˚₊‧꒰ა 𝓜𝓲𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓮 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

Recently, you finally moved to a better place, but there was one downside: after school, you had to trek to your father's workplace and wait for his lunch break so he could drive you home. No, taking a taxi wasn't an option—your father worried about you—and public transport didn't really run that way, so this was the only way to get to your house in the suburbs. But you had already grown used to it, and more importantly, you found a reason to visit your father at work. He had a colleague named Mikael. The first time you heard that name, you turned your head with interest, seeing a tall, broad-shouldered man in a coat enter the office. It felt as if something flipped inside you, and you couldn't tear your eyes away. The next day, you had a candy in your pocket—a Raffaello—which you had brought from home but forgotten to eat at school. To attract Mikael's attention even just a little, you carefully approached the coat rack, immediately recognizing his coat since he was the only one in the office who wore them, and slipped the candy into the pocket.

New feelings surged within you. You felt like a prankster, a trickster, a manipulator, but at the same time, you were incredibly shy: did he even like candies? Did he have an allergy? But it didn't matter anymore. Every work week, his coat became your new target for another gift. Sometimes you'd leave him several candies, and other times you'd pick a yellow dandelion on your way from school and tuck that into his pocket too. It was cute.

This continued for several months, until one day Mikael's coat was buried under the clothes of other employees, so you had to linger a bit to reach the coveted pocket. But just as your hand was visibly sticking out of the stranger's pocket, slipping in a candy, you suddenly heard a cough behind you, in that unmistakable tone of Mikael's. You turned around to find the man himself. "What's in there? Another Raffaello?"