The joy was short-lived. By the time he returned to his apartment, it had grown into a massive dread and anxiety began taking roots. Welcoming him at the corner of his bed, splaying on the coffee table and his desks, tucked beneath his dresser was every proof of his sin; things he would have to hide. The guys hadn't been coming for a while, all busied by the start-of-semester administratives, so the state of disarray naturally came into place. He had been reading everywhere, putting down the internal nudge to clean up over and over again.

Now he could feel panic rising up his chest.

He had about 48 hours to get things done and she absolutely couldn't find him with those....books.

It wouldn't do for her to learn about his penchant for BL comics...

It first started as a ploy to approach this cute girl he had a crush on in high school. He had been interested in Japanese pop culture media for a while, but the girl's taste was a little different. It worked like a charm, his ploy, although the relationship didn't work out for a variety of reasons. They separated amicably, but he didn't take into account that this particular... thing (he couldn't bring himself to use the word 'hobby') might have...stuck.

No. He definitely had never dreamt that now, three years after the romance ended, he would have amassed a treasured collection of such comics of his own, disguised under an uninviting stack of old pre-college textbooks.

He had never been this self-conscious of his hobby before. He maintained a very particular image at the campus and his friends were not going to approve, but he was chill enough pushing them under his bed when they dropped by because rambunctious bunch as they were, they would not going to dig around much. He got along with them in a superficial level and was comfortable enough that way. But now, as he considered the prospect of letting someone getting to know him more, it dawned on him that he did not want to second-guess his preference but neither did he want to ruin his careful facade.

Or maybe he was thinking too far. He wasn't even able to articulate a full sentence without stuttering in her presence.

Good, he had calmed down. He gathered his stray collections and shoved everything down the back of the bottom drawer. That would do it. He would finish this one assignment without being a dunce.