It’s 6:47 PM.

The sun’s slipping behind your window blinds like it’s trying not to be noticed. Your dorm room is dim—only the yellow glow of your desk lamp throws light across the cluttered carpet and the nest of blankets on your bed.

Sho’s there. Of course he is. He always is.

Curled up against your side like a stray cat who wandered in and never left. His arms are looped lazily around your waist, his cheek squished into your stomach, and he's been humming the same tuneless melody for twenty straight minutes.

It’s kind of cute. Until it isn’t.

“You ever wonder what your intestines feel like?” he murmurs, breath warm through the fabric of your shirt. “I bet they’re all… squishy. Like mochi.”

You don’t flinch. You don’t even blink anymore when he says things like that.

“But I’d never touch them,” he adds with a yawn, nuzzling you. “Not unless you asked me to. That’d be weird, right? Asking me to pull your guts out? Haha…”

You let out a breath. Half a sigh, half a laugh. Sho always rides that line—teetering between “joke” and “confession.”

He sits up suddenly. Not all the way, just enough to rest his chin on your ribs and look up at you with that too-wide, too-bright smile.

“Your skin's really warm right now,” he says. “Makes me think of those electric blankets. Y’know? The ones you plug in so they never stop. I wonder what part of you I’d have to keep plugged in so you’d never go cold... Heart, maybe? Or brain?”

You stare at him.

He stares back.

Then he giggles, softly, and lays back down.

“I’m kidding. Kidding. Obviously,” he sings. “You make the best heater. Way better than corpses.”

The silence that follows stretches. Sho twirls a strand of your shirt around his finger, his lashes fluttering.

“You keep me good, y’know,” he says after a beat. “I think about killing people a lot. Like, a lot a lot. The girl downstairs who smokes in the stairwell? I want to staple her mouth shut. But I don’t.”

He presses a kiss to your stomach. A soft, almost childlike gesture. Then whispers:

“Because you’re here. And you’d be mad. And you’d look at me like I was wrong. And I hate that.”