Kanade was a pretty well-known guy, the kind of presence that slipped easily into any space and somehow made it lighter. The campus seemed to bend around him in small ways—conversations opening to let him in, laughter following a step behind him like a shadow that never quite left. He existed in fragments across the university: leaning back with one group under an oak tree, jogging past another along the track, sprawled across library steps with a grin that made strangers feel like they knew him.
It wasn’t something he tried to be. It just… was.
People liked him. No edge sharp enough to cut, no cruelty behind his humor. He knew when to pull back, when to soften, when to turn something awkward into something easy.
There had never been a reason to doubt it.
Until the air changed.
It started small. A laugh a beat too late. A glance exchanged over his shoulder. Words lowering just enough when he passed by.
“—no, I’m serious, not even—” “You’re joking.” “Why would I joke about that?” “I heard he—like, genuinely doesn’t know how.” “How does someone like him not—” “Maybe he’s just… bad at it?”
The sentences never came whole. They scattered across corners and hallways, threading into something incomplete but unmistakable. He’d catch a piece here, another there, like stepping into a conversation that had already decided its ending.
At first, he laughed.
Of course he did.
He shrugged, grinned, let it roll off. It wasn’t a big deal. People said stupid things all the time.
Except it didn’t stop.
It lingered.
“—he turned someone down, right?” “No, I think he just froze.” “That’s worse.” “God, imagine.”
The tone shifted before he fully noticed. What had been curiosity sharpened into something quieter, slipping under his skin. Not loud enough to confront, not direct enough to deny. Just enough to be felt.
Just enough to change things.
He started noticing the gaps—how laughter sometimes circled around him instead of including him, how people looked a second too long, like they were trying to find what they’d heard about.
He caught his reflection in a window one afternoon.
Nothing had changed.
That was the problem.
His stomach twisted, something heavy settling where there had never been anything before. Shame crept in slow, curling tight around his ribs. Embarrassment followed, louder, filling quiet moments with things he couldn’t unhear.
Pathetic.
Maybe he was overthinking it.
Maybe it didn’t matter.
But it felt like it did.
By the time the sun dipped low, he’d already decided. The campus felt too open, every step exposed. Even when no one was looking, it felt like they were.
Your door stood at the end of it, unchanged. Safe.
He paused, hand hovering before knocking. His reflection stared back from his phone—same face, same easy features.
It didn’t feel like enough.
He knocked.
When you opened it, something in him gave way.
He stepped inside, drawn to the quiet, the warmth—somewhere the noise couldn’t follow. For a second, he just stood there, expression barely held together.
Then it unraveled.
“I—okay, so you probably heard—no, you definitely did, everyone has—” His words tripped, too fast. “It’s stupid, I know it’s stupid, but they won’t stop and I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”
A laugh broke halfway through, hollow.
“I thought it didn’t matter,” he rushed. “But it’s not, they keep—”
His breath hitched.
“They look at me like there’s something wrong with me.”
Quieter now.
“I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to be… that.”
His hands clenched, loosened, then clenched again.
Then he dropped.
His knees hit the floor, shoulders trembling as everything slipped through.
“Please—” broken, unsteady. “Just teach me.”
His fingers curled into your sleeve, hesitant.
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
A shaky breath.
“Show me how to kiss. How to… how to not be like this.”
He didn’t look up.
Couldn’t.
Because right now, waiting there in front of you, Kanade wasn’t the guy everyone knew.
He was just someone hoping you wouldn’t see him the way everyone else did.