SaraBat

Your arranged marriage to Lord Nanami can be considered simply that, an arranged marriage. You are certain to some degree that he has never laid eyes upon you, but have laid your eyes on him. 

Your father does not know that you had watched him, to some degree, from afar at some aristocrat's family ball. You had merely passed, barely presented yourself, and then left before your father could tell you something crass about being at a ball unchaperoned. Lord Nanami is described, and you do agree to a level, handsome with light blonde hair and eyes as blue as the sky. 

You’ve never heard of any rumors, for the maids talk and talk about everything. So he must be that of all society says…a handsome match. That is at least what your father says. “A handsome match for a beautiful, capable daughter of mine.”

However, you feel guilty. Your father praises your sweet and handsome ways, but you know something that all others do not. Unlike the many innocent ladies of society, there’s something inside you that's different. You seek out pleasure in ways society does not. 

It is unheard of for a lady to sit in the hay that feeds the horses and stare at the ceiling, imagining the stable boy forcing her to the floor and kissing her cheek. You can count how many times you’ve sat on the hay, hitching your dress and harassing your skin until you sing the heavens' name. 

“Lord Nanami and his brother will be here shortly. You should make yourself presentable for your future husband.” Your maid, Eleonar, as she dresses you in a gown of sea-green sarcenet, the high empire waist cinched with a narrow ribbon. 

The skirt falls in a slender, graceful column to your ankles, finished at the hem with delicate silver embroidery. Your arms are encased in white kid-leather gloves that met your puffed sleeves, and a simple string of pearls caught the candlelight at your throat. “I am being sent to be slaughtered.”

Your maid furrows her eyebrows, displeasure quickly taking over her face, “Rubbish. You are not, Miss Y/N. You are a distinguished young lady.” And she says all that while clasping the pearl earrings, and making sure each strand in your hair is not out of place. 

When you travel downstairs, your eyes quickly fall upon the esteemed Lord Nanami and his brother, Lord Hiromi. In truth, you enjoyed watching Lord Nanami from afar. 

You liked how his eyes twitched once he heard something, and how he could not control his face, for he always showed his displeasure. His hands are big, and you can see the light veins running from them into his jacket. 

But your favorite…is his voice. 

They speak in hushed voices, but there’s a set of eyes on you, sky blue ones that trace your every movement, as if trying to see through your very thoughts.

You barely make it downstairs when your father finally waltzes to your side. “Oh, and here is Y/N. You’ve finally made it down, dear.”

You lightly curtsy, “Good evening, Lord Nanami,” you say, trying to avoid his piercing eyes somehow, then turn with curtsy again, “Lord Hiromi.”

Lord Hiromi smiles, “My, your daughter has every ounce of beauty that you so humbly speak of.”

Your father gives a meek thanks, “A small picnic has been prepared for the betrothed, so I must trouble you.”

Lord Nanami doesn’t say anything for a long time; he simply stares at you until he turns to your father and shakes his head, “No trouble at all.”

You find Lord Nanami’s voice to be that of honeysuckle and of chamomile tea. Pleasant, soft, and yet strong. He doesn’t raise his voice, and he seems to always speak with a disposition that says, “I am on par with those in here, I will not shout”. 

Lord Hitomi and your father begin to walk outside, and as you move to follow behind, you’re stopped by Lord Nanami’s hand in front of you. He stares at you, blue eyes barely lit by the small rays of sunlight dashing through the unprotected windows. 

You slide your hand into his, and it’s as though electricity has flashed through your very being, opening your soul. You’ve never encountered love, for you believe they’re simply chemicals inside the head driving one's actions.

Desire is the same, but at least desire does not leave you dry and make you cry. But then again, you’ve never fallen in love, and all you’ve ever heard is of the many ladies who’ve had their hearts broken simply for “love”.

Lord Nanami lets you lead him. As odd as it seems, you walk in front and drag him along, not unlike a dog, but unlike a dog, he doesn’t pull on the leash, wishing to release himself. Instead, he walks and walks until he’s next to you, and you can smell the faintest scent of smoke and wood. 

You both trail behind Lord Hiromi and your father until you arrive at a small table and two chairs, while your father and Lord Hiromi move along the lake, speaking and paying no attention to you both. 

You begin to sip on a hot cup of tea, letting your eye rest for a second on Lord Nanami. “Tell me, Lord Nanami, some ladies have spoken of your desire to have a house full of laughing children. Is that true?”

You’re a liar. You’ve never heard of such a thing. You are simply a bold lady who wants to poke and understand.

He shakes his head, eyes trained on you, “I desire what my wife desires.”

“Should she desire to never bear children, will you desire that as well?”

“If that is what she desires,” He speaks finally, and his arms fall, and for a second, something flashes in his eyes. A hint of pity…a hint of disappointment, perhaps. You can’t tell. You’ve never been great at reading people. “Then so be it.”

You hum, placing the cup down. Lord Nanami never takes his eyes off you, and you feel somewhat scrutinized under the weight of his sight. It’s a pleasant feeling. To have someone like lord Nanami, picking at your every movement, trying to dissect the way you walk, speak, or move.

You feel like a bird, open though not yet pliant, lying on a dissection table, while Nanami holds a scapel, grazing the sharp edge against your thigh, neck, and stomach. You wonder for a second how his skin may feel against your stomach.

How would his nail feel digging into the flesh of your hip or calf? Is Lord Nanami a gentle lover? Is he rough? Is he loud? 

“Do I make you nervous, Miss Y/N?”

You pick your eyes, finally staring into his, while the sun whisks into your skin and the calm wind caresses your hair. A bird chirps somewhere near you and him, its voice carried through the wind like a small angel. “Yes.”

“Why?”

You aren’t sure what to say. There seem to be not enough words to describe how you feel for Lord Nanami. How his voice makes your skin quiver, and how he looks at you as though you are a cherub, about to bewitch his heart. “You look at me as though you are seeing...through me.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No.” In fact, it makes you like Lord Nanami more than you should. Though he will be your husband, you are certain that he will not satisfy your unworldly appetite for your flesh is simply insatiable.

You don’t realise that the sun has gone low, and the sky has turned a dark with hues of orange and pink. “I want to watch the ducklings before we end our day.” You say, and quickly walk away from Lord Nanami, glancing back to see him sitting unmoving in his chair.

You’re not disappointed. Well, a small part of you is, but you’ve always enjoyed your space, and in some way, you’re glad he does not hover. You cross into the woods, far back into the pile of tall dark oak trees, long dress smothered in dirt. 

You’re a good distance from Lord Nanami, and from where you are, no one can see you. Not Lord Nanami. Not your father. Not Lord Hiromi. Not the young couple, across the lake. 

You squat down, unmoving. Your limbs feel heavy, and though you know you should get up and walk away, you’re unable to tear your eyes away from the young man, caressing the woman through her dress. They tumble from the tree to the ground, and he kisses every one of her limbs, until she’s squealing. 

Your body burns, and it takes too much willpower for your fingers to lie to rest on the dry grass. When the young man disappears into her long, dark blue dress, you cup your breast, pinching the bud as a lightning bolt of pain strikes your knees. 

You don’t feel him, not until he has you trapped, underneath the weight of his body. Lord Nanami holds you, strong arms wrapped around your very being, a hand quickly clasping down on your mouth, stopping you from screaming. 

His arm tightens around your waist, and your lungs squeeze inside your ribcage. You’re breathing too heavily, eyes still on the woman as her skin turns pink. Saliva should be coating the side of her mouth, you think, feeling the warmth of Lord Nanami’s clothing surround your skin. 

“Does this excite you, Miss Y/N?” He whispers in your ear, teeth grazing the shell of your ear. The hand on your lips falls, quickly forming a fist at the end of your dress, while his right arm is still wrapped around your stomach. 

A sigh escapes your lips as his lips crawl to the side of your neck, just behind your ear. A violent shudder crosses your flesh. “I…I am…”

“Her pleasure will never reach the pleasure I will give you,” he whispers, and you can feel his breath travel up to your cheekbone, “For in our wedding night, I will imprint your bones on my skin, and I will lay my heart for you.” 

It is indecent, the way his hand quickly twists your face to his, and the way his tongue caresses yours. He breaths in your air, stealing every ounce until your lungs feel as though they will collapse. 

“Lord Nanami,” you whisper along his cheek, as he parts from you. 

“Kento.” He says, “Call me Kento. Call me your husband. Say anything but my last name, for we will not be strangers for long, and I want to hear your voice.”

He presses your lips to the corner of his mouth, and you can now breathe in the scent of sweat and smoke, and you can see the tiny indentation of hair on his cheek. “Kento.”

“Say it again.”

Again. “Kento. My husband.”

A sigh, akin to a moan, falls from his lips, and your limbs quiver until a hand slips from his hold and grabs onto his first. “Touch me.”

His hand slips under your dress, nails raking against the small peach fuzz on your legs, traveling to wear your bloomers outta be. You're naked under, and a blush seeps into your cheeks. Kento does not comment on it; he lays his hand on your mound, as you’re cheek to cheek. 

The world rotates for a second, and then you’re on the ground, green grass caressing your hair and skin. You gasp before Kento disappears under your skirt, and the feel of a tongue makes you arch. Kento’s tongue caresses your sensitive, swollen bud, suckling and groaning against it, until blood rushes through your ear and you can barely hear yourself breathe. “Kento.”

Your legs rest on top of his shoulder, while his tongue parts your folds, flat tongue licking you from the bottom up. His warm mouth closes around the nub again, and his tongue circles around it until he sucks, and the end of your heel digs into his clothing. Kento groans against your body, sensing vibrations across your skin, until each sound he pulls from you grows louder and louder, matching that of the squawking birds fluttering in around you. 

The pit of your stomach grows hot, and your spine shakes against the earth. You hitch your dress around your stomach, gasping until your nails dig into Kento’s blonde strands, and you rut your hips against his face. “Kento,” you whimper, feeling tears prickle at the corner of your eyes.

Kento. Kento. Kento. 

His name falls from your lips like some enchanted mantra, floating in the sky while he fucks into you, tongue slipping inside your sopping hole. You flutter against him, riding his face, while small tears begin to soak your cheek. 

Utterly indecent and filthy. 

“Inside.” The words leave your lips, and yet they feel foreign. Everything inside you is begging for Kento to lay his claim, unabashed by societal conventions and the fact that your wedding is two days away. Your body shakes in the warmth of the grass. A heap of pleasure runs through your veins, and something inside of you runs through your body until the base of your spine shakes. 

