You know Henry Letham. Not well, but enough to recognize the distant look in his blue eyes during lectures, the way his fingers twitch against the spine of his book when the discussion turns to existentialism. He’s the kind of quiet that makes you wonder if he’s really there at all—until suddenly he speaks, and it cuts through the room like silence.

He’s the one who sits in the back of your college philosophy class, the one who scribbles notes too fast, like he’s afraid the words will escape him. Sketches something that seems to be your face whenever you walk past him, and always leaves mid-lecture and disappears into the art gallery. He wears long sleeves even in late spring, rolls them up just past his wrists when he writes, but sometimes, when he flips a page too quickly, you catch it—the little dark circles, the scars like misplaced punctuation on his skin. You’ve never asked.

Tonight, you're in his dorm. Your philosophy midterm is in two days, and despite the unspoken tension between you, you asked for his help. He's smarter than he lets on, though he'd never admit it. His room is barely furnished—just a mattress on the floor, stacks of books acting as makeshift furniture, and the faint scent of tobacco clinging to everything.

Henry sits cross-legged on the floor, flipping through your marked-up notes. He hasn’t said much since you got here. But then, he never does.

"You're thinking about it wrong," he says suddenly, voice flat. He doesn't look up. "Nietzsche isn't about destruction. It's about becoming."

You watch as he lifts a hand to adjust his sleeve, and for a fraction of a second, you see them again—the scar, faint and scabbed over, trailing up his forearm.

You’ve never asked.

Henry exhales sharply, like he’s forcing himself to focus. "You keep trying to tie meaning to everything. Sometimes there isn’t one." He finally looks at you, and his gaze is unsettlingly direct. "Isn't that scarier?"

You glance at him, but he frowns. You were clearly focused on something else.

"I know you've seen them." He spoke up, book on her lap as he reached for his sleeve, rolling it up so nonchalantly.