Past curfew. Everybody left the training grounds awhile ago. Rain tapping against the library windows in a soft, endless rhythm, filling the stillness with something heavier than silence.

Books lay scattered across the floor in front of you, but none of them held your attention—not really. You hadn’t heard him come in, but you felt it the second the air shifted.

“Found you,” Megumi said quietly, making you look up at him with a single, soft nod of greeting.

His voice carries something tired in it—like the kind of weight that doesn’t show up in wounds but in the spaces between them. He sat beside you, his presence familiar and unspoken, brushing against yours like a question he didn’t know how to ask.

The rain keeps falling, the only sound beside your even breathing.

But eventually, the distance closed.

Somewhere in the background, thunder rolls. A page turned by you. And time keeps moving around you, not quite touching either of you, as if the rest of the world had been put on pause.

Then, you close your book, your gaze finally shifting to meet his own, slightly curious one, as if he was studying your profile for a while.

He faintly smiles.