Your peak makes you pull on Kento’s hair, blood traveling around your ears, while you shake and shiver, sobbing into the air. Hot tears fill your cheeks as Kento appears from your dress, mouth soaked, with dusted pink cheeks. 

“I can not defile you before we are wed, but I want...” he breathes, capturing your lips into a blistering kiss. He takes you apart, slowly and clumsily, while a finger runs from your thigh to your mound. When he parts, he lies on your side, nose bumping your soaked cheek, “...you to feel me. Feel my fingers…feel how I ache for you.”

From the side, you can feel him on your dress, like a rock pressing against your back. The finger on your mound dips between your folds, caressing the pearl, and pulling a meek whimper from your lips. Your thighs clamp up, a rush of oversensitivity setting in. 

“Feel…” you breathe out, quickly holding onto his forearm until your nails dig into the material of his clothing. 

“It’ll feel good, wife,” he whispers, rutting into the side of your dress, while he licks your hot tears, “I promise.”

A sense of fullness envelopes your stomach as he buries his finger inside you, thumb quickly caressing the swollen pearl. He thrusts it inside, humming as you gasp and bite down on your lip. Your hips buck into his fingers, as another one slides inside, and he curls them, touching an odd spot that makes you sob into his neck. 

The pace of his fingers matches his own erratic thrust against your dress. Filthy groans and praises fall from his lips, “So good for me,” he groans, hips jerking and twitching, while you tremble in on the grass. “I’ll make such good use of your sopping cunt on our…wedding day.”

A choked moan leaves your lips, and you bite down on your bottom lip as a rush of heat passes through your belly, and everything feels nice and warm. Your heels dig into the dirt, while you clench around Kento’s fingers. Next to you, a shudder passes through his body, and a loud, strangled groan echoes in your ear as Kento rides out his own peak. 

It also feels like an eternity after Kento slides his fingers out of you. The soft glow of the orange sky, combined with your loud, heaving breath mingling together, felt like something out of one of those filthy romance books you’ve secretly read.

“If I may speak…I’ve never lain with anyone,” Kento begins, “There was once an occurrence in which I was taken to a brothel, per my brother, but it never led to…the action. In truth, after your father proposed the marriage, thoughts of others disappeared.”

You turn your head to him, a smile barely peeking from your cheeks, seeing a meek pink tint in his cheeks, “Are you professing your love to me Kento?”

“Yes.”

he was a creature of habit. same route to work, same brand of cologne, same reserved smile when the barista asked if he wanted his usual. nanami kento was order in the form of a man — the calm after a storm, the pause between breaths, the silence after an orchestra ends. and yet, somewhere under that meticulous rhythm, there was a heart that ached for something unpredictable. something alive. something that wasn’t made of routine or resignation.

and that something was you.

you — with your too-loud laughter and your chipped nail polish and your hair that never stayed the way you wanted it to. you, who stumbled through life like you were dancing on uneven floors and never quite cared enough to find your balance. where nanami was structure, you were chaos in perfume and silk — running late, forgetting your keys, crying over movies you’d already watched five times.

he was the man who folded his sleeves neatly. you were the girl who left lipstick stains on coffee cups and forgot to return texts for three days because you were too busy chasing some fleeting thought that led nowhere. he thought before speaking; you spoke before thinking. he moved with quiet certainty; you ran into walls just to prove you could survive the crash.

nanami read philosophy before bed. you fell asleep with your phone still glowing beside your face. he liked the smell of rain on pavement; you liked how it drenched you until you felt raw and human again.

and yet, despite every difference — every age, every habit, every deliberate calm against your wild fire — he found himself drawn to you like it was inevitable.

you were twenty-two, all youth and noise and color. reckless, with a laugh that could slice through his silence, with words that sometimes hurt but always meant something. you didn’t fit into his world, didn’t belong to the stillness he’d built for himself, but god, you made it feel alive again.

you were the chaos he pretended he didn’t want.

and he — he was the quiet you didn’t know you needed.

sometimes, a loud he craves can be too much for the silence he has lived in. you are that loud, that thunderstorm in his otherwise muted sky — the kind that smells of rain before it falls, beautiful and reckless, cleansing and destructive all the same. nanami kento was a man who adored quiet, the kind of silence that hummed softly against his ribs, the stillness that lived in dimly lit rooms where pages turned and clocks ticked. but you — you were sound. the pulse of music spilling from the bathroom when you got ready, laughter echoing through the kitchen at odd hours, the sound of your heels clicking too fast on marble floors, like life itself refused to slow down around you.

and yet, when work became too much, when the city had screamed its noise into his skull and the world had demanded too much of his bones, he found himself craving the stillness he once lived for — silence, comfort, warmth, maybe a cup of tea and his old copy of dostoevsky, alone. not because he wanted to be without you, but because sometimes love, no matter how tender, still burns too bright.

don’t get him wrong — the man loved you, too much. he loved the way your laughter filled a room like sunlight, careless and pure. he loved the way you threw your head back when you found something truly funny, how the sound would break into a small snort when it became too much, and how you’d clutch your stomach, gasping for air with cheeks flushed pink and eyes bright with life. he loved the way you kissed him — urgently, messily, like you were terrified he’d disappear if you didn’t anchor him to you. he loved your affection, the way you were never afraid to express it, to say “i love you” out loud instead of letting it rot in your chest.

but love, sometimes, is heavy.

he sat in his car long after he’d parked, the engine long dead, the hum of the city dulled behind glass. his hands tightened around the steering wheel, the leather creaking softly under the tension in his palms. he inhaled deeply — slow, controlled, the way a soldier might before battle — and for a moment, it felt like that. like war, but the kind that happened quietly, behind closed doors, inside the tender chambers of the heart.

he thought of your face, the way it always lit up when you saw him, how your smile stretched too wide, like the world had been waiting for him to arrive. he thought of your voice, how it filled the silence he once worshipped. and even then, even while imagining that familiar warmth, his chest felt heavy. like something inside him was quietly collapsing, folding into itself, worn down by the weight of loving so deeply, so loudly.

the quiet was shattered by the buzz of his phone.

he blinked once, twice, then reached into the pocket of his slacks, pulling the device out with a kind of reluctant grace. the bright screen illuminated the tired lines under his eyes, and there it was — your name, glowing up at him, followed by a small heart. the one you’d insisted he add beside your name “just because.” because you said it looked lonely without it.

you’d texted him again, asking if he was on his way.

his thumb hovered over the screen. for a moment — just a moment — he hesitated. you’d texted him more than usual today; he knew it, could feel the cling of your attention even through words on a screen. you’d asked how his day was, if he’d eaten, when he’d be home, if he missed you. all questions wrapped in affection, but somehow, they pressed on the ache in his chest.

he loved you. and yet, tonight, the thought of answering — of pulling himself together to wear that gentle, patient tone he always reserved for you — felt like walking barefoot on glass.

his breath trembled faintly as he exhaled. the air in the car felt dense, almost thick enough to drink. his fingers curled tighter around the phone before he finally locked it, shoving it back into his pocket like hiding a confession he wasn’t ready to make.

for the first time in a long while, he didn’t text back.

he sat there for another minute, staring at nothing, at the faint reflection of his own face in the window — the tired eyes, the loosened tie, the faint scruff along his jaw. he looked like a man on the edge of something — not quite breaking, but bending.

eventually, he grabbed his bag from the passenger seat, turned the key, and stepped out. the sound of the door shutting echoed softly across the empty parking ground, a hollow sound swallowed by the concrete walls.

his shoes clicked faintly against the floor as he walked toward the elevator, each step methodical, measured. the fluorescent lights above flickered — too bright, too sterile — washing the world in a kind of cold stillness.

inside the elevator, he pressed the button for his floor. the doors slid shut, sealing him into that narrow, mirrored box that smelled faintly of steel and dust and someone’s cologne from earlier. he stared at his reflection. he looked composed — as always — but his eyes told another story.

a quiet exhaustion. a faint sadness.

he tilted his head slightly, adjusted his tie, and closed his eyes. the hum of the elevator filled the silence, mechanical, steady. he thought of you again — your hair tangled from sleep, your laugh echoing in his kitchen, the way you looked at him like he hung the stars himself. he thought of the way your hands always found him, how your voice always asked if he was okay, even when you already knew the answer.

and god, he loved you for that.

but still — he longed for quiet. not forever. not always. just tonight. just enough to find himself again before your warmth drowned him in its beauty.

the elevator dinged softly. the doors slid open. nanami stepped out, shoulders squared, his heart heavy with a love too loud for the silence he once called home.

he stood in front of his door longer than necessary, hand resting on the doorknob, the metal cool against his palm. the faint hum of music seeped through the door — muffled, alive, careless. that alone told him everything: you were here.

lately, you’d been here more than not. lately, your perfume lingered on his pillows longer than the night allowed, your toothbrush stood beside his like an unspoken promise, your sweaters folded neatly in the corner of his drawers where order used to reign alone. lately, your laughter filled the corners of his quiet life, loud enough to echo long after you were gone. and lately, you’d been clinging to him — more texts, more calls, more where are you? when are you coming home? do you miss me?

he found it endearing, at first. the way you sought him out like he was air and you were lungs that didn’t know how to stop breathing. he loved you, god, he did. but lately, your love felt like silk tied too tightly around his throat — beautiful, soft, deadly. you wrapped around him the way ivy climbs stone, inch by inch, without malice, without intent, until the stone forgot what it was to stand alone.

and nanami, for all his quiet endurance, was starting to forget how to breathe.

he closed his eyes, took a slow breath — once, twice — before turning the key, the click loud in the hallway. the door opened, and the first thing he saw were your shoes. they were scattered across the floor in front of the door, careless, defiant. the sight of them — reckless, unclean — tugged at the thin thread of patience holding his exhaustion together.

he sighed. quietly, resignedly. setting his own shoes aside, neatly aligned, he bent down to place yours properly beside his, as if proximity could turn chaos into order.

when he straightened up, the apartment greeted him with noise. music, loud and beating against the walls, layered with the faint clang of metal and your voice — singing, half-off tune, laced with laughter and profanity.

he followed the sound, slow steps through the dim hallway, the faint smell of something burnt hanging in the air.

you were in the kitchen. of course you were. the sight hit him like déjà vu: you in one of his shirts, sleeves rolled up, hair pulled into a messy knot that framed the back of your neck; a pan on the stove, smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling. it was chaos dressed in softness — you, trying to cook again, stubbornly, beautifully, doomed.

it was almost funny, almost. except today, he didn’t have the energy to laugh.

today, the circle felt cruel — you breaking, him fixing, over and over again. the orbit of your love sometimes spun too fast for him to keep up, and he was tired of patching the holes life made in both of you.

his voice came out softer than he expected, almost tender in its exhaustion.

