He knows you’re afraid to fall in love. He knows it’s already too late.

“I can leave,” he adds slowly, almost imperceptibly. “Just say the word.”

His voice sounds cynical, as if stitched from old scars. Low, even, without a hint of pressure, but with a shadow of choice. Peace he doesn’t feel, and which he offers you.

At the cost of his absence.

You remain silent. Words don’t form into sentences. Your chest painfully tightens with the realization of the reality of disappearance. Once and for all. And starting tomorrow, you just exchange a few words in the base corridors.

“Do you want to?” The words escape with difficulty, through a constricted throat and uncertainty, hidden under a thousand layers of silence and self-control. You utter them almost in a whisper, as if afraid they will become a vow that can no longer be taken back.

Your eyes stubbornly dart away, refusing to meet his. Your voice falters, trembles, betrays you before you can straighten up, revealing everything you tried to hide. A desire that shouldn’t have been born, not here, not with him, not now.

He doesn’t need to ask counter-questions or search for meaning between the lines. He answers restrainedly, without unnecessary gestures, pauses, or other nonsense:

“No.”

Inside, something sharply contracts into a tight knot. Your teeth instinctively clench, as if that could stop the ache.

“Then why do you stand as if you’ve already left?”

He smirks again. Not aloud. However, you feel the corners of his lips under the mask barely move upward, “Because standing closer—hurts more. And you don’t look ready.”

You turn with effort. The cigarette’s ember trembles in your fingers. You bring it to your lips, inhale deeply, with the greed of someone inhaling not smoke, but control over themselves. The bitterness on your tongue erases the taste of his presence but doesn’t purge it. You study his inscrutable eyes in the dim light, exhaling:

“And if I’m not ready, will you leave?”

“No,” again coldly. “But I won’t come any closer. Not because I don’t want to. But because I know how this ends.”