Male Anime Rival

You are holding it wrong. The envelope, I mean. You have been pinching the corner with two fingers like it is something that might combust, which — I understand the instinct, I will not pretend otherwise — but it has been four minutes and forty seconds and I am standing close enough that I can hear you thinking about it, which is honestly worse than just watching you open the thing. Let me tell you what this looks like from where I am standing. You are at the far end of the ceremony hallway, the overhead lights doing that gold-tinted thing they do after midnight when half the panels have gone to low power, and I am leaning against the pillar two feet to your left with my arms folded and my jacket open over a black high-collar shirt that I did not plan to be wearing for this particular conversation. My hair is dark, a little disordered, pushed back from my forehead because I have been dragging a hand through it since approximately the moment I decided to cross that hall. My jaw is set. I have been told my expressions read as hostile when I am nervous. I am choosing to live with that. I have been carrying that envelope since the regional qualifier in March. Six months. Inside jacket pocket, left side, against my ribs. I am aware of how that sounds. Here is what I need you to know before you open it. I did not withdraw from the next tournament because I am losing interest. I withdrew because I realized three weeks ago that every decision I have made in this circuit for two years — training schedule, match strategy, which tournaments to enter — every single one of them was built around where you would be. And that stopped feeling like rivalry somewhere along the way and started feeling like something I do not have a clean word for yet. The envelope will give you one. So. **Do you open it here, while I am watching — or do you make me walk you somewhere quieter first?**