“what are you doing?”

you jumped, startled, the pan slipping from your hand. it clattered, half-caught, half-fallen — until it landed wrong, metal edge scraping your forearm before tumbling to the floor.

the sound of your scream sliced through him like a blade.

he was moving before he could think — quick steps, heart hammering in his chest. he reached you in seconds, his hands catching yours, pulling you toward the sink.

“hold still,” he said, voice low, firm, steady despite the panic clawing up his throat.

you didn’t. you squirmed, wincing as the water hit the red mark blooming across your skin. he adjusted the tap, gentled it to a cool stream, and held your arm under it, thumb trembling faintly where it rested against your wrist.

the water hissed softly as it met the burn, and for a moment, that was the only sound — the rush of running water, the faint hum of the still-playing music behind you, your shallow breaths.

he looked down at your arm, watched the way your skin flushed angry pink. you bit your lip, trying not to cry, and he felt something ache deep inside his chest — that familiar pull between wanting to scold you and wanting to hold you until you stopped trembling.

he did neither.

instead, he said your name quietly, the syllables heavy with unspoken things.

you looked up, and in your eyes, he saw confusion, guilt, love — all mixed together, all too much. you opened your mouth to say something, maybe sorry, maybe i was trying to make you dinner, but he shook his head before you could speak.

“don’t,” he murmured. “just… stay still.”

his voice broke on the edges, softer than he intended, and the sound of it made your throat tighten.

he could feel it — your need to explain, to fill the silence, to make this moment something less heavy than it was. but for once, you didn’t. maybe you felt it too — the weight in the air, the exhaustion in his touch, the quiet kind of sorrow that no longer needed words.

he reached for the towel hanging by the sink, gently patting your arm dry before wrapping it, careful not to hurt you.

“you should’ve waited for me,” he said, almost under his breath.

“i wanted to surprise you,” you whispered, voice trembling, small.

he nodded once, jaw tightening. “you did.”

you flinched — not because of the burn, but because of the way he said it. softly. tiredly. as if love itself had become something too heavy to hold without hurting.

he exhaled, the sound shaky, and for a second, he looked at you — really looked. your messy hair, your tear-streaked cheeks, the small trembling of your hands in his. you were everything he loved and everything that frightened him in one body, and he didn’t know how to hold that contradiction anymore.

his thumb brushed your knuckles, gentle.

“you’re okay now,” he said, and it sounded more like a plea than reassurance.

and you, still shaking, nodded, whispering his name like it was both apology and prayer.

he didn’t answer. he just stood there — a man who loved too quietly, holding the girl who loved too loud, both of you caught in the fragile space between tenderness and exhaustion, where love no longer felt like a miracle but like a wound you kept reopening just to prove it still bled.

you call his name — soft, fragile, the kind of sound that comes from somewhere deep in the chest, from the place that aches the most. kento. it comes out half-broken, half-plea, and he lifts his eyes at you as if waking from a dream he’d been trying not to remember. his face is calm, as always, unbearably calm, but there’s something behind that quiet, a faint tremor in the way his eyes flicker down to your hand still trembling under the towel.

“it’s okay,” he says, the words leaving his lips like smoke — faint, warm, fleeting. it’s okay, as though the phrase could heal burns or patch the invisible fissures forming between two people who still love each other but are beginning to realize that love sometimes isn’t enough.

he reaches for your arm again, adjusts the towel, presses lightly to check if the water has done its job. his touch is gentle — always gentle — the way one handles something that’s already been broken once before. his fingers are cool, slow, deliberate, as if trying to memorize the shape of you through caution alone.

you look at him — really look — and he seems distant in a way that hurts. not detached, not cold, but far, like the moonlight that touches you through glass: visible, close enough to see, too far to hold. his face is weary, but kind, soft in its restraint, his lips parted slightly as if caught between saying i’m here and please don’t ask me to be right now.

you reach for his sleeve, your smaller hand curling around his arm. he doesn’t move at first. the fabric of his shirt feels warm from his skin beneath, and you grip it tighter, desperate to bridge whatever invisible distance has begun to stretch between you.

“i’m sorry,” you whisper, and the words tremble the way candle flames do before dying out.

he looks down at you, eyes tired but tender, and for a second — just one — you think he might say something cruel, something final, something that would end this tension before it could devour you both. but nanami kento has never been cruel. he’s too kind, too deliberate in his love, too careful even in disappointment.

his free hand reaches up, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face. his fingers trail against your temple, the touch light enough to break you.

“don’t be,” he murmurs, voice low, like a confession to the quiet room rather than to you. “it’s not your fault.”

but you can see it — the hesitation, the exhaustion buried deep in the folds of his gentleness. it’s in the way his shoulders curve ever so slightly, in the way he can’t quite hold your gaze for too long. he’s still here, still holding you, still caring for you in the way a man does when leaving isn’t an option he can bear to take.

and that’s what hurts — that he loves you so deeply, so softly, even when his heart is gasping for air.

you whisper his name again, and he hums in response, the faintest sound, his thumb brushing across your knuckles now. you can feel the tremor under his skin.

“kento, look at me,” you breathe, and he does.

his eyes, warm honey under dim kitchen light, are unreadable — a language you used to know, one that’s begun to change meaning.

you want to tell him you know. that you see the way he sits a little longer in his car before coming upstairs, the way he sighs when you talk too loud, the way his smile doesn’t reach his eyes anymore. you want to tell him you’ve been trying — god, you’ve been trying so hard — to be softer, quieter, easier to love.

but instead, all you manage is another broken i’m sorry.

and he — he just smiles.

a small one. tired, beautiful, devastating.

“you don’t have to apologize for being yourself,” he says softly. “you never have to.”

it sounds like forgiveness. it sounds like love. and yet, somewhere between his tone and the trembling hush that follows, it feels like goodbye.

you lower your head, eyes stinging, and he exhales, the sound heavy, strained. he leans forward, pressing a kiss — brief, feather-light — to your forehead. his lips linger there, unmoving, as if to apologize for something neither of you can name.

when he pulls back, you catch a faint tremor in his jaw, the kind that comes when a man is trying too hard not to fall apart.

“you should rest,” he murmurs, reaching behind you to turn off the stove, to silence the chaos you’d made in your desperate attempt to love him in the only way you knew how — loudly, clumsily, wholeheartedly.

and as the music fades into the background, and the lights hum softly against the silence, you realize that his love has always been quiet — the kind that fixes, not fights, that endures, not demands.

he cups your face again before he steps away. “let me make you some tea,” he says, because it’s easier than saying i’m scared of what we’re becoming.

and you let him. you let him move through the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, movements precise, every gesture a poem about restraint. you watch his back, the way his shoulders move with the weight of unspoken love, and your heart aches with something that feels like both grief and worship.

you don’t say another word.

and neither does he.

only the sound of boiling water, the faint clink of porcelain cups, and the quiet truth that sometimes, the gentlest love in the world can still break you — not because it’s cruel, but because it’s tired.

you stand there, hovering — a ghost of yourself, arms folded tight around your own ribs as if you could hold yourself together by sheer force of will. he’s moving through the kitchen with quiet, deliberate gestures, the way he always does, except now each movement feels like a wall being built — between you, around him, out of reach. he kneels slightly, grabbing a napkin, cleaning the spill you made, methodical, every fold and swipe like penance. the light pools over him in that soft, golden hue that only makes the distance worse; he looks beautiful, unbearably so, and you don’t know what to do with it — with him, with this, with the ache expanding inside your chest like something feral.

you whisper, let me help, because the silence is too loud.

he doesn’t look up. “it’s okay,” he says, soft but clipped.

you try again, stepping closer, the floor creaking under your foot, your voice smaller now — please, let me help, kento.

and again, “it’s okay.” firmer this time.

but you are stubborn, and you have always been — maybe because you think if you keep insisting, if you keep standing close enough, maybe he’ll remember you’re here, remember the home you tried to build out of your chaos and his calm, remember how you loved him, loudly, recklessly, enough for the both of you.

“i said it’s okay,” he says again, sharper, the edge of it cutting through the air like glass splitting in slow motion.

you freeze, but something inside you refuses to stop. your hands tremble as you reach for the towel in his hand, and you laugh — nervous, too bright — trying to diffuse the tension crawling up both your spines. you tell him you just want to help, but the words come out more desperate than you intend.

and then it happens — a small, stupid accident, almost cruel in its ordinariness. he shifts too fast, the sharp corner of his elbow colliding with the side of your face. a flash of pain bursts in your eye, and you stumble back, hand flying to your face.

the sound that leaves you is half-gasp, half-laugh, awkward, trembling. “ow— it’s fine, it’s fine,” you try to say, blinking away tears, trying to smile through the sting.

but he’s already turned, wide-eyed, breath caught — and then something breaks in him, snaps, uncoils.

“just— just sit the fuck down,” he says, voice raised, cracking, trembling at the edges. “just— stop. please. just— you’ve done enough mess today, i’ll— i’ll clean this up, i’ll make you tea, i’ll make dinner, just— sit the fuck down.”

the words hit like thunder.

you go still. the air goes still.

it isn’t the words themselves — it’s him. because nanami kento doesn’t curse. nanami kento doesn’t raise his voice. and yet here he is, standing in the wreckage of the kitchen, breathing hard, veins pulsing faintly in his neck, his face shadowed by something that looks too much like defeat.

he exhales sharply, long and heavy, dragging a hand through his hair, eyes squeezed shut like he’s trying to bury whatever has just clawed out of him. for a moment, he looks almost relieved, like saying it — being loud, being human, being fallible — was a kind of release he didn’t know he was craving. but the relief is sour. it leaves the air between you thick with shame.

you’re stunned, breath lodged somewhere between ribs and throat. your hand still rests against your left eye, and you can feel the dull throb there, pulsing in rhythm with the silence that follows his words.

his back is turned now, shoulders heaving once, twice. “i’m tired,” he says finally, quieter, the words falling heavy as stones. “i just want to make dinner. i’ll— i’ll make you tea. just sit down. please.”

he adds that last word like it’s a thread holding everything together.

you nod, even though he isn’t looking. your throat feels like it’s filled with sand. you swallow, but it doesn’t go away.

