"Sis… did you just see that?"
Soren's voice came out flat enough that it was almost expressionless, which was impressive, considering he had very definitely just watched Olivia grab Alex's hand and walk off with him like that was the most natural thing in the world.
Beside him, Louise stared in the same direction for another second before slowly nodding.
"I did."
Soren rubbed the back of his neck.
"Didn't Olivia say it wasn't a date?"
Louise turned to look at him then, one brow lifting in a way that said she was offended by the very premise of the question.
"She did," Louise said. "Which is now starting to feel like a complete lie."
That earned the faintest huff from him, though his eyes were still fixed on the pair vanishing further into the crowd.
The two of them had followed at a distance for entirely respectable reasons, or at least reasons that could be called respectable if one was being generous.
Soren had come because he wanted to make sure Alex actually showed up.
He hadn't said that out loud, but it was true.
Some part of him had worried that Olivia would be left standing there by the fountain, dressed up, hopeful, trying not to look like she was waiting too long.
He had told himself he was only checking because she was his friend, because yesterday had turned into something unexpectedly nice, because it would be annoying if Alex ruined it before it even started.
None of those excuses changed the fact that he had come to check.
Louise, on the other hand, had come because she was curious and because she liked meddling in other people's lives far more than she ever properly admitted.
She hadn't even tried to disguise it.
And because of that, they had just watched Olivia take Alex's hand and drag him off with the kind of unconscious familiarity that left both cousins standing there like they had somehow missed several chapters of the same story.
"Are they really not dating?" Louise asked, the sharpness in her voice softened only slightly by disbelief.
Soren shook his head slowly.
"No," he said, though even to his own ears it lacked conviction. "At least… that's what she said."
Truthfully, his thoughts were still trying to reorder themselves.
Back when this world had only been a game, there had not been anything like this, not really.
Romance had existed, technically, but only in that thin, performative way games often handled it, event scenes, route flags, fixed lines, a blush here, an attack there, and none of it with enough weight behind it to feel fully alive.
Olivia's feelings for Alex had always come across as sweet, obvious… and completely one-sided.
That was why Soren had been worried.
That was why yesterday had mattered enough for him to help.
And yet what he had just seen looked like the exact opposite of one-sided.
As she said… they look exactly like a couple.
Olivia had taken his hand without hesitation.
Alex had accepted it just as naturally.
No awkward pause, no surprise, no fumbling, no stiff confusion, just an easy adjustment of his stride as he let her pull him along, his grip settling around hers like this was already familiar, already comfortable, already theirs.
And then there was the way he had dressed.
Soren could not quite let that one go.
Alex had dressed up.
Not dramatically or enough to seem vain, but enough that it had been deliberate, and that alone kept needling at him, because people did not usually put that much care into their appearance for a completely ordinary outing.
…At least, not people like Alex.
Soren exhaled slowly through his nose.
'Doesn't this basically confirm the winner already?'
The thought came uninvited, and once it arrived, he could not entirely dismiss it.
There was still more than half a year before Crusch was even supposed to appear.
And yet…
From where he was standing now, watching Olivia and Alex disappear into the motion of the shopping district with their hands still joined, it was hard not to feel like something had already been decided ahead of schedule.
He hoped, more than anything else, that Alex would treat her well.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
At first, following them had been almost funny.
Then it had become slightly surreal.
And after that, increasingly difficult to watch without developing a headache.
As the date went on, the look on Soren's face grew steadily worse, though not in any dramatic way.
He didn't look angry.
He didn't even really look jealous.
He just looked tired.
Louise noticed, eventually glancing sideways at him while they trailed the pair from a careful distance.
"What's with that face, Little Brother?"
Soren did not answer immediately.
His gaze stayed fixed on Olivia and Alex ahead of them as they moved from one place to the next with a kind of ease that was beginning to feel excessive.
After a moment, he spoke.
"Doesn't looking at it give you a toothache?"
Louise followed his line of sight, and in the next second the corners of her mouth twitched downward with immediate understanding.
The date was going well.
Far too well.
Everywhere Olivia and Alex went, they stayed close.
Not just close in the ordinary sense, but close in the way that suggested neither of them was thinking about the distance anymore.
Their hands remained linked as though letting go had simply never occurred to them.
When the street narrowed, Alex shifted without thinking and guided Olivia slightly ahead of him.
When a cart rolled too close, he moved her around it with an absent little pressure at her back that looked practised despite having no right to be.
It was sickening.
When they reached the restaurant Olivia had chosen, Alex stepped ahead first and held the door open for her without missing a beat, waiting patiently until she passed through before following.
Soren watched that happen and already felt his expression start to flatten.
When they were seated, Alex pulled her chair out for her before she even realised he was doing it.
Soren stared.
Then Alex paid for lunch.
All of it.
Soren winced like he had taken damage directly.
"That's already bad enough," he muttered.
Louise folded her arms.
"Agreed."
But somehow it still was not the end of it.
