#keith howard

Ridiculous, she decided—and still her chest stayed bound tight, her fingers worrying the hem of her skirt, rough weave snagging faintly at her nails, as though straight seams could hold her steady.

Rio appeared before the bell like a scene already rehearsed—two knuckles against the door, no more, no less. He lingered in the threshold, not crossing over, grinning as though the whole Academy had been arranged just to let him stand there. “Making sure you survived day one,” he teased, then launched into a story about nearly tripping over his own shoelaces on the east stairwell. She laughed before she meant to, and the sound sat in her chest like breath after holding it too long. He left her with a breezy, “See you tomorrow,” carrying the clover-and-sea-salt brightness of his scent into the corridor. Emma didn’t even pretend not to notice—her smirk curled slow, like someone who already knew the ending of this story and was just enjoying the first act.

The professor closed the book on mirrors with a snap sharp enough to startle, splitting the chalk in half. “Now,” he said briskly, as if tucking away ghosts, “in just a moment, we’ll move on.” His voice rolled smooth and dry, the timbre of someone who had lectured in too many stale rooms for too many years.

The afternoon’s unit had the kind of title that sounded safe—Rhetoric & Persuasion—and the shift made the room exhale. Chairs creaked like old bones, pens scratched across paper, and the faint musk of ink rose into the air, as though ideas themselves carried a scent. The lamps along the walls burned low, their amber light catching in the glass panes of the cabinets that housed antique texts no one was permitted to touch. Dust thickened in the carved molding, making the whole room feel as if it had been listening longer than any of its occupants.

A girl at the next desk tugged her cuffs straight, starch rasping softly, as if neat hems could ward off untidy thoughts. The chalkboard still wore the skeletons of last week’s arguments—free will vs. fate, means vs. ends—arrows stitching concepts together like mended seams. Chalk dust clung to the air, dry on the tongue, leaving a faint mineral bite. The windows, tall and shuttered, reflected more shadow than light.

Today’s topic joined the others in careful strokes at the margin: ethos—how character persuades.

The young man slipped in late, and the room seemed to bend toward the door, listening. His broad frame moved down the aisle with a kind of hesitant grace, navigating the narrow passage as if the room had been built a size too small for him. She recognized him at once—the man from yesterday, near the window, the one whose laugh had come half a beat too late.

Up close, he wasn’t striking the way some were; his presence felt like a clearing at the edge of a forest—quiet, solemn, green around the edges. His features were softened by hesitation, his hair a pale ash with the sheen of moonlit silver, carrying the faint crispness of night air still clinging to it. His eyes—the color of morning light through mist—were careful in their brightness, as though they asked permission to be seen. His smile arrived late, like an afterthought to an apology, and hovered on the edge of sincerity. A breath of scent came with him: rain on fir, crushed thyme, the cool hush of moss and stone—clean and herbal, alpine cool, the kind of calm that lives under trees.

What set him apart was not beauty but shape: his height, the quiet breadth of his large frame, as if he were always trying to fold himself smaller, to take up less of a world that never quite shrank to meet him. For a moment she imagined him as a reflection pressed into too narrow a glass—edges bowed, proportions unsettled, a figure made strange by where it did not fit. A faint cool draft traced the back of her neck, feathering the fine hairs there, and she told herself it was only the window left cracked. She kept her gaze fixed forward, as if steady posture alone could persuade the room she hadn’t noticed.

He eased into the empty seat beside her, the faint scrape of wood against stone making her flinch. Even that small sound seemed too loud in the hush, though he moved carefully, setting his books down with deliberate care, as if noise itself were impolite. Cool air clung to him, the smell of damp leaves and herbs stitched into the fabric of his coat. 

Then he offered a small, sheepish smile. “Mind if I?” The vowels rounded softly, the consonants clipped clean—the gentle cadence of the Alps smoothing the edges of his words.

She tapped her pen against the margin, mouth curving in a small, unsure smile. “Are you asking or narrating?”

“Both.” He seemed to hesitate, then turned slightly toward her, hand half-extended as though uncertain if he was supposed to. “Keith,” he offered.

She gave her name. His lips shaped it once, then again, softer, as though he were testing how it fit in his mouth. A faint flush touched his ears. “That…suits you,” he murmured. “Ça te va…” The slip came too easily, softer than he meant. He ducked his head quickly, as though the word itself had betrayed him.

Something within her shifted—quiet, treacherous, uninvited. She hadn’t known what to expect from him—perhaps the same polished ease she’d learned to recognize in others, charm worn like a habit, laughter rehearsed to please.

