ADARIKA WAKES UP again to find the sun already up and seeping into her room again, duvet half-spilling onto the carpet and half-wrapped tightly around her figure.

She's also on the wrong side of the bed, feeling her toes graze the wood of the headboard when she stretches. She doesn't know how that happened.

The time on her trusty phone reads 8:25 a.m., February 3rd, 2016. Adarika blinks. Then she realises that the guardian angel really did listen to her and she's back to square one for the second time now.

There's yet another sticky note on the back of her phone case, and this time the guardian angel has dropped the smiley face, instead making do with a simple I turned off the Laufey for you, by the way. Don't be late.

Adarika sighs, dropping the hand holding the sticky note onto her lap dramatically. This time, there's no script to save her and she has little to no idea of what to do, and it sends her into a minor panic attack.

Nonetheless, fifteen minutes later, she finds herself in front of the cafe again, shifting her weight back and forth on her heel, bag in hand and makeup done with more detail, the same way that Ishan had complimented her for once.

She recalls a post she came across in school while scrolling through her Instagram feed. The caption had read something like 'Makeup is the key to confidence'.

Well, screw that, Adarika doesn't know what she's feeling right now. It feels like an amalgamation of everything she's ever felt yet simultaneously a completely new emotion, designated just for moments like these when she is waiting for the love of her life to step through glass doors with a charming smile that never meant anything more to him than something platonic. Something between friends, like they were.

"Someone's early." A familiar voice jolts Adarika from her thoughts. She looks up and smiles at Ishan.

"Maybe you're just late," she quips back, making him let out a breathy laugh.

"Yeah, 'cause the world just has to revolve around my snarky best friend." Their eyes lock into each other's and Ishan is still smiling.

"You look nice," he compliments.

"And you look like a sewer rat." Lies. Ishan looks as gorgeous as ever with his Forever Nineteen ™ visuals consisting of sparkling eyes, cheek dimples, natural blush, and God's favour. Adarika recalls the times during school when Ishan would always open his bag to see an overabundance of secret admirer letters, confectionaries, and other little gifts spill out of the inner pockets. And Adarika gets it.

She gets the hype that her best friend receives, because, really, who wouldn't melt to their knees for someone as one-of-a-kind as Ishan Kishan? But that's beside the point.

Ishan fakes a pained expression and holds a hand to what was probably meant to be the heart but instead on his lungs, mixing up his left from his right.

"I'm kidding." Adarika snickers, doing her best to play off the nervousness she feels.

"Your heart is on the other side, by the way," Ishan rolls his eyes with a playful huff before snatching her bag out of her hands and running off with it.