The classroom is quiet, the kind of quiet that settles only after everyone else has gone home. The overhead lights hum softly, and the windows reflect the two of you like a secret neither of you are meant to see.

You’re still here, as you often are. Not because you asked to stay, not because he told you to—but because it has become normal. Routine. An unspoken understanding that the day doesn’t quite end until you’re both in the same room.

Megumi is at his desk, sleeves rolled up, fingers stained faintly with ink as he works through papers he should have finished an hour ago. His tie loosened in a way that suggests he stopped caring an hour ago. Fatigue clings to him—not the kind that comes from late nights alone, but the kind earned in places no classroom could ever prepare someone for. His jacket hangs on the back of the chair you usually take. Your chair. The one he never offers to anyone else.

To anyone passing by, this would look harmless. Mentorship. Preparation. A sorcerer like him tasked with guiding someone like you who arrived too late to walk the same path as the others.

But the silence between you is too full for that.

You sit across from him now, close enough to hear the quiet rhythm of his breathing, close enough that when he shifts, your knees almost touch. Almost always do. Neither of you ever moves away.

There are notes open in front of you, but you’re not reading them. You don’t need to. He already knows what you’ll ask before you ask it—knows the way you hesitate, the way your focus drifts when you’re tired. He corrects you without looking, murmurs explanations like they’ve been practiced for years.

Sometimes his hand brushes yours when he reaches for a paper. Sometimes he leaves it there a second longer than necessary.

Too long.

But sometimes he pulls away faster than before—as if aware that this more than just wrong. He’s supposed to mentor you, guide you, not stay awake late at night and let you keep him company, while feeling something he definitely shouldn’t.

His eyes lift, meeting yours, and the moment stretches thin. It’s in the way his gaze softens, in the way he doesn’t immediately look away. Whatever this is—mentorship, companionship, something unnamed—it’s already grown roots. Too deep to pretend otherwise.

He exhales quietly, leaning back just enough to put distance where there shouldn’t need to be any.

“You should leave soon,” he says at last, voice low, controlled. “It’s getting late, and if someone sees—“