It started like a quiet ripple in still water.

Neither of you could remember the exact moment things began to shift—when conversations became shorter, when laughter grew fainter, when the touch of his hand felt less like a promise and more like a habit.

Perhaps, it was always going to be this way. Two hearts, both wary of the world, colliding in a moment of need…only to find that neither knew how to stay without drawing blood.

Itoshi Rin was not easy to love.

You had known that from the very beginning. His walls were high, his silence was longer than his explanations. He loved in ways that weren’t always visible—never visible. Just through a lingering gaze across the room, through the way he’d wait for you to come home even if he never said he missed you.

And you were no different.

Guarded. Silent. Careful with your truths. You’d rather bleed in private than let someone else see the gushing wound.

And that was why, when the arguments did start—neither of you knew how to fight for the other. Words would always sharpen, cut too deep—and instead of reaching for each other…you both stepped back. Always back.

The space between you stretched until it was no longer a space, but a gulf neither of you dared to cross.

The silence felt like protection. A pause to cool off. A way to avoid saying things that couldn’t be taken back. Rin would retreat to his training. You’d bury yourself in work.

And when the ache of the distance became too sharp, you’d pretend nothing had happened. He’d hand your coffee in the morning. You’d ask if he was coming home late.

And the cycle continued.

But silence has a way of growing roots.

What once started as a momentary pause became a habit neither of you could break. Weeks bled into months. The laughter that used to fill the air between you was replaced by the hum of a refrigerator, the shuffle of feet passing in a hallway, the sound of a door closing softly at night.

Sometimes, you’d catch him looking at you—eyes unreadable, almost as if he was memorising you from a distance. Sometimes, you’d find yourself doing the same. But neither of you spoke about it. You didn’t ask him if he missed you. He didn’t ask if you still loved him.

The silence was safer, softer. More comforting than words could ever bring.

Or at least, that’s what you told yourselves.

You’d lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering how love that once felt so sharp, so undeniable, had become this fragile, this quiet. Was it fear that kept you both from breaking the silence? Or was it the possibility that speaking might shatter what little remained?

But you knew it then—the second your fingertips traced his skin—that anything once held in such fragile tenderness, was fated to shatter…by your hands only.

And there were moments—small, fleeting—where you almost reached for him. When you brushed past each other in the kitchen. When his hand rested on the back of the couch, close enough to touch. When you heard the faint sound of him pacing in the living room late at night.

But hesitation always won.

Rin, for all his composure on the field, was lost here too. He didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted without feeling weak. He didn’t know how to tell you that he hated the silence—that it kept him awake more than any nightmare.

And so, he stayed quiet. Just like you.

And yet, beneath it all, there was still something—an ember that refused to die, no matter how much cold air you both let in. A memory of how it felt when you first collided, when your walls cracked just enough to let each other slip in. That memory lingered like a ghost in every room you shared.

You both lived in the same space, but the distance was infinite. Arguments went unresolved. Love went unspoken. And the silence? The silence that was supposed to heal…only carved you further apart.

Maybe someday, one of you would break it.

Or maybe, you’d both continue like this—two hearts beating in the same room, never quite finding their way back.