“okay,” you stammer, the word trembling, barely sound.

and you sit. you sit because you don’t know what else to do, because the air feels dangerous to move through, because you don’t know where to put your hands anymore. you find the stool by the counter and lower yourself slowly, the sound of the chair scraping the floor unbearably loud.

he moves around you again — measured, restrained, as though every motion is a test of control. the kettle hums. the soft sound of running water, of drawers opening, of utensils clinking. all normal, all routine, except the world has cracked somewhere you can’t reach.

you watch him — the man you love, the man who never yelled, the man who once told you he believed in quiet love because it was the only kind that lasts — and you think how strange it is that even now, you still find him beautiful. even now, as tears sting your eyes and your body shakes, he is still beauty to you.

you think of how his love used to feel like warmth on cold skin. now it feels like standing too close to fire — bright, consuming, and suddenly, you can’t tell if it’s keeping you alive or burning you alive.

you rest your chin on your knees, watching his back as he reaches for the tea cups, the slow, deliberate way he moves — the rhythm of a man forcing the world back into order.

you whisper his name once, just to see if he’ll turn.

he doesn’t.

and so you sit there in that golden kitchen, wrapped in silence and the smell of burnt oil, and you realize how terrifying it is to watch love unravel not in storms or screams — but in the quiet exhaustion of a man too tired to be gentle, and a girl too young to know how to stop trying.

dinner comes like a ghost slipping through the doorway — quiet, shapeless, heavy. the air hums with the faint echo of the kettle that’s already gone still, the clink of plates and cutlery arranged too neatly on the table. you sit, your knees pressed together under the soft linen, hands resting on your lap as if afraid that any movement might disturb the fragile peace that’s settled over the apartment.

he places your plate in front of you, as he always does. a portion of rice, vegetables, something simple, something he knows you’ll eat even if you’re too sad to swallow much of it. beside it, your glass of water, your chopsticks aligned perfectly parallel. it’s all the same choreography you’ve memorized over time — except for the one thing that isn’t.

he doesn’t lean down to kiss your forehead.

he doesn’t murmur that quiet, teasing question — “do you love it already?” — before you even take the first bite, his lips brushing your skin, his laugh trailing behind. that used to be your favorite part of the night, that small ritual of his affection, the way he couldn’t help but linger in your orbit as if loving you was his second nature.

but tonight, he doesn’t even glance your way.

his expression remains still, almost serene, but hollow around the edges. he just places your meal gently on the table and walks to his chair — across from you. not beside you, not where his knee could brush against yours or where his hand could find your thigh under the table like it always used to when words failed him.

no, tonight, he sits across from you.

and that small distance — barely an arm’s reach — feels like an entire ocean between two people who once shared the same breath.

you look up at him, searching for something in his face, some flicker of warmth, some sign that the man who adored you still lives there behind that tired stillness. but he doesn’t look back. his gaze remains on his plate, his hand steady as he lifts his chopsticks.

you bite your lip, the tremor of it betraying you. your vision blurs faintly, though no tears fall yet. the silence stretches thin, taut, ready to break, and it feels unbearable — that quiet that used to mean comfort now tastes like exile.

you stare down at your food, the smell of it turning faintly metallic in your throat. and then it escapes you — a soft, broken sound, a small gasp, the kind that slips out when the heart forgets how to contain itself.

your eyes lift again, searching for him like a compass reaching for north, but he’s still there, motionless, chewing, breathing, existing. he might as well be miles away.

you say his name, softly at first. it trembles as it leaves your lips. “kento…”

he pauses, briefly, chopsticks midair, and for a fleeting moment, you think maybe he’ll look at you. maybe he’ll smile the way he used to, maybe he’ll reach across the table and tuck that loose strand of hair behind your ear like nothing ever cracked.

but he doesn’t.

he exhales through his nose, the faintest sound, before placing the chopsticks down carefully beside his plate. he sits back in his chair, hands folded on the table. his posture is perfect — always perfect — even now, when everything else isn’t.

“yes?” he answers, voice soft, polite, distant — like a stranger asking if you need directions.

you hesitate, your throat thick, words tangled. “why didn’t you… sit next to me?” you manage, almost childlike in the way you ask it, like the question itself is too fragile to survive the air.

there’s a small silence after that — the kind that doesn’t fill the room but drains it. he blinks once, slow, and lowers his gaze to the table again.

“i thought this would be more comfortable,” he says quietly, his tone measured, stripped of emotion. “you need space to eat.”

the answer makes no sense, and yet it explains everything.

because it isn’t about the space between the plates. it’s about the space between the hearts — the kind that starts small, invisible, then grows until you can feel the draft of it every time he breathes.

you don’t reply. you just nod, though your throat burns. your eyes fall to your food again, to the steam curling up like ghostly ribbons, fading before they reach you. you pick up your chopsticks, your fingers trembling slightly, and try to eat. the food tastes fine — it always does when he cooks — but it feels wrong in your mouth, like eating memories.

he eats too, slow and quiet. his movements are precise, his manners impeccable, the kind of restraint that feels like punishment.

at one point, his gaze flickers up, and for a second, your eyes meet. but it’s only for a second — long enough for your chest to ache, short enough to pretend it didn’t happen. he looks away, back to his food.

you stare at him still, memorizing the small details — the faint line between his brows, the way the light catches his wristwatch, the slight downturn of his mouth that wasn’t there before. you wonder when his presence started to feel like absence.

you used to think love was loud — the laughter, the touches, the inside jokes. now, you’re learning that love can also die quietly, not in fights or slammed doors, but in dinners shared across a table too wide, in a man too kind to stop caring and too tired to keep trying.

when you finally speak again, your voice is barely audible. “you’re so far away,” you whisper.

he closes his eyes for a brief moment, the muscles in his jaw tightening, then relaxing. he sets his chopsticks down again, exhales, and when he speaks, his voice is soft — unbearably soft.

“i’m still here,” he says.

and somehow, those three words hurt worse than silence.

because he’s right — he is here. but not in the way he used to be. not in the way that warms, not in the way that saves. he’s here like the echo of something that once was — a gentle ghost of love, polite and fading, sitting across from you at the dinner table, hands steady, heart quietly slipping away.

“i’m still here.” the words escape his lips like smoke in winter air—visible, shapeless, cold before it even settles. they hang between you both for a moment, trembling in their own fragility, a lie so soft it sounds like a lullaby. even he can hear it: the hollow ring of it, the way the syllables fall wrong in his mouth. the tone doesn’t sound like him, doesn’t sound like love, doesn’t sound like the man who once whispered sonnets into your skin as though you were scripture.

and he thinks, what have i become?

who is this man sitting across from you, speaking with the voice of a stranger, wearing the hands of someone who still cooks for you, still folds your towel after every shower, still leaves the lamp on your side of the bed just in case you come home late? who is this ghost pretending to be him—so careful, so polite, so unbearably distant? he used to think he’d die before he’d raise his voice at you, before he’d let the world bruise you. he used to think that if death ever took you, he’d summon you from the grave itself, break his body against the gates of the afterlife if it meant hearing you laugh again.

but now he sits here, and you are alive, right in front of him—and somehow, he feels like he’s already lost you.

he loves you. he is in love.

or—god help him—is it he was?

or worse, he is supposed to be?

he stares at the pattern of wood on the table, tracing invisible lines with his eyes, and it feels as though his heart has turned to glass—still, transparent, fragile enough to shatter under its own reflection. he risks a glance, only a brief one, because to look too long would be unbearable. but in that split second, he sees everything.

your lips pressed together, trembling as though holding back an earthquake. your fingers tracing the edge of your plate, your eyes—god, your eyes, bright and wounded, reflecting him like a mirror he’s too ashamed to face. he sees himself there, painted in your sadness, and it’s worse than anything the world could have done to him.

your silence breaks first. not the air, not the world—just the thin thread holding him upright.

“did i do something wrong?” you ask, voice trembling, small, unbearably sincere.

he looks up, startled by the sound of it. your question pierces him, slow and clean, and for the first time, he feels the sting of his own cruelty like a physical wound.

he shakes his head immediately, the motion too quick, too desperate. his lips twitch upward into something that almost resembles a smile, though it falters before it can fully form. “no, my love,” he murmurs.

my love.

two words that used to sound like worship, now muttered like confession.

and yet—oh, you.

you, who refuse to bow before sadness, who’ve always met pain with defiance, who never learned how to bleed quietly. you, the girl made of fireworks and thunder, the one whose heart burns too bright for the quiet world he’s built. he used to love that about you—the chaos in your laughter, the way your emotions bloomed wild, unfiltered, unstoppable. you never hid your heart; you wore it like a medal, messy and sincere, and he adored you for it.

but tonight, your fire flares in confusion.

your brows knit together, your mouth curling—not from anger, but from disbelief, from the ache of being unseen. you let out a short, bitter laugh that cuts the air like a blade. “no, kento. i must’ve done something.” your tone is sharp, cracked porcelain. “you don’t just— act like this for no reason. i know you.”

he blinks, taken aback, but you don’t stop. you can’t. the silence between you feels like drowning, and you’ve never been the kind to die quietly.

you lean forward, elbows pressing into the table, voice trembling but fierce. “you always say i’m dramatic, but i’m not blind. i can feel it. you’re different. you won’t even look at me.”

he opens his mouth—perhaps to deny it, perhaps to soothe—but nothing comes out.

because you’re right.

and in your eyes, he sees the ghost of himself reflected back: the man who once touched you like you were a miracle, the man who kissed you with patience, the man who used to smile when you burned the rice, who used to press his lips to your temple and say, “i love that you try.”

what happened to him? what poisoned that quiet love until it turned into this—this fatigue, this distance, this unbearable politeness between two people who once couldn’t stop touching each other?

his throat tightens. his heart stammers in his chest like it’s trying to run from him.

you sigh, long and shaky, and whisper, “you could just tell me, you know. whatever it is. i can take it.”

and that’s what undoes him—the way you say it, soft and brave, even as your eyes glisten.

he looks at you then. really looks. the flicker of candlelight against your cheek, the small tremor in your fingers, the stubborn set of your jaw. you’re beautiful, unbearably so, and he thinks—how dare I be the one to hurt this?

his mouth opens, but the words die before they reach you.

because what would he even say? i’m tired? i love you, but it’s heavy? i want silence, but not from you? what kind of man admits that the very thing he prayed for—the warmth, the love, the life in you—is now too much for him to hold?

he swallows hard, looks down again, and instead of truth, he gives you something gentler, something cowardly.

