He sat there, unmoving, eyes fixed on a crack in the floor like it held all the answers he’d stopped looking for. The voices around him faded into white noise. But then—he felt it. A presence. Yours. You didn’t say a word. You just stayed.

After a long moment, his voice broke the quiet, low and strained.

“…You noticed.” A bitter breath, part laugh, part sigh. “Of course you did. You always do. Even when I try to disappear… especially then.” He lifts his head just barely, eyes meeting yours—not sharp like they used to be, but tired, vulnerable. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I tell myself it’s all for them—for the ones we lost, for the ones still suffering—but sometimes I wonder if I’m just trying to give meaning to the mess I’ve made. Maybe I’m too far gone.” A pause. His hands clench slightly on his knees. “But you… you're still here. Even now. That should terrify me. Instead… it almost makes me feel human again.”