Check-Mate

CHAPTER 10

Elijah’s POV

The drafting table in the corner of my room was a battlefield of graphite dust, technical pens, and giant sheets of tracing paper. It was past midnight on Saturday, and the stark white glow of my desk lamp illuminated the complex lines of my structural engineering plate. My brain felt entirely fried. Fluid mechanics and structural stress variables required a level of cold, absolute precision that usually came naturally to me. I liked blueprints. I liked rules. I liked knowing that if you followed the mathematical formula precisely, the bridge wouldn't collapse.

But as I rubbed the bridge of my nose, staring at a half-finished cross-section of a concrete beam, my mind completely drifted off the grid.

I leaned back in my leather chair, my eyes automatically wandering away from my T-square and landing on the corner of my bed. Resting right on my pillow was the crinkled, neon-printed paper bag from yesterday afternoon.

I let out a slow, quiet breath and stood up, stepping across the cool hardwood floor to pick it up. Reaching inside, my fingers closed around the soft, plush fabric of the round calico cat. I pulled it out and held it up under the lamplight, tracing the spotted orange and black patches that looked exactly like the kitten she had been playing with on her living room rug.

A completely foolish, involuntary smile broke across my face before I could even catch myself.

I replayed the scene in my head for the twentieth time. I remembered her standing at the back of the arcade, her face practically glued to the glass of that rigged machine, her eyebrows drawn together with that fierce, stubborn determination I was quickly becoming addicted to. And then, that crushed, utterly deflated look when the claw dropped the plushie into the corner. It had felt like a physical tug on my heart.

“What am I even supposed to do with this?” I muttered to the empty room, looking down at the fat cloth cat in my hands.

I couldn't just hand it to her in the hallway. If I did, she would immediately calculate the timeline, realize I had been lurking behind a pillar watching her, and promptly label me an absolute creep. She was already furious at me for accessing the council database to get her number. If I dropped an arcade prize onto her desk without an airtight, logical excuse, she would probably throw it right back at my face.

“Good timing, Elijah. You just need a proper window,” I told myself, a rare wave of nervous hesitation hitting my gut. I carefully placed the calico plushie inside my top desk drawer, right beside my engineering scales, and slid it shut. I had to lock my features back into focus. I had three more plates to finish before Monday morning, and my department head didn't tolerate late submissions any more than I did.

---

By 7:30 AM on Monday, the campus was already buzzing with its usual high-energy morning rush. The weekend summer heat had completely returned, the air thick, dry, and heavy as students crowded through the main gates.

I hurried down the West Wing corridor, carrying my protective blueprint tube under one arm and a stack of council orientation folders in the other. I was entirely running on black coffee and four hours of sleep, but as I approached the intersection where the Civil Engineering hall crossed paths with the Accountancy wing, my pace instinctively slowed down.

My eyes automatically scanned the crowded hallway outside Section E.

I expected to see her. I expected to see that chaotic, beautiful hurricane of a girl running against the clock, her dark hair a bit of a mess from sprinting from the gate, her arms full of folders. I had even prepared a short, casual greeting in my head—something smooth and administrative just to test her reaction after our quiet, rainy car ride on Friday.

The corridor thinned out as the first bell rang. Kyle was leading a conversation near the lockers, loudly sharing a joke with Paolo Mendoza and a few other guys from their block. Jessie was nearby, checking her reflection in the glass window.

But Kaisha wasn't there.

“She’s probably just present-adjacent again,” I thought, a small smirk playing on my lips as I turned on my heel to head toward the faculty room. “She’ll slide through the back door right as the professor picks up the chalk.”

But by noon, the smirk had completely vanished.

The Student Council orientation in the university theater had kept me trapped at the podium for three straight hours, but my eyes had relentlessly searched the back rows of the auditorium. Nothing. When the session finally concluded, I bypassed lunch entirely and walked back toward the Accountancy wing under the blazing midday sun, my chest tightening with a strange, suffocating layer of overthinking.

I stood near the grandstand lockers, pretending to read a budget proposal, but my focus was entirely locked on Kyle and Paolo as they walked out of their major lecture hall.

She wasn't with them.

Is she actually that mad at me? The thought hit my stomach like a physical drop. Did I push it too far in the office on Friday? Was the text message too invasive? Did she realize I bought the cucumber shake on purpose because I’d been monitoring her preferences?

My mind began to aggressively map out every single variable from last week, calculating my errors. I had thought the game was playful. I had thought her defiant, headstrong reactions were part of our silent dynamic. But what if she genuinely despised my presence? What if she was intentionally skipping her critical major classes just to completely avoid crossing paths with me?

"Elijah? You're staring at that paper like it's written in ancient Greek," a voice interrupted.

