If anything, it had gotten worse.
Garrett clocked three phones before he’d even reached the main square , not hidden, not subtle, just held at chest height and angled his way like nobody had bothered explaining that this was supposed to be discreet. A couple of people were properly whispering, heads tipped together. One girl was outright filming, not even pretending otherwise.
He didn’t say anything to any of them. Saying something would have made it a moment worth having, and he wasn’t going to hand them that.
"Garrett."
He turned. Emiliana was a few feet away, chin slightly raised, the exact posture of someone who had done the maths on what walking over here would cost her and had decided the number was acceptable.
The phones swivelled almost as one thing.
"You’ve caused quite a lot of chaos for someone who apparently hasn’t done anything," she said, not quite smiling.
"That seems to be the general consensus."
"I did wonder whether you’d start enjoying it. Some people do." She looked him over, unhurried, the same way she might inspect a menu she already knew she wasn’t going to order from. "You don’t seem to be enjoying it."
"I’m riveting company. I’ll let the rumour catch up eventually."
"Walk with me," she said, already moving. "Somewhere I can actually hear myself think, preferably without an audience narrating it back to me later."
He fell into step beside her. "You say that like you’re not the reason there’s an audience."
"I’m aware. It’s part of the package." She glanced sideways at him. "You could try looking a little less like you’re being marched somewhere against your will. It’s not helping either of our cases."
"What would helping look like."
"I don’t know. Smile occasionally. Try not to look like you’re doing long division."
"I don’t smile on command."
"Noted. I’ll add it to the list of things you apparently can’t be persuaded to do."
The noise thinned considerably by the time they reached the quieter path along the science block, the square’s low hum dropping to distant voices and the occasional bike rattling past.
"How do you deal with all this?" Garrett asked, once it felt like a question worth asking properly. "Not the rumour. All of it, People knowing your name before you’ve said a word to them."
She raised an eyebrow. "That’s a very sincere question for someone who just told me he doesn’t smile on command."
"I contain multitudes."
"You keep saying that. I’m starting to think it’s the only thing you actually believe about yourself."
She let the question sit a second before answering it properly. "Mostly I just don’t engage. If I gave everyone the reaction they were fishing for, I’d never get anywhere — I’d just be reacting, all day, to strangers." A small, dry smile. "You get efficient at it. Cut people off before they’ve finished their sentence, Don’t make eye contact for longer than necessary, It’s not glamorous. It’s more like — traffic management."
"Traffic management."
"Don’t make it weird. It’s an accurate metaphor and I stand by it."
"I wasn’t going to say anything."
"You were absolutely going to say something. I could see it forming."
"Is it just here?" he asked. "Or does it follow you home as well?"
"Oh, it’s worse at home." She said it lightly, but there was a flatness underneath the lightness that gave the joke away. "Here, at least, people just want a word with me or a story to tell their flatmates. At home it’s expectations. Everyone already has an opinion about who I’m supposed to be before I’ve walked into the room. Efficient, in its own way. Saves them the trouble of actually finding out."
"Sounds like a great deal for everyone except you."
"Welcome to my life...There’s a newsletter, if you’re interested."
"I’d Pass."
"Wise. It’s mostly complaints."
Garrett found the contradiction sitting there the whole time he wasn’t saying anything about it — someone half the campus wanted a piece of, who’d built an entire arsenal purely to keep people at arm’s length, currently walking beside him in full view of every phone in the square, apparently unbothered about being the one who’d started it.
She caught him looking.
"What."
"Nothing."
"That was very clearly not nothing. You’ve got a face like you’re solving something."
"I’m just wondering why you walked over there at all. Given the traffic management."
She considered that with more honesty than he’d expected. "Because sometimes the traffic is worth managing."
She said it like it cost her something to admit, then immediately looked like she regretted admitting it.
"Anyway," she said, briskly, clearly done with that particular thread, "you’d think, with all this apparent fame, someone would’ve taught me how to have a normal conversation by now, And yet..."
"You seem to be managing."
"Barely. You’re not exactly easy company."
"I’ve been told."
"By whom."
"Several people. Consistently."
"That’s not reassuring for either of us."
"I wasn’t trying to reassure you."
She laughed properly, this time, the kind that seemed to surprise her a little on the way out. "You’re genuinely difficult. I don’t think anyone’s talked to me like this in about two years."
"Like what."
"Like I’m not going to combust if you disagree with something I say."
Somewhere in there, the conversation had stopped needing an excuse. They weren’t talking about the rumour anymore, or the crowd, or even really about her family, just the fact that he’d apparently peaked academically in Year 9 and hadn’t recovered since. She teased him relentlessly about the module handbook voice. He gave almost nothing back except the occasional flat line that made her laugh despite herself, which seemed to annoy her slightly, in a way she clearly enjoyed being annoyed by.
Then she glanced back, caught another phone further off, angled their way.
Her jaw set, just slightly. The composure came back up like a shutter.
"We should probably head back," she said, lighter than she meant it to sound. "Or somewhere else, This is usually the part where it stops being worth it."
"Forget the crowd," Garrett said, before he’d fully decided to.
She looked at him properly.
"Don’t you enjoy talking to me?" he added, because stopping now felt worse than finishing it.
She didn’t answer straight away.
"That’s a very bold question for someone who doesn’t smile on command."
"You’re deflecting."
"I’m aware I’m deflecting. Let me finish."
She didn’t finish it in words. Her expression did most of the work instead the careful, managed version of her face from the square giving way to something looser, closer to what he’d seen on the bench with the translation between them, the corner of her mouth doing something she clearly hadn’t authorised. She held his eyes a beat longer than the question needed, said nothing, and kept walking. Same direction. Same pace as before.
"I’m going to take that as a yes," Garrett said.
"You can take it as whatever you like. I’m not confirming anything."
"You’re smiling."
"I’m not."
"You are, slightly."
"I have resting pleasant face. It’s a curse."
Raymond saw them from the edge of the quad, and something in his jaw set immediately.
Garrett and Emiliana, walking, unhurried, laughing at something he couldn’t hear — while half of campus watched them do it. He took a step forward on instinct, then stopped.
Too many phones. Too many eyes already on the two of them. If he walked over now, he’d be the story instead of a footnote in it, and there was no version of that scene that ended well for him.
He stood there instead, arms folded, watching them get smaller down the path, working through the specifics, useless anger of someone who couldn’t do anything with what he was feeling in the moment he was feeling it.
’Later’ he thought. ’Not here.’
Brian saw them too, from further off, and didn’t feel anything close to what Raymond was feeling.
He just watched, quiet about it, taking in the scene alongside everything else he’d already noticed — the courtyard, the look-away, the name he’d asked a stranger for. This wasn’t a coincidence anymore. Coincidences didn’t walk this comfortably, this obviously unbothered by an entire square full of phones.
He didn’t approach either. There wasn’t a version of approaching that would tell him anything he didn’t already suspect.
He just watched them go, and left the thought where it was, close at hand, waiting for a use.
Garrett wasn’t thinking about Raymond, or the phones, or whatever was going to be circulating by the time he next opened his own.
He was just walking, Emiliana half a step beside him, insisting she wasn’t smiling while very clearly still smiling, and for the length of the path at least, that was the only thing that felt like it mattered.
Chime.
[ ]