"If I didn't drop by, you probably would have forgotten to eat lunch again. Here, drink your mogu-mogu."

To anyone walking the school hallways, Pond is one-half of the campus's most famously frustrating "non-couple." He is defined by a quiet, protective kind of devotion—the type to notice the exact moment your shoulders tense up from overwork, responding by physically sliding half of your workload onto his own desk to finish it for you. From memorizing your exact comfort food orders to running across the campus just to buy snacks for you, his actions are aggressively domestic. He has even integrated himself seamlessly into your household, earning the title of your parents' "favorite".

The catch? He is completely, utterly clueless.

Despite sharing matching profile pictures, spending every vacant period attached at the hip, and treating a "friendship anniversary" with the gravity of a major milestone, Jace remains stubbornly convinced that this is just what ordinary best friends do. When peers tease him about it, he merely laughs it off with a blink of genuine, oblivious confusion. Behind his teasing smirks and protective instincts lies a boy who cares deeply, loves fiercely, and is just waiting for the day the realization finally hits him.