I snapped out of my trance, quickly dropping the folder to see Professor Dela Cruz walking out of the department office, carrying his leather briefcase and a stack of newly graded midterm syllabus sheets.

"Professor," I said immediately, my voice coming out a bit more urgent than I intended. I adjusted my council vest and forced my posture into its usual professional, composed alignment. "Good afternoon, sir. I was actually just about to head to your office to return the finalized attendance audits from last week."

"Ah, excellent work as always, Eli," the professor noted, giving me an appreciative nod. "Your department's efficiency is the only thing keeping my records accurate this semester."

"It's no trouble, sir," I replied smoothly, but my heart was hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs. I swallowed hard, trying to phrase the next sentence as casually as humanly possible. "By the way, sir... I noticed a few discrepancies in the Section E roster today during the morning block. I was checking the seminar room allocations and noticed that... Miss Lopez wasn't in her usual seat."

Professor Dela Cruz paused, looking at me with a slight sigh as he adjusted his briefcase strap. "Ah, yes. Miss Lopez."

My grip tightened against the folders in my hand. I braced myself, fully expecting him to tell me she had filed a formal grievance against a student council member, or that she had dropped the course entirely out of sheer frustration.

"Her best friend, Miss Galvan, dropped off a medical slip at my desk before the first period," Professor Dela Cruz explained, his tone completely calm and unbothered. "Apparently, the sudden transition from the intense summer heat to that torrential downpour on Friday caught up to her system. The poor girl developed a massive, high-grade fever over the weekend. She’s completely bedridden at home."

The irrational knot of panic in my stomach unraveled instantly, but it was immediately replaced by a heavy, hollow ache of worry.

She isn't hiding from me. She's actually sick.

"Oh. I see," I managed to say aloud, my voice flat, keeping my flawless VP mask perfectly locked in place so the professor wouldn't catch the sudden shift in my expression. "An uncalculated health variable. I'll make sure to note it as an excused medical absence in the official council files, sir."

"Thank you, Eli. I appreciate the thoroughness," Professor Dela Cruz smiled, giving my shoulder a friendly pat before walking down the corridor toward the faculty lounge.

I stood alone in the quiet hallway for a long time, the heavy weight of the entire day’s overthinking completely evaporating, leaving only a restless, unsettling quiet behind. She was bedridden. A high-grade fever. My mind instantly flashed back to Friday afternoon—the way she had looked so small shivering against that concrete pillar, her damp hair, and the cool air rushing into the car. I had been so caught up in playing cool, so desperate to hide the arcade bag, that I hadn't even realized how cold she actually was.

I pulled out my phone and stared at the glowing screen.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard, but my fingers wouldn't move. For the first time, I didn't want to use the anonymous burner number. The tactical advantage of the mystery felt entirely empty now. I wanted to text her from my actual, personal number. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for making her stand in the office, sorry for the stress, and sorry for not handing her an umbrella the second the car doors opened.

“Hey, Kaisha. I heard you’re sick. Let me know if you need any notes from Dela Cruz.”

I typed the words out, my heart hammering a chaotic rhythm against my ribs.

No, this is ridiculous, I thought, staring at the message box. It was entirely too direct. It would break the boundary I’d spent all week maintaining. If I sent this from my personal number, the first thing she’d do is question how I even knew she was absent, let alone bedridden with a fever. She’d think I was keeping tabs on her personal life, or worse, that I was actively hunting down her friends for updates. The fragile, uncalculated dynamic we had built over yellow sticky notes and short hallway arguments would completely shatter.

With a frustrated sigh, I aggressively hit the backspace button, watching the letters vanish one by one until the text field was completely blank. I shoved the device deep into my pocket, turning on my heel to head back to the empty Student Council room.

I walked into the office, the cool air conditioning hitting my skin, but it did nothing to ease the persistent, lingering worry in my chest. I sat down at my desk and pulled open the top drawer just an inch. The small calico cat plushie sat securely inside, its stitched button eyes staring up at me from the dark compartment.

“Why does a chaotic accounting major have this much of a hold on my focus?” I muttered, rubbing my temples. I couldn't even blame administrative duties anymore. This wasn't about council orientations or checking Section E's attendance sheets for Dela Cruz. I just genuinely, incredibly missed the sound of her loud laugh echoing down the hallway. The university felt entirely too structured, too quiet, and completely empty without her.

I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the white ceiling tiles as the afternoon sun filtered through the blinds. There was nothing left to calculate, no hidden strategy to deploy. For a guy who lived his life strictly by the rules of engineering blueprints, being entirely out of moves was a terrifying feeling.

“Just recover quickly, Kaisha,” I thought, closing the drawer with a soft, decisive click that echoed in the quiet room. “The board is entirely too boring when you aren't around.”