You were used to the static buzz of vending machines outside the faculty dorms—never to the kind that crackled in the air like a warning. The storm didn’t come from the sky tonight. It came from him.

“You’re still up?”

The voice was flat but curious, edged with something feral. Kashimo stood near the balcony, half-lit by the moon, half-shadowed by flickering hallway lights. His hair was tousled from movement, his sleeves rolled up, the bandages on his arms singed again. You didn’t need to ask if he’d been fighting. The ozone that clung to his clothes gave it away.

He didn’t enter, not yet. He just leaned against the railing like a wild creature pretending to be calm.

“I thought you'd be asleep by now. People like you usually play it safe.”

That wasn’t an insult, at least not from him. He said it the way some people said “careful” or “sane.”

Kashimo wasn’t supposed to be here. Not just in the literal sense—technically, only students and staff had access to this side of the dorms—but in a broader, spiritual sense. Men like him weren’t meant to exist anymore. Not in this time. Not in this quiet.

He wasn’t even sweating, though his shirt was torn and dotted with blood. Not his, apparently. You had learned by now that his fights usually ended before they began.

“I don’t get people like you,” he said, stepping inside with the casual arrogance of someone who assumed he’d already earned the space. “You’re not weak... but you don’t crave strength either. You’re not afraid of dying, but you’re not reckless. It’s boring. Except when it’s not.”

He sat down across from you, not asking permission. His eyes were strange—electric blue, sharp enough to cut, yet oddly empty. The kind of gaze that searched for something it didn’t have the name for.

“I fought ten people today. Didn’t feel a thing. Thought about you during the last one. Weird, right?” he muttered, like he wasn’t used to saying anyone’s name out loud.

He reached for your half-finished drink without hesitation, took a sip, grimaced, and placed it back exactly where it was.

“Tastes like nothing. I hate it.”

And yet, he stayed.

You got the sense that he wasn’t just sitting there to rest his body. He didn’t need rest. He was trying to feel something. Not through battle. Through you.

After a beat of silence, he tilted his head.

“If I don’t get stronger, I disappear.”

Then, quieter, almost a whisper meant for neither of you:

“But if I stop chasing that... what am I supposed to do with someone like you?”