Sweet Romance16 min read
Soft White Rumors (and the Boy Who Kept Coming Back)
ButterPicks14 views
I had never been the center of anything important at college. I took notes. I answered questions when asked. I tried not to be noticed. That afternoon, a stranger handed me three milk teas at the foot of the teaching building and my life tilted.
"Hi, the delivery's here," he said through the rolled-down window. His voice was quiet and the car smelled faintly of coffee. He held the cup out.
"I—I'm downstairs by the shared bikes," I replied into my phone and then ran to the road. "I'm here. Where are you?"
"Black car. Come over," he said.
I ran, and the car window slid down. He had on a black mask and a dark beanie. His eyes were the part of him I could see—quiet, deep, a little familiar. He handed me the drinks like it was the most normal thing.
"Three milk teas?" he asked.
"Yes." I took them and forced a smile. "Thank you."
He nodded, watched me run back to the building, then drove away. I stood there, breathless from running and smiling like an idiot because his hands were pale and long, and because his eyes had looked at me in a way I couldn't put into words.
Back in the classroom I split the drinks with my roommates. "A guy in a car brought them," I said.
"Was he cute?" Isabel asked, immediately leaning in.
"Uh," I thought of the long fingers. "He wore a black mask. I couldn't see much."
"You're lying if you say you didn't notice," Jewel teased.
We returned to studying. Two hours later an anonymous campus post hit the forum: a photo of a girl in a rust-colored coat accepting drinks and smiling at a guy in a black car. The comments exploded.
"Look at that smile—so sweet."
"Is that love or what?"
"Who is that guy?"
"That's Lin—" someone wrote the name and a photo set followed. The thread shifted. People started making ship names.
"Who is that?" I whispered as Isabel shoved a phone at me.
"Soft White CP," she mouthed. "You're trending."
My face went warm. I had no idea how a one-minute exchange turned into a campus romance script.
The next morning the classroom felt different. Everyone turned toward me when I walked in. "Did you bring us coffee?" a girl whispered and giggled. I sat down, throat dry. The professor called on me; my hands shook when I answered. He later asked me to step into his office.
"Come by my office after class," Professor Jaqueline said, warm as sunshine. "I have something to ask."
I froze in the hall. "Do you want me to ignore it?" Isabel asked from behind my shoulder.
"No," I said. "I can't keep pretending. It's getting weird."
Outside the office a tall student was leaning with a book in his hand. He looked up when I walked by. He had an air about him—calm, polite, not at all like the characters people made him out to be online.
"Come in," he said when I hesitated.
I stepped inside and found Professor Jaqueline with another woman I didn't know. "Halo, this is Ms. Jaqueline from events," the tall student said.
"Nice to meet you," I said. He smiled at me like it was easy to smile for him.
"That's Zachary Carter," Professor Jaqueline added as if announcing a guest of honor. "Zachary helps organize our exchange events. He's in charge of hosting, actually. Halo, we'd love for you to be in the promotional photos. Can you do it?"
"It would be an honor," I said, and against the knot in my chest, I agreed.
Zachary walked me out afterward. "You're Halo?"
"Yes. Are you—"
"Zachary. You really didn't recognize me?" he teased, and I felt a warm sting.
"My brother kept calling me 'don't date anyone' before I left for school," I murmured. "I'm bad at recognizing faces I haven't seen in a while."
He laughed softly. "You still call him 'brother'?"
"Yeah."
We parted then. He didn't do anything dramatic. He just went away, and that was the end of it—or so I thought.
The forum followed. Photos from different days—me walking with Zachary, me on campus, the two of us in one frame—sprang up like daisies after rain. People shipped us seriously. "Soft White," they typed like a charm.
"You're trending again," Jewel said when I checked my phone.
"How—?" I didn't know. Zachary texted me simply, "Ignore it."
"Cold treatment gets old," I typed back. "Should I say something?"
"Not necessary," Zachary replied. He was short and calm. He didn't want the fuss and he tried to teach me not to care about the noise. But noise kept finding us.
At the basketball-court-turned-practice, the worst kind of problem happened. Fernanda Renard—one of the seniors with a solo dance act—hurt her ankle before the exchange. There were only days left. Panic moved like a cold wind through the rehearsal room. Zachary paced and made calls. He looked like someone trying to fit a dozen seconds into a single minute.
