Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Adrian Cole had the kind of reputation girls warned each other about.
He was generous with every girlfriend. Whatever they wanted, he gave them. Dates, gifts, attention—he never seemed to hold back.
And somehow, every breakup with him looked clean.
Everyone around him said the same thing: Adrian was charming, easygoing, impossible to truly pin down. No girl had ever lasted by his side for very long.
So when he started pursuing me, my friends nearly lost their minds.
I still remember one of them grabbing my arm and saying, “Come on, think about it. Why would a guy like that suddenly decide he likes you?”
I laughed it off and said nothing.
Not long after that, one of Adrian’s former flings had dinner with a friend of mine by pure coincidence. The friend came back full of gossip.
“She’s gorgeous,” she told me excitedly. “And she’s got style. Honestly? She and Adrian looked pretty good together.”
I had just lowered my head to pick at my food when someone beside me let out a low laugh.
Adrian, who had no business overhearing that conversation, suddenly leaned back in his chair, looked straight at me, and said lazily, “If we’re talking about looking good together, I think we do too.”
The table instantly went quiet.
By then, the entire department had already noticed him chasing after me.
It had become such a spectacle that people were openly taking bets on whether I’d make it past a month.
The truth was, before I ever met Adrian, I’d already heard plenty about him.
People said his family had money. That he knew everyone. That he was especially good at making girls fall for him. That even when he broke up with someone, he always did it in a way that let both people walk away with their dignity intact.
At the time, I believed all of it.
So from the very beginning, I never thought of us as a story where someone sincerely chased and someone sincerely gave in.
Back then I was drowning in my senior capstone and thesis work. My faculty advisor needed me to get in touch with a graduate from the English department who had already started working, someone who could help with some reference materials. I sent message after message, but it felt like shouting into the void. Just when I was about to give up, someone finally replied.
The message was short.
If you need Adrian Cole, contact me. I know him well.
That was how I got his number.
Later, to thank him, I treated him to dinner a few times. We saw each other more and more after that. One evening, after we came out of a restaurant and stood beneath a streetlamp, he lowered his head and looked at me with those smiling eyes of his.
“Do you have any idea,” he asked softly, “how hard it’s going to be for me to stop seeing you after this?”
I froze.
He went on before I could answer. “Once this goes on any longer, I won’t be able to pull back.”
The light above us was warm and yellow. His voice sounded half serious, half teasing.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
I should have said something then. Anything. Instead, I looked away and forced a smile. “I thought you were supposed to be good at this.”
He raised a brow. “Good at what?”
“At chasing girls,” I said.
He stared at me for two seconds, then laughed.
He really was good at it.
Before I ever agreed to be with him, he was already fitting himself into every corner of my life with a patience that never felt aggressive and a confidence that was impossible to ignore. He picked me up when I stayed late on campus. He brought me food when I was too busy to eat. When I rushed to the train station and realized I didn’t have enough money, he transferred it before I even finished explaining. On my birthday, he remembered before anyone else did. During every holiday, there was always something from him waiting for me.
Even the people around me started saying, “Honestly? Just give him a chance.”
I didn’t do it because they persuaded me.
I just wasn’t made of stone.
No matter how many rumors I’d heard, he never treated me carelessly. Not once.
And when someone goes to that much trouble for you, when he keeps showing up and saying the right things and looking at you like that, it gets harder and harder to keep pretending it means nothing.
So eventually, I let him stay.
Later, when we were already together, I heard someone mention Vanessa Hart in passing.
They said Adrian had once been serious about her. That she was probably the only one he’d never really gotten over. Someone else added, with a knowing smile, that none of his relationships had ever lasted more than half a year anyway.
I remember exactly what I said then.
“Is that so?” I asked.
And they nodded. “Pretty much.”
At the time, I thought none of it mattered.
As long as he was good to me now, that should have been enough.
When you like someone, you always think you can ignore the past.
Only later did I realize you can’t always do that.
At the very least, I couldn’t.
Because I kept remembering that sentence—how Adrian Cole had never had a girlfriend who lasted more than six months.
And then I started wondering—
For someone like him, why had I become the exception?
After I let myself love him, I still couldn’t stop fearing that I wasn’t special at all.
Maybe I was only standing in someone else’s place.
After that, Adrian took over a huge portion of my life.
Maybe it was because he was so good at reading boundaries, but unlike the men I’d dated before, he never made me feel pressured or uncomfortable.
He called me every day. He asked me out to dinner. If I needed help with something, he was there. He’d wait for me outside the campus gates, sometimes for over half an hour at a time. I’d feel bad and tell him he didn’t have to do that, that he could just go do his own thing.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
He would only smile and hand me whatever he’d brought. “Eat first.”
Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he’d ask, “How’s your thesis going?”
To be honest, I was happy.
Not just because he was handsome. Before that, my impression of him had mostly been built on rumor—someone who was impossible to pin down, charming in a way that didn’t feel safe.
But when he showed up in my life, none of that matched the version of him I came to know.
He never crossed a line with me. He was patient in a way that made people let their guard down without realizing it. He knew exactly when to step closer and when to stop.
So the time we spent together kept increasing.
Later, he even set up a small private screening room for me. Whenever we had free time, we’d sink into the couch and watch movies there.
I actually had a lot of opinions about films, and he always listened seriously from beginning to end. If I really loved one, I’d even sit there afterward writing a long review while he stayed beside me, quiet and indulgent, never rushing me.
Sometimes, in the middle of those ordinary days, he would tease me.
There was one time I still remember clearly. A girl’s picture had somehow ended up in a book I was holding. She stood under a tree, hugging the book to her chest, her smile bright and gentle.
I hadn’t realized at first that he’d been looking at me for a while.
When I finally lifted my head, I ran straight into his eyes. There was laughter in them—soft, obvious, impossible to mistake.
I froze. “What?”
He leaned in a little, lowered his voice, and said, “That one was the first time.”
My mind blanked for a second.
My throat felt strangely tight. “First time… what?”
He laughed, the corners of his mouth curving higher, and tapped the page lightly with one finger. “The first time I saw you.”
I stared at him.
He didn’t look away. “I thought you were beautiful then too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
My face started burning. I lowered my head at once, pretending to study the photo more carefully, but my heartbeat had already gone completely out of rhythm.
That night, after I got back to my dorm, I lay awake for a long time.
I kept replaying the way he’d looked at me when he said that.
That was our first kiss.
My lips were a little dry. He had noticed before I had. He unscrewed a bottle of water and handed it to me first. While I was drinking, he stood beside me with that loose, easy posture of his, watching me.
When I looked up, he suddenly stepped closer.