From where they were sitting, not close enough to overhear everything, but close enough to keep watch, they caught the smaller details too.
Olivia smiled more on this one lunch than she usually did in half a day.
Alex leaned in when she spoke, attentive in that infuriatingly natural way.
At one point she laughed so brightly that even from a distance Soren could tell she had forgotten to be shy for a few seconds, and the sight of it should have been nice.
Instead it was somehow making this worse.
Then came the incident.
A little smudge of cream, probably from dessert, ended up on Olivia's cheek.
Soren noticed it only because Alex did.
There was a brief pause.
Soren assumed, reasonably, that Alex would point it out, or maybe hand her a napkin, or at the very least gesture awkwardly and let Olivia deal with it herself like a normal person.
Instead, Alex reached out, wiped it away with his finger, and then, with the kind of calm confidence that suggested he had no understanding of the psychic damage he was causing to bystanders, ate it.
Soren recoiled so hard he nearly knocked his own chair.
"What the fuck did I just watch? Do people really do that in real life?" Soren asked, as if he was seeing common sense fall apart before his eyes.
Louise did not even try to argue.
There was a hollowness in her gaze now, like part of her had left her body somewhere around the chair-pulling and had not returned in time for the cream theft.
"Mm," she murmured after a beat. "That was revolting."
They kept following anyway.
At that point, pride alone required them to see how far the disaster would go.
After lunch, Olivia and Alex wandered through the district together, sometimes talking, sometimes falling into those easy little silences that only worked when two people were already comfortable enough not to fill every gap.
Olivia pointed at things occasionally, little shop displays, trinkets, decorations in windows, and Alex actually looked at whatever she was pointing at instead of only looking at her and nodding along like a liar.
Once, when she slowed in front of a display for longer than expected, he slowed with her without complaint.
It was all terribly considerate.
Soren disliked it on principle.
Then, near the plaza, Alex stepped away for a minute to use the bathroom, leaving Olivia waiting by herself.
Soren's attention sharpened immediately.
Two men approached her not long after, leaning in just enough, standing a little too close, speaking in the low, overfamiliar way that always made his skin crawl before the actual words even registered.
He couldn't hear them clearly from where he was, but he didn't need to; the posture alone was enough.
His body had already started moving before he consciously decided to intervene.
Then Alex reappeared.
He crossed the distance between them in seconds, stepped in close without hesitation, and slid an arm around Olivia's waist, pulling her gently but firmly against his side.
"She's with me," Alex said.
That was it.
No raised voice, no threat, no performance, just the sort of calm statement that left no room to misread him.
The two men backed off almost immediately.
Soren stopped where he was and watched instead.
More than Alex's timing, more than the arm around her waist, what caught his attention was Olivia herself.
The way she relaxed almost as soon as he touched her, the way she leaned into him not shyly or awkwardly, but with plain, immediate trust, as though being gathered against his side was the simplest answer in the world.
'Are dates really meant to be like this…?'
The thought came with a strange kind of disbelief.
Soren had been on dates before.
Not many, and not enough that he would ever pretend to be an authority on them, but enough to know what awkwardness looked like, what hesitation looked like, what trying too hard looked like.
This did not look like any of those things.
It looked far too smooth.
Far too complete.
It felt almost scripted, except that unlike the old game scenes, this had weight behind it, habits forming in real time, small gestures with no audience except the unfortunate pair shadowing them from behind shop corners and across walkways.
Alex and Olivia's date was far too perfect.
"It's too much…" Louise muttered beside him, sounding oddly drained.
Soren glanced at her.
Her earlier excitement had worn away over the last hour, not into irritation exactly, but into something flatter and more hollow.
The bright, entertained sparkle that normally lit her up whenever romance was involved had dulled into the expression of someone who had eaten too much sugar and regretted it.
If even Louise had reached her limit, that probably said enough.
Soren let out a slow breath and dragged one hand down his face.
All right.
That was enough suffering for one day.
"Want to go get something to eat?" he asked, finally looking away from the pair ahead of them.
Louise turned to him, blinked once, then let out a small breath that might have been relief disguised as dignity.
"If my little brother is asking, I won't say no," she said, one corner of her mouth lifting faintly.
With that, the two of them turned and walked the other way, leaving Olivia and Alex behind to continue their absurdly fairytale-like date in peace.
The crowd shifted around them as they moved, voices blending into the soft noise of the district, shopfronts passing one after another, warm light spilling out onto the street.
Louise fell into step beside him easily, and for a little while neither of them said much.
Soren didn't realise it immediately, but somewhere over the course of the past couple of days, while watching too closely and judging too much and suffering psychic damage from second-hand romance, something inside him had quietly loosened.
His worry had gone with it.
Not all at once, not in some dramatic revelation, but little by little.
The worry that Louise would be let down by him.
The worry that she might see through him at any moment.
Those fears had thinned with every easy smile and every thoughtless gesture.
By the time Soren walked away, they had faded into something light enough to carry.
And for now, that was enough.
————「❤︎」————