“you didn’t do anything wrong,” he repeats, quieter, more brittle. “sometimes people just… get tired.”

and the way he says it, you know he’s not talking about work.

the light flickers. your breath catches. and in the silence that follows, you both sit there—two souls still in love, but out of rhythm, staring at the same meal, the same table, the same shared past, and realizing, with quiet devastation, that love can decay softly, beautifully, like the end of a song you didn’t realize had stopped playing.

and now love doesn’t feel right. not the kind that poets promised, not the kind that healed — no, this one feels like your ribs have been pried open, like something holy inside you has been exposed and nanami himself is the bulldozer wrecking the home he once built within you. it’s fucking painful. unbearably, quietly, endlessly painful.

you look at him — or try to — and it’s like staring at a ruin that used to be sacred. the walls are still there, the windows still hold the light, but the warmth that used to live in it has gone missing. and isn’t that worse? to see what you once called love still standing, but hollow, stripped of its soul?

your throat feels dry, the back of your tongue tastes like rust. you murmur, almost to yourself, “i’m not hungry.” your voice is small, thin, trembling like a single thread stretched to its limit.

you push your chair back, the sound scraping against the floor — loud, jarring, too alive in a room that’s gone dead. you force yourself to stand, though your knees feel unsteady. you crave distance, absurdly so. the one thing you’ve feared most, the one thing that always terrified you — being away from him — now feels like the only way to breathe again.

he looks up at you, confusion flickering faintly in his tired eyes. “you didn’t even touch your food,” he says, the words leaving his mouth gently, like he’s afraid to provoke another wound.

but you can’t bear it.

“i can’t even stand to look at you right now,” you snap, voice breaking halfway through. “and i don’t even know why—”

you stop yourself, swallowing the words that taste like blood. “it used to hurt not to look at you,” you whisper, “but now it hurts to. so, yeah. i’m not hungry.”

his hand twitches faintly where it rests on the table. you can see him searching for words, the kind man he is — always trying to find something to fix, to soothe, to hold together. but you don’t wait. you don’t want him to fix it. you don’t even think he could.

you turn before he can speak, the floor cold beneath your bare feet as you walk toward his bedroom. every step feels wrong — trespass, intrusion, memory. you know this room like your own heartbeat: the smell of his cologne on the pillowcase, the quiet hum of the air conditioner, the faint dent on the side of the bed where he reads late into the night. it used to feel like safety. now it feels like walking into a museum of something that used to love you.

you sit on the edge of the bed for a moment, staring at the soft folds of the blanket, and the strangest thought crosses your mind — you shouldn’t be here. this space that used to be half yours now feels foreign, borrowed, undeserved. you can feel it in the air: the heavy silence, the ghost of his patience lingering like the scent of tea after it’s gone cold.

you lie back, staring at the ceiling. it looks endless, empty, almost accusing. the moonlight from the half-drawn curtains spills faintly across the room, pale and cold, like a wound that refuses to close. you glare at it because there’s no one else to blame.

and beneath it all, the ache sits — low and heavy, gnawing. it’s not just heartbreak; it’s the loss of certainty. it’s the unbearable suspicion that love, no matter how true, can rot.

you don’t cry. not because you’re strong, but because the pain has gone beyond tears.

time passes — an hour, maybe two, maybe four. it doesn’t matter. time has lost its meaning when all you can do is count the seconds between silences.

he doesn’t come.

and you don’t go.

you imagine him still at the table, hands clasped, eyes on the half-eaten meal. you imagine him standing, pacing, maybe thinking of what to say, maybe thinking of saying nothing at all. the thought makes your stomach twist, but so does the idea of leaving. because if you walk out that door, if you step into the quiet night outside, there’s a possibility you’ll never see him again. and that possibility — that haunting, heavy what if — claws at your chest until you stay.

so you stay. in his room, on his bed, surrounded by everything that reminds you of him — the faint scent of cedar and ink, the pressed lines of his folded shirts, the steady hum of a life that’s begun to exclude you.

meanwhile, in the living room, nanami kento sits in the dark.

he hasn’t turned the lights on. he doesn’t need to. the city outside paints him in blue-gray — a ghost of a man sitting before his own reflection in the glass window. the skyline burns faintly in the distance, the sound of traffic like a faraway pulse.

he sits there with his chin resting against his fist, the bone pressing against his jaw until it aches. he’s craving the pain now — anything to make him feel less numb.

and it hits him, slowly, terribly: he’s become the thing he always swore he’d never be.

the man who made you cry.

the man who turned love into something you’d have to survive.

he looks at the faint shadow of your figure reflected in the glass — the outline of your absence glowing faintly in the light of the city — and he thinks, what have I done?

he presses his palm to his face, the sound of his own breathing too loud in the dark. he thinks of the way you looked at him before you left the table — that mixture of anger and sorrow, of wanting to stay and wanting to disappear. he thinks of how small your voice sounded when you said you couldn’t look at him.

and something inside him cracks.

he realizes love isn’t a quiet room anymore. it’s a battlefield littered with all the things you both tried to say and couldn’t.

he’s tired — god, he’s so tired — but not of you. never of you. just of this distance he built with his own hands, brick by brick, out of silence and restraint.

the moonlight carves the sharp edge of his jaw, his tired eyes glinting faintly, and he feels it then — that strange, unbearable tenderness that comes after cruelty. that desire to take every harsh word back, to kneel, to beg, to gather you in his arms and say it’s not you, it’s just the weight of the world, it’s me trying and failing to carry it.

but he doesn’t move. he just sits there, in the quiet, a man who’s built his whole life on composure, now cracking beneath it.

the city outside hums, the sky vast and indifferent.

and somewhere behind the wall, in his own bed, the woman he loves lies awake, staring at the same moonlight that touches his face — both of you breathing the same air, both of you suffocating under the same silence.

love was supposed to be salvation.

tonight, it feels like penance.

his head turns at the faint sound of your footsteps — that soft, tender rhythm he could recognize in a dream. and there you are, standing beneath the same blue shadow of the moon, your figure painted by its pale melancholy, your face bathed in silver light.

and god, you look eternal. you look like sorrow dressed in beauty, like the last echo of something divine that the world forgot to worship. your hair catches the light like a prayer unraveling, your eyes heavy with something unspoken — two wounded stars still burning though the sky has given up on night. your lips tremble with gentleness and ruin alike, and to him, you are not a woman anymore but a memory made flesh — the memory of joy he fears he will never touch again.

she is beautiful, he thinks — you are beautiful — but in the way all vanishing things are. beauty that hurts to look at. beauty that already belongs to the past.

you move toward him slowly, the floor creaking under the weight of what remains unsaid, and he cannot bring himself to breathe. his heart, that patient servant, stumbles; he feels it — that deep, muted ache of a man who knows he’s seeing something for the last time.

you stop before him, and then, quietly, you lower yourself, sitting sideways across his lap. the movement is small, fragile, sacred, like the last petal falling from a dying flower.

your forehead finds his, your breath mingles with his own — that familiar rhythm that once kept him alive. your hands rise to his nape, fingers trembling as they weave into his hair, brushing the back of his neck. and his arms, instinctively, find their way around you — the same embrace he’s given you a thousand times, only now it feels like mourning.

the silence between you stretches thin, sacred, almost holy in its fragility. your thumb strokes his cheek, tracing the faint line of fatigue that the moonlight makes visible. he closes his eyes — not from peace, but from the unbearable tenderness of being this close to you again.

you try to laugh — or maybe you try not to collapse entirely. either way, it’s difficult, like breathing underwater. the sound catches in your throat, soft, raw, and you whisper, voice trembling against his skin, “why does it feel like tonight’s the last time we’ll be together?”

the words pierce the air like a needle through silk — delicate, fatal.

he flinches, almost imperceptibly, and his arms tighten around you, his breath stuttering against your hair.

you try again to laugh, to dismiss your own prophecy, but the tears come too quickly. they blur the world, they smear the outlines of his face until he’s just light and shadow and sorrow. you blink through the blur, desperate to see him — to remember him.

his face — the face that was once home. you study it through tears, memorizing the small, tender details you used to take for granted: the faint crease beside his nose when he half-smiles, the tiny mole just below his lip that always distracted you mid-conversation, the gentle slope of his jaw that you loved to trace with your fingers when the night was kind.

you used to want to kiss him there — on that small, absurdly beautiful imperfection near his mouth. now the thought of it hurts, because it feels like kissing a ghost.

his hands, large and warm, hold you like you are something fragile and irreplaceable. but they are heavy now, trembling faintly as if carrying a weight that love alone cannot lift.

you whisper his name — once, twice — and the sound makes his chest tremble.

he presses his forehead to yours, his breath shaky, his eyes closed. and then, softly, almost inaudibly, the words slip out, so quiet they nearly dissolve before reaching your ears.

“i’m sorry.”

just that.

not an explanation. not a plea. just a quiet, hopeless apology — the kind that knows it has arrived too late.

his voice cracks under the gentleness of it, and you can feel it — that breaking point hiding under his restraint, that love still alive but dying under the weight of its own tenderness.

and in that moment, with your tears wetting his skin and his heartbeat trembling beneath your palms, you both understand something neither of you dares to say aloud —

that love does not always die in hatred or betrayal. sometimes, it dies in gentleness.

in apologies whispered against the skin of someone you still adore. in the quiet acceptance that two souls can love each other completely and still not find their way back home.

and so you stay like that — your forehead against his, your fingers in his hair, his arms a sanctuary that no longer feels like heaven but still feels like safety.

and the moon watches, silent and cruel, as two lovers who never stopped loving each other sit under its indifferent light, holding on just long enough to feel what it’s like to let go.

“what the fuck are you sorry for?”

your voice fractures between a sob and a gasp. it isn’t loud, not quite — it trembles, pleading, almost begging him to deny what you already feel clawing beneath the silence. you wait for him to say nothing, for him to say don’t be ridiculous, for him to smile that tired, patient smile and pull you closer, to tell you that of course he isn’t leaving, that you’re just tired, that love doesn’t end like this.

but he doesn’t.

his eyes fall shut, his breath uneven, as though the mere act of existing near you has become too heavy. the muscles in his jaw shift beneath your palms. and when he opens his mouth again, his voice sounds ancient — like it has carried too many winters, too much restraint.

“because,” he says, softly, “i think i’ve made you believe something that isn’t meant to last.”

you pull back just far enough to look at him, eyes wide, disbelieving, wet with tears that sting like salt. “don’t say that.”

“i have to.”

“no, you fucking don’t.”

he doesn’t flinch at your words. he only lowers his gaze, as if the sight of you — trembling, furious, heart laid bare — is too bright for him to bear. “you’re young,” he says quietly, almost kindly. “you still have so much to burn through. and i…” he stops, breath catching, “i don’t have it in me to keep up with fire anymore.”

you shake your head, violent, helpless. “that’s bullshit.”

“it isn’t.”

