For the past few weeks, Eri had been acting odd, even for him. He was still coming to see me, but they would be for minutes at a time and there were times I would say a single word and he defensively puffed up and disappeared into another time. By doing that so often, I've gotten used to the whole 'time traveling Flareon' concept, but it's gotten annoying. When he would stick around for more than a few minutes, he would stutter and constantly look off into the distance as if he were daydreaming. Even Hikaru noticed that he seemed a little bit off, but he would just laugh at me and tell me to "give him time, pun totally intended."

At first I tried being patient with him, but enough was finally enough. It was impossible to do anything with him constantly showing up in my face and then promptly absconding the second either of us tries talking. The next time he showed up, I managed to yank him by the fur on his head and get a sentence out.

"What the fuck, Eri?"

He quickly tried to escape into his time-hole thing, to which I responded by placing my paw over his eye, stopping the process. Weeks of watching him flee from me worked in my favour, since it led me to realise his eye needs to be uncovered for him to time travel. He whimpered in defeat, slumping down.

"A-Alright you got me, I won't run." He sighed.

"Cool. So, as I was saying; What the fuck, Eri?"

I half expected him to bolt for it and stayed guarded, but he actually kept true to his word.

"W-Well..." He trailed off, looking at anything except me.

"Eri."

"I know!! Look, it's not easy. Just. Give me a minute. I wasn't expecting. To do this. Today. Now." Eri's sentences were noticeably very anxious and nervous

I sat in silence, a blank expression on my face. I tried to avoid scaring him more, but honestly now I was starting to get nervous. It must be something serious for Eri to not be able to tell me with no problems.

"Well. I."

"I. Just. I."

"Erm what I want to say is."

"For a while."

He sighed.

"I-I-I REALLY LIKE YOU, OKAY!" At his last sentence his fur puffed up ungracefully, out of nervousness. His eyes were closed, probably too afraid to open them. He stood there as he trembled slightly, waiting for my response.

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I ship it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