but inevitable.
...Yeah.
That was probably for the best.
I scrolled through my phone without reading anything. Just the motion of it. The thumb moving because having something to do with the thumb is better than sitting completely still with a heart that is misbehaving.
The coworking space had gotten a little busier. Someone near the door was on a call, voice low. The couple at the round table had ordered more coffee. And near the window —
He was still there.
The guy with the notebook. Still writing. Still not looking up. Same unhurried pace as when I'd walked in, like time was moving at a slightly different speed for him than for everyone else.
I watched him for a second.
There was something about the way he sat — the way he held the pen, the way he seemed entirely unbothered by the noise around him, the way each word clearly cost him something before he let it onto the page —
"You kinda feel like him somehow."
I said it out loud.
I did not mean to say it out loud.
I pressed my lips together. Looked around. Only two people were close enough, and one had headphones in.
The guy at the window looked up.
Oh no.
He wasn't alarmed. He wasn't offended. He just — looked at me, with this calm, slightly curious expression, the way you look at something that has said an unexpected thing and you want to understand it better.
"Sorry," I said immediately. "I was — that came out. I was thinking out loud. I do that. It's a problem. I'm working on it."
He tilted his head slightly. "Who's him?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
"Someone I know," I said. "He just left. He's..." I made a vague gesture toward the door. "A lot."
"A lot how?"
"A lot quiet. And a lot unbothered. And a lot — " I waved the hand again. "Present without being there, you know? Like he's in the room but he's also somehow just... visiting the room from somewhere else."
The guy looked at me for a moment.
"That's not a bad place to visit from," he said.
I blinked.
"Do you—" I paused. "Are you actually a person who says things like that, or was that a one-time thing?"
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something close.
"I write things down," he said. "Sometimes they come out in conversation instead."
"What do you write?"
He looked at his notebook. Then back at me.
"People," he said simply.
"...People."
"What they feel. What they almost say. What they do when they think no one is watching."
I stared at him.
"That's kind of beautiful and kind of terrifying," I said. "Are you watching me right now? For the notebook?"
"I was here first," he said. "You watched me."
"I— " I made a sound. "That's fair. I did do that."
He looked back at his notebook, which I was starting to understand was not rudeness — it was just how he was. Like Yagami, in a way. Present without performing the presence.
"The person who just left," he said, without looking up. "You like him."
It wasn't a question.
"...Is it that obvious?"
"You spent the last twenty minutes on a sofa not looking at your phone while looking at your phone."
"I was looking at my phone—"
"You were holding your phone," he said. "Different thing."
I looked at my phone. He was right. I hadn't read a single thing on the screen.
"Okay," I said. "Yes. I like him." I slumped slightly. "He built me an IoT device."
The guy paused his writing.
"In response to—?"
"A project. It was a project. He built the whole thing himself, showed up early, and then went home to sleep." I paused. "He made hot chocolate in advance. At home. Before we met."
A beat.
"He sounds very literal," the guy said.
"He is SO literal." I shared his table. And I pressed my palms to my face. "He is the most literally literal person I have ever encountered in my life and somehow that is the thing I find — I don't know. I don't know why that's the thing."
"Because literal people mean what they say," he said quietly. "When they say something, it's real. There's no wondering."
I lowered my hands.
I looked at him.
That landed in a way I hadn't expected.
"Yeah," I said, after a moment. "Yeah, that's — exactly that."
He wrote something.
"You'll be fine," he said. Not as reassurance. Just as a statement of fact, the way you note that the weather will clear.
"How do you know?"
He looked up then, directly, for just a second.
"Because you're paying attention," he said. "People who pay attention usually find what they're looking for."
Then he looked back at his notebook.
I sat with that for a moment.
Then I stood up, tucking my phone into my bag, and gathered the device — Yagami's device, the one he'd built in three hours and left on the table like it was nothing.
"Thanks," I said. "For... I don't even know. Existing near me, I guess."
He didn't answer. But the corner of his mouth moved again.
I walked out of the coworking space into the cold morning, holding a working IoT monitor and something else that was harder to name — lighter than hope, steadier than nothing.
Presentation day arrived. We stood at the front of the room, and the professor couldn't stop grinning.
