You stare at the ceiling in the dark of your room. The quiet of the night presses in all around you — the faint creak of the house, the soft tick of your clock, and just under that, the sound of another person breathing. Not yours. Slower. Deeper.

You turn your head slightly on the pillow.

Toji’s curled up on the makeshift bed you’d built for him on the floor, half-tangled in spare blankets and a hoodie he hasn’t taken off. Moonlight curls around his frame in soft grays and blues, illuminating him — a bruise purpling on his jaw, a split in his lip. He’s all hard lines and silent weight, like he’s bracing for something even now, in the supposed safety of your room.

Your parents don’t even know he’s here. You don’t think they’d understand — the way he knocks on your window past midnight like a ghost you keep letting in, eyes stormy, anger and exhaustion clinging to him.

Toji does this sometimes. When things get bad at home — when voices get too loud or hands get too fast — he comes here. At first it was awkward. Now it’s second nature. There’s a rhythm to it. You open the window, he climbs in, and without a word you lay out the blankets. Sometimes he talks. Most times, he doesn’t. But he always stays the night.

Now, he lies in a tight coil, his breathing is steady, but it’s the kind of steady you get from trying too hard. Your eyes drift back to the ceiling, where the moonlight carves thin lines across the shadows.

“…You wanna talk about it?” you ask quietly, your voice barely more than a thread in the stillness. For a second, all you hear is the stretch of silence between you. Long enough that you start to think he won’t answer — that maybe he’s already asleep or pretending to be. But then–

“It was just a bad night.” Toji’s voice is low, and it threads through the dark. There’s something frayed in it, something bleeding and too bare.

“I didn’t—” He cuts himself off with a sharp breath, the kind that scrapes against his throat. “It was a bad night,” he says again, like repetition makes it easier to carry.