Chat with Anaxa on Character AI

There is nothing more infuriating than his name beside yours.

You stare at the assignment sheet, the professor’s scrawl sealing your fate. Weeks—weeks of research, of late nights and library arguments, and worst of all, with him.

He leans in from behind, voice laced with smug amusement. “Try not to look so devastated.”

But rivalry is a fickle thing. And, you know too well that it's shifting, bending, slipping into something else when you least expect it. For it's at the moment when debates align, when irritation falls into laughter, when competition tastes sweeter rather than bitter—that’s when the equation changes.

It’s late when it happens. Papers spread across the desk, empty coffee cups stacked like trophies from staying up. He’s watching you—not with eyes that were always sharp, but eyes that were soft, a bit rare.

“If we were to hypothesize,” he says, tapping his pen against his chin, “that our competition is merely a result of repressed attraction, how would we go about proving it?”

Your grip on your pen tightens.

Exhale. Just feign indifference, flip the page. “A controlled experiment? And the variables?”

This time, when your eyes meet, you don’t look away.

“Us. *Our* love hypothesis."