ee dropped his forehead on the note table attached to his lecture hall seat. An entire two days had passed and Lee was back in OChem with a Park Complex the size of Canada. He really couldn't fathom a reality in which Wednesday was real, and that he, Lee Asano, agreed to become "Gym Buddies" with USFC's star running back.

As if he could even keep up with a USFC athlete. USFC was a nationally accredited Division I university with the stats to prove their worth. Their athletes were the best in the game, and the fact that they were known to put exclusively seniors on the field made Park's all the more of a celebrity. A freshmen on the team holding his own against massive, beefy, hulking biceps and thighs. The lead quarterback, Roland Ball, had a pair of thighs that caused earthquakes in San Francisco and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.

And Lee certainly didn't know this because he had fantasized about having his head annihilated by them.

Just as Lee brought his head up to hit against the desk for a third time, someone's knuckle rapped on the surface. Lee stared vacantly at closed notebook. Out of the corner of his eye, Rushil leant over into his vision.

"Hey... big guy... how're you holdin' up?" Rushil said as he took his seat. He sat on the edge of it, though, all of his attention and energy seeping into Lee's direction like the tendrils of a vicious beast, grinning smugly at him from the shadows.

He glowered at Rushil.

Rushil (bless his heart) offered an almost-pitiful grimace as he nodded in "understanding" and said, "That bad, huh?"

"I haven't slept in two days," Lee said. It was an exaggeration, but it was a direct reference to how he felt as a human being, existing in a bag of flesh, at that very moment.

Rushil gestured to his eyes and said, "I can... I can tell. You've got, uh, bags under your eyes today."

"It's my immune system rejecting this situation," Lee said, slumping back in his seat. He put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and sighed. "He's your roommate."

"We would have known this sooner had you just told me his name—" Rushil said.

Just past Rushil, Lee caught sight of Alex climbing the stairs. Once again, Alex stopped at the sight of them, and then at what they had managed to overhear from the situation. Alex hurried over, backpack swinging off of their shoulders and onto the floor behind Lee's chair.

"What happened? Why does Lee look like death incarnate?" Alex demanded.

Rushil cleared his throat as he prepared for the delivery of the best punchline of Lee's joke of a life. "Mystery Starbucks guy?"

"Yeah?"

"My roommate."

Alex fell back into their seat. They stared at Rushil, completely stunned. They put a hand to their heart and said, "You've done it. You've officially killed me."

"You're tellin' me," Lee huffed. "I've been dead for two days. This is just my ghost talking."

Alex leant forward to hiss, "Your roommate's Milo Park. As in, thee guy. The Guy who made the field as a freshmen. Didn't he get, like, a full-ride scholarship to Ohio State?"

Rushil nodded eagerly. "Yeah. Uh-huh, that's the guy. That is thee guy that sleeps three feet away from me every night."

"Wow," Alex said.

"I hate everything about this," Lee droned. "Leave me now or forever hold your knives, fellas, because I might just beat you to the chase."

"Well, you will if you stay awake any longer. Have you even been eating? Look at your face," Rushil said. He straightened with a gasp, snapping his fingers as he said, "Milo said you gotta eat carbs today. Like, a fuck ton of them. Like, grab yourself some Noods after this 'cause it all starts tomorrow."

"What starts tomorrow?" Alex asked. "Also, I never understood why everyone calls Noodles & Company 'Noods'."

"Because it's cool? I don't know," Rushil said. "But our boy Lee has a date with destiny. And by destiny I mean the gym. Milo has pledged to make Lee ripped by Christmas so he can take on Jesus in a fisticuffs battle of the century."

"Wow," Alex breathed, shaking their head in disbelief.

"My arms are the size of twigs," Lee whispered, barely holding himself up against the armrest. He looked to Rushil, eyes bleary with sleep. "Does cool whip count as carbs?"

Class went on, and once again, Lee was effectively distracted enough not to think about his eminent downfall set to commence in less than twenty-four hours. His phone weighed heavily in his pocket with all of four texts he had shared with Milo Park over the topic of their schedules and how incredibly well they crashed. Still, they would make it work (somehow, if Lee's lack of self-control had anything to say about it).

Park ran on a different clock. His days rotated between classes, practice, meals, and personal gym time. It was a religious schedule that, when Lee took a closer look at, now existed in his very hands. He had Milo's entire life in his fingertips, and he wondered how much it would sell for on the San Francisco Black Market. How many girls would tear his innards out just to get their hands on Park's class schedule like this? The guy had even included the room numbers. If Lee wanted, he could sit in the window of every lecture hall just to stare at Milo.

Which he seriously... wasn't considering doing. It was just a vague, hardly defined visual in his head.

Lee shook his head as class ended. No, definitely not thinking about that.

Lee had made sure to block out time on his calendar for studying and schoolwork, which left far less time on his clock than he initially thought. He supposed it made sense. When he wasn't at school, studying, or eating Ben and Jerry's, he was at Starbucks. It made his nights long but manageable, and it certainly diminished the cost of classes.

