Sweet Romance11 min read
He Got Handsome and I Left: Paint, Equations, and the River
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"I can't believe people call you his girlfriend," someone said outside the math lecture hall.
"They say he looks like a model now," another voice replied.
"I thought he was just the smart, chubby boy," a third voice sneered.
I crouched by the steps, hands in my pockets, and watched Kenji Fields bent over his notes. The amber light hit his face just right; it made his eyes look like cut glass. I didn't care about the jokes or the looks. I cared because he had changed—everyone noticed—and what if everyone noticed him and not me?
"Is that Corinne?" a girl in twin tails asked.
"It is," the short-haired girl answered. "Why would he date someone like her? She's so loud."
I felt the silence that followed my name. I felt it like an extra layer on my skin.
"Do you want to eat together tonight?" I texted him ten minutes before class ended. He glanced at his phone and didn't reply. He looked up at the window light and kept working.
When the class doors opened, I rushed forward, but a girl blocked Kenji to ask a question.
"Kenji!" I said, forcing a smile. "We have to go."
"We're in the middle of solving this," the girl said.
"He's with me," I said, hooking my arm through his. He walked with me without looking up.
"Why didn't he answer my message?" I asked when we finally stepped into the corridor.
"He might be busy," he said. His voice was low and even. He had always had that calm voice.
We sat in the cafeteria. He picked at his fish with precise fingers. The same girl from earlier sat too close.
"Kenji, check this step," she said, sliding a paper across.
He leaned over it, eyes on the numbers, and his attention folded away.
"Don't be silly," I muttered, and shoved rice into my mouth at lightning speed.
"Do you want to go now?" I asked when I had finished. He frowned and nodded.
"Don't wait for me," he said.
I walked out alone to the track and sat until the sun sank all the way down. The messages in my phone were quiet. I told myself I was being dramatic. I told myself I had chased him through four seasons and he had finally agreed on the forty-fifth time because he was tired of my shouting, of my insisting.
"Are you crying?" a hand asked after a while.
He was standing there, a little cold, fingers brushing mine. He took my hand and the skin there was cool.
"Did you come all this way to say you passed your exam?" I tried, and the question fell flat between us.
"Just passing by," he answered.
"Do you like her?" I asked, voice thin.
"Who?" he said, bewildered.
"The girl who asked you the question," I said.
"What makes you think she likes me?" he asked.
"She sat next to you," I said.
He looked at me like I had spoken in a code he couldn't read.
"She wanted to know the problem. She said it was interesting," he said.
I was the girl who did not know proofs and algorithms. I was the one who painted and counted brushstrokes. I was the one who fed him and ran beside him at dawn when he wanted to slim down. I had seen the fat boy shrink into someone the whole campus called handsome, but I felt the warmth of that small person leave my hands.
That night I sat on the steps and typed, "Do you know what day it is?" He answered ten minutes later, tired, "Busy." He said he had to be at the computer lab. I found his quiet silhouette in the glow of the monitors, and I brought a cake whose candles I had lit alone.
"Make a wish," he said, voice dry.
"I wish to stay next to you next year," I said.
"Don't be silly," he murmured and looked away.
The cake cooled between us. I slept in the chair and woke to his jacket over my shoulders. I woke and felt small and bitter.
Then the scholarship happened.
The list came and my name was gone. Jazmine Yamazaki's name sat where mine should have been. I flipped the paper over and over, checked the email again, and my stomach dropped.
"Are you sure?" I asked our class advisor. He pushed his glasses up, "There's no error. The list is final."
"But my grades—" I began.
"She has special circumstances," he said. "It's been approved."
"Special circumstances?" I said. "She's my roommate. She comes back late every night, and she cries to the dean."
I walked out and called Kenji. He answered on the second ring. He was at some hallway, people passing behind him.
"You bullied her?" he asked sharply after I burst out.
"What?" I said, stunned.
"Did you push her? Harass her? Corinne, I heard from Jazmine and she sounded so hurt."
