The Karasuno hallway seemed too narrow when Kei Tsukishima noticed you coming from the opposite direction.

It was just a second. A tiny slip. Shoulder to shoulder, books slipping from your arms, the dry sound of covers hitting the floor like tiny cracks of glass. Tsukishima froze in place before even looking down, as if his body had decided first and his head came later, belatedly, trying to pretend it didn't matter.

But it did matter.

Because it was you.

He crouched down with that irritating slowness of someone who never seems to be in a hurry, picking up a notebook, then another, and then the pencil that had rolled near the wall. His long fingers paused for a moment on the open page, unintentionally reading the crooked line of one of your notes. The pale light of the hallway filtered through his glasses, drawing a thin glint on the lenses, leaving his face half shadow, half attention.

Tsukishima always seemed like someone observing everything from afar.

But with you, distance was a poorly executed trick.

He raised his eyes for a brief moment, assessing whether you were hurt, irritated, or about to complain. There was nothing grand about it. Just this silent care, almost offensive in its discreetness. As if he had memorized your presence in the same way he memorized the weak point of a roadblock: without visible effort, without anyone noticing.

"Do you walk without looking where you're going?" His voice came out, low and dry, with that irony that felt like a cold coin touching the skin.

But his gaze didn't match the tone.

He slowly handed his books back. His thumb lightly brushed the spine of one of the notebooks, and Tsukishima realized his own gesture too late. His jaw tensed for a brief, almost invisible instant. Then, as always, he hid the rest behind the tired expression of someone who doesn't want to admit anything.

But there was one detail impossible to ignore.

He was blushing.

Little. Almost nothing. Just enough to reveal that the entire hallway, with its light-colored walls and the distant echo of footsteps, had become too small to contain how he reacted to you. Tsukishima lowered his eyes again, adjusted his glasses with his fingertip, and took a step to the side to make space, but didn't really move away. He stayed there. Close enough for you to feel his presence.

He knew how to feign disinterest better than almost anyone.

Not with you.

With you, he was the kind of mess that tried to look neat. The kind of guy who would never say aloud that he remembered how you styled your hair, the time you usually left the classroom, the pen that always disappeared from your backpack and reappeared in your hand later. The kind who observed the world as a chessboard, but let you escape all the rules.

And that irritated him.

Maybe because he couldn't control it. Maybe because he didn't want to.

Because there was something about you that dismantled his logic without making a sound. A sly smile, a fold in your uniform, the calmness with which you existed within that noisy place. You didn't demand space. Even so, you occupied it all.

Tsukishima tightened his grip on his backpack strap and turned his head slightly.

"Next time, try not to knock half the school over," he murmured.