Garrett went through his normal routine in school, went for a couple of classes and found a way to dismiss Daniel-he didn’t tell him about the date, he wasn’t prepared to explain anything to him
Garrett found a bench near the fountain and sat with his phone in his hand, doing nothing in particular, when the screen went gold without warning.
[PROGRESSION REQUIREMENT: MAKE EMILIANA CHOOSE THE HOST OVER AT LEAST ONE ALTERNATIVE ROMANTIC OPPORTUNITY ]
[STATUS: COMPLETED]
He read it twice.
I didn’t do that.
He hadn’t asked Emiliana to reject anyone. Hadn’t even known there was anyone to reject. As far as he was aware, his entire contribution to whatever this was had been walking into a crowd and asking her a question in front of witnesses.
He stared at the notification, waiting for it to become less ridiculous.
It didn’t. For a second, he considered asking her outright.
"Hey, quick question...Did you turn anyone down recently?"
Which was, on reflection, an insane thing to say to someone hours before a hangout.
If she had something to tell him, she’d tell him. And if she didn’t, there was no version of that question that didn’t eventually lead to him explaining a phone app that gave him money for making her like him.
That was a conversation he was in no rush to have.
He put the phone away and let it sit.
She arrived a few minutes later, cutting across the grass toward him, and the first thing he noticed had nothing to do with the notification. her long hair falling loosely around her shoulders. Her dress was simple but suited her perfectly, neat without looking like she’d tried too hard.
Garrett noticed the little things too: the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the quiet curve of her smile, and how effortlessly beautiful she looked when she wasn’t trying to be noticed.
She looked at him a second longer than she needed to before saying anything.
"Afternoon."
"Afternoon."
"Good walk over?"
"Quite the adventure, There was a pigeon."
"Thats interesting." She said sitting down
They fell into step toward the bench without either of them deciding to, and Garrett noticed something else once they started talking.
Emiliana seemed slightly different today,Not wrong. Just more present.
She kept glancing at him between sentences, like she was checking something rather than simply talking.
He kept that in mind
He didn’t ask.
"You’re staring," Emiliana said, not looking at him.
"I’m observing."
"That’s the same thing with worse PR."
He almost let it go, Then he didn’t.
"Did you turn someone down to come here?"
She went still.
Not dramatically. Just a small pause, a fraction too long. The kind of pause that told him he’d hit something before she’d said a word.
"How would you know that?"
"I didn’t." He leaned back against the bench.
"You’ve just seemed..." He searched for the least suspicious word to use. "...Different today. Figured something happened."
She looked at him properly then, weighing something.
"Brian."
The name landed flat and took a second to register.
Brian Gilbert.
The same Brian half the campus treated like a minor celebrity. The guy that always seemed like the only one with a easy access to emiliana
"He asked you out."
"Yesterday." She said it like she was getting it over with rather than confessing to anything. "I cancelled."
Garrett didn’t answer immediately.
She turned down Brian.
He knew exactly who Brian was. Brian Gilbert. The guy who could probably ask half the university out and get a yes before finishing the sentence.
And Emiliana had said no.
For him.
That thought stayed in his head longer than it should have.
His phone buzzed.
[WARNING]
[HOST’S EMOTIONAL STATE IS INTERFERING WITH THE CURRENT OBJECTIVE.]
[HOST IS AT RISK OF COMPROMISING THE QUALITY OF THE CURRENT INTERACTION.]
Garrett glanced down at the screen, then back at Emiliana.
He’d gone quiet for several seconds. Right now was Not the moment for this.
Whatever Brian meant, whatever the System thought it meant, none of it changed the reason he was sitting on this bench.
He let the thought go.
"So," he said, "no pigeon story of your own to compete with mine?"
Emiliana raised an eyebrow.
"I refuse to compete with a pigeon."
"Wise. It was a genuinely impressive pigeon."
She laughed.
The tension he’d created by going quiet disappeared, and for the first time that morning, Garrett stopped thinking about the notification.
He had a hangout to enjoy.
They had chosen a place in the park, past the fountain, past the bit of the park where anyone might reasonably wander through. A row of trees cut it off from the main walkway. It was quiet enough that neither of them had to think about who might be watching, just grass and a bench with peeling green paint that neither of them bothered complaining about.
"So," Emiliana said, tucking one leg up under her, "tell me something you’ve never told anyone."
"That’s a big ask for a Friday evening."
"Small things count. I’m not asking for your deepest trauma."
Garrett thought about it. "I used to be terrified of the vacuum cleaner. When I was six, maybe seven. Full meltdown every time my mum turned it on."
"That’s not embarrassing, that’s adorable."
"I once cried at a birthday party because someone else blew out my candles."
"Better."
"I was eleven."
"Now that’s worse."
He nudged her shoulder with his. She didn’t move away.
"Let’s hear yours" he said.
She considered it longer than he had. "I can’t do maths in my head. At all. Basic maths. It’s genuinely embarrassing given who my family is."
"That’s not embarrassing."
"You haven’t seen me try to work out a bill split."
"I’d pay to see that."
"You’d lose money watching it. That’s the tragedy."
It went on like that for a while — nothing important, nothing that mattered beyond the fact that neither of them had bothered telling most people these particular useless facts about themselves. A dog she’d had as a kid that hated everyone except her. A physics teacher Garrett had spent an entire term convinced was secretly a spy, for no reason he could still defend. Things they liked and Things they couldn’t stand. The way she picked the raisins out of anything and lined them up on the side of the plate like evidence.
Somewhere in the middle of it, without either of them steering there deliberately, the conversation went quieter.
"What do you actually want," she asked. "Out of all this. University, life, whatever."
He didn’t have a polished answer for that, so he didn’t try to build one.
"Honestly? Until pretty recently, not much past just getting through it. Pay rent, pass the year, don’t think too far ahead because thinking too far ahead usually just told me how little I had to work with."
"And now?"
"Things changed. Not going to bore you with the details." He glanced at her. "But I’ve started actually thinking past next week, which is new for me."
"What changed it?"
He thought about how much of the true answer he could give her without the whole thing sounding insane.
"A few things went right that hadn’t been going right for a while. Made me realise I didn’t have to keep living the way I had been." He shrugged. "Vague answer. Sorry."
"It’s fine. Mysterious works on you."
"Your turn," he said. "What actually makes you happy. Not the version everyone assumes."
She took longer with that one.
"Quiet mornings. Genuinely boring ones, where nobody needs anything from me and I don’t have to think about who’s watching." A small pause. "This, actually. Right now. Nobody’s filming it. Nobody’s going to ask me about it later."
"High bar. A bench and some grass."
"You’d be amazed how rare that is."
He didn’t push further. She’d said enough, and pushing past it felt like it would cost more than it earned.
There was a stretch after that where neither of them said anything at all.
It should have felt awkward. It didn’t.
Garrett noticed that properly, the specific absence of the urge to fill the silence with something, anything, just to keep the moment moving. She wasn’t checking her phone. He wasn’t scrambling for a joke. They were just sitting there, comfortable, without either of them needing to perform.
He hadn’t felt that around anyone in a long time.
At some point he realised he hadn’t thought about whether he was doing any of this right once in the last half hour. Hadn’t thought about the balance in his account, or Raymond, or the five requirements sitting on his phone like a countdown he was supposed to be racing.
He was just sitting on a bench, enjoying being there, with someone who currently had a raisin balanced on the end of one finger, threatening to flick it at him if he made one more comment about her maths.
"Don’t," he said.
"You started it."
"I really didn’t."
She flicked it anyway.