I felt the air fall out of me.
"I didn't," I said. My throat closed. He made a small, guarded sound. "Are you on her side?"
"You were mean to her last week," he said. "You yelled in the corridor. She called me."
So I told him I would not be his girlfriend anymore. I wrote a long message and sent it: every line of how tired I was, how I felt watched, how I would not be someone's half-hearted attachment. Then I deleted him.
Kenji read the message seven hours later in a rainstorm in his tiny rented room. He stared at those words and realized the echo he had made in me. He tried to call back. He sent a message: "Come back." The message failed, a red exclamation like a small laugh.
He left for the art building. He saw me once more at the river and thought I had gone to London, to exchange. He found out I had left after he missed the chance to say anything. He ran to the paint studio and learned I had taken a placement that would send me abroad.
"She left today," a classmate told him, breaking the paper like news.
He woke like a man who had lost his balance. He tried to find me but the world had already rewritten my address.
*
"Slow down," Mateo Olsen said, carrying me under an umbrella, his voice thickly amused.
"You're not Kenji," I managed.
"No," he said. "But I'm Mateo. You fainted by the house. Everyone panicked."
"Who are you?" I asked, and he smiled the sort of smile that didn't expect much in return.
"Mateo. I'm the landlord's son," he said.
He taught me to say small words in English and I taught him to draw lemons the way I liked. He had a voice like river stones and looked at me like I had always been the only thing on his mind.
"Do you still think about him?" he asked once, when paint hung from my fingertips.
"Yes," I said.
"You'll stop," Mateo said softly. "But you won't do it because he made a mistake. You'll stop when you do not want to spend your one life glued to waiting."
"Are you okay with being the one who helps me forget?" I said, half teasing.
"I don't want you to forget him," Mateo said. "I want you to remember you."
Slowly, in a foreign city where the rain was a religion and the sky left puddles like confessions, I breathed air that had nothing to do with Kenji's cool hands. I painted faces that did not belong to him. My cheeks found color again.
*
Back home, Jazmine kept smiling like a porcelain doll. She had the scholarship, the parents' compliments, and a delightful ability to charm the administration. She also had made a habit of calling Kenji and crying, of telling him about everything I allegedly did.
She had lied, and for a while she had won. For a while I had been erased.
Then the year-end exhibition approached.
"Everyone from the art school is invited," the dean emailed. "Students, faculty, and a panel. Awards will be presented publicly."
I saw my chance. I wrote a letter to the dean and asked to speak. They agreed to let me read a short statement before the show. I asked Faith to bring the files and the screens.
On the night of the exhibition, the hall smelled like turpentine and boiled coffee. Kenji sat at the back, sleeves rolled, face hollow as a sculpture.
"She's here," Mateo whispered. He had flown in quietly for the evening.
I stepped up to the small podium. The lights were bright; every face blurred into a sea. I held a bundle of printed screenshots and a USB drive.
"Good evening," I said, my voice steady. "I want to say something before the awards."
I clicked. The projector hummed. A chat window bloomed onto the white wall: a flood of messages, timestamps, recorded calls, and a list of emails between Jazmine and an administrative assistant.
"This is the night," I said. "I was told to keep quiet. I was told to accept what the school decided. But the truth is—"
A hand in the audience rustled. Someone muttered.
"Jazmine," I said, and turned to where she sat in the second row, all smiles, a scholarship certificate folded in her lap. "This is about you."
"Corinne," she said sweetly, and put on the voice she used to call Kenji.
"Do you deny calling the dean and asking them to consider 'special circumstances'?" I asked.
The room was quiet enough to hear paint drip.
"I... I didn't mean—" Jazmine's voice started small and fragile.
"Do you deny texting the records clerk asking if anyone could 'help with the list'?" I said, and clicked again. Another window popped up. The emails were dated and timestamped. Her words were cheerful, the kind of casual cruelty that sounded innocent in print: "Can you put my name in? My family really needs this." In another message: "I was worried she might fight back. I told him she'd bullied me."
