Memoirs of the Lost Loser

Betrayal's Peak

Rational Phoebe: Two, actually.

Trivia Phoebe: Well, t he simple "maximum likelihood" method for predicting the future from the past is to estimate the probability of an event-type that has occurred r times in N trials as r /N...

Demure Phoebe: Live with a man— are you out of your mind?! There's no ring in her finger and you want her to give the wife privileges?!

Pessimistic Phoebe: Oh by Erwin's underwear, someone calm the Karen down.

Trivia Phoebe: ... this generally works well if r is fairly large (and if the world doesn't change too much). But as r gets smaller, the maximum likelihood estimate gets worse...

Rational Phoebe: That's not very nice. Apologize to people whose name is Karen.

Sexually repressed Phoebe: Fuck him while he's still have the hots for you girl. If you died out there, at least you get to fuck THE Levi Ackerman.

Opportunistic Phoebe: Sounds like an opportunity to me.

Trivia Phoebe: ... but as for us, no human record has yet been recorded making you the first, making the statistical estimation for large numbers of rare events inapplicable. Everybody got that?

"Shut up... all of you, just— shut up..." You hissed to chastise your thoughts. You closed your eyes, hoping this trick will disperse them. They get so... loud sometimes. Not that you don't want to listen, or that they're wrong, you just can't keep up when they speak like this.

"Oop, did I say too much?" Lucinda's high pitched voice made you jump out of your skin. "I thought you're together today because you're finally dating—"

Oh no.

"No, I wasn't— that's not what—" That's not what you meant! You weren't talking about him!

"We're not dating." Levi said curtly. You had a second to observe his hard expression that seeped out of his consistently stoical features. He stooped to take the boxes of lunch in a bag, and before it even registered, he was already walking away.

Is he angry? Disappointed? Sad?

Does he care that you're fretting about his response to this another layer of misunderstanding?

Wait.

No, you don't want this— you don't want the gap to get wider and wider until you can't approach him anymore. You don't want another misunderstanding with him. It's cheesy, it wastes so much time and it's awkward—

"Sir Levi—" Wait I said!

You will just clear this misunderstanding, that's all! Nothing more— you can't afford to be greedy. You don't have enough lives to pay for more wishes. And you can't be with anyone in this world— you'll leave, eventually. You don't belong here. You're not one of them.

You're not one of them.

Your chest tightens every time that thought crosses your mind.

"Ah, isn't that Phoebe?" You turned around to catch a glimpse of Jean and some others, but when you quickly turned back, Levi was getting further. It won't be long until the crowd will eat him away, and you won't be able to muster another round of courage to approach him.

You can't prolong this agony. You'll just clear it up: say sorry for putting him on hot seat with that assuming question back in the kitchen— you'll apologize for being elusive and awkward whenever he's in your line of vision; apologize for making him uncomfortable until now and...