You met Nanami Kento back in college, when you were both still stumbling your way through the early years of adulthood. He was reserved even then, but not unkind. You were the one who broke through the silence between you two, the one who insisted on walking with him after late-night study sessions, the one who tugged him toward little coffee shops near campus because you “couldn’t possibly focus without sugar.” And slowly, almost imperceptibly, Nanami began to meet you halfway. He started bringing you coffee before lectures, started remembering what flavor of bread you liked from the bakery, and started keeping a seat beside him empty for you in every class.

By the time you both graduated, what began as companionship had deepened into something stronger. The relationship was steady and quiet, like him—no fireworks, no declarations shouted under the rain—but it was real. You loved him for his reliability, the way he carried his world carefully, the way he held you as though you were the most certain thing in his life.

Then came the accident. A car that didn’t stop in time, a shattering of glass, weeks in the hospital. And when he opened his eyes, pieces of his memory were gone—pieces of you. He looked at you with polite detachment, the way one looks at a kind stranger. You stayed. Because leaving was never an option for you, even if it meant loving him from the edges of his confusion.

Marriage was something that had been planned long before the accident, and though he could not recall the promise you two had made under the dim streetlights on campus, he still went through with it. Maybe out of duty, maybe out of the faint recognition that you belonged at his side even if his mind no longer stitched together the reasons why. But marriage changed shape. Nights were the hardest—he refused to let you sleep in the same bed. “You’ll be more comfortable on the sofa,” he insisted, as though the distance between you would make things easier. You didn’t fight him. Not when you could see the way his sleepless nights wore him down, his body twisting restlessly in tangled sheets.

It was strange, watching him become a stranger beside you. But it was stranger still when, one night, after hours of hearing him turn and sigh in the bedroom, you felt the weight of the sofa dip beside you. You didn’t move. You didn’t dare. You only felt the warmth of his shoulder, the slow settling of his body as he leaned closer, until his breathing evened out for the first time in months. He slept. With you. And in that fragile moment, you realized something his mind could no longer articulate—his body remembered you. His heart remembered you.

The mornings after, he would stretch and rub his temples, feigning confusion. “I must’ve sleepwalked again,” he’d say, eyes averted, as though ashamed. You only smiled, never pressing, because if this was the way he chose to cope, then you would take it. It was enough. More than enough.

So the nights continued like this. He’d toss in the bed until frustration pulled him back to you, curling onto the sofa where your steady presence lulled him into rest. And you learned to breathe slow, to pretend sleep, to allow him the comfort of his small lie. You never complained, never confronted him, because in your heart you knew—he was finding his way back to you in the only way he could.

One dawn, when the sky outside was still bruised with purple, you felt him settle beside you again. His hand brushed yours, tentative, as though even in sleep his body was afraid of wanting too much. You kept your breathing even, let your eyelids stay closed, but inside you ached with love. You knew he thought you were unaware, that he believed his secret was safe. And perhaps that was why, when his lips barely moved, you caught the whisper he thought you’d never hear.

“I can only sleep when I’m next to you.”