"Isabel has choreography experience," I said. "She can step in."
"Can she?" Zachary asked, not unkind, just practical.
"She can," Isabel answered without hesitation. She came, learned fast, and made the performance feel right. Zachary stood on the side, quiet approval on his face.
"Thank you," I told him after the run-through. He smiled then in a way that made my chest stumble.
"Good job," he said simply.
That is the first time he broke his no-nonsense, composed mask in front of me and smiled, and I felt a small thunder of something strange and warm. Later, when the stage was set and my role was to stand by and speak lines, Zachary leaned over like it was the most normal thing and said, "Link arms with me on the stairs."
"The rehearsal didn't have that," I protested.
"You'll be safer," he said, like it was common sense. He didn't ask permission; he just supported his hand. My fingers brushed his sleeve and the whole world stilled for a second.
"Hold my arm," he said as we climbed.
I did. The lights shone. People cheered. After we walked off the stage, his hand lingered on my elbow a beat longer than necessary. The room felt softer around us. I wondered if the crowd had noticed. I hoped they had.
The following weekend, he found me again. This time it was raining and the campus smells of winter. He caught up with me outside the dorm, held a coat at arm's length and before I could protest, threw it around my shoulders.
"Put it on," he said.
"Zachary," I managed. "It's huge."
"Then wrap it. You're going to catch cold." He tugged the collar round my neck and brushed a drop of rain off the side of my face with the back of his hand. "Don't be foolish."
"Why do you do this?" I whispered.
He looked down at me, unruffled. "Because you keep catching my attention," he said, and I could not find any sensible answer. He had stroked my tiny chin to see my face better that night. That is the second time he made me think that maybe the world had tilted specifically for us.
Rumors kept swirling. People started to pair us whenever they saw a photo: on campus steps, behind the gym, on posterboards for the exchange. I felt seen yet embarrassed. "Are you playing this?" I asked him one evening, fingers twisting the hem of my sweater.
"No," he answered. "I don't make public what I want to be private. Let them think what they want."
"But people decide things about me. They pair me with you in stories I never agreed to."
He paused. "Then tell them. Be clear."
"I don't want to be the girl who points at people's tongues and says, 'No, it's not true,'" I said.
He surprised me when he took my phone, typed a short note and handed it back. "Short," he said. "Firm. Honest."
I posted, "Those photos were taken for the exchange. We are not dating."
The comments flooded again—some disappointed, some relieved. Zachary sat beside me, said nothing, and squeezed my hand once, privately. That squeeze was the third small thing that made my heart go unpredictable.
Within all the sweetness, trouble simmered. A girl named Karin Greco appeared more often in the comments. She was everywhere—front-row at events, quick to smile with Zachary for pictures, and too closely familiar with the way the forum's threads were pushed. Her posts were tidy and timed. Someone had to be running the account that orchestrated the photo drops.
"That account's too neat," I told Dario, my brother, when we talked on the phone. "It always posts at the right moment."
"You being put up is bad luck," Dario barked. "Whoever is doing that is messing with people."
Dario had always been protective. He and Zachary had a strange way of talking on the phone like they were competitors who also shared a map. That protective anger comforted me.
The night before the big exchange event—four days after I had started to allow myself to care—Karin cornered me in the KTV room. She sat down beside me like she belonged there, voice sugar-sweet.
"So," she said. "You and Zachary are trending again."
"I said it's part of the event," I replied.
She hummed. "You should be more grateful. He helps people like you get spots." Her smile was a model's. "I'm running the campus gossip page. You can call me your...assistant."
I stared. "You run the account?"
She laughed and tapped my hand like a cat. "Do you think all of this is random? I know how to make people look good together."
"You are prying," I said, suddenly furious. "Are you trying to make me a product?"
"Playful," she said. "I thought you enjoyed the attention."
"Don't pretend you like us," I snapped. "You're pushing things that make people think the wrong things."
Karin's smile tightened. "Do you even like Zachary? Or will you run away when someone better shows up?"
My stomach folded. "I—"
She patted my shoulder. "Cheer up. Life's a game. Be good at it." She left as if this was all a joke.
I kept my distance. Yet, over the next days, posts became more personal, more staged. Stories about dinners, gestures, him wrapping my coat for me—someone was manufacturing our moments for the crowd. It felt like my private life had become a curated collage.
