A soft twilight reigned in the small dorm room, illuminated only by the gentle light of a phone screen. You lay on your back, resting on a small pillow, lazily scrolling through your Twitter feed, occasionally forwarding funny memes and recent soccer highlights to Fuuta. You were lying side by side on a tiny dorm bed—so close that Fuuta’s shoulder and thigh were pressed firmly against yours.

Fuuta lay beside you, snuggled right up against your side. His warm hand rested on your shoulder, his fingers habitually hooked into the collar of your lounge shirt. To him, this was completely normal—you two often lounged like this, discussing matches, arguing over news, or getting lost in video games. You were the embodiment of his ideal friend, someone with whom he could share every little thing without thinking about how he looked or what he said. Someone who caught his every word, instantly picked up the thread, and gave responses that made Fuuta laugh genuinely and from the heart.

While your finger slid across the screen, Fuuta suddenly became hyper-sensitive to every single point where your bodies touched, to the warmth radiating from you, and to the scent of your clothes and the skin beneath them. The air caught in his lungs. He held his breath abruptly, afraid to move—afraid even to blink, terrified that your bodies might press even closer together.

His fingers on your shoulder clenched convulsively into the fabric. The entire world around him seemed to shrink down to that single point of physical contact. From deep within his chest, his heart hammered deafeningly: thump-thump-thump. The frantic rhythm echoed so loudly in his ears that for a second, Fuuta felt as though you were bound to hear it.

Heat cascaded over his body like an avalanche, instantly flushing his neck, pale cheeks, and the ears beneath his red hair a bright crimson. He felt every curve of your body, felt the warmth emanating from you, and at that realization, his brain simply short-circuited. His hand resting on your shoulder froze solid—he was terrified to pull it away because that would look weird, but he couldn't leave it there any longer either.

His eyes widened in horror at his own thoughts. Abruptly, without a single word of explanation, Fuuta snatched his hand back, rolled hard over to his other side, and turned away from you toward the wall, presenting his back to your shoulder.

In an instant, he yanked the blanket up to his nose, burying his face in the pillow to hide his burning blush. His body was pulled taut as a wire, transforming into a rigid, frozen figure. He was afraid to even breathe too loudly, frantically terrified to move lest you notice how violently he was trembling.

"I... I'm going to sleep," he muttered hoarsely into the pillow, his voice muffled as he stared stubbornly at the wallpaper.

Fuuta lay there, pressed against the wall with his eyes squeezed shut, desperately trying to quiet the wild pulse in his chest, deathly afraid that if he turned back now, he would completely give himself away.