What you're about to read is the greatest and most romantic love story ever told. That being the case, it necessarily follows that most of it is not strictly speaking.... true.

In the dewy days of Fall 2022, two intrepid youths were making their way through their first semester of college. Neither had any designs on the other, nor was there a whisper anywhere of their being anything more to each other than cordial classmates (save of course in the sacred speculations of the female population which must, for its own safety, explore every possible combination of man with woman conceivable among their friends, in order to forestall the most terrible catastrophe imaginable: the emergence of a relationship that "nobody saw coming".) In short: everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

But then mysterious forces beyond our ken began to act on our dauntless youths. Nobody quite knows from whence these forces gain their powers, some have attributed their success to divine beings of mythological origins, and others lay the blame at the feet of strange giants like the Will Of God. Others in an astonishing attempt at simplicity have conjectured that they merely developed a sense of appreciation for each other as they got to know each other and by an accident of compatibility began to "develop feelings". Whatever the case and whoever the perpetrator the effect was undeniable. Soon the blush of something too terrible to mention began to grace their brief encounters. Naturally, such things are terrifying, and everything by way of obstacle and obstruction was employed to prevent anyone from "getting the wrong idea". After a close brush with feeling, our pair made a sharp diversion and exercised a certain cold civility one to the other...