Two days later, during the exchange gala, something snapped. We were supposed to present and thank everyone on stage. Bad timing made the gala perfect for me to confront the truth.
"Zachary," I whispered before we went on. "If I do this, will you stand by me?"
"If you want me there, I'll stand," he said.
The hall filled. Cameras, phones, alumni, students—there were too many eyes. I walked on stage with my chest tight and the script in my trembling hands. Zachary was close and steady. Midway through my lines I paused, then decided to risk everything.
"Before we thank some people, may I say something?" I lifted my head as ten thousand small lights blinked like stars. "There have been posts, photos, and rumors about how Zachary and I—about us. Some of these posts were helpful to the event. Some were...not. Some were manipulated. I know the gallery is small, but this affects us."
There was a murmur. Zachary's thumb ran along my palm under the script and did not let go. He gave me a look: go on.
I took a breath. "If someone is packaging our moments to become a storyline, I think they should be called out. Publicly."
A cough rippled across the audience. Cameras turned. Someone hissed, "What's she doing?"
Professor Jaqueline gave me a small nod. "Do it," she mouthed.
I had screenshots. Privately, Dario had helped me dig through some posts. I had messages, timestamps, pictures that matched when Karin appeared in places she hadn't been photographed before. I had a feeling she would try to sabotage—make me feel like a pawn—but the evidence was blunt. I tapped the presentation remote.
"These are the coordinates and timestamps for several posts that were edited and published from the same device range," I said. "They line up with accounts logged in from Karin Greco's phone. There are messages showing her arranging staged photos and hinting at 'boosting engagement.' I asked her about this once and she smiled and said, 'Be grateful.'"
The auditorium had gone silent. Even the visiting professors were leaning forward.
Karin, who was cooling herself with a hand fan at the second row and had been watching us like she watched everything, froze. Her smile slipped. She pressed her lips together.
"You're accusing me?" she called across the room, voice loud and pointed. "That's slander."
"Is it slander when you arranged it and posted it?" I snapped. "Or is it the truth?"
She rose like a pop-up. "You think you know how to use the internet now," she said. "You're a freshman who got lucky with some photos. You don't know how the game is played."
Zachary stepped between us like a shield. "Karin, step back," he said.
She glared at him, then laughed. "And you? Little hero. You like the chaos you made. You want attention."
"Who's 'you'?" he asked quietly, but everyone could hear. "You were the one posting timestamps and coordinating who would be where. You encouraged staged 'coincidences.'"
She staggered back like she'd been hit. "That's a lie!" she cried. "Those posts were for the exchange. I helped the promotions."
"Much of what you posted wasn't about promotions. It was personal—made to simulate intimacy," I said. "You told a photographer to wait at the dorm entrance and 'catch something pretty.' That's orchestrating, not helping."
Karin's face changed in stages. First a mask of haughty disbelief, then the paper-thin color draining from her cheeks, then frantic denial.
"Who gave you those screenshots?" she hissed. "Who told you?"
"Dario helped. And some people who wanted the truth," I said. "We recorded messages. We have timestamps. We have the IP info."
She lunged for my phone as if snatching it could rewrite the evidence. A dozen students rose, whispering. Some took out their phones. A few started streaming. The auditorium was a sea of faces and light.
"Stop!" Karin screamed. "You don't know anything."
"You're right," I said, voice steady despite my shaking hands. "We know enough."
A friend from the student union, Egon Brooks, stepped up and spoke into his phone as if to a live stream. "This girl's got receipts," he said. "If you want them public, we'll show them."
Karin's laugh died. Her hands began to tremble. For the first time since I met her, she looked small. "You're trying to humiliate me," she whispered. "You're targeting me."
"You're the one who tried to control someone's image without their consent," I said. "Who made private moments into a product."
Around us, murmurs turned into louder comments. "Show receipts!" "Expose the fake!" "What a mess!"
Karin's face shifted from smug to shocked to panicked. She snapped out, "This is my account. I did it to push engagement. I didn't think—"
"You didn't think?" a chorus of people echoed. "You 'didn't think' about people's feelings."
"Stop lying," Karin spat. "Zachary, say something. Say I helped you! Say she owes me for this!"
