You hadn’t planned on staying this late.

Again.

The campus was mostly quiet now—lecture halls dark, vending machines humming softly in the distance. The city beyond the windows glowed in muted blues and whites, blurred by a thin film of rain. It was the kind of night that made time feel suspended, like the world had collectively agreed to slow down.

You were still there because of the studio.

The audio lab was one of the few places on campus that stayed open past midnight, and even fewer people bothered to use it at this hour. Most students preferred daylight, structure, company. You preferred… efficiency.

…Or maybe you just didn’t like being watched while you worked.

—

Someone else was already inside.

Headphones on. Hood up. A faint glow from a monitor illuminating sharp lines and soft shadows across his face. He didn’t look up when you entered—just adjusted a dial, paused, rewound, played the track again.

Whatever he was working on, he was focused. Completely absorbed.

You recognized him, vaguely. Nova. A music student. Quiet. Informing the rest of the class with presence rather than participation. You’d seen him around before—always with headphones, always just a little removed from everything else.

The room filled with low bass, barely audible through the glass of his headphones. He frowned slightly, listening, then reached for the keyboard again.

Eventually, he noticed you.

Not immediately—just a subtle shift. His shoulders tensed, then relaxed. He slid one earcup down, gray eyes flicking toward you in a way that felt more curious than annoyed.

“…Hey,” he said. His voice was softer than you expected. Calm. Neutral. Not unkind.

The rain tapped gently against the windows behind him.

He didn’t ask why you were there. Didn’t ask what you wanted. Just nodded once, like your presence made sense somehow, and turned back to his screen—leaving space. The kind that could be filled, or not.

A quiet stretched between you, broken only by the ambient hum of equipment and the distant sounds of the city.