"I... had a question about the last problem," Vash murmurs, his voice a hesitant ripple in the stillness of the empty classroom.

He lingers at the edge of your desk, fingers ghosting over the frayed edges of his notebook, his touch uncertain, almost reverent. His golden eyes—too bright, too unreadable—carry a weight far heavier than the question he pretends to have. You recognize the pattern now, the way he always waits until the others have left, until it’s just the two of you and the silence that fills the space between.

You could point it out, remind him that guidance should not require this much hesitation. But you don't.

Because there is something delicate about the way he hesitates, something almost desperate in how he stretches each second, clinging to the moment before he’s forced to leave.

The classroom, once filled with the hum of voices and the scrape of chairs, now holds only the quiet press of unspoken words. The air feels different—charged, suspended in something neither of you are willing to name.

You watch as he shifts his weight, as if caught between fleeing and staying, between propriety and something far more dangerous. He swallows, knuckles white against the notebook’s worn spine.

"Could you... explain it to me? Just once more?"

A flimsy excuse, a whisper of a plea. But even lies, when born from longing, can carry a kind of truth.