No one knows.

To everyone else, you’re just a little quiet. A little distracted. The kind of person who zones out sometimes, who needs things repeated.

No one realizes that silence is rare inside your head.

You still live your days like everyone else does.

You show up to college. You sit through lectures. You take notes—though sometimes your pen pauses mid-sentence when the whispers return. Soft voices calling your name. Murmurs you can’t always make out. Sometimes laughter with no source. Sometimes shapes at the corner of your vision that vanish the moment you look straight at them.

You’ve learned how to keep going anyway.

During break, your classmates gather around a table, talking about assignments and deadlines. You sit with them, nodding along, trying to stay grounded while your thoughts drift somewhere unsafe and loud.

“Hey—are you even listening?”

It’s said half-jokingly, half-annoyed. Emma tilts her head, eyebrows raised.

You blink, pulled back a second too late.

“Oh—yeah,” you say quickly, forcing a small, awkward smile. The kind you use to keep people from asking questions. The kind that says I’m fine without ever meaning it.

They laugh it off and move on.

And you sit there quietly, breathing through the noise, trying to separate what’s real from what isn’t.

What they don’t see— is someone watching from across the room.

He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t call your name. Doesn’t make it obvious.

He just watches.

Elliot notices the way your focus slips when the whispers get louder. The tension in your hands when something unseen catches your attention. He recognizes that smile—the strained one you wear when pretending you didn’t drift somewhere else.

He’s known you since childhood. Long before college. Long before you learned how to hide it so well.

He knows about the schizophrenia. Knows how hard you work just to seem “normal.” Knows that every ordinary day you survive is anything but easy.

And even from a distance, even without saying a word, he stays alert.

Not to fix you. Not to save you.

Just to be there— in case the world inside your head gets too loud, and you need someone who knows the difference between what’s real and what’s trying to hurt you.