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It was dark outside, but it couldn’t have been any later than ten-thirty at night. There are still many students coming in and out of the building, many of whom are waiting for the elevator, and others who are just ending their days of studying and starting a social nightlife. Yuma zigzags through the people and takes the stairs down to what is known as “The Cave.”
The Cave is a small campus convenience, yet grocery—like store where students can spend their surplus of dining dollars when they get sick of the dining hall food. Yuma doesn’t know how long it’s been here, but he knows that it’s essential to the students at Grey City University. Multiple shelves are stocked with instant meals, rice, noodles, mac and cheese, stuff that can’t be the healthiest for you, but surely fills your stomach. It really adds to the college experience of consuming so much sodium that it kills your system.
The walls are lined with rows of chips, popcorn, and other carb items you can think of. Some freezers with frozen meals can also tide you over until you can get something real to eat. Scattered through the isle of junk, there are things that are for the more conscious choice of eaters (however, if you asked Yuma, it's still very processed, but that’s neither here nor there).
There are many things that one could spend their dining money on, but Yuma does not know what he wants. Snacks are probably going to be what he ends up with, because he is who he is. It’ll probably be salty, like the kettle popped chips he likes, or some puffed popcorn, and then a sweet drink, maybe those sugar milk drinks Dunkin likes to call bottled coffee. It's not much of a gamble about what Yuma is going to get; he likes his order, his routine, his structure.
However, he does need to get out of here quickly because The Cave closes in thirty minutes, and Yuma is sure that the workers would love to go home eventually. He walks down the ominous hall and pushes through the doors to get into the store. Sure enough, the same four workers are there; he sees them weekly. A tall man with a neatly kept beard is always at the register. He wears glasses that are thick-framed and black, something that was peak 2016 fashion if Yuma had a say.
As he’s looking for his salty snack to go with his sweet drink, he sees a boy who resembles the shape of a boba pearl. His hair, black and just a little bit poofy, sits neatly on his head, though one can tell it has been tousled by the few straws that fly up. He’s dressed casually, just a simple black T-shirt that surely has seen better days, and gray sweatpants, ones that almost every college student owns in their wardrobe because the laziness kicks in far too often to actually put pants on.
Yuma can make that claim; he’s dressed almost similarly, he has classic sweatpants, a white tank top with a gray zip-up over it, but his hair isn’t black anymore. His hair is now freshly blonde—thank you, box dye. He’s chatting with his friends, or Yuma assumes that it's his friends with the way that his body looks so relaxed around them. His shoulders aren’t tense, his movements aren’t stiff, the big smile on his face is also a dead giveaway, and his eyes crinkle in a way that makes them look like crescent moons.
Yuma doesn’t linger any longer before he grabs a bag of kettle chips and makes his way to pay and then makes the trek back to his own dorm on the other side of campus. It’s the smaller and quieter dorm hall of the three on campus, but Yuma enjoys that; he adores his peace, and he has friends in Campion, so if he wanted the chaos, he didn’t have to go very far.
It happens again two days later. Yuma is back for snacks again, and here comes to the boba pearl boy—or that’s what Yuma has called him simply because of his hair. This time, while Yuma is browsing the chips, he can hear the whispers coming from the group. The boys' friends say, “Go ask him, “and “Just talk to him.” While the boy seems to reply with, “No, he’s scary.” Yuma chuckles at that; he doesn’t think he's scary at all. As Yuma is about to make his final choice of chips—shockingly, it's not kettle this time—he feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns around, and to his surprise, it is the boba boy.
“Uh—hi,” the boy says meekly, “I’m Taki.” Yuma notices the way that both hands are now folded neatly in front of the boy, how he is rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, and he even notices the way that he licks the bottom part of his lip. Yuma can see that he is nervous. It's honestly kind of adorable.
Yuma smiles at him, “I’m Yuma,” he says. There's no humility in his voice; he finds it endearing that the other is nervous, but he doesn’t think that he is intimidating enough to be nervous around. They chat a little, but they end up exchanging Instagram just as everyone in college does, and then they part ways. Yuma went back to his snack browsing, and Taki went back to his friends, who left quickly after buying drinks. As he was seeing if there was anything at the last minute that he wanted, he couldn’t help but smile at the interaction. It was cute that the boy was nervous. Yuma liked that he had that effect on him.
Three days later, Yuma finds himself at a bench next to Union Green. He’s overlooking the green; it’s a bit chilly, so there aren’t that many people out today, but there are still a few students out doing work or eating with others. Union Green is a bigger hit in the spring and warmer days around Grey City University; there are always clubs gathering there to bask in the sun while working on some activity, or there are students with blankets and food just having a picnic studying their lives away for their next big exam.
Yuma and Taki agreed to walk around together, even though they both knew the campus well; they did not have the funds to go off campus and potentially blow more money than they could afford. And, honestly, when you have good company and an even better conversation, the walk around the campus becomes trivial.
Yuma would get a job, but being a civil engineering major, he did not have the time for that between the hours he spent on long math calculations and physics labs—he was always so busy that the funds that he was left with from his summer job, and the little weekly money his parents gave him, would have to suffice.
Taki comes just a little later, and then they’re off, just walking up and down the small hills of campus. The leaves of the trees have long since changed from green to a mix of orange and red, something that would be on the cover of a fall magazine that featured the next pumpkin spice craze. They talk about everything and nothing, they start with the basics, major? Yuma says he's in his second year in civil engineering, and he learns that Taki is a first-year student in biomedical engineering. They talk about the differences in their fields, about what they want to do, their big dreams, and, of course, how horrid their math tests are.
Both also connect on a deeper level, they talk about their culture, and what it meant to each be first generation college student. Yuma says he wants to take care of his parents and repay them for everything that they’ve done for him. Taki mentions that he’s taking language courses to be able to speak his mother's language more fluently as a way to thank her for the sacrifices she’s made for him since he was young. Yuma says that he’s admiral for that and that makes Taki blush.
They bond over their favorite shows. Yuma tells Taki that he’s been re-watching Black Clover recently, and Taki admits that he hasn’t watched that one but is in love with Chainsaw Man. They talk about other shonen anime they love to watch.
Yuma wasn’t one to believe in fate, but he thinks that maybe it was fate that he had gone to the cave that night. He thinks that there might have been something in the way that stars had aligned when he and Taki hung out that day, blessing them for time to come.
It's a beautiful connection, just like the foliage around campus, a beautiful blend of plants from far and wide, but that ultimately comes together to form something far better. Like the blend of students on campus, some from just around the corner, others who come from different corners of the world. Something brought them here; it brought them all together.