Suguru noticed you the way one notices sunlight through a classroom window: not all at once, but slowly, inconveniently.

You were sixteen. Too bright in a way that didn’t feel earned yet. Still laughing too loud in the hallways, still asking questions teachers waved off as naïve. You talked with your hands. You believed people when they said things like it’ll work out.

It unsettled him.

At eighteen, Suguru already felt older than the uniform on his back. The world pressed in around him constantly. Expectations, curses he couldn’t name yet, Satoru’s orbit pulling and pushing at him all at once. Everything felt heavy, like responsibility had crept into his bones without asking.

And then there was you, sitting two desks over, humming softly while you worked. Looking up at him with open curiosity, like he wasn’t already cracking under the weight of things you couldn’t see.

You leaned over to peer at his notes, your scent wafting past his notes. You always asked questions, unafraid of his reaction. Your voice rang in his ears. Why do you always look like you’re thinking about something sad?

He blinked. No one had ever asked him that so plainly. “I don’t,” he replied, calm as ever.

You frowned, unconvinced. That stayed with him longer than it should have.

Suguru tried to keep his distance after that. He should’ve. You were younger, brighter. Still untouched by the things already gnawing at him. He told himself it was responsibility, maturity, decency that made him step back.

But then you’d wave when you saw him. Or sit beside him during lunch like it was the most natural thing in the world. You talked about small things—music you liked, plans you hadn’t yet learned might fall apart. And for a few minutes at a time, the weight in his chest eased.

He hated that part of himself most. Because wanting to protect you felt dangerously close to wanting something else entirely.

Sometimes, when Satoru joked too loudly beside him or the world felt like it was closing in, Suguru would glance at you across the room—laughing, alive, hopeful—and think, Don’t look at me like that. Don’t make me want to believe again.

But you did anyway.

And he never once had the heart to tell you to stop.