Chapter One: Jump Balls and Heartfalls

You ever try to act super manly while internally sobbing over a boy's cheekbones? Yeah, same.

Name's Young One. Captain of the Pentagon University basketball team, dunker of dreams, breaker of ankles (on the court, calm down), and—plot twist—a secretly hopeless gay with a crush the size of a regulation hoop.

Now, before you imagine me as some six-pack-sporting, jawline-sculpted Adonis with a tragic past and secret powers—don't. I have exactly one ab (somewhere under the stress eating), and the only thing tragic about my past is that I once cried watching a slow-motion Nescafé ad.

Anyway.

Let me tell you about him. The boy. The legend. The reason my brain short-circuits every time I walk into the library.

Silent Boy.

No one knows his real name. I mean, someone must, probably the admin who takes attendance, but for the rest of us, he's just Silent Boy. He doesn't talk, like, at all. Not in class. Not during presentations. Not even when the vending machine ate his dollar. He just…tilts his head slightly, like a confused anime character, and the machine immediately spits the snack out of pure guilt. I'm not even kidding.

He's beautiful. Like offensively beautiful. The kind of beauty that makes you forget your own name and maybe your blood type. Long lashes, pouty lips, perfect skin like he drinks unicorn tears for hydration. If a cherry blossom turned into a person and started majoring in philosophy? That's him.

Every time he walks by, the air gets ten degrees cooler and smells like freshly folded laundry. I don't know what shampoo he uses, but I'd marry it.

Now, let's rewind to yesterday.

Practice had just ended, and I was standing in the locker room, drenched in sweat, doing that alpha male routine of flexing in the mirror and pretending I wasn't dying from a cardio drill Coach invented in a fit of personal vengeance. The team was joking around, tossing towels like middle schoolers, and I was laughing along like the world's straightest bro. Inside, though?

I was spiraling.

Because he had walked past the open door.

In slow motion. Like some wind god was carrying him down the hallway.

And I swear on my signed LeBron jersey, he looked at me. For 0.6 seconds.

I dropped my water bottle and nearly collapsed.

"Cap, you good?" asked Jaxon, my shooting guard, chucking a towel at my face.

"Fine," I replied, casually knocking over a bench with my knee. "Just, uh…hydration issues."

Hydration issues. That's what I went with. I deserve exile.

Look, I can't tell the guys. I love them like brothers, but Pentagon U's basketball team isn't exactly a rainbow-friendly space. They think Queer Eye is a punk band.

So for now, I'll keep pretending I only have eyes for victory, protein powder, and whatever lies straight men are supposed to say.

But one day… maybe I'll talk to Silent Boy.

And maybe, just maybe, he'll talk back.

Or wink.

Or—God help me—breathe in my direction.