Gasps ran through the room.
Jazmine's smile faltered. Her fingers gripped the certificate paper.
"I only mentioned it because—" she said.
"You lied," I said. "You made up 'bullying' and fed the dean with staged tears. You wrote to the clerk at midnight asking them to change the spreadsheet."
Someone in the crowd clicked and a photo came up: Jazmine and the clerk laughing at a cafe, a selfie with a caption, "Late-night editing." The dean's face flushed. He had been sitting at the front, his mouth a thin line.
"Is this true?" he asked.
"Yes," the clerk whispered.
The audience dissolved into whispers like birds. Some students stood, some grabbed phones. Kenji's face had gone white.
Jazmine's hand flew to her mouth. "I—everyone—" she stammered.
"You told people I was the bully," I said. "You told Kenji I harassed you. Because of one of your calls, the dean believed you. Because of your edits, my scholarship disappeared. You wanted to win, and you didn't care whose life you crushed."
She stood up then. Her knees trembled.
"No, I didn't," she cried. Her voice bounced off the high ceiling. "I was afraid! You were all so mean to me. Corinne, you made me look small!"
"You made me small," I said. "You changed the truth into a story that suited you."
The crowd started to murmur louder. Phones pointed like tiny torches. Faith stood up and walked to the front with a set of printed bank statements and screenshots. She placed them on the podium.
"This is our evidence," Faith said. "Emails, calls, transfers. Also, here are records of how Jazmine frequently met with the clerk. This certificate was adjusted after midnight. The scholarship committee has a timestamp."
"How could you?" the dean asked, voice shaking.
"How could I?" Jazmine begged. "You don't know what it's like to be ignored."
"That's not an excuse," the clerk said, voice small. "I should have been impartial. I... I was wrong."
Students began to clap, not in celebration, but in a harsh, mounting judgment. Clicks of phones, recordings, whispers: "She cheated." "She lied." "Shame."
Jazmine's expression changed in a flash—pride to shock to denial to pleading.
"You'll lose the scholarship," someone said from the crowd.
"You're going to be expelled from the student committee," another voice called.
"I didn't want to—" she sobbed. "Please, I can explain."
"Explain what?" a voice yelled. "Explain why you smiled and then made her life vanish? Explain why you thought you could trick everyone?"
Her face crumpled like wet paper. She hugged herself, knees buckling. A handful of students stood and walked away in disgust. Others recorded her, some uploaded videos live. A teacher shook his head. The dean stood up, eyes angry and tired.
"Records will be audited," he announced. "An investigation will begin immediately. Pending the outcome, Jazmine Yamazaki's scholarship is revoked. The student council will review her membership. We do not tolerate falsifying documents and influencing staff."
The room reacted with a chorus: "Yes!" "Finally!"
Jazmine fell to a chair, her composure gone. "Please, please," she begged, voice thin. "I'll do anything. I'm sorry."
People were not merciful. That was not my intent. My intent was truth. But justice, when served openly, is messy. The group of classmates who used to gossip now turned their cameras and fingers toward her. Some whispered words of contempt. A few looked sad for her fall; a few clapped in satisfaction.
Kenji stood frozen for a long breath. Then he walked directly toward me, eyes raw.
"Corinne," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Why?" I asked. "For what? For not seeing? For letting her lie? For not hearing you when you said she was crying?"
"For everything," he said.
He stood there, and I felt years tilt and slide. The crowd's sound folded into a distant roar. I could see the tremor in his hands.
"You stayed," he said. "You left. You left me and I wanted you back."
"I had to leave," I said. "I couldn't wait for you to notice me in the spaces between your numbers."
He stepped closer. "I know now."
I looked out at Jazmine. She had stopped pleading and now stared at her shoes, the face losing all color.
"Do you want them to watch you beg?" I asked, quietly.
