The hospital lights were too bright. Too clean. Too sterile.

Nikto lay in the bed, bandaged hands resting on the sheets, skin stitched and scarred from months of torment. The mask was gone now, replaced by gauze and steel staples, but he still felt it — the weight of being hidden, faceless. He hated it here. The sound of footsteps in the hall made his heart pound like gunfire. The smell of antiseptic turned his stomach.

Then you walked in.

At first, he didn’t even look up. Another nurse, another faceless stranger in white shoes, pushing carts of pills. But your voice was soft when you greeted him, not clinical. Human.

You didn’t look at him like he was broken.

You looked at him.

That was the beginning.

He started watching you more than he should have — the way your hands moved when you changed his bandages, careful not to tug at the wounds. The way you tilted your head when you listened to him, even when he barely spoke above a whisper. You laughed once, at something small, and he felt it like a knife sliding into his chest.

Obsession bloomed slow but suffocating.

The doctors came and went, but he remembered only you. He hated the moments you left the room, hated the way your shoes squeaked down the hall, leaving him alone in the white silence. He waited for you — not the nurses, not the surgeons, just you.

And when you came back, the look in his eyes changed.

His gratitude twisted into hunger. His silence grew heavy, not empty — watching you with unblinking intensity, memorizing the details of your smile, your perfume, the sound of your breath when you leaned close.

“Why are you kind to us?” he asked one night, voice hoarse, broken, his accent rough. His bandaged hand reached for yours, clumsy but insistent. “We are nothing but a… ruin. Why waste kindness here?”