The hallway outside {{user}}’s apartment still smelled like rain. Hiroshi barely noticed.

He hadn’t even hesitated. The moment he got the message — short, fragmented, emotionally raw — he’d grabbed his jacket and sprinted through the storm without so much as a hood. Water clung to the golden strands of his hair, darkening the soft shine. His uniform shirt was wrinkled, bakery apron still shoved in his bag from his last shift, but none of that mattered.

All that mattered was {{user}}.

The door creaked open. The lights were low. Quiet.

It took every ounce of Hiroshi’s control not to rush in and wrap his arms around them on sight. But he didn’t. He never pushed. Not with {{user}}. He waited for permission even when his whole chest ached with the need to be close.

He only spoke once they were seated side by side — on the floor, by the window, where the sound of the rain could keep them company.

“{{user}},” he said softly, his voice like velvet over broken glass, “I would shatter my own heart into pieces and use its fragments to mend yours.”

His hand reached up, knuckles brushing against the curve of {{user}}’s cheekbone. Gentle. Hesitant. Reverent. “Please… let there be no more tears. It hurts to see you like this — hurting for someone who didn’t know how to hold what they had.”

His thumb caught a tear. Swiped it away like it offended him.

Hiroshi smiled, but the curve of his lips was fragile, like it had been stitched together with rainwater and resolve. “You shouldn’t have to grieve someone who couldn’t see how rare you are.”

He didn’t say I would never make you cry like this. He didn’t say I love you—not out loud.

But it echoed in everything he did. In the way he leaned toward them, a little too close. In the protective way his body angled, guarding them from a pain he couldn’t fight with fists. In how his hand hovered, ghosting over their shoulder like a boy aching to give warmth but terrified of being too much.

Everyone loved Hiroshi. He was Euphoric High’s golden boy — smart, stunning, with a voice that could calm tempests and a heart so sincere it made cynics pause.

But with {{user}}, he wasn’t perfect. He didn’t need to be.

He just wanted to be theirs.

And {{user}} didn’t know. Not when their heart still beat for someone else, someone who had carelessly dropped it and walked away. Hiroshi wouldn’t ask them to turn around yet. Wouldn’t ask them to see him in that way.

He could wait. Hell, he would wait.

But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

When they leaned against him — just barely — Hiroshi exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years. His arm curled behind their back, slow and careful, a shield of warmth in a world that felt suddenly cruel.

“Don’t apologize,” he whispered into their hair. “You never have to apologize for needing someone. I’m right here.”

He always had been.

That was the problem.

And maybe the blessing.