Worst Cupid Ever

Bellamy and Jules

"Did you have friends?" Ada asked Haruto in a low careful voice.

They were lying on the roof of the jet, face to the sky, and Ada's logger between them projected a tile matching game.

Haruto's finger paused over a yellow tile before he swiped, making a match. "Are you referring to the time I was a cupid?"

Ada nodded. She had been thinking about it a whole lot; if she were to fail at this match, did that mean she could no longer be friends with Teddy? A ball of anxiety formed in her chest. It was late afternoon. The sky above the spread of white fluffy clouds was a pleasant pale blue. But her tranquil surrounding did nothing to calm that persistent buzz of trepidation.

"I had two friends. Tim and Diego. Didn't even get the chance to say goodbye when I was dropped."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yep." Haruto continued the game, making swipes here and there, seeming unaffected by what he just shared.

"Um..." wincing, Ada tentatively asked, "how did it happen?"

Exhaling, Haruto closed the game with a tap and let his hand drop. "You really want to know? Fair warning, it kinda sucks."

Ada clipped her logger to her chain and hid it behind her shirt. "Tell me."

"Where to start?" Haruto's voice faded as if unsure. "Well... the couple I was assigned to, Bellamy and Jules, had an 89% success rate. Good potential, but almost every shot I took at orchestrating their meet-up failed. And when their meet-up finally happened, due to my ignorance, they got off on the wrong foot. Tried again with the forced closed proximity trick; made it work in a way that they had to see how cool they both were. Worked for a while, but there was a problem with Bellamy. Persistent thoughts of his ex had formed this... these barbs around his heart. I have seen fixation on an ex before but with Bellamy, it was... it was like a wound that would never heal. Nothing in his file helped... or maybe something was there and I didn't see it. Anyway, a year passed with no progress, I got desperate and I..."

"You what?" Ada turned to her side and used her arm as a pillow. Haruto's eyes had turned sad, the hand on his belly clenching into a fist.

"I tampered with his brain... the limbic area."

Ada sucked in a breath. She didn't even know that could be done.

"I know." He barked a dead laugh and shut his eyes. "It was incredibly stupid of me but I was desperate. I just wanted him to ease up on the ex obsession. We had this... this weekly assembly at the Northern Division. Luke and the two other helmets, Kwan and Andile, would make us all gather at the auditorium. There was this large screen. Luke called it an open evaluation." Haruto began massaging the bridge of his nose; his eyes were still shut. "He praised the good ones, admonished those stringing along, then me. I was the only cupid doing way below average. It was crazy how awful my luck was. Nothing I did ever seemed to work with the matches I got. Luke never failed to remind me that Bellamy was my last shot at being a cupid. And he will say this to the hearing of everybody. Nothing Tim and Diego said to comfort me ever stumped the fear and desperation that came every time my failures were displayed."

Ada's heart squeezed in her chest. "That's... that's awful."

Haruto shrugged, his thick dark hair moving with the action. "My desperation led me to the single most idiotic decision I've ever made in my life. For a time, it worked out smoothly. Bellamy and Jules were getting to know each other and one day I witnessed their love awaken. It was like a—like a warm soft fragile pulsing flare between them. A miracle." Haruto cupped his hands, a small sad smile curving his lips. "I had failed so much at being a cupid that I had never stayed with an assignment long enough to witness awakening love."