Zachary didn't say it. Instead he looked at the witnesses around us—Isabel, Jewel, Egon, Erick—and then at me. He reached out, took my phone and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket as if to guard me.
"People create narratives," Zachary said, voice low and composed, but everyone felt the weight. "Some do it for attention, some for control. If you used others to craft a story you wanted, that's your choice. But don't blame the targets."
Karin's denial cracked. "You—"
"Sit down," Professor Jaqueline ordered, quietly fierce. "Miss Greco, stay here and answer. We will have the student conduct review handle this."
Her eyes were wild. For a moment she seemed like she would run, then the auditorium's attention held her like a net. Phones floated in the air. People shouted. The dean's assistant walked up the aisle with measured steps. "Miss Greco," he said. "You are requested to the administration. There are allegations we must investigate."
Karin started to plead, her voice lost in a tide of whispers and rising outrage. "I didn't mean—" she tried to bargain.
"You did mean," a girl in the front row said sharply. "You meant to make money from our moments."
"How could you?" someone else cried. "Why make us into content?"
Karin sagged as if a hand had pushed her. The air tasted like a storm. I realized how awful it must have been for many people. Not just me.
She stumbled and sang a high, angry mixture of denial and plea. "I didn't know it would hurt! I wanted to be seen! This is unfair! You're making me out to be the villain!"
A chorus of phones recorded it all. Some students laughed. Some hissed. A few older alumni shook their heads. The comments on the live streams cascaded with betrayal and confusion. "Shame," many typed. "She used us."
Karin's face went through stages: first indignant pride, then disbelief, then shrinking panic. Her voice quavered. "You can't do this to me. I'm popular. People like my work."
"Not at the cost of someone else's privacy," I snapped, but my voice had no venom. It was honest and tired. "You did it for clout."
The dean's assistant guided her out. People followed with their eyes. Karin's legs trembled. Outside, a small crowd formed. Some students shouted "expose!" Others held up their phones. She turned to them and begged.
"You don't know the whole story!" she cried. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please!"
Her pleas fell like brittle leaves. On the livestreams, people debated her motives. Some tried to defend her as a "promoter in a broken system." Many did not.
That night, the forum blew up with posts: "Karin admitted it on stage." "She begged on camera." "She tried to say it was innocent but we all saw." Some screenshots showed her messages arranging staged photos. People who had been quiet suddenly opened up about being uncomfortable weeks earlier.
Karin called the dean, begging them to be fair. The public had already judged. She walked the campus the next morning and felt the shift. Students turned their shoulders when she passed. The student union canceled her future promotions. Some of the pages that had posted her content deleted it and apologized.
I watched all this and felt a complicated knot. I had wanted truth, not ruin. I did not gloat. But part of me was relieved that the staged narrative had been dismantled.
Karin's reaction changed across that day. First she held her head high—untouchable. Then she slunk into denial—denied the receipts. Then shock took her, the kind that shows when your plan is exposed. Finally she broke. She sat on a concrete step outside the administration building, elbow on her knees, hands covering her face. People whispered. Someone walked by and said, "You used us." She didn't answer.
The punishment was not a legal sentence; it was a public shaming measured by the people she had deceived. It was hundreds of messages telling her she had betrayed classmates. It was the cancellation of her student privileges in promotions and an investigation by the conduct board. It was the slow drying of fans who felt used.
She tried to make amends with a public statement. She stood in the student square and read a prepared apology. Cameras circled. For the first time she sounded small and hollow.
"I'm sorry for how my actions made people feel," she read. "I didn't consider the consequences. I thought I was helping. I was wrong."
Some students clapped. Many did not. Some called out, "Too late!" She kept her head down.
Afterward she approached a cluster of students who had been most vocal. "Please," she pleaded to one quiet girl. "Will you take this down? Can we talk?"
The girl answered calmly, "You made a private thing public. You made it a product. That's not something you can fix with a post."
Karin's shoulders trembled. She begged on her knees in front of a small group, phone cameras capturing every second. "I'll delete everything. I'll resign from clubs. I'll apologize."
They filmed it. Some people filmed to document accountability. Some filmed out of curiosity. Karin's face crumpled and she begged for forgiveness in the rawest way possible.
