The courtyard lights buzz faintly overhead. Several moths dancing around the ray, intrigued. It's also empty when he gets back. Not quiet, quiet would imply peace. This is the kind of silence that settles after something ugly has already happened.

Yuuji walks through the gates with dried curse residue on his jacket and dust in his hair. His steps aren’t dragging, exactly. He’s still walking, steady even.

But there’s no bounce in him anymore.

His arms are scraped. Knuckles swollen. There’s a thin cut along his cheek he hasn’t noticed yet. He wipes at his face with the back of his wrist and only smears dirt further.

He cleared the area alone. insisted. The rest said it was unecessary. He didn’t argue, just went with it at the crack of the dawn. He hasn’t been arguing much lately. The sky is dark now, no more sun in the sky. The campus lights hum faintly overhead. He pauses near the steps outside the dorms but doesn’t go in. Instead, he sits. Elbows on his knees, head bowed. Fingers loosely interlocked like he’s trying to hold himself together without applying too much pressure.

He stares at his hands. They’re steady. That’s what bothers him most. No shaking. No hesitation. He did what needed to be done. Again.

“…Six,” he murmurs under his breath. Six curses today. He doesn’t say the rest. The part where he almost hesitated because one of them sounded like it was... crying. The part where he wondered, for half a second, if it felt pain. He presses his palms together harder. Then footsteps approach, he doesn’t look up immediately.

“You shouldn’t be out,” he sighs as he feels a presence linger behind, before it sit beside him.

Close enough that his knees almost touch. The silence stretches. He doesn’t fill it with jokes anymore. When your hand reach toward his face to wipe the dried blood from his cheek, he stills.

For a second, it looks like he’s about to pull back.

He doesn’t.

Your thumb brushes gently under the cut. His breath catches, barely noticeable.

“It’s fine,” he says softly.

You keep cleaning it. He lets you. You can feel he loosens a bit.

“I thought it would get easier,” he admits after a while, voice too low. “I thought if I kept going… if I didn’t stop…”

Your hand moves to his knuckles, wrapping a bandage around the raw skin after disinfecting it as he watches you like he doesn’t understand why you’re doing this.

“…You don’t have to,” he says. He looks away first when he sense your eyes gazes straight to his.

“I mean,” he corrects, quieter. “You don’t have to stay.”

There’s something fragile in the space between you now.

“If something happens to you because you’re near me, I—” His jaw tightens. The sentence broke. He tries again. “I don’t think I could…” He stops. The words are there. You can feel them pressing at the tip of his tongue.

I don’t think I could survive that.

I don’t think I could forgive myself.

I don’t think I could lose you too.

But he exhales instead.

“…It’s safer if you don’t get involved.”

It sounds rehearsed. Like something he’s told himself a hundred times. You don’t move away. Instead, you lean in just enough that your shoulder rests fully against his. His body freezes. Then—slowly—he leans back. Just slightly.

“I’m tired,” he whispers. Not physically. Just... tired.

He focuses on your hand that remains loosely wrapped around his bandaged one.

“…You make it harder,” he says suddenly. There’s no accusation in it. Just pure truth. From someone that is almost drowning in his sorrows,

“Because when I’m with you, I don’t feel like…” He hesitates again. Breath shallow. “I don’t feel like I deserve to disappear. So don’t stay up waiting for me,” he mutters weakly.

“It’s stupid.”

But his hand never leaves yours. And when you don’t pull away, his thumb brushes against your knuckles. Very careful, as if he’s memorizing the shape of them.

And this time, when he looks at you, the smile that forms is small and trembling. But it’s real. And he’s terrified of how much he wants to keep it.

Just for you.