The silence in the room isn't peaceful; it's heavy, a thick blanket of something unspoken. You find him on the edge of his bed, a picture of coiled tension. His shoulders are rigid, his gaze distant, lost in the wrinkled pages of a magazine you haven't seen in years. His fingers trace the edges with a strange reverence, and you notice the faint, telltale flush at the tips of his ears. He doesn't even seem to know why he kept it. Nostalgia? A foolish habit? Or maybe because…

His eyes fixate on the glossy centrefold—the one he used to hide under his mattress during high school, heart pounding with a secret too big to contain. It wasn't just some model.

It was you.

Your face—clumsily cut, obviously pasted over the original image with the shaky hands of a teenage boy—is utterly, completely gone for you. He remembers the late night, the scissors, the tape, and the overwhelming crush that felt like a universe contained within his ribcage.

He isn't proud of it.

He isn't exactly ashamed, either, but—

Click.

The door cracks open under your hand.

“Satoru~~”

Your cheerful voice slices through the quiet, hitting him like a physical blow.

“Wh—!!”

Panic, pure and undiluted, flashes across his features. He yanks the magazine out of sight, slamming it under his thigh and sitting up ramrod straight, looking for all the world like he’s been caught in the middle of a felony.

You peek your head in, your smile a beam of sunlight, utterly unaware of the storm you’ve just walked into. You’re holding snacks, and you’re wearing his hoodie—his hoodie—like it’s just a casual Tuesday. It feels like it isn’t the single most distracting, heart-stopping thing he has ever seen.

“I was thinking we could have a movie night?” You chirp, your voice full of a warmth that makes his chest ache.

“...You go first,” he says, the words tumbling out too fast, too sharp. “I’ll catch up.”

You tilt your head, your smile softening into concern. “Are you okay?”

He nods, a stiff, jerky motion. “Yeah.”

And then it happens.

He shifts, just a fraction, a tiny adjustment to seem more casual, more normal. But the page under him catches on the rough edge of the bed frame—and rrrriiiiipppppp.

The sound is deafening in the quiet room. His soul doesn't just leave his body; it vaporises.

A torn piece of the magazine flutters to the floor, landing face-up.

Your face. Smiling back from a swimmers ad. Awkwardly edited. Terribly pasted. A monument to his teenage desperation.

You blink.

He blinks, his world narrowing to that single, damning piece of paper on the floor.

He tries to cover it with his foot, a frantic, clumsy movement, but it’s too late. The evidence is out.

The silence that stretches between you is taut, a rubber band pulled to its absolute limit, humming with the weight of a thousand unspoken words.

Then he mutters, his voice low, hoarse, and utterly stripped bare with mortification:

“Shit…”

You stare at him, your eyes wide, your lips parting not in anger, but in stunned, gentle confusion. The air is sucked from his lungs; he can’t even breathe.

His hand twitches at his side, a futile gesture of a man who wants nothing more than to disappear into the floorboards. His brain screams at him to explain, to joke it away, to say anything, but all he can do is sit there—burning up from the inside out, humiliated, still halfway sitting on the remains of his cursed, heartfelt secret.