After the public fallout, the university held a hearing. Reports gathered. Karin was required to undergo online safety and privacy training and banned from handling official campus promotion for a year. She lost followers and clout. She had to face students she had used; their stares were the worst. The punishment was not a dramatic arrest scene—it was exposure, accountability, loss of status, and the slow realization that her actions had consequences beyond likes.
People reacted differently: some were fierce and unyielding; others were tender and offered a second chance after genuine change. I watched from the quiet corner, feeling both vindicated and sad. I did not enjoy seeing someone reduced to tears. But I also knew that sometimes truth must be louder than a rumor factory.
After everything, life had small healing noises. Zachary and I carried on with the exchange and the publicity died down slowly—less clamor, more ordinary life. He kept showing up in tiny, steady ways.
One night he returned my phone and said, "Keep this." He had put the coat he borrowed from me on the chair and, without fanfare, he wrapped it back around my shoulders.
"Why do you keep doing this for me?" I asked, half exasperated, half grateful.
"Because I like how you look when you're embarrassed," he said seriously, then added softly, "And because when someone messes with you I get angry."
"That's not a romantic reason," I said.
He gave me a crooked smile like a secret. "It's a start."
People around us still whispered sometimes. "Soft White" as a label lived for a while longer. But the thing that mattered to me was his steady presence: the way he tucked my hair behind my ear when it fell into my face, the way he squeezed my hand privately after a speech, the way he bought me milk tea when the buses were cancelled and handed it to me with the same quiet politeness as before.
"Do you want to come over and help me proof the next script?" he asked once, casual as a question.
"I do," I said, and smiled.
We kept making moments—some real, some perfectly ordinary. I learned that people would always want to package everything. I learned that truth and consent were worth guarding. And I learned that between the manufactured posts and the messy human feelings there could be an anchoring hand.
On the morning I left campus for winter break, Zachary walked me to the gate. A thin snow had dusted the sidewalks; it looked like a soft white blanket that does not hide footprints.
"Will you come back next term?" I asked.
"I'm already on call," he said, stretching out a hand.
I took it. "Then don't let the world make our small things into content for strangers," I said, half-warning, half-joke.
"I won't," he promised.
His fingers curled around mine a moment longer, warm against the cold. People passed, phones in pockets, lives continuing. Karin would have to rebuild. The forum would find new things to love. But I had something quieter: someone who had stayed, not because of the posts, but because he chose to do the small things that mattered.
"Promise me one thing?" I asked suddenly, eyes on the distant campus gate.
He smiled his small smile again. "What's that?"
"If anyone tries to take moments from you, don't fight alone."
He looked at me as if he had always known that. "Never alone," he said, and squeezed my hand.
That phrase should have been a cliché, but with him it felt like a rope I could hold onto.
When I later checked the campus forum, the throws of gossip were smaller. People moved on. The story that had been built without consent had been dismantled by voices that insisted on truth. Karin retreated from the role she'd once loved, and I wondered if she would ever really understand how much damage could be hidden beneath a glossy post.
Months went by. We worked together in quiet ways—scripts, hosting, helping others take their small moments with dignity. Every time a camera pointed toward me I felt less like a product, and more like a person. Zachary taught me how to say "no" in a calm voice, and he taught me how to accept a jacket from someone who was paying attention.
On the last night before the term ended, he walked with me to my dorm again. The street lamps threw rectangles of light on the snow. "Do you remember the first time?" I asked.
"The milk tea," he said. "I remember you tripping back to the building with a plastic bag."
"I remember your hands," I said. "They were cold."
"They still are."
He wrapped his gloves tighter and then, in a quiet, private gesture, his hand brushed mine. It was small. It was true. The world outside could frame us any way it wanted, but inside our pockets of ordinary time, we had our own tender things.
I put my head against his shoulder for a moment. "Thank you," I whispered.
"For what?" he asked, and it was a question I would spend time in later, but at that moment his voice was enough.
"For staying when it was messy," I said.
He hummed and kissed the top of my head before I could think better of it, and I laughed because my heart had a habit of turning heavy things into warmth.
"Stay," he said, like a command clothed as a wish.
"I will," I promised.
And for the rest of that winter, whenever someone tried to sell a story about us, I thought of that night—the spilled milk teas, the coat, the staged photos, the public unmasking—and I knew that truth and small kindnesses mattered more than a thousand likes.
The End
— Thank you for reading —