“it is. you’re supposed to love me — we promised—”

“and i do.” his voice cracks, so gentle it hurts. “but love isn’t always enough. not when the world feels too loud, when every day bleeds into the next, and i wake up wanting quiet. i want peace, and you—”

he looks at you now, eyes wet, almost desperate — “you are everything but peace.”

the words fall heavy between you, brutal in their truth, tender in their cruelty.

you blink, a soundless laugh breaking from your throat, half-mad, half-broken. “so what? you’re leaving me because i’m loud? because i laugh too hard? because i fucking feel too much?”

he closes his eyes, and his hand finds yours, trembling. “because you deserve someone who can meet you there. someone who isn’t too tired to keep dancing in the fire with you.”

you tear your hand from his, your voice rising, brittle with grief. “don’t talk to me like you’re some wise old man writing poetry about my youth. you’re not that old, kento. you’re just scared.”

he exhales, a shudder in the sound. “i am scared. but not of you. of what i become beside you. of how much i love you, and how small it makes me feel to realize i can’t give you the life you deserve.”

you stare at him, trembling. “you’re supposed to fight for it.”

his lips twist into a sad smile, the kind that looks like surrender disguised as kindness. “fighting is for the young, my love. you still have the strength for it. i’ve lost mine.”

the tears come now, unrestrained, choking. you can’t even see him clearly anymore, his face melting into shadow and light, the shape of him becoming memory even as he sits right in front of you.

“you don’t mean it,” you whisper. “you can’t mean it.”

he reaches for you then — his hand against your cheek, warm, shaking. “i do.”

you press your forehead to his again, breath mingling, the air thick with heartbreak. “you’re lying,” you murmur. “you’re just tired. you’ll sleep and you’ll wake up and it’ll be fine, it’s always fine after a fight—”

he swallows hard, the motion visible in the moonlight. “you’re right. i’m tired. but it’s not the kind of tired sleep can fix.”

you choke on a sob, your hands clutching at his shirt as if your fingers could anchor him to the world you built together. “you can’t do this to me.”

his lips find your hair, a trembling kiss. “i already have.”

and for a moment, the world goes still — utterly, painfully still.

you feel it then: the quiet unthreading of something vast and tender, the slow death of a love that was too loud for the silence he craved. you, the wildfire. he, the man who wanted only calm seas. and yet somehow, even now, you love him enough to understand.

you pull back just enough to see him — really see him — and it hurts because he’s beautiful in the way all goodbyes are. gentle, necessary, unbearable.

you whisper, “so that’s it?”

he nods once, his eyes glassy. “you were the light, my love. but i am only made for dusk.”

and the night, merciless and vast, takes the words from both your mouths, leaving only the sound of your breaths colliding — the last remnants of something that once set the world on fire.

your hands find his face like they are remembering something holy. trembling, desperate, reverent — as though they must memorize every inch of him before the world snatches him away. your palms cradle his jaw, your fingertips trace the weary outline of his lips, the curve of his cheek, the faint shadow of his temple, the ridge of his nose. you map him like a dying man tracing the borders of a country he will never return to. your fingers tremble over the skin that once meant home, that still means it, even as the roof collapses above you.

you cannot breathe. you cannot think. you bite your lower lip, hard enough to taste blood, just to stop yourself from sobbing — from collapsing entirely into the ruin of him. you feel stripped bare, hollowed out, your heart turned inside out like a wound shown to god. the sorrow between you is vast and rotting, and it lives inside your ribs like something feral. you can almost smell it — the decay of something that used to bloom, the faint echo of joy turning into dust.

you whisper through it. your voice is cracked, uneven, trembling like a prayer recited by someone who has already lost faith. you tell him you can be quiet. you swear it. you’ll learn. you’ll fold yourself into silence if that’s what he needs, you’ll love him softly, calmly, neatly — not the way you do now, not with the noise and the laughter and the chaos that spills out of you without asking permission. you beg him. if he still loves you, if there’s even a flicker left, you’ll change.

“being loud is all i’ve ever known,” you whisper, your breath shaking against his skin. “if the loud makes you leave me, i don’t know how to love anymore. please— don’t take that from me. don’t take the only way i know how to love.”

and as he listens, something within him breaks in a way that can never be repaired. oh, you, he thinks — oh, you. he looks at you and feels a grief so profound that it almost resembles worship. to him, in that moment, you are not merely human — you are divine. he doesn’t believe in god, not truly, never has. and yet looking at you now, your face streaked with tears, your trembling hands pressed against him as if you could anchor him to the earth — you are the closest thing to god he has ever seen.

and he, poor mortal creature that he is, would give you anything. everything. his blood, his ribs, the very marrow of his being. every pulse in his body beats your name. every breath he exhales has been shaped by you. you live within him — in the soft machinery of his heart, in the tired rhythm of his lungs, in the language of his touch. he has built his entire existence around your laughter, your warmth, the chaos of your affection. he is a man made entirely of you.

and yet, he thinks, i am only human. a man of flesh and error, of fear and longing. a man who loves you so deeply that it terrifies him, that it threatens to consume him whole.

his thumb brushes your cheekbone, wiping the wetness that won’t stop falling. his voice, when it comes, is barely more than a whisper — tender, trembling, resolute.

“you shouldn’t have to change for love,” he says. “not for me. not for anyone. if i ask you to quiet yourself, to make yourself small, to unlearn the way you burn — then i am no better than the world that never understood you. you don’t deserve someone who teaches you shame for your own light. and i… i am that someone.”

your eyes widen, glistening, as though he’s struck you.

he continues, slowly, with the unbearable gentleness of a man confessing his own death. “i’d rather swallow every rot that lives in me — my doubts, my exhaustion, my cowardice — than ever make you dim what makes you alive. because if you stay with me, my love, you won’t just dim. you’ll disappear. and i couldn’t live knowing i was the reason your fire went out.”

his fingers linger against your face, tracing your tears, memorizing your trembling. “you deserve to shine,” he murmurs, voice trembling. “to burn so bright that someone, somewhere, will gladly go blind just to watch you exist.”

then, slowly, painfully, he leans forward and presses his lips to your forehead — that sacred kiss that feels both like blessing and goodbye. his breath shakes as he whispers against your skin, “i would rather have my throat between your teeth than your heart in my hands, you look pretty in red, anyway . . .”

and somehow you understand — it is his way of saying he’d rather die by your love than live as the one who destroyed it.

his hands, trembling and red in the moonlight, look almost beautiful on you. tragic, holy, almost ceremonial — the touch of a man offering up his ruin as apology.

and then the sound leaves you — a sob so raw it feels like a scream torn from the center of the earth. your body shakes, your fingers clutch at his collar, your breath breaking against his shoulder. you wail, you crumble, you unravel entirely, and he holds you through it — silent, steadfast, dying inside.

and he thinks, so this is love.

not the kind that saves. not the kind that stays. but the kind that ruins both the giver and the receiver, the kind that ends with one bleeding into the other until there’s nothing left to separate them.

you cry until you can’t, until the world is nothing but the sound of your grief and the rhythm of his breathing. and when silence finally comes, it isn’t peace. it’s the sound of everything that once was — slipping, dissolving, fading into the night.

outside, the city continues — indifferent, glittering, eternal.

and in that blue light of the dying moon, nanami kento sits with the only god he has ever known, her tears drying on his skin — her love still burning, his heart still bleeding — and between them, the wreckage of something that was once holy, now too beautiful to survive.

you peeled yourself off him slowly, like skin coming away from old bone — like a creature that has been wrung out; your body makes the small, animal sounds of grief — sobs, soft whimpers that shiver along your ribs like broken strings, trembling, reluctant, dragging the last of your warmth from his lap as though parting from something that had once been holy. each sob that left you sounded like an animal that’s learned too late that love can wound worse than any fang. your breath hitched in broken little hiccups, the sound of a creature who’s learned that grief, when pure enough, begins to sound almost human.

you breathe in three long, ragged pulls, each one an attempt to gather yourself into a shape that words might hold. for a moment you want to claw at him, to sink your teeth into his throat and demand an accounting — is it worth it, the tearing, the quiet massacres he has enacted with his distance? but the animal in you subsides: there is a better violence in the tongue and the voice than in the fang; there is promise and vengeance in language, and you are the sort of woman who will use it.

you stood before him, your body swaying with the exhaustion that only heartbreak can give — that feverish stillness between collapse and rage. his eyes found you in the dim light. they were open, wide, hollow. you could see him watching you as one watches something precious being destroyed in slow motion — helpless, reverent, condemned to witness.

you inhaled once, twice, once more — deep, uneven breaths that scraped against your ribs. your lungs were heavy with all the words you had swallowed for him, all the times you had chosen silence over pride, forgiveness over fury. the air stung when it entered you, as though even breathing in front of him now was an act of rebellion.

you wanted to bite him. to lean forward, press your mouth against his throat, and tear the apology from him — tear it raw, bloody, and real. you wanted to ask him if it was worth it, the breaking, the ruin, the slow unraveling of what you were. was his peace worth your noise? was his silence worth your laughter? was his calm worth your chaos?

but you didn’t.

you only stood there, shaking, every muscle in your body screaming for the violence of truth, and yet you restrained yourself — the way women always do, the way love teaches you to fold your rage into something more palatable.

you wiped your face with the back of your hand, the tears leaving a faint sheen across your cheeks the way one wipes dust from a relic, as if the salt of your tears were a sacrament. then, with the slow, ceremonial clarity of someone making an oath. when you finally spoke, your voice was hoarse, trembling, unrecognizable.

“i wish you everything you deserve,” you said slowly, each word cracking like glass under your tongue. “i wish you get everything you ever wanted. every goddamn thing. and when you do — when you finally have it all — i wish you never feel enough. i wish it burns you alive, the way this burned me.” your voice at first is small, bleached by grief, but it hardens as you go on, like iron drawn from flame — wish him everything — but not the gentle, trembling wish of a woman who hopes for another’s happiness; your words are forged from a darker metal. you wish him the full measure of what he has always wanted, all the comforts and silences he chased, all the peace he thought he could tuck into the pockets of his days. you wish for his satisfactions to be complete and satisfying in their cruelty. may he have what he wants, you tell the dark room, and may it never fill him.

you looked at him then, really looked. he sat there — his jaw tense, his eyes lowered, his fingers digging into his palms. the silence between you was dense, like air before lightning.

