Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Lucas Bennett narrowed his eyes and stared at the man across from him for a full ten seconds.
Then he pinched the bridge of his nose and asked, thoroughly baffled, “Hang on. You’re saying that was my romantic destiny?”
The other man nodded. “Yep.”
“You’re saying the matchmaker god doesn’t have a Red Thread of Fate for me? Not even—not even a damn loose end?”
“Correct.”
“Correct my ass!”
Lucas slammed a hand on the table, nearly knocking over an empty beer bottle beside him. He caught it before it hit the floor, then snapped, “Adrian Ellis, if I remember right, you teach philosophy. Since when did you start moonlighting as the god of matchmaking?”
Adrian smiled faintly and put on his most inscrutable expression. “The end of philosophy is theology.”
“Oh, give me a break. I got rejected by my dream girl today, I’m emotionally devastated, I came here to vent, and you—you went straight for telling me I don’t even have the thread.”
At that, Adrian finally lost it. He tried to hold it in, failed spectacularly, and broke into a cackling laugh that sounded like a very amused crow.
Watching him gloat like that, Lucas genuinely wanted to swing a beer bottle at his head and make him see stars.
Luckily, he wasn’t drunk enough to actually do it. Catching the looks other customers were throwing over from the surrounding tables in the Skewer Bar, he felt a flicker of embarrassment and sat back down, sullen. He rolled his eyes at Adrian and let out a contemptuous snort through his nose.
Once Adrian had laughed himself out, he picked up two skewers of grilled kidneys from the plate and handed them over like a peace offering.
“All right, all right. So your confession failed. It’s not exactly a world-ending crisis. And let’s be honest, it’s not your first time. You’ll get used to it eventually. Here—eat these and calm down.”
Whether Adrian was being thoughtless or deliberately stabbing him right in the scar tissue, Lucas couldn’t tell. Either way, it was exactly the wrong thing to say.
Still, Adrian wasn’t wrong.
Ever since Lucas had his first real awakening at nineteen, he’d been confessing to girls he liked with relentless sincerity. Seven years had passed since then. Aside from that very first love confession—which had actually worked, and lasted all of six months—his romantic life had been one disaster after another.
Fortunately, Lucas had a big heart, an absurd amount of confidence, and an almost supernatural ability to forget pain the second it stopped hurting.
Honestly, anyone with a slightly weaker mindset would’ve started questioning the meaning of life by now.
Chapter 2
“Adrian, do you know how they all rejected me?” Lucas demanded.
He was definitely tipsy now. Pride gone, dignity gone, he clutched two beer bottles to his chest and complained in a wounded, aggrieved voice.
“The reasons are always insane. You couldn’t come up with this stuff if you tried.”
Adrian remained as calm as ever, taking a sip of beer and then a bite of skewer before replying, “No, I probably couldn’t. So tell me.”
Lucas slurred on, “They always say, ‘Sorry, I’m not good enough for you.’ You hear that? Does that sound normal to you? If one or two people said it, fine, whatever. But I’ve confessed almost twenty times, and every single one of them shut me down with ‘I’m not good enough for you.’ Even my first girlfriend used those exact same words when she dumped me. So tell me—tell me—does that mean there’s something wrong with me as a person?”
Drunk and miserable, Lucas kept grumbling while pouring more beer into himself. Some of it missed his mouth entirely and ran down his neck onto his shirt, and he didn’t even notice.
Clearly, Professor Bennett—who had long since grown used to this version of him—just ordered another plate of edamame and kept eating with perfect composure.
When Lucas realized Adrian wasn’t properly engaging with his suffering, he kicked one of the table legs and said irritably, “I asked you a question. And you’re sitting there eating edamame?”
“No, no, your character’s fine. Totally fine. Don’t worry.”
After offering that deeply unconvincing reassurance, Adrian held out two shelled edamame beans in his palm and asked, “Want one?”
Lucas was clearly drunk enough that his brain had stopped working in sequence. He stared at Adrian’s hand and asked, “What is that…”
“Edamame. The mandatory post-skewer snack. You like it.”
Lucas processed that for two full seconds. Then, still hugging the beer bottles, he leaned across the table like a child waiting to be fed and opened his mouth.
“Ah…”
Adrian shook his head in helpless amusement, popped the edamame into his mouth, then lifted his chin lightly with two fingers and reminded him, “Chew, you drunk disaster.”
Lucas sank back into his chair. He chewed for a bit, then started rambling again.
“What do they even mean by that? What are they trying to do? What’s actually wrong with me? If there’s a problem, just say it. Why make me guess? Do women never say what they really mean?”
Adrian didn’t answer.
Chapter 3
He let Lucas carry on with his drunken meltdown while he calmly picked up a skewer of grilled chicken hearts, flicked away a few bits of edamame Lucas had sprayed across the table mid-rant, and kept eating.
When Lucas finally dragged himself all the way out of his hangover, he made a solemn promise to himself: this time, he was going to figure out what, exactly, was hidden inside those three infuriating words.
I’m not good enough.
There had to be more to it than that.
So he asked Sophie Carter, the woman who’d turned him down last time, to meet again. To his surprise, it took almost no effort. She agreed immediately, without even hesitating.
They sat at an outdoor cafe, and Lucas got straight to the point with total sincerity.
“I need to ask you something honestly,” he said. “Is there actually something wrong with me? Like… do I have some kind of character issue people don’t want to say out loud?”
Sophie waved that off at once. “Don’t start spiraling. You’re a good guy. You’re attractive, you’ve got a good personality, and you make decent money. You’re completely dateable. Seriously, stop doubting yourself.”
“Then why did you reject me?” Lucas asked. “And why say something like you weren’t good enough? That’s impossible to decode. And it’s not just you. More than one person has used that line on me. I want to know why.”
Sophie suddenly covered her mouth, her eyes curving with amusement. The more she looked at his completely clueless face, the harder she laughed, shoulders shaking.
Lucas just stared at her, baffled.
“Fine, I’ll tell you.”
She took a sip of coffee, clearly fighting back another laugh. “Someone came to me and asked me not to date you.”
Lucas froze for a few seconds. Then his whole face lit up with revelation.
“I get it,” he said. “That person was into you too, right?”
A spark of hope flashed in his eyes as he leaned forward. “That’s fine. I can compete fair and square. In the end, no matter who you choose, I’ll respect your decision. Just give me a chance.”
“No, you’ve got it wrong.” Sophie shook her head. “He wasn’t pursuing me.”
Lucas blinked.
If the guy wasn’t after Sophie, then why sabotage his chances?
He thought about it again, more carefully this time, and a chill crept up his spine.
That meant the person probably wasn’t targeting Sophie at all.
He was targeting Lucas.
And not just once, either. Whoever it was had been messing with him from the shadows for years.
The enemy was hidden, and Lucas was standing out in the open.
That was a terrible position to be in.
His scalp went cold. In a flash, he mentally reviewed everyone he’d ever had bad blood with, from kindergarten to now, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think of a single bastard he’d offended badly enough to hold a grudge like this for years.
Lucas looked back at Sophie. “Did someone threaten you? Tell you not to go out with me?”
She blinked and chose her words carefully. “I wouldn’t call it a threat. At most… it was a very sincere request.”