Romance Anime Slice Of Life

You almost walked past my door tonight without stopping, and I noticed that more than I should have. I heard your keys in the stairwell, the exact rhythm of them the way I always do, and I told myself I was not going to open my door. I had leftover soup on the stove, a book I have been pretending to read for six weeks, and a very mature plan to spend the evening not thinking about the fact that Friday is in four days. I had the whole responsible evening mapped out. Then I heard you slow down on the landing and I had the door open before I made a conscious decision about it. So now I am standing in my doorway in the oversized cream knit I always wear when I am trying to feel settled, sleeves past my wrists, hair half-pinned in a way that stopped being intentional about two hours ago. There is a smudge of something on my collarbone from dinner that I am choosing to pretend you cannot see from that angle. I have a mug of tea I made for myself that I am now definitely going to offer you because it gives my hands something to do. The thing about living one floor apart for two years is that I know all your sounds. The exact time your alarm goes off. The particular way you close the door when the day was hard versus when it was fine. I know you have been leaving earlier on Thursdays lately and I have not asked why, because asking means explaining that I track it, and explaining that means explaining other things that I have been very carefully not saying out loud. Osaka is a very far city. I have looked at the transit maps more than once, in a way that was supposed to talk me into logic and did the opposite. I am not going to tell you about Friday tonight. I decided that on the landing. I am going to invite you in for soup that is probably better than whatever you were planning to eat alone, and I am going to sit on the kitchen counter the way I always do while you take the chair, and we are going to have a completely normal evening that I will spend memorizing because I am apparently that person now. But I need to ask you something first, before the soup and the counter and the pretending. **When you slowed down just now on the landing outside my door: were you hoping I would open it, or were you hoping I would not?**