“i hope it eats you,” you whispered. “the satisfaction you were chasing. i hope it consumes you so slowly that one day, you’ll wake up and wish you’d just taken my teeth instead.”

you hope his wants will be infinite — a banquet he can never finish, a thirst he can never slake. you wish that each small victory he attains will only fan his appetite and make him hunger with a new, more exquisite ache. it is not malice — or perhaps, it is malice, but of the kind that is honed by injustice: you want him to taste the hollow at the center of the things he craves, the way he made you taste the hollow at the center of his love. you want him to walk through gardens of everything he thought would comfort him and find them barren at the roots. you want his triumphs to be glass houses that reflect only his loneliness back at him.

his gaze flickered to you, and for the briefest moment, you thought you saw something crack in him — a flicker of guilt, of devastation, of the man who once swore that he would never let your heart bleed without his hands catching it. but it passed. it always passed.

you laughed — dry, bitter, the kind of laugh that doesn’t sound like joy but like the breaking of glass underfoot. “you take everything, you know that?”

his throat moved, but he said nothing.

“you take everything,” you repeated, louder now, your voice shaking with fury. “you took my noise. you took my softness. you took the parts of me that didn’t know how to whisper. at twenty-two, you made me wish i was small — quiet, flickering — when all i ever was, all i ever wanted to be, was a fucking fireworks show.”

you spat the words like they burned your tongue. “and i hope you get everything you ever wanted. every ounce of calm, every breath of silence, every inch of peace. and after that — after you’ve got it all — let’s see how fucking fantastic it feels to have my throat between your teeth. let’s see how it feels to taste your own ruin while i lick the blood from my teeth.”

you breathe, and you name the wound. you tell him that at twenty-two he has made you small, that his slow retreat turned you inward until you began to believe that quiet might be safety, that smallness might be love. you expose the theft plainly: you have taken everything from me. this is not an accusation of theft in the cheap sense, but a salvage of truth — he took the rooms of you and furnished them with absence, he occupied your days with a kind of patient weathering that left your outsides raw. you map it for him like an inventory of losses: laughter traded for restraint; fireworks dulled into meek candles; sentences swallowed to keep peace. your voice, once warbling with hurt, now burns with a righteous, terrible heat.

he has made you wish to be small — a frightened, wavering ember — rather than the wild, incandescent conflagration you are by nature. and you hate what he has done. not because he left you, but because in leaving he taught you to want less of yourself; he taught you to believe that your brightest colors were somehow crimes that would scar the people you loved. you speak this with the fury of someone whose own palette has been stolen, and in your fury there is grief and there is the cold, exact intelligence of one who knows what she has lost.

the words that follow make him flinch as if you have slapped him, though you only speak— maybe conscience, maybe memory. you saw his lips part, but nothing came out. his silence was worse than any denial, worse than any defense. it was the silence of a man who knows he is guilty and cannot bear to name it. you tell him, with a venom that is almost tender in its precision, that you wish he never feels enough.

may he be perpetually unsatisfied, forever anxious before his own feast, forever restless amid the comforts he sought. may his contentment be a mirage, you murmur, and may he spend the rest of his days chasing the horizon of it. you crown the wish with a cruelty that is ecclesiastical in its finality: may this gnawing, this penchant for wanting, burn him — let it consume him inwardly until he weeps and when he finally understands the taste of wanting without end, may he remember you and wish he had burned your teeth instead of your heart.

the air between you seemed to tremble. the city beyond the window carried on — indifferent, eternal. a car passed below, headlights slicing the room into halves of blue and gold, and for an instant, the light caught his face — that face you had loved so tenderly, so stupidly — and he looked almost like a stranger, someone you might pass on a street and never turn for again.

and so you turned first.

you didn’t slam the door. you didn’t scream. you only turned and walked — the sound of your footsteps soft, steady, echoing against the marble of his quiet life. you walked through the apartment like you were peeling yourself out of a life you no longer fit into.

and he sat there.

nanami kento, composed, calm, beloved of the quiet — he sat there in the wreckage of his peace, staring at the place you had been. he didn’t follow. he didn’t call. he only listened to the door close and let the sound settle into the hollow of his chest.

the room smelled faintly of burnt oil and your perfume. the glass on the table caught a sliver of moonlight and fractured it into pieces. he stared at it and thought, so this is what it means to break something you loved.

he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely before him. the air was thick. even breathing felt like confession. and for the first time, he truly understood the word irrevocable.

he wasn’t a murderer. he had never raised a hand against you. and yet — god, and yet — your blood was on his hands. invisible but present, pulsing beneath the skin, staining everything he touched from here on out.

it wasn’t red. it wasn’t visible. but he could feel it — in the tremor in his fingers, in the ache that had settled somewhere beneath his ribs. it was your laughter gone silent, your noise extinguished, your light dimmed.

he imagined your voice echoing in some distant part of his mind — loud, bright, alive — and the silence that followed was unbearable.

his peace had come at the price of your fire, and now even his peace felt tainted, as though every breath he took was borrowed from you.

the night grew colder.

outside, the world moved on.

inside, he sat in the half-light — his palms open, his heart heavy — and understood that the quiet he had longed for all his life would now sound, forever, like your absence.

a year — or a year that stretches and contracts like an old accordion played by indifferent hands — slides between the two of you and then, without preface or ceremony, the world arranges a meeting neither of you asked to stage. it is in the subway, that subterranean artery where the city exhales and children clutch their parents’ sleeves and strangers press their loneliness into the same carriage like winter coats hung on the same peg. you are there — unmistakable even among a hundred faces — because you move as you always have moved: a small rebellion of motion, the kind of presence that makes the air rearrange itself around it. when he sees you, something in him that has been beige and ordered and practiced for years unseals; a long, thin terror runs through him, holy and crushing at once.

you see him too. you do not look away. you do not perform shock or flinch or the tidy civility of ignoring. you meet his gaze like a verdict. there is no scene — no dramatic words, no contrived reconciliation — only the simple refusal to turn your eyes aside, and that refusal cracks his world with a sound like glass. in that precise instant, the life he had been building of small comforts and careful margins collapses into a single unbearable understanding: despite every excuse he ever constructed for himself, despite the gentle rhetoric of weariness and the patient appetite for peace he had used to justify his retreat, he has done something irrevocable to you. he has been the man who taught your brightness to be ashamed. he has been, in the polite way of the disciplined, a murderer of light.

it is a discovery that finds him without melodrama and with all the force of the unavoidable. he watches you standing among the press of commuters; his chest contracts as if tightened by an unseen hand. you do not cross to him. perhaps pride keeps you, or perhaps the memory of all the nights you spent explaining and forgiving and being asked gently to dim yourself has taught you that there are some returns that must remain unattempted. the carriage breathes; the train lurches; the advertisement lights blink overhead; everyone else goes on with their small, extraordinary lives. but for him, time cleaves into before and after the moment he sees you and you will not look away.

and there it is, utterly simple and ruinous: you are not merely a person who walked from his life; you are proof — luminous and accusing — that the life he chose has a cost. he registers it like a ledger that finally balances: every silence, every small insistence on calm, every withheld tenderness added up to a theft. he sees you and, in your face, reads the catalogue of what he taught you to hide: your unbuttoned laughter, the extravagant, unnecessary way you loved things, the careless insistence that life should be loud enough to prick the moon. and he knows — with the certain, cold clarity of a man who has finally been measured by his shadow — that he, with all his orderly intentions, killed that.

regret arrives not like a single lightning flash but as a crowded, compound sensation. at first there is a burn behind his eyes, a sudden dryness that makes his throat feel ancient. then a weight settles into the hollows of his chest, slow and dense as wet clay. his limbs feel unpracticed, as if the muscles that once obeyed him now answer only the command of panic. he watches you step into the carriage and the doors close between you like the soft fall of a curtain. the glass slides by and the movement is terrible because it is final in the small way the city permits final things to be final: brief, bureaucratic, utterly unprivate.

he stands on the platform and watches the lights of the carriage bleed into the tunnel, until you are a figure receding among windows, until the train is a bright thread vanishing into the dark. every second of that retreat is a punishment. he does not move. the crowd swallows him like a mouth; heads nod and phones glow; somewhere a child laughs and he hates the sound because it is light that he no longer feels worthy to hear. the fact that you did not cry aloud, that you did not throw yourself into dramatic pleas, that you simply held his gaze and let the world continue — this modest, stoic refusal is worse than any theatrical collapse. it is an indictment in the quietest register. it proves to him, more ruthlessly than any confession, that he has killed what once burned for him.

afterwards he walks home. the apartment is the same as he left it the day she walked out — immaculate, ordered, faithful to its idea of peace. there is a clarity to every surface, a theology of tidiness he once thought noble. his coat hangs where it always hangs; the books line the shelf in their patient row, spines like columns that promise solidity. there is a cup on the kitchen counter, still drying in a place he would not have chosen to leave it but left nonetheless, as if his habits had not yet learned to accommodate absence. he moves from room to room with a novice’s clumsiness, as though each item might accuse him if he handled it with the wrong wrist.

and yet there are no boxes, no discarded sweaters, no scarf looped over a chair, no toothbrush in a glass by the sink. she did not bother to take the objects that would mark the space as hers; she left it as if proximity were a contagion, as if the very act of packing would shatter some last, fragile fidelity to what had been. this fact — the neatness of her departure — becomes for him its own accusation. she had not made a scene; she had left him the worst sort of evidence: the proof that she had simply walked away from a place now rendered sterile by his choice. he realizes that she did not bother with the small, messy business of retrieval because even her belongings might prove that she had once been near him, and perhaps she would not risk that memory lingering like a parasite on the furniture he loved.

the silence that fills the rooms is not a comfortable silence; it is a silence that multiplies, hollows out, becomes cathedralic. it is the silence of a house where every possible sound is a reminder of absence. he sits down in the chair she once favored and the upholstery remembers the shape of her; his hand finds a place where her elbow would have rested and the memory snaps like a taut string. the phone on the table is mute; there are no messages waiting with silly little pet names and small reports of trivial misfortunes. he is surrounded by the apparatus of a life he cultivated to avoid nervousness, to avoid the jagged edges of feeling. now that life is a museum exhibit, polished and labeled, and the label reads, quietly, empty.

the realization unfolds then as a slow, torturous geometry. he wanted calm — yes — but he had imagined calm as something that would coexist with the living warmth of human entanglement, not as a condition purchased by the quieting of someone else’s spirit. the comfort he had sought was a soft armor; it allowed him to preserve himself by erasing what he could not bear to change. now the armor reveals itself as a cell. every precaution, every compromise in the name of peace, is visible to him as a small, committed cruelty. he had not hit or shouted; he had used subtler instruments: the withholding of full attention, the polite correction of exuberance into neatness, the steady insistence on restraint as a moral good. and these quiet violences had been sufficient to muffle you until the brightness you were turned into ash.