"No," Kenji whispered. "I just—"
"Then don't make it about you," I said. "This is about everyone who gets trampled when someone lies. Do something right for once."
He nodded, like a student understanding a proof. Mateo's hand found mine at the edge of the stage. He squeezed very lightly.
The dean's voice cut through. "We will conduct a full review and make decisions. Until then, the faculty committee will handle any disciplinary actions. Thank you for your courage, Ms. Arroyo."
I stepped down. Phones buzzed. People talked. Some students came up to me, eyes wide with apology and questions. Some left without looking back.
Jazmine stood slowly. She walked toward the exit, and the whispers rose like wind. Near the door she turned.
"I'm sorry," she said to me, small and raw.
"You're sorry because you were caught," I said. "Not because you understood."
She smiled, watery and shriveled. "I did it because I was afraid to be poor. I didn't think—"
"Fear doesn't give you the right," I said. "You took something that was mine."
She collapsed just outside the doorway, and I watched everyone part. Some leaned down to help her up. Some took pictures as if she were a fallen animal. Her face crumpled, and she did what guilty people do—she begged. The university records would be reopened, and for once, my truth was loud enough that it could not be ignored.
The punishment was public, and it changed things. It didn't make me feel vindictive for long. Seeing her unmasked, seeing Kenji's face when he finally understood, those things mattered more.
*
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Kenji asked me after the crowd had thinned and we sat by the river where I had once watched him work equations.
"Because I wanted you to see me without pleading," I said.
"Because I wanted to matter without being a nuisance," I finished.
He put his hand over mine. "I should have noticed the way you blinked less often. I should have answered. I'm sorry."
"Words don't fix everything," I said.
"I know," he said. "But they are a start."
We didn't promise forever. We didn't wrap our mistakes in grand speeches. We walked and sat and watched the paint on the river glint and dry. Later, he came to my studio and we spoke in smaller things: about schedules, about how to be present, about being the kind of person who takes action when someone is wronged.
"Will you ever trust me again?" he asked.
"Trust is like a painting," I said. "You can touch it up, but you can't pretend the tear wasn't there."
He laughed, softly. "Fine. I'll learn to be a better painter."
We worked on the edges of a new beginning. He came to my shows, helped me carry canvases, and sometimes we sat in the quiet, his hand finding mine. The world didn't forgive easily, but some things were mended with steady effort.
Weeks later, as the winter river rimed with frost, I received a letter from a program in London asking me to fill a seat left by someone who had changed their mind. It was an opportunity that shimmered like distant light.
"I am going," I told Kenji.
He looked like a man given a complex equation he wanted to solve.
"You'll go," he said. "And you'll... be brilliant."
"I'll go," I repeated. "And you will be better. For yourself and for others."
We did not cling. We did not promise impossible things. We kept small rituals: texts at midnight, the occasional painting crit, a photo of a lemon tree or a math notebook. We were learning to be present without smothering.
On my last night before leaving, we sat on the riverbank where we had once met. He handed me a small, wrapped package.
"Open it," he said.
I did. Inside, a tiny clock with a cracked face.
"What is this?" I asked.
"A broken thing like us," he said. "But you wind it anyway."
I winded it. The second hand moved with a small stutter and then kept time.
"You think we can keep this?" I asked.
"I think we will try," he said.
I smiled, because trying is not the same as promising, and maybe trying is enough.
When I boarded the plane, Mateo sent me a message: "Paint the rain." Kenji sent: "Be safe." I kept both messages and folded them into my sketchbook.
At the London flat I painted lemons and students and the boy with river-stone hands. I learned new words and new ways to warm my hands on someone else's shoulders. Sometimes I thought of the scholarship paper rustling in the dean's office and the hush that had followed the projector's hum that night.
One evening by the river in London I set a small palette down and listened to the hush. I slid my cracked little clock into my pocket. The wind smelled like turpentine and distant bread. I felt, finally, that I was walking forward.
The End
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