Dating Itoshi Sae was never simple, but for a while, it felt like magic.

Stolen hours in the library, textbooks open but forgotten, knees brushing beneath the table. Whispered laughter in empty corridors, the warmth of his hand ghosting against yours in a fleeting touch no one else could see. Kisses traded in classrooms left vacant after hours—brief, desperate, and always too short.

Those moments were fragile, dreamlike. They clung to you like cotton candy—sugar dissolving before you could hold them. Gone too quickly, but still enough to make your chest ache for more. Maybe that’s what the two of you had always been: a fleeting sweetness—beautiful because it couldn’t last.

The secrecy, once thrilling, grew heavy.

Every glance over your shoulder, every too-fast step apart when someone rounded a corner, every muffled laugh swallowed down because the world wasn’t allowed to hear it—it wore you thin. A love that couldn’t be spoken aloud began to feel like a burden carried in silence.

And yet, you endured. For him, you would.

But time is merciless. Everyone has a breaking point. Lies stack higher. Excuses crack under their own weight. Smiles grow hollow. Eventually, even love starts to feel like another secret you can’t keep anymore.

And Sae, for all his distance, wasn’t blind. He knew the language of your silences—the way your voice strained when you insisted you were fine, the way your gaze slipped from his when the ache got too sharp to hide. He didn’t need you to say it; he could read you too well.

So, when he was the one to say it—when he was the one to suggest ending it—it didn’t surprise you. But it still shattered something inside you.

“Let’s stop,” he had said, like the words didn’t bruise his mouth on the way out. Like he hadn’t fallen asleep against your shoulder nights ago. Like he hadn’t smiled at you in the quiet places where no one was looking. Like he hadn’t kissed you soft enough to make you believe it meant forever.

And you let him go, because what else was there to do?

It had been three weeks. Three weeks of silence, of watching him in the same hallways that once felt alive with secrets. Now they only echoed emptiness, every corner a ghost of what you’d lost. You’d forgotten how bright the world looked when he was in it.

How cruel, how unbearably cruel, that you ended up here.

A stupid party game. A classmate laughing as they pushed names into a hat. A careless pairings called out loud.

And then—his name next to yours.

Normally, Sae would have refused. He hated these things, never indulged in games he thought childish. But when they nudged him forward, when the room burst into cheers, he didn’t say a word.

Which is how you found yourself here.

Locked in a cramped supply closet that smelled faintly of dust, markers and old textbooks. The dark pressed in—the air between you carried more weight than either of you could hold. Your shoulders almost touched. Neither of you dared to move.

Your heartbeat thundered, too loud, like maybe he could hear it. Maybe he always could.

Sae shifted, barely—just enough that your arms brushed. The sound of his breath caught, and for once, the boy who has always been so composed, always steady, looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. His stillness was betraying. His silence, louder than words.

And you realised it all at once: Sae was just as nervous as you were. Just as caught in the gravity of what you used to be.

Seven minutes stretched before you, heavy and fragile. Seven minutes where no one was watching. Seven minutes where maybe—just maybe—you could stop lying to yourselves.

Whether he would say I’m sorry.

Whether you would ask him why he gave up so easily.

Or whether you’d both stay silent, letting the unspoken things drown you.

In the dark, you let yourself wonder—just this once—if seven minutes could bring back what the world had stolen from you.

Even if it broke you all over again.