Adrian Hayes shoved the last physics textbook onto the shelf and stepped back to admire his work. Alphabetized. Color-coordinated by subject. Spines aligned with military precision. The left side of Room 447B at Greystone University looked like a Container Store catalog had exploded in the most organized way possible.
"Year of Winning starts now," Adrian muttered, straightening a pencil holder that didn't need straightening.
The desk gleamed. Fresh notebooks sat stacked by height. Three blue pens, two black, one red—all facing the same direction. Adrian had spent two hours arranging this space, transforming generic university housing into a command center. This semester would be different. This year, Adrian Hayes would finally—finally—cross a finish line first.
The door rattled. Adrian spun around, heart hammering, but nobody entered. Just wind through the hallway. Just paranoia making his pulse spike.
Adrian picked up the next box, lighter than the others. Personal items. The stuff his mom had packed with those little tissue paper dividers she bought specifically for moves. Inside, wedged between a framed photo of Sage and a participation trophy from eighth-grade baseball, sat a small white card.
Room 447B—Roommate Assignment.
Adrian pulled it out. Standard university letterhead. Laser-printed text in that impersonal Arial font administrators loved.
DANTE ALARIC.
The card slipped from Adrian's fingers. It hit the linoleum floor with a sound like a gunshot—sharp, final, impossible to take back.
"No." Adrian's voice cracked. "No, no, no, no, no."
Adrian snatched the card from the floor, reading it again. The letters didn't change. DANTE ALARIC. Room 447B. Move-in date: same as Adrian's. Of course it was.
Four years. Four different schools—elementary, middle, high school, and now university. Four supposedly random roommate assignments. Four times the universe had looked at every possible combination of human beings and decided: you know what would be hilarious?
Adrian grabbed his phone, fingers shaking so hard it took three attempts to unlock the screen. Sage answered on the second ring, their face filling the display with that expression—the one that said they'd been expecting this call.
"What happened?" Sage asked.
"Dante." Adrian paced between the beds, phone screen wobbling. "Dante happened. Again."
"Your roommate?"
"FOURTH TIME, Sage. Fourth. Random. Assignment." Adrian spat each word like a curse. "Do you know the statistical probability of this? Do you have any concept of how astronomically, impossibly, cosmically unlikely—"
"Adrian—"
"—it is to be randomly assigned to the same person FOUR CONSECUTIVE TIMES?" Adrian's voice pitched higher. "I did the math. I actually did the math during the car ride here. The odds are point-zero-zero-zero-three percent. That's not random. That's targeted. That's the universe actively choosing violence."
Sage's eyebrow arched. "Maybe it's a sign."
"A sign? A SIGN?" Adrian laughed, the sound sharp enough to cut. "Yeah, it's a sign alright. It says 'Adrian Hayes, you will never escape your own inadequacy. Here's your roommate to remind you daily.'"
"That's not—"
"Kindergarten. Age five. Dante Alaric stole my favorite red crayon." Adrian ticked items off on his fingers, phone balanced precariously against his ear. "Not just any crayon. The red one I'd been using to draw my masterpiece fire truck. Mrs. Patterson gave him my crayon, and suddenly his drawing was better. His drawing won the wall display."
Sage sighed. "Adrian—"
"Age ten. Fifth-grade track and field day. I trained for WEEKS. Weeks, Sage. I ran that course every morning before school. Race day comes, I'm leading the entire time, and then—" Adrian snapped his fingers. "—one second. Dante crossed the finish line one second before me. One. Single. Second."
"Okay, but—"
"Age thirteen. Science fair. My volcano was structurally perfect. Chemical composition? Flawless. Presentation? Engaging and educational. Second place. Guess who got first?"
Sage pinched the bridge of their nose. "Let me take a wild guess."
"Dante built a robot that could solve a Rubik's cube. Do you know how pretentious that is? Who needs a cube-solving robot? Nobody, Sage. Nobody needs that." Adrian collapsed onto his bed—the one he'd carefully made with hospital corners and a gray comforter that projected 'serious student' energy. "And then three months ago. The championship game. I had the shot. I was OPEN. Coach called the play for me, and then Dante—"
"Made the winning shot," Sage finished. "You've told me this story seventeen times."
"Eighteen."
"The point is—" Sage leaned closer to their camera, expression shifting from amused to concerned. "—you talk about this guy more than anyone else in your life."
Adrian froze. "That's because he's ruined my life for eighteen years."
"Or maybe you're obsessed."
"I'm NOT obsessed." The words came out too fast, too defensive. Adrian sat up, straightening his shirt. "I'm... strategically aware of my competition. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes. Obviously. Obsession is unhealthy fixation. I'm just... appropriately attentive to patterns of repeated defeat that have shaped my entire psychological development and sense of self-worth." Adrian paused. "That sounded better in my head."
Sage's expression said everything their silence didn't.
"Look." Adrian set the phone down, propping it against the pencil holder so Sage could see the empty bed across from his. "This is supposed to be my Year of Winning. I made a plan. I have goals. Specific, measurable, achievable goals. Join clubs, make dean's list, actually finish first in something—anything. I was going to reinvent myself."
"You can still do that."
"How?" Adrian gestured at the barren mattress. "He's going to be RIGHT THERE. Every morning I'll wake up and see proof that I'm not good enough. Every night I'll fall asleep remembering every time I almost made it and didn't."
"Maybe—" Sage hesitated, choosing words carefully. "—maybe this is an opportunity to move past it. You've built Dante into this symbol of everything you're not, but he's just a person. A person you've never actually had a real conversation with."
"We've had conversations."
"'Good game' and 'thanks' don't count as conversations."
Adrian picked at the comforter's stitching. Sage had a point—a frustrating, uncomfortable point that Adrian didn't want to examine. In eighteen years of parallel existence, Adrian and Dante had orbited each other like binary stars: gravitationally bound but never touching, locked in eternal revolution around a shared center of competitive mass.
"What if I can't do it?" Adrian's voice dropped to something smaller, more honest. "What if I spend four years watching him succeed at everything I fail at, and I'm still the same person at the end? Still the guy who almost makes it. Still second place."
"Then you'll be second place," Sage said simply. "And maybe you'll realize that doesn't actually define your worth as a human being."
"Deep."
"I'm a graphic design major. We take one philosophy class and suddenly think we're Socrates."
Adrian laughed despite himself, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders. Outside the window, other students hauled boxes and furniture, parents calling directions, friends shouting greetings. Normal people having normal move-in experiences. Not people psychologically preparing for cohabitation with their lifelong nemesis.
"I should finish unpacking," Adrian said.
"You should breathe," Sage corrected. "And maybe consider that the universe isn't actually conspiring against you. Maybe it's just... chaos. Random chance that feels personal because you're the one living it."
"Point-zero-zero-zero-three percent, Sage."
"Statistics don't care about your feelings."
They said goodbye, and Adrian set the phone down. The room felt bigger in the silence, the empty bed looming with malevolent potential. Adrian stood, walked to the window, counted breaths the way his mom had taught him during middle school panic attacks. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.
His phone buzzed. Mom: Be open to new experiences, honey. College is about growth!
Adrian read the message three times. Growth. Open to new experiences. The words tasted like cotton candy—sweet, insubstantial, dissolving under pressure.
Adrian turned back to the room, surveying his organized half and Dante's empty half. The space between them measured maybe six feet. Might as well be the Grand Canyon.
"Alright, universe." Adrian straightened his shoulders, adopting a fighting stance he'd learned from three years of basketball. "You want war? I'll give you war."
The empty bed didn't respond. But Adrian could almost—almost—feel it judging him anyway.