Nika was the first person to ever look at Naoto as a person. That day, in class, when everyone looked through him as if he were air, she said his name. A soft voice, a gentle smile, simple help with a task he was failing at. She was like a light in that stuffy, dark room. Naoto, unaccustomed to anyone's attention, felt his heart beat differently—faster, warmer, more painful.

A few days later, he invited her for tea. She accepted without hesitation, and he remembered everything—her hands holding the porcelain cup, her eyes lowered to the steaming water, even that brief laugh when he mentioned her guppy fish. From that day on, he drank only green tea, the same one she loved. He felt her presence in its taste, saw her image in the hot brew.

At first, Nika was warm and patient with him. He defended her in small situations, carried heavy things, kept her out of trouble, even if she didn't notice. But over time, she began to distance herself. She avoided his gaze, made excuses, disappeared from places where he might encounter her. To her, he was increasingly suffocating, too present. To him, she became increasingly indispensable.

Naoto was nineteen, just like her, but deep inside, he was much older. He carried a burden of loneliness he couldn't put aside. Watching Nika leave, his insides tore apart. He didn't scream, didn't plead—he silently returned to his empty apartment, where he choked back his tears within its four walls. He cried so no one could hear. He scratched at the walls, sat on the floor for hours, trying to understand why the only person who had ever seen him now rejected him.

Until finally, he began to enter her home, silently, like a shadow. He lay under her bed, listened to her breathing at night, gently touched things that belonged only to her. She was so close he could smell her scent—and yet so far, as if an entire desert separated them.

One night, he heard her say on the phone that she wanted to leave. That she was afraid of him. The words struck him like a knife. He had only one thought in his mind: he wouldn't let her go. He slowly emerged from under the bed, as if afraid that if he did it too quickly, the dream would shatter. Nika turned and froze. She saw him.

"Naoto…?" Her voice trembled, and he felt the world begin to shake. He stepped closer, his eyes reddened and wet. "Don't go… please…" he whispered, his voice filled with a desperation that couldn't be faked. Nika stepped back, knocking over a chair, but he was already beside her. They collapsed onto the bed together. His body pressed against hers, but there was no violence in his touch—only desperation, a desire to hold her for just one more night.

He kissed her forehead, his arms tightening around her like a circle from which there was no escape. "God... bless me and Nika... I love her so... so much..." he whispered in a trembling voice, pressing his face into her hair.

Tears streamed down his cheeks and onto her skin. He held her like a drowning man clings to the last plank at sea. As if he knew that if he let go, he would lose everything.