But that just meant his early morning Starbucks shifts were all the more difficult to get up for. However, Milo's name was slotted in bold immediately after, just before Calculus on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And, on every other weekday, Milo Park slipped in immediately after OChem with the promise of dinner at Lockhart Hall immediately after.

Rushil walked with Lee to Noods, where they stood in line and determined the cheapest option on the menu. They sat at a booth as they waited for their togo bags, and Lee propped his chin on his hand and sighed. Rushil smiled from across the table and asked, "So I take it you don't come from a rich and famous family with a limitless credit card."

"Nah, I do," Lee said, so deadpanned that Rushil's fond smile faltered. Rushil raised an eyebrow at him and Lee sighed, "Disowned."

"Wait, are you serious? Shit, I was just kidding—"

"Nah," Lee said, eyes traveling across the line of costumers before landing sharply on Rushil to say, "I'm serious."

"Wha—? How?"

Lee shrugged and, by some stroke of luck, his order was called. He didn't mind talking about his family, really, but he'd never talked about it before. Before Rushil, Lee was socially brain-dead. He thought he'd pulled the plug on hopes of an average teenage life, and what with his shit schedule (as Park now knew as "lame") he didn't expect to have a social life.

As Rushil got his meal, Lee popped open the top of his togo container and walked out to the front of the building. He waited on the sidewalk as Rushil jogged up to him and said, "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I mean, that's gotta be rough."

"They're assholes anyway," Lee said, mouth full of noodles and oh-so-yummy spicy pasta sauce. He waved his fork idly as he said, "I just don't know what to say about 'em, you know? It's like... so many kids here wish they had a family to pay for it all. I have one, but it's just not in my moral code."

"What code?" Rushil scoffed.

"Precisely," Lee said. "You'd think it's all just common sense shit. 'Be good, do good,' that sort of thing. My family—they aren't like that."

Rushil hummed, lips pursed. He swallowed down his noodles before shaking his head and saying, "Nah, I really don't get it. What are they, in the mafia or something?"

"Worse. They're lawyers," he said. "I originally came here enrolled in USFC Law."

"Shut the fuck up. You were not."

Lee grinned, a cheeky smile on his lips as Rushil went on to stare at him in awe. USFC Law was the most difficult college at the University of San Francisco, California to get into. They had an acceptance rate of 12%, and if that wasn't impressive enough, every member of the Asano line who went to university attended the same exact college. Lee was a fourth generation alumni, and his family was beyond pissed that he switched colleges after his freshmen year tuition was settled and signed off on.

They were at the gym doors then, and before Rushil could inquire further, Park was pushing open the door for them from where he was waiting at the windows. Rushil held up his pasta for Milo to see, as if to say, "I've done your bidding."

Milo smiled at them and said, "Nice Noods. Can I have some?"

Lee almost dropped his Noods all over the floor. On some faraway plane of existence, there lived a Lee who had been asked for nudes by Milo Park, and somehow, he had been dealt the wrong plane of existence.

Instead, he was just inquiring about pasta.

"It's just mac and cheese, you nerd," Rushil said. "Lee got something exciting. You should try his."

"It's spicy," Lee blurted out before Milo even made eye contact.

Milo glanced down at the bowl of pasta in Lee's hands as he held open the second door. It wasn't fair, truly, for Milo to be able to lean against the door like that and say, "I have a good tolerance for spice."

Lee held the pasta out like a sacrificial offering and Milo took the fork between his fingers. Lee transcended. He wondered if there'd be Renaissance-styled paintings, some day, of this interaction.

Lee swallowed hard as Milo put every tong of that goddamn fork in his mouth and pulled the noodle off with his teeth.

"Tasty," he said.

"Fuck," said Lee.

"What?" said Rushil.

Milo stuck the fork back onto the plate and walked on. Lee realized then that the choir of angels was just in his head, and it faded fast. He hurried to keep up. "I'll show you around the gym, but I have to say, I don't believe a word you said about never having set foot in here," Milo said, glancing sparingly at Lee.

"I've never set foot in a gym. I swear on my life," Lee said.

"Then we must be changing the world. On this day in history, Lee Asano set foot in a gym," Milo said.

"Yeah, and you didn't burst into flames like a demon stepping foot into a church, so I'll give you points for that," Rushil said.

Lee rolled his eyes. There was a checkpoint just before the gym area that required their student cards. Milo went first, then Rushil, and then Lee. Lee slotted his card up with the sensor, only to have it blare angrily at him. He threw his arms up and said, "Well, nice knowing you guys. I'm just gonna leave now—"

He barely turned around before Milo was grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him back. He plucked Lee's card out of his hand, and Lee told himself that it was only possible because Lee was distracted and holding a bowl of Noods.

"You have to give it a second," Milo told him, shaking the card in his direction.

He leant over the machine and put Lee's card back down. He held it still for a solid second before the green light blinked on, and the half-door opened. Milo stuck the card back into Lee's grasp and gave his hand a pat.

As if the heat in Lee's cheeks wasn't already intolerable.