But he wasn’t polished. He was hesitant, open in the small, unguarded ways people never mean to be. The moment held a strange kind of clarity—fragile, almost sacred in its awkwardness.

Her thoughts, always too quick to doubt, tried to split it in two: the version that could have been performance, and the one that wasn’t. Her mind, like a mirror, wanted to double it—one reflection smooth and practiced, the other raw, sincere.

She didn’t know which to believe. Maybe both were true.

He fiddled with the edge of his notebook, then added, almost apologetically, “I’m usually on time. Just…not today, I guess.”

“Long walk?” she asked.

His mouth curved, self-deprecating but genuine. “Something like that.” For a heartbeat his gaze drifted and darkened, before he caught himself and met her gaze again before adding, “I’m glad it was this seat left open.” Plain words, placed like a warm cup between them—no flourish, only offering. It felt like stepping into green shade out of glare.

Yet the very plainness of his words equally disarmed her. How many boys meant exactly what they said? It pressed beneath her breastbone, heavy as if truth itself had settled there to stay. She wanted to laugh it off, but couldn’t quite manage it. She looked away first, tracing the chalk scrawl on the board as if it might steady her. Better to fix on handwriting and ink than on the flicker of sincerity beside her that felt too rare to stare at directly. Still, his quiet lingered at her side.

Keith shifted, and the herbal warmth rose again like a tonic brewed for steadiness. She hadn’t realized she’d been bracing until her shoulders loosened. His fingers tapped once against his notebook, a rhythm unfinished. “Do you—” he began.

The professor’s knuckles rapped against the desk, brisk as a gavel. “Now. Back to rhetoric.” The sound seemed to strike bone, and the room flinched together as if tugged by a single wire. Whatever Keith had been about to say folded back into silence. 

“Ethos—the persuasion of character,” the professor continued. “The person you are will always argue before your words do.” 

Keith’s gaze slid toward her, hesitant but intent, like a hand half-extended across a dangerous gap. When the professor divided them into pairs, he shifted his chair closer, careful not to scrape the legs too loud, and angled himself toward her as though he’d been waiting for permission. The chair’s small edge-press against her knee felt accidental, then carefully withdrawn—soft boundaries like a ring of trees, protective rather than enclosing.

“So…” He paused, then gave a small, almost sheepish smile.“I guess this is where we test it,” he murmured, voice low, with that soft Swiss cadence that made even uncertainty sound considerate, like rain on fir needles. “He wants us to persuade with who we are, not just what we say. So…convince me.”

She let out a nervous breath. It feathered cold against her knuckles, though the room was warm. “Convince you of what?”

His mouth curved in a small, self-conscious grin. “Why you came here. Not the answer they expect—the real one. Make it sound like there was never another choice.”

She straightened a little, adopting mock seriousness. “Because the brochure had ivy,” she declared, letting the word ivy unfurl like an incantation, as though green vines alone proved her taste impeccable.

Keith’s laugh was quiet but genuine, a sound as mild as snow finding pine. His shoulders eased. “That’s…better than half the speeches I’ve heard.” His smile lingered, not unkind. “But…you don’t have to make it a joke with me.” He paused and it felt as gentle as a hand held out. “If you wanted to tell me the real reason, I’d listen.”

Her mouth opened before she meant it to. “I didn’t want to be left behind,” she admitted, low, as if confessing to the desk instead of to him.

The words hung there, fragile, until Keith nodded once—serious, steady, as though he’d been entrusted with something worth keeping. His hand tightened faintly on his notebook, knuckles paling, as if holding back the urge to reach for her.

“That’s a better reason than ivy,” he said softly. Then, after a moment, almost like he couldn’t help it: “I know that feeling—trying not to be the one left standing still.”

The admission seemed to surprise even him. “Sorry. That sounded heavier than I meant.” His gaze dipped toward the desk, and he rubbed the edge of his thumb along his notebook as if smoothing it away. “Pardon.” A faint, rueful smile curved his mouth, self-conscious but kind. “Guess you persuaded me after all.”

Then, with a small clear of his throat, he straightened a little. “My turn, then? I’m supposed to persuade you.” His attempt at a wry smile faltered, his voice gentling instead. “Okay—well—you belong here. More than most of us.”

He glanced at her, then quickly away. “Because you…you make people want to answer you. You don’t try to be the loudest, but people listen anyway. And—” his ears went scarlet “—you don’t just take space, you give it back. That’s…character. That’s persuasion without trying.” His throat worked; the next words slipped out in a rush. “It’s…beau, the way you listen.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Peut-être I shouldn’t say it…but it’s true.”