"I must say," he said, examining the prototype with barely concealed delight, "I'm impressed you managed to get Yagami to focus on something."
The class laughed. I laughed too — a small, awkward sound, slightly too late.
I glanced at Yagami beside me.
He was scowling at the floor, hands in his hoodie pocket, like the whole thing barely concerned him. But he'd written the entire report. Built the entire device. I hadn't touched a single component. He'd done it alone — not because he had to, but because that's just what he does, quietly, without making it mean anything.
Lazy, my foot.
I was still looking at him when he turned his head.
Our eyes met for exactly one second.
I snapped forward so fast I nearly pulled something. Heat rushed up my neck. The professor was still talking. I wasn't hearing a word.
Did he notice?
"You may return to your seats."
I walked back to mine slowly. The chapter of our little project was over. No dramatic ending. No revelation. Just a hallway and two people going back to their separate orbits.
Kind of sad.
Really sad.
I sat down and stared at my desk and decided, quietly and with great finality, to let it go.
He was too much in his own world. I was too much in mine. It was unrequited and probably always would be, and the kindest thing I could do for myself was to accept that gracefully.
...
Okay. Fine. I meant it this time.
Exhibit Number Three.
The cafeteria was busy. I was with my friends, tray in hand, when I spotted him across the room.
Yagami was already there. He was sitting with three guys — actually sitting with people, which was strange enough on its own — and they were laughing about something, and he wasn't laughing, but he wasn't not there either. He looked comfortable. Present in his own quiet way.
And he was reading.
I squinted.
A novel?
I took one step closer than I needed to, tilting my head just slightly to read the cover.
Spring Will Be Missed.
Oh.
Oh.
I'd read that. I hadn't just read it — I'd lived inside it for three sleepless nights. I'd cried at the part near the end where —
My feet moved before my brain finished the argument.
Yes, I know. I know what I said. I'd decided. I'd been very mature and final about it and everything.
But this —
"Hey, Yagami."
He looked up from the page. Slowly, as always.
"...Maria."
I set my tray down and pointed at the cover. "I just finished that. It's incredible."
And then something happened.
It was subtle. The kind of thing you'd miss if you weren't paying attention — and I had been paying a great deal of attention to this boy for longer than I'd like to admit.
His eyes changed.
Not his expression, not his posture. Just his eyes. The tiredness in them shifted, made room for something else. His pupils widened just slightly. And for the first time since I'd known him, he looked completely, entirely present — like someone had turned a light on behind his face.
"You read it too?"
His voice was higher. Just by a fraction.
"I'm really enjoying it," he said. "It's a masterpiece."
I stood very still.
That was more words than he'd said to me in a single breath in all the weeks I'd known him. His friends were staring. Even they looked surprised.
I leaned in slightly, heart hammering with something that felt less like nervousness and more like recognition.
"The ending is something you will never see coming," I said.
The color drained from his face.
"No — no, no—" He held up both hands, genuinely alarmed. "No spoilers. Please."
I burst out laughing.
I laughed so hard I had to set my tray down, one hand over my stomach, doubled forward. Yagami watched me with an expression I couldn't fully read — somewhere between bewildered and almost, almost warm — and somehow that made it funnier.
When I finally straightened up, wiping the corner of my eye, I found him still looking at me.
Not through me, the way he usually did.
At me.
Just for a moment. Just long enough that I noticed.
Then he looked back down at his book, and the moment passed, quiet and small and entirely unremarkable to anyone watching.
But I felt it.
I had decided, twice now, to let this go. I'd been practical about it. Reasonable. I'd done the math and accepted the result.
Yet here I was, standing in a cafeteria, laughing over a book with a boy who had no idea what he'd just done to me — and feeling, for no logical reason at all, like something had been returned to me that I hadn't known was missing.
It was a small thing.
Just a book. Just a shared moment over something neither of us had planned.
But small things, I was learning, have a way of meaning everything.
I picked up my tray and smiled to myself, the kind of smile you don't perform for anyone — the kind that just happens because your chest is too full to do anything else.
Yeah.
I could hold on a little longer.
Because that moment — that one unguarded second where Yagami looked at me and I looked back and something passed between us that had no name yet —
It made me happier than anything else that day.
It made me the happiest.