Ryo stared at the screen, watching his overlay twitch into place as the stream timer counted down. Five minutes until he had to transform from Ryo the antisocial disaster into RyoTakkun, the electrifying voice behind the screen. The chat was already exploding with pre-stream hype.
"Why are you biting your lip like you're about to confess to your high school crush?" Kaito's voice cut in from behind, startling Ryo mid-thought.
Ryo spun in his chair. "I'm not—! Shut up."
Kaito leaned against the doorway, a spatula in one hand and an apron that read 'Kiss the Cook (He Might Let You)' on his front. "Oh, right, my bad. You're just brooding because your tragic anime protagonist backstory won't write itself."
"I'm writing a stream script, not angst poetry," Ryo muttered, minimizing the notes on his laptop that definitely weren't filled with crossed-out lines and second-guessing.
"Mhm. That why you've been typing, deleting, then staring into space for the last twenty minutes?" Kaito raised an eyebrow, flipping something on the stove.
Ryo didn't answer. Mostly because Kaito was right.
His mind had been annoyingly cluttered since yesterday.
With her.
That weird, messy girl at the café. The one who spilled her drink, then tripped over her own shoelace while trying to apologize to a chair. The one who mumbled to herself like her brain-to-mouth filter was permanently offline. The one with the soft, round eyes who looked like her whole personality was made of pink bubblegum and romantic delusions.
She was… loud. Physically and emotionally.
And yet, somehow, Ryo had ended up watching her.
Not intentionally. She was just there. In his line of sight. Disrupting the peaceful background noise with her strange little dramatics. And then she dropped that notebook. Of course he wasn't going to pick it up—he wasn't a hero in some cheesy shoujo manga. But still… he might've glanced at the cover.
Love & Lattes.
He rolled his eyes just remembering it.
"So," Kaito said, breaking into his thoughts again, "are you gonna eat before your fan club shows up and starts simping over your voice?"
"Not hungry."
"Cool. I'll just feed your share to the ghost in your room who's been haunting you lately."
"What?"
"Nothing," Kaito grinned, walking back into the kitchen.
Ryo scowled at his screen. Haruka, that was her name. He didn't know why he remembered it. Probably because she said it too many times in third person, like a cartoon character narrating her own life.
"Haruka will not be defeated by spilled coffee!" she'd declared at one point, dramatically blotting her notebook with napkins like she was treating a wounded soldier.
Ryo had genuinely tried to ignore her. But she was like an animated GIF—looping, expressive, impossible to scroll past.
Now she was in his brain, disrupting his concentration, like a pop-up ad he couldn't close.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, eyes flicking to the script draft again.
Title: Tomorrow's Just a Lie You Tell Your Anxiety
Intro: "Yo! Welcome back, chaos crew! It's ya boy, RyoTakkun—back again to help you forget life exists. Grab your snacks and your emotional damage, and let's jump in…"
Kaito walked past with two plates, one stacked with curry rice, the other holding a single, tragically toasted slice of bread.
"Made you breakfast," he said. "Well, technically, I made breakfast. This was the sacrifice."
Ryo glanced at it. "Looks like a fire hazard."
"Exactly your aesthetic," Kaito smirked. "Charred, bitter, and hard to chew."
Ryo rolled his eyes and focused back on his script.
Kaito leaned against the counter, sipping his tea. "You know, I've been thinking of getting a dog."
"You can't even keep your plants alive."
"Yeah, but imagine it—big, fluffy, too much energy, no sense of personal space. Kinda like a walking disaster with sparkly eyes."
Ryo stiffened just slightly.
Kaito grinned. "What? I didn't say anything."
Ryo tossed a pencil at him. "Out."
The stream started moments later, and just like flipping a switch, RyoTakkun came alive. Energetic, hilarious, charming in all the ways Ryo could never be off-screen.
And somewhere between laughing with his chat and roasting a laggy NPC, the memory of a girl dramatically fighting a coffee cup and declaring literary war on her own notebook floated through his mind again. The thought of a girl in a café lingered. Her awkwardness, her rambling, her dramatic little speeches to herself… it kept buzzing like an annoying fly he couldn't swat away.
He thought he'd forgotten about her. After all, she was just some random girl in a café—nothing special. But every now and then, when the chat slowed or when the game got frustrating, his thoughts wandered back to her.
Her clumsiness, the way she seemed to be fighting with herself, the way she had that notebook—Love & Lattes—like she was on a mission to make the world see her big, chaotic dream. And those little pep talks she gave herself... as if she was trying to convince herself that she wasn't losing the plot.
Why did that seem so… relatable?
Just as he was about to roll his eyes again, Kaito's voice cut in from the kitchen, dragging him out of his thoughts. "Hey, you're making that weird brooding face again."
Ryo groaned, rubbing his temples. "Can you stop paying attention to my face? It's not some sort of performance for you."
"I dunno, it's kinda fun to watch," Kaito teased, coming into the room with a bowl of ramen this time, his presence like a gust of wind in Ryo's otherwise quiet space. "But seriously, what's going on in your head? I haven't seen you this distracted since—well, since forever."
Ryo didn't answer immediately. He couldn't. He didn't even know what to say.
It wasn't like he had a crush on her. He wasn't that stupid. It was just that… she was so different from everything he'd grown used to. So unpredictable. So… human.
"I just need to focus on the stream," Ryo muttered, shifting in his chair.
"Uh-huh," Kaito said skeptically. "And I need to stop being the funniest guy in this house."
Ryo shook his head, but the unease that had been gnawing at him was still there. Haruka's face flickered in his mind again, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he realized something. Somehow, despite her chaos, she made him feel a little… lighter? Was that possible?
No. He wasn't going to start thinking like this. She was just a weird girl who spilled her coffee. End of story.
But despite himself, as the stream continued and his audience reveled in his chaotic commentary, his thoughts drifted once more to Love & Lattes, and the girl who seemed to have a little too much personality for her own good.
Just a random encounter. Nothing more.
Still, the thought kept lingering. As if her presence in his life was some kind of sign. He hated it. And he hated that it made him think of things he wasn't ready to think about.
Ryo finished his stream an hour later, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. The adrenaline from the live broadcast was starting to wear off, and the quiet of the room was settling back in. The fan chat had quieted down, and Kaito had retreated to his corner of the apartment to watch some obscure cooking video.
Ryo closed his laptop, staring at the screen for a long moment. The words "Love & Lattes" echoed in his mind, and he cursed himself. Why couldn't he just forget about her already?
"Hey, you're gonna keep brooding over this forever?" Kaito asked, his voice cutting through the silence.
"I'm not brooding."
"Right, right." Kaito smirked from the couch. "Well, whenever you're ready to stop thinking about dramatic café girls, you know where the fridge is."
Ryo didn't answer, his eyes drifting to the window. The night was quiet, peaceful—nothing like the chaos that filled his head.
As the night wore on, Ryo tried to focus on something—anything—to distract himself. But no matter how hard he tried, Haruka's chaotic energy kept invading his thoughts.
Just a random encounter. Nothing more.
But for some reason, Ryo couldn't shake the feeling that his life might be about to get a little more chaotic than he liked.