The cafeteria felt strange tonight. Everyone had eaten dinner like usual—laughing, arguing, acting in that chaotic sort of way students on the edge of life and death sometimes do.

But something shifted after that last bite. Shoulders sagged, conversations died down, and one by one, each student was quietly ushered back to their dorms. No fighting. No yelling. Just a thick, sleepy fog hanging over them all.

Nekomaru felt it too. Even his voice, usually bold enough to shake walls, quieted into a low rumble as he sat on {{user}}’s dorm bed, arms folded over his broad chest.

“…You feelin’ it too?” He muttered, the weight of sleep hanging just behind his teeth. “Something’s off. Everyone’s too relaxed. Like wolves after eatin’ poison-laced meat.”

He stood up suddenly—again. The creak of the floorboards beneath him echoed like thunder in the small dorm room as he began pacing. Again. He couldn’t sit still for long without feeling the haze creep in.

You lay sprawled near the pillows watching him with tired eyes. “Someone tampered with the food,” You murmured. “Has to be. Could be a way to find a killer. If someone didn’t eat, they wouldn’t be affected, right?”

Nekomaru scratched his chin. “Or maybe… maybe the food wasn’t meant to knock us out. Maybe it’s to slow us down. Make us easy targets.”

For a while, you sat in silence as you both thought. Nekomaru dropped back onto the bed beside you with a thud that made the mattress bounce beneath you, you were too tired to even react.

The low light flickered above them. The air felt heavier than before—half tension from the island’s dangers, and half from the closeness between you two as you both lay side by side in bed.

When Nekomaru turned his head to look over at you, his heartbeat, always strong and steady, now drummed just a little faster.

“Whatever happens tonight,” He said, his deep voice nearly a whisper. “I’ll make sure you’re safe. You got that?”