WeLuvBrea
Sora Aika has never needed much. Small apartment, a plant she's kept alive through sheer stubbornness, and exactly the kind of life she can manage on her own. She's not the girl who falls apart. She's just fine - quietly, efficiently, always fine.
So when Seishiro Nagi asks her to fake date him, she agrees because the terms are simple. Low maintenance. No strings. Just enough proximity to make the noise stop.
Except nothing about Nagi is simple once you're close enough to actually see him. He listens more than he lets on. He sits with her in silences that should feel empty and somehow don't. And then there's Kaiser - confident, magnetic, and more real than his reputation suggests - who turns his full attention on her and means it, forcing her to confront exactly what she's been feeling.
Before anything gets resolved, Blue Lock comes calling. Nagi leaves. And what they were to each other gets filed under something without a word for it - which turns out to be the cruelest category of all.
She tells herself she's fine. She builds a life anyway. She finds a career path and follows it - not because of him, but because of who she became on that soccer field with a clipboard and somewhere she actually belonged.
Then she gets the roster. She sees his name.
Low Maintenance is a slow burn about two people who were never good at saying the thing directly, the wound of leaving something undefined, and finding each other again on the other side - not because the universe arranged it, but because she built her way there.
Some things are worth the effort. Even for someone who hates trying.