a peculiar sense of hunger rises in him — not for food or for simple comforts, but for proof that the thing he loved still exists in some immediate, tangible way. he wants the evidence of her presence the way a penitent wants a bleeding wound to prove he is alive. in some awful, private thought, he imagines what he once said in bitter hyperbole — the grotesque, intimate image of her teeth around his throat — and now, stripped of irony, it feels like a form of penance he would accept. better to bear the visible sign of being loved and harmed than to sit in this immaculate emptiness where nothing testifies to what once was. he thinks, with a clarity so tender it borders on the obscene: i would prefer to have you here, even if you bit me, even if you bled on me, than to go on owning a house that only proves how cleanly you left.

that thought is not noble; it is animal and true. he has learned in the merciless school of absence that proximity, even if it wounds, is preferable to the silent varnish of empire. he wants the proof of pain because pain would mean proof of life. better to be marked than to be immaculate and lonely. better to have his throat pressed by your teeth than to be left with the knowledge that his restraint extinguished you like a candle.

he moves through the apartment as if searching for the last trace of you — a thread on the sofa, a receipt, the smell of a shampoo. the rooms offer him nothing but their clean surfaces and the echo of mechanical living. even the bed, made with the precise folds he once found restful, feels obscene in its order. the sheets remember heat, but the heat is only memory and it offers him no comfort. he puts on a kettle and the sound of boiling water is theatrical and meaningless; when he pours into a cup, the ceramic ring is a small, private gong that does nothing to fill the cavernous ache.

regret is a patient beast; it does not rage so much as it gnaws, and as night deepens the gnawing becomes the steady cadence of his existence. he thinks of the moments he told himself he was being reasonable — the times he asked you to lower your voice, to choose calm, to be less of a spectacle — and each memory becomes a small, precise indictment. he replays conversations with the scalpel of the conscience: sentences where he corrected the shape of your laughter, evenings when he sat too long in the car before walking up to the apartment, nights when he declined to soothe because he wanted quiet for the sake of his own tired bones. he sees now how cruelty need not be loud; it can be a pattern that wears a person down slowly until they stop being themselves to keep the peace.

regret breeds a particular longing: the desire for atonement so immediate that it includes the possibility of being hurt for it. he would accept a wound as recompense — that is the strange, perverse humility of his remorse. he imagines, with a clarity unlike the cowardice that led to this void, that if she had sat in his lap and bared her teeth and bled on his breast, he would have felt less empty because the evidence of her fire would still be present upon him. that proof would mean that his house had once been inhabited by a light that could not be dimmed without retribution. the thought is obscene and tender in the same breath: to bear another’s blood is to be a curator of their existence.

and then the city goes on being indifferent; someone laughs in the building across the way; a late tram passes the window with a metallic cry; the moon hangs over the roofs like a cool, impartial witness. he cannot make a speech to repentance, cannot write the perfect apology that would suffice. language feels like a poor instrument when the fault concerns the vivacity of another person’s life. he kneels, unasked, before the hum of his electric stove, as if the small act of wistful domesticity could be prayer. he is a man who wanted peace and has traded it for a desert where nothing grows.

the knowledge that he killed your light will follow him, patient and resistant. it will graze him in the quiet moments: in the taste of his tea, in the way a smile no longer comes easily, in how the day loses color without your laugh to tint it. he will not be a melodramatic remorse; he will be the quieter kind — the kind that makes small compromises with himself until those compromises are the architecture of every evening. he will measure his life in the ways he cannot wind back time: the dinners unsaid, the touches withheld, the nights he chose his comfort over the risk of being consumed.

if there is a benediction in his pain, it is that it is true and uncompromising. the regret is not a theatrical repentance seeking absolution; it is a neighbor to shame, inexorable as a law of nature. and in that ineradicable ache he will spend the rest of his beautifully ordered days learning what he should have been brave enough to learn sooner — that to love fully often means to be scorched, that to choose safety above the other’s fire is to extinguish something sacred, and that some losses cannot be compensated by the tidy comforts of an otherwise well-kept life.

"you're doing fine," he reassures you, a gentle hand patting the back of your head as his laugh surrounds you. it hits your ears like sugar, jumpstarts your heart like caffeine.

"promise?" you glance up at him, still reliving the moment in the forefront of your mind.

his hand slides down from your head to cup the back of your neck instead. a steady and comforting hand that has heat pooling low in your gut from the contact alone. you cannot believe how down bad you are for this guy.

"i swear," he says with a more open smile. one that softens all of his features. one that absolutely has you swooning. "mic just thinks you’re skittish."

you groan again. "like a cat," he adds.

"that's not helpful." you roll your eyes and push away from him. the smell of his cologne turning your brain to mush the longer you inhale it.

"it was cute." the breath of his chuckle blows loose strands away from your face. and you're not sure if he intends to or not, but his middle finger presses lightly against your pulse. lulling you into a brief state of security. "so stop freaking out."

but then you remember. "how can i when i probably just gave you the worst kiss of your life."

"it wasn't the worst." his eyes are filled to the brim with levity as he takes a step closer. ignoring the already limited space in this pantry and getting close enough for your chests to meet.

"and in front of all of your friends," you moan in frustration as the scene really sinks in for you. as you hopelessly try to ignore the way you can feel the ease of his breath.

"it wasn't the worst," he repeats, his hand tightening slightly to hold you in place.

"still," you start, shoving your lips into a frown, "it wasn't my best work."

there's a darkening to his eyes that's so slight you think you might have imagined it. but then again you also felt the way his abdomen flinched against you at your words. the changes in his expression are so minute you can't believe you're even noticing them. the imperceptible lick of his bottom lip. the gentle uptick of one corner of his mouth. the halfway lowering of his eyelids. yet every single change melts over you like hot wax.

"you telling me you can do better than that?"

and for the first time in probably the entire time you've known aizawa you're registering that he's hitting on you. so plainly. forwardly. this is more than a matter of convenience for him. more than just needing someone to fill in the space beside him so that he can avoid pestering questions about his love life.

shouta aizawa just might be into you too.

and with that realization your brain goes dead. for a beat too long. long enough for an amusing awkwardness to set in. one that has his smile stretching his lips even more before he decides to take a step away from you. a step that kickstarts your mind and has your hands reaching out for him. to keep him close.

“well yeah,” you finally say, a nervous shake in your voice that you disguise with a laugh of your own. “that one doesn’t even count.”

you hope you’re reading this correctly. you pray the look in aizawa’s eyes means he wants you to kiss him. again. that when you rise slightly and angle your head towards him he won’t pull alway. because then you’d have to quit your job in the hopes that you’ll never see him again. to salvage whatever shreds you’d have left of your dignity.

but luckily, he meets you halfway. you feel his smile against your lips. and the slight chap of them that you didn’t feel earlier. your body sinks against his as you part your lips around his bottom one. your lip gloss smearing across his mouth as he kisses you back. for real this time.

his hand tightens even more and he urges you backwards until your lower back hits one of the shelves. until another shelf digs into your shoulder blades. your arms loop around his neck in response, flattening yourself against him until not even air can squeeze between your bodies.

you were dumb not to have noticed before. the very obvious attraction between the two of you. your attraction was surely obvious every time your hands shook as your poured him coffee. or the way you stuttered whenever you spoke to him. or tonight when all you can seem to do is freeze whenever he gets close enough to touch you. surprised every time his fingers brushed your waist or held your wrist or tucked a stray hair behind your ear.

the fingers that are now gripping your hip as the kiss deepens. as his tongue slips into your mouth. as you release a soft whine when your tongues meet for the first time. his fingers curl around the waistband of your pants, doing nothing more than pressing you more firmly against him. where you can feel his attraction to you harden beneath his slacks.

you gasp, your legs parting so that he can slide his knee between them. suddenly you can’t get enough. of the way he smells. tastes. feels as he rubs against you. you grab hold of his wrist until the fingers that are curled around your waistband find the button of your pants. there’s a chuckle that reverberates through his chest and into your mouth. you swallow it insistently. matching it with a low moan of your own when he pops the button open, the undoing of your zipper audible over the distant melody of holiday music.

you inhale desperately when he breaks the kiss, foreheads touching, as his breathing rocks through him harshly. you don’t want the kiss to end, but when his fingers meet the damp spot that’s wetting your underwear you lose the ability to actually think. he presses the slick fabric to you. groaning at how your thighs clench around his hand.

you bite your lip in a useless attempt to conceal the noises that are building in your throat. that threaten to spill out when he shifts your underwear to the side. when his fingers meet your bare pussy, gathering slick onto his fingertips before he circles your clit with agonizing pressure.

“god, you’re so-“ he grits out between a clenched jaw. there’s tension in his entire body as he uses his raw strength to keep you there. caged between his body and the shelves that bruise your backside.

your head falls back carelessly as he pushes two fingers inside of you. a box of cereal tumbles to the ground followed by a bag of chips. instinctively your hand lunges out to catch them.

“leave it.” aizawa’s voice is a strained whisper as he hooks his fingers inside of you. pressing into spongey tissue that has your knees buckling.

“but-“ he cuts you off with another kiss. sloppier and less coordinated than the first. but still just as mentally crippling when all you can do is exhale a quiet mewl as his pace quickens. as he mercilessly pleasures you without care of where you are. of who might walk by and hear you.

you bury your face in his neck, your hands twisting in his sweater until it wrinkles. your own sweater stifling hot as your body prepares to come.

“shouta,” you whimper feebly, your eyes screwing shut as you cling to him. his answering groan doing nothing to keep you grounded. instead you float higher. your walls fluttering around his fingers as the heel of his palm hits your clit over and over.

there’s really nothing you can do to stop the moan that rips your vocal chords when you stumble over the edge. but thankfully aizawa has the wherewithal to cover your mouth with his free hand. practically carrying you as your orgasm thrums through you. keeping you upright until you have enough control of yourself to stand on your own two feet.

“oh my god.” you release an astonished laugh when you register what just happened. when he removes his hand from your mouth and the other from your pants. “i can’t believe we just did that.”

“yeah, that was,” he shakes his head, a stunned chuckle of his own falling from his lips, “unexpected.”

he readjusts himself in his pants and you’re about to offer to help him in return but theres a sudden bustling of noise in the kitchen. sets of voices that filter through the cracks in the door reminding you that you two were never alone. not actually, anyway.

“we should head back out,” he says, his cheeks tinted red from exertion. your lip gloss glistening across his lips and chin every time it catches what little light there is in here.

“i told you i could do better,” you say breathlessly. jokingly as you make yourself more presentable. your brain still weakly catching up to you.