That meteor was the last hoorah for the Karraker. Scientists found a way to stop the tears from opening up, and superheroes mopped up the last of them and were finally able to breathe easy. We won the war.

Plenty happened after that, but it was a mess of noise and chaos and more celebrations than I cared for. I also wasn't a part of them.

With my powers tapped, I was no longer an asset to the war effort, so I was relieved of my front line duty and spent the rest of the war assisting at a military hospital. But officially, I was dead. It took some persuading, but I convinced my superiors and other heroes, Carl and Jeffery included, to report to the media that I was deceased. Originally, I was gonna desert right after destroying the meteor, but Carl and Jeffery convinced me otherwise, saying it would land me in serious legal trouble if I was to go on living when I was declared dead to the government. The “official” report was a compromise.

Funnily enough, there are articles in circulation claiming that I'm still alive and walking around, but those are all tabloid articles about some random guy who happens to vaguely resemble me. I would laugh so hard if they used my actual picture in one of those articles.

With the war over, there were talks of what to do with the superheroes now that their powers had no use. Some floated the idea of turning everybody back to normal, but nobody knew how to pull that off. Discussions continued and continued and went on and on, and in the meantime, everybody went their own way, myself included.

I had business to attend to, after all.

*

“Grant!”

My reunion with Mercedes was the happiest moment of my life. The second she saw me waiting on her at the top of our hill, she ran up and took me into her arms in a tight embrace. We had hugged before, sparingly, but that was the first time there was so much feeling in a hug. If we stayed like that another five, ten minutes, I wouldn’t have had a single complaint.

We did have to let go, unfortunately, and then Mercedes bombarded me with questions, asked for stories on fighting the Karraker, asked that I demonstrate my powers for her. They returned after a few days out in the sun, so it made those talks about turning us back into normal people hilarious. I thought I had reverted back to being normal, but my power didn't want to stay away.

Mercedes was spellbound by what I had to say, and the glimmer didn't leave her eyes once as I spoke. Usually, I was the one listening to her gushing, but for our reunion, our roles switched. Seeing her so transfixed on me, I was happy to say or do anything she asked of me, and I loved the excuse to just gaze into her eyes, but, when you get down to it, I had invited her here for one purpose and one purpose alone. She wanted to ask me more questions and hear more stories, but I interrupted her and stood up.

“Is something wrong?”

I was too antsy to keep sitting. I felt like I would start shaking if I remained seated. My hands were already shaking. I had to laugh at myself. Even when faced with the meteor, I wasn't this nervous.

Mercedes stood, and she came up behind me to check on me. I turned and looked her straight in the eye.

She was so beautiful in the setting sun. Unbelievably. Hard to believe there was such a beautiful girl on Earth and harder still that I was friends with her.

But being friends wasn't good enough, not anymore.

“Mercedes, I—”

And then I immediately froze up. I knew the words I wanted to say, had this huge speech I recited in my head over and over again, but when the moment came, I got stage fright.

“Yes?”

She was so patient. Always had been. That was one of her best virtues.

I didn't have it in me to go on with the speech, so I scraped it and settled on telling her how I felt. Those three little words. That was the bare minimum.

“...I—”

Just needed to get the words out there. Throw them out so that she knew. The delivery didn't need to be perfect, it just needed to be delivered.

“I—!”

I'm big into gaming and such now, but back then I was fresh into anime, so those sunset scenes of impassioned confessions always pulled at my heartstrings. I channeled one of those in order to finally get my confession out.

“I love you! Will you go out with me?!”

It was super cringe. I feel like crawling beneath a rock right now and laying there until the worms eat me, remembering this. But at that time, I was proud I got my feelings off my chest. I'd been waiting and hoping to do that for the longest time.

As you might expect when someone opens up like that, Mercedes was taken back. She gasped and even blushed a little. She stood looking at me for a moment, likely trying to determine if I was being honest or if I was playing around. Then it was a matter of what to say. If our roles were reversed and she was the one confessing, I would be unimaginably happy, of course, but I'd also stand there like an idiot because I wouldn't know how to react. How are you supposed to react when someone lays themselves bare like that? Whether it's for love or a confession of regrets when they're on their deathbed?

I waited on her answer, which seemed to be an eternity in the making. It was tense, I was tense, and the longer she took to respond, the more I felt like I would snap. I would fake a laugh and tell her that I was kidding. Play it off as a joke like they sometimes do in anime, you know?

“I'm sorry.”

Her answer finally came, and it came with a frown. As you'd expect, I wasn't smiling myself.

“I'm sorry?”

I wasn't parroting her words so much as I was asking her to repeat herself, in case my brain temporarily altered all incoming speech to sound like the exact opposite of what I was hoping for. Denying reality, in short.

“I'm, uh...” Whatever she was going to say, she didn't finish the thought and said something different. “I don't like you that way. I'm sorry.”

“——”

Not gonna lie, I was gutted. Totally dismayed and downtrodden. I was hardcore head over heels for her. Had been for close to two years. All those feelings, all those daydreams I had of us being a happy couple, cut down in less than a minute.

Somehow, that seemed less real than an invasive alien species infiltrating our universe.

It was my first rejection ever.