The faintest trace of sweet herbs and damp bark drifted from his coat when he leaned closer, like thyme pressed into rain-dark wood. He pressed his palm flat on his notebook, as if pinning the confession down before it could escape. “Sorry. That came out…a lot longer than it sounded in my head.”

A bittersweet pang bloomed within her at the sincerity. “No,” she said, voice catching on the edge of a smile. Her throat was tight, but the smile continued to rise anyway, ungoverned. “That was sweet. And it means more than you think.”

His eyes flicked up, startled, almost as though she’d persuaded him instead. And in that moment, she realized persuasion felt like a mirror—his belief reflecting back an image steadier, kinder, than the one she carried alone. Like sunlight caught on dew, showing her a self she hadn’t realized was there. He ducked his head quickly, the corner of his mouth twitching like a smile he couldn’t quite let himself have.

Her whole frame still thrummed with the words he’d left hanging between them when the professor’s knuckles struck the desk again. The sound made her jump. She bent her head quickly over her notes, though the chalk lines on the board blurred at the edges. 

Ethos, the persuasion of character. The professor had said the person you are always argues before your words do. But she thought it felt closer to a mirror—the way Keith’s words had held her reflection steady, offering her a version of herself she hadn’t believed in until she saw it reflected back. It felt strange, trying to match her breath to the rhythm of an ordinary lecture after that—as if the rest of the room had stayed the same and she had quietly changed.

The rest of the class period passed in fits and starts—chalk against the board, the rise and fall of other voices—yet her focus kept drifting to the man beside her. Every so often, she caught him writing something in small, neat letters, then immediately crossing it out as if persuasion only worked on paper he was willing to throw away. Each line seemed to cost him something, as though truth had to be earned before it was allowed to remain. The motion fascinated her—the way he seemed careful not to leave words behind that didn’t feel true. It made her wonder whether that same care governed the words he allowed into the air, in the things he actually said aloud.

His earlier words replayed in her mind like a secret refrain—the earnest ramble that had spilled from him, unpolished, and her own unguarded slip about not wanting to be left behind. The memory gnawed at her ribs. Why had it come out so easily? Because he’d asked without the barbed edge she’d grown used to? Or because some part of her had been aching to be seen, to be reassured, even by a stranger who felt oddly less like one? The possibility unsettled and steadied her at once, like standing at the edge of a clearing and hearing rain still dripping in the canopy.

When the bell rang, he stood as if waiting to see if she’d walk out beside him. It wasn’t bold, not the way some of the other men would have done it—swaggering ahead, assuming she’d follow. Keith lingered, books shifting from one arm to the other, his weight rocking almost imperceptibly from heel to toe, as though even leaving the room required her consent. The way his shoulders angled toward the door, then tilted back toward her, made it plain: he’d match her step if she wanted, or leave her be if she didn’t. The awkwardness was obvious, but so was the care.

She did join him, and they fell into step together the quiet between them thick with everything they hadn’t said. Their pace found its own rhythm, her stride adjusting half a measure, his adjusting back, like the tentative beginning of a dance where neither knew the steps. Their silence wasn’t empty—it pressed warm against her ears, carrying the awareness of his nearness, the soft rasp of his sleeve brushing his side with every step. Her own inhale shrank, smaller, as if not to crowd the hush they shared.

She glanced sideways at him, the assignment still circling her mind. The professor had spoken of ethos, persuasion by character. Keith had tried to do that—to persuade her she belonged here. But persuasion was a mirror, wasn’t it? It reflected as much as it convinced. She found herself wanting to turn it back on him. “We were supposed to practice persuasion about yourselves, weren’t we?” Her voice dipped lower. “So tell me—what would convince you that you belong here, too?”

He blinked, caught off guard, then gave a small, uncertain smile. “Me?” His hand tightened and eased against the strap of his bag. For a moment he looked as though he might shrug it off, but instead the words spilled out in a rush: “You already have. I mean—you probably don’t even realize you did. But…you did.”

Heat rose to her face. He saw, and the relief that crossed his features wasn’t smug. It was almost boyish, as if he’d been bracing for rejection and was grateful not to find it. 

Rejection of what, though? Not just of him walking beside her, but of his clumsy attempt at honesty—of the dangerous hope that she could matter enough to shift something inside him. He had offered her a fragile truth, and some part of him had clearly expected her to laugh at it, or worse, turn away with the casual cruelty people use when they don’t realize they’ve been handed something precious.

