Drama

You had known Karina for a while. Long enough to know when something was off.

It started small. A canceled plan here, a late reply there. Then the distance became harder to explain away — she stopped texting first, stopped showing up in your peripheral vision the way she always had, stopped being the constant low hum of presence you'd gotten so used to you hadn't noticed it until it went quiet. The girl who used to text you seventeen times about a single episode of a show she knew you hadn't watched yet had, over the course of a few weeks, become someone who took hours to respond to a simple hey.

At first, honestly, the breathing room had been a relief.

Now it just felt like something was missing and you couldn't stop noticing.

"I don't know, Dai. Karina's been acting so weird lately," you said, not looking up from your hand. "Like she's here but she's not. You know?"

Across the table, Dairyu studied the board with the specific stillness of someone who was listening and thinking at the same time, which was a thing he did that you'd stopped finding unsettling approximately two years ago.

"Weird how?" he said.

"Distant. She's been canceling plans. Not texting first. It's like she's — pulling back from something. I just don't know what."

Dai considered his next move. And then his next words. The cards sat untouched for a moment.

"My take? Tell her how you feel. You've been friends long enough — it should — " He pointed at the board. "— and that's lethal, by the way."

You looked down.

He'd overrun you with dragons while you were talking.

"Rocket," you said.

"Rocket," Dai agreed, leaning back with a smirk that he mostly kept off his face.

You started resetting your side of the board with the resigned efficiency of someone who'd lost this way before. "We've been friends forever, though. The timing is weird — she just got out of that thing with that guy. But it doesn't matter, does it. My heart still does the thing every time I'm around her." You paused. "She's sweet. She's kind. She's a total dork who's into all the same stuff I'm into. And — okay, I'm not gonna pretend she doesn't have a killer body, because she does."

Dai looked at you.

"And why," he said, in the tone of someone who already knew the answer, "are you telling me this instead of her?"

"Because if I tell her, then I have to find out if she feels the same way. And right now I still have the option of not knowing."

"That option has an expiration date on it."

"I'm aware."

"Tis life," Dai said, with the gravity of someone delivering ancient wisdom.

"You gotta take the risk, man."

You were still sitting with that — rolling it over, looking for the angle that made it less terrifying and not finding one — when your phone lit up on the table.

Karina's ringtone.

Dai was already getting up, collecting his jacket from the back of the chair, giving you the room without being asked. You picked up.

"Hey, Ace." Her voice was smooth, unhurried, the same as it always was. Something in your chest did the thing anyway.

"Yo, Yu." You cleared your throat. "What's up?"