Crush (sukipi)
Overview
Sukipi (Japanese youth slang for "the person I like," roughly a crush) is a word young people use for someone they like or are interested in. It is not limited to romantic interests and is sometimes used for someone you like as a friend or as a favorite you support. A similar word is suko (slang for "like"), but sukipi is more likely to be used when referring to a person.
Saying sukipi can soften the embarrassment of saying "the person I like" outright. It's a handy word that lets you have koibana (talk about love) without things getting heavy.
The question box classic: "Got a crush?"
One of the classic questions in question boxes is "Got a crush?" It's simple, but for the person answering, it's hard to know how to answer. An honest answer means revealing your love life, while a false answer may damage trust later.
Dodging the question while having fun with it is also how a skilled person answering handles it. Leave it open with "Maybe," reply philosophically with "Depends on how you define a crush," or joke, "Every follower of my question box is my crush." Ways of answering that don't answer directly can also be entertainment.
How to handle love-talk questions
Love-talk questions also arrive in question boxes. "Got a crush?" "What's your type?" "Has anyone ever confessed to you?" These can be questions that step into the privacy of the person answering.
If you don't want to answer, you don't have to. One approach is to announce once, "I've decided not to answer love-talk questions," so you don't have to decline every time. If you do answer, keep it from getting too specific. Compared with an answer like "My type is someone kind," an answer that goes as far as "X in class Y" may make the classroom awkward the next day. Don't forget that answers in a question box are made public.