Your Favourite Stranger

Chapter Five

The Love Consultancy

Nymor Bexley set up his stall at 12:05 sharp, in a corner of the courtyard beside the vending machines, behind a folding table covered with a bedsheet and a cardboard sign painted in three shades of pink. The sign said, in letters that tilted dramatically to the right, THE LOVE CONSULTANCY: advice for your heart, ten pesos, heartbreak is free. Beneath it, in smaller print, Satisfaction guaranteed or your crush is refunded.

"You can't refund a crush," Caelis said, sitting down beside him with a sandwich he had not asked for.

"That's why it's a guarantee. Nobody ever asks." Nymor adjusted a name card in front of him. It said DR. NYMOR, LOVE SPECIALIST, and he had added a pair of thick, lensless glasses to complete the effect. "I've been preparing for this my whole life. Forty-three dramas, Caelis. Forty-three."

By 12:20, there was a line. Two first-year girls wanted to know whether a boy who liked their posts but never texted was in love or merely lazy. A tall second-year wanted to rehearse an apology to his ex. A student from the culinary club asked if it was acceptable to cry over a soufflé. To everyone's astonishment, including Caelis's, Nymor was good. He talked too fast and used too many metaphors, but he listened first, and the people who walked away from his table walked away lighter. Caelis watched his friend toss out advice with a swagger he did not feel and understood that this was what Nymor did instead of singing. He made noise until someone else's silence stopped hurting.

"May I join?"

Caelis looked up. Rhovan stood beside the table with a tray in his hands, his school tie loosened, his expression an uneasy blend of confidence and apology. A few students nearby stopped talking.

"Sure," Nymor said grandly, flipping his glasses up. "Dr. Nymor is accepting all heartbreaks, large and small. First consultation is free for athletes."

"I just want to eat lunch."

"That's what they all say, right before they confess everything."

Rhovan sat, and the three of them ate in the strange, delicate quiet of people who didn't know how to begin. Rhovan stirred his rice. He glanced at Caelis, and then away. At last he said, in a voice meant for only the table, "Does Ela seem okay to you?"

Caelis nearly choked on his sandwich. "Why ask me?"

"Because you were in the room yesterday. Because she looked at you like... I don't know. Like you were easy to talk to." Rhovan rubbed the back of his neck. "I've known her since I was five, and I don't think I've ever seen her look at me like that. Like she's relaxed. I'm the one she's supposed to be relaxed with, you know? And now she can't even look at me."

The sentence landed in Caelis like a stone dropped into a well. He had spent two years envying this boy's place beside her, and he had never once imagined that Rhovan might be afraid of losing it. For a moment he almost felt sorry for him, and that was an infuriating thing to feel.

"I think she's tired," Caelis said carefully. "I think she's been carrying a lot. Maybe give her time, and don't make her explain it."

Rhovan looked at him, really looked, with something like surprise. "That's actually good advice."

"I'm right here," Nymor protested. "Dr. Nymor is the one with the sign."

"I'll pay you ten pesos," Rhovan said, and slid a coin across the table, and for the first time that week the three of them laughed together. It was a small, fragile laugh, but Caelis felt it fit around the three of them like a thin blanket. In the corner of his eye, he saw something he didn't understand yet. Beside the library wall, half hidden behind a pillar, a girl stood alone with a notebook pressed to her chest. She wasn't looking at Rhovan or at Nymor's ridiculous sign. She was looking at Caelis, as if she had been doing it for a very long time, and when their eyes met, she turned and vanished around the corner.

That night the broadcast went smoothly. There were questions about group projects, a heated debate on whether the cafeteria should serve pineapple on anything, and a long, wobbling story from a first-year boy who had accidentally sent a love poem to his teacher. Caelis answered all of them in his warm, unhurried voice, and every so often he glanced at the inbox for a message from Stranger that didn't come.

At 9:40, as he was preparing to sign off, a different message arrived. There was no name, no emoji, no greeting. It was only three lines.

I've listened to every broadcast since the very first one, when you only had four listeners. You don't know me, and you don't have to. I just wanted you to know that someone was always there, even before anyone else was.

Caelis read it, then read it again. His fingers hovered over the keys, because the message wasn't Stranger's. The voice behind the words was different, quieter and steadier, as if it had been written slowly, a letter at a time, by someone who had waited a very long time to say it.

He typed, Thank you. I didn't know. Then he stopped, and added, Who are you?

The reply came before he could second-guess himself.

Nobody important. Just someone who likes your voice.

Caelis sat in the dim broadcasting room, listening to the rain, and wondered how many people had been listening to him all this time, and for the first time he wondered whether any of them had ever wanted to know the boy behind it.

(End of Chapter 5)