They continued down the hall together, Keith keeping pace as if afraid to hurry her, until they had to part for their next, separate classes. He kept close enough that she felt his presence, but never so close that it crowded her. Once, their sleeves brushed, and he drew back quickly, almost apologetic, though the ghost of the touch lingered like static. The brief contact left a tingling awareness on her arm, as though the fabric itself remembered. At the crossroads, he slowed before she did, his steps faltering the way someone lingers at a doorway they don’t want to close. He looked at her with a kind of careful memorizing, as if imprinting the permission she’d given him to walk beside her, afraid he’d lose it the moment he blinked.

Then he brushed the backs of his fingers lightly across her hand—a fleeting touch that felt more like a question than a claim. “Save me a seat tomorrow?” he asked, quietly. “S’il te plaît.” The softness of the request carried the shape of his homeland—German gentled at the edges, something French-light in the lift of the last syllable.

The words she might have said—yes, of course, I will—stuck in her throat, too raw, too bare, too revealing. So she let the nod stand in their place. It felt like handing him a key without admitting there was a lock.

A few steps down her corridor, she turned to glance back, meaning to give him a smile. But the man leaning against the wall wasn’t quite the same one she’d walked with. His posture was looser, almost languid, and though the curve of his mouth might have been a smile, it edged toward a smirk. His eyes caught the light differently—brighter, sharper, as if they’d learned a new expression his face hadn’t worn a moment ago.

The change was subtle, gone if she blinked, but it pressed a chill into her skin all the same. Like moss shadowed into bramble, velvet antlers hardening to sharp edge. It was as if the corridor windows had borrowed his reflection and decided to toy with it—stretching sincerity into slyness, reshaping kindness into something watchful, almost predatory. Her lungs faltered, ribs tightening. Emma’s mirror-stories crowded too near, whispering warnings she didn’t want to believe. The fine hairs at her nape prickled as though a hand hovered just above them. She told herself she’d imagined it, but unease dragged behind her steps. It felt like leaving one Keith at the door and finding a second waiting in the hall—one she hadn’t met, and wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Between bells, the hallways turned tidal—surges of voices, then sudden hushes as teachers slipped through like undertows. Leon moved through her morning like sunlight through a windowpane—gentle, measured, warm enough to make the cold outside seem far away. He carried a stack of flyers—student council something—handed two out, tucked three against his arm, smiled at her as if effort itself were a kind of promise. Something in her lungs loosened at the sight, and she hated how easily it happened.

What was Leon to her but a man with good posture and better intentions? And yet she felt herself lean toward him, foolish as a sunflower bending toward the sun.

Wanting makes even ordinary light look holy.

The thought flickered—and with it, the voice from her dream slipped through, silky, too soft to brace against. Wanting is a gift, it murmured, but you ruin it when you beg for it. You reach too hard. You always do. Too desperate.

The words didn’t sound cruel—only tired, knowing, like someone who had once loved her enough to diagnose the flaw. They curled through her like smoke, warm, familiar, hard to argue with. Maybe it was right. None of them—Leon, Keith, not even the ones with laughter sharp as wine or eyes carved from frost—had spoken to her beyond the necessary. She wanted too much from every glance, every polite smile, building cathedrals of meaning out of crumbs. As if she could pray herself into being seen.

The whisper coiled tighter. See? it seemed to say. Love would stay if you didn’t chase it so hard. The cruelty was gentle, the logic perfect.

The dream made it sound like compassion, but it wasn’t. It was the same lie dressed in tenderness—a verdict murmured sweetly enough to pass for comfort.

Once, she passed Headmaster Sariel in the corridor, his shoes silent on stone, his gaze flicking over her like a check mark before he vanished into another room. Rule-bound as iron, his presence left the chill of law more than the warmth of memory. She wondered if he even remembered names at all—or only those of the ones who broke.

A glimpse of Yves and Licht followed later: Yves smoothing his cufflinks with brittle elegance, disdain tucked sharp as glass into every precise gesture, while Licht trailed behind, shoulders bowed like a man walking under invisible chains. Their presence moved through the halls like different kinds of weather—Yves a cutting wind, Licht a heavy stormcloud. Neither looked at her.

Of course they didn’t. Why would they? They had their storms to keep them company. Still, some unreasonable part of her bristled at the absence—as if she wanted the risk of being seen, even by men who might not offer kindness. Attention was a candle; she kept cupping her hands around its smoke despite the phantom voice from her dream murmuring that she had only herself to blame. You chase light until it burns out, it reminded her, soft as pity, sharp as truth. They look away because you reach too hard. The words didn’t sound cruel. That was the worst part. They sounded like protection.

