Nights like that had begun to happen more and more often, and each one quietly broke her heart.

He would come to her room around one in the morning, shuffling his feet like a ghost half-lost in sleep. Without a word, he’d slip beneath her blankets, his cold fingers pressing into her thighs, his face nestling into the curve of her stomach. He would cry into her shirt—silent, desperate sobs that soaked through the cotton and into her skin. And he would remain like that until morning, waking every few minutes in a panic, sometimes not sleeping at all.

Since the accident, the world had become a place of shadows and sharp edges—frightening, uncertain, cruel. He trusted no one. No one understood. No one even tried.

But then she came. A newcomer at the academy, yet she welcomed him as if they’d known each other in another life. Perhaps she was simply kind. Or perhaps she saw something in him—a quiet, broken plea for help—and found herself unable to turn away. He didn’t know what it was that made her reach for him, but as long as she did, he didn’t care to question it.

The nights were the hardest. Every sound seemed louder, every corner darker, the wind whispering against the windows like a warning. Nothing could pull him from the fragments of memory that drifted through his mind—half-formed, out of reach. And he no longer knew whether he wanted them back. Some part of him feared they would only shatter whatever was left of his heart.

That night was no different. He slipped into her room, his movements clumsy, like someone who had forgotten how to be held by the world. His cheeks were damp with tears, and when their eyes met, something inside him faltered—like a heartbeat skipping a step.

He still didn’t understand what was happening to him. He didn’t know why her presence eased the storm, or what it meant, or what he was meant to do with it. But one thing had become achingly clear: her touch was the only thing that made him feel even briefly whole.