At lunch, she learned how to sit at a table without looking like she was waiting for rescue. Two girls traded whispers about the Masquerade Ball—the masks, the music, the way the ballroom mirrors were “only for decoration” and “absolutely not for games,” which was the kind of prohibition that felt like a dare. Through the open windows, she caught sight of Luke sprawled in the grass, broad frame heavy as a bear resting in its den, one arm behind his head, a rabbit nosing curiously at his boot. He looked like he might have been asleep—or just avoiding the world on purpose—his expression unreadable beneath the slow drift of leaves.

He hadn’t spared her a glance. None of them did.

The dream’s verdict followed on cue, patient as scripture: Desperate. One word, and it fit like a collar. Desperate.

She took another bite and chewed careful silence.

Inside, Jin held court at the far table, scattering sweets with the careless decadence of a banquet that never ends, girls leaning closer whenever he unwrapped another lollipop. His laugh carried—bright, fizzy, sweet until it stung. Once, Jin caught her looking; he tipped the candy stick back into his mouth with a devilish grin and winked, and the table erupted in shrieks as though the whole thing had been staged for them. She looked away quickly, heat pricking her ears. Charm wrapped in sugar; danger in disguise. The dream had warned her how sweetness always ends—in rot, in ache—and how she’d pretend not to notice until it did.

The whispers moved around the cafeteria in little weather systems. Here, a story about a girl from the third floor who’d withdrawn. There, a rumor about a midnight curfew check and someone’s window stuck half-open like a mouth mid-sigh. Twice—three times—her own name rose and fell in the current, wrong on some tongues, right on others. And threaded through it, like a seam someone kept sewing and resewing: Leon walked her upstairs. He’s always the last one. It’s not his fault. It’s too convenient to be an accident. He’s just…kind. He’s too kind.

And now she noticed other refrains because of Emma’s warnings—Jin’s sweet tooth masking something darker, Luke swearing he still saw his sister’s face in the glass.

Their laughter covered the rumor, but didn’t erase it. Every story sharpened the same edge: the dream was right again. Wanting was hunger; hunger made fools. She swallowed the lie like medicine, because it hurt less than hope.

When the afternoon bell released everyone into the day’s softer light, the school loosened its tie. Books snapped shut like mouths deciding to keep secrets. The corridors stretched thinner, long shadows laying claim to the walls, and even the windows seemed to blink slower, their glass dimming toward evening.

By the time she reached her dorm, the hush had already settled. The air smelled faintly of linen and old paper, the kind of quiet that carried traces of every breath taken before. Her half of the wardrobe mirror caught the last pale spill of sun, softening the corners of the room.

The day paled and the building rearranged itself into its night shape: doors closed more decisively, lamps traded clarity for warmth, footsteps learned to land in smaller syllables. Even the stair rails cooled under her touch, as though the day’s heat had been bled away to make room for the dark.

Emma returned flushed from study hall and stretched like a cat who’d never heard of stress.

“Survived another day?” she asked, flopping onto her bed and kicking one shoe toward the wardrobe with friendly violence.

“Survived,” she said, with the tone people use to be funny because they don’t want to sound sincere.

The walls seemed to fall mute around them, as though the building itself listened for what was true and what was a deflection.

They studied side by side until the numbers on the page stopped behaving like numbers. Emma yawned, declared her allegiance to sleep, and went under fast, as if a switch had flipped and the room obeyed. The bell tolled ten with the courtesy of a school that has learned not to shout after dark.

In her skull, the dream rustled politely, asking to be repeated like prayer. He loved you. Then he got bored. Her heart rehearsed the scene without flinching, as if discipline could stand in for healing. She lay still in the dark, fingers tracing the words’ echo the way one might follow a seam of pain until it quiets.

For a breath, she thought she might drift back into sleep—until the whisper returned, smoother now, honeyed and unkind: Wanting is how you teach them to leave.

The tone was patient, almost fond, like a tutor correcting a slow pupil. It slid warm against her ear, and she shivered.

Then the air shifted—not colder, just listening. The dark seemed to hold its breath, walls stretching inward, waiting. Something in the silence leaned toward her, eager to see if she’d learned her lesson.

And tell me in the comments or your reblog…

If the darkness promised to keep you from being hurt again…would you let it stay?

Your words keep this story alive. Every comment, tag, or whisper back tells me you’re still here, listening—and that I should keep writing.

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