Rin POV:
I walked away from the library without looking back. That was one of my rules. Never look back. Looking back is a form of hesitation, and hesitation is a crack in the armor.
My footsteps were loud in the empty hallway, each one a neat, solid thud on the linoleum. Orderly. Predictable. The way things were supposed to be. But inside my chest, my heartbeat was a mess. A jumbled, syncopated rhythm that didn't belong to me. It was from the library. From the silence that had stretched between me and the boy by the window.
Next time, don't let yourself get surrounded like that.
The words echoed in my head, my own voice sounding foreign and strange. It had been an order. A simple, logical piece of advice. So why did it feel like I'd left a part of myself on that desk, right next to his worn-out book?
The sun was a dying ember, smearing streaks of orange and deep violet across the sky as I walked the familiar route home. Streetlights flickered on one by one, their artificial gold failing to chase away the encroaching blue of twilight. A train rattled on a distant track, a lonely sound. The last of the summer cicadas screamed from the trees, a high, desperate static pressed against the cooling glass of the evening.
Everything was loud. Everything was unsettled.
I only stepped in because they were an inefficient variable. That's what I told myself. Three idiots making a scene, disrupting the school's ecosystem. Dealing with them was a simple matter of pest control. It had nothing to do with him. Amamiya.
But my mind betrayed me. It didn't replay the moment I'd scattered the delinquents. It didn't replay the satisfying crunch I'd imagined my fist making against a jawbone.
It replayed his eyes.
Dark, quiet, and unnervingly calm. They weren't the eyes of a victim. They were the eyes of an observer. When he'd looked at me in the library, he hadn't flinched. He hadn't fawned. He hadn't recoiled from the "Iron Queen." He had just… looked. At me. Rin Kanzaki. Not the myth, but the girl standing there in a stuffy school uniform, holding his book.
For the first time in a long time, I felt seen.
And it was terrifying.
My house was as quiet as the library, but without the comfort.
I slid the front door open. "I'm home." The words were a formality, absorbed by the stillness.
From the living room, the low murmur of a television quiz show. "Welcome back, Rin-chan," my aunt's voice drifted out, warm but distant, a radio playing in another room. "Dinner's on the table for you."
She was a kind woman. She'd taken me in when… well, after. She never asked too many questions, never pushed. She gave me space. So much space that my entire world had become a vacuum.
On the dining table, a plate of grilled fish and rice was covered in plastic wrap next to a small, folded note with her neat handwriting. Have to work late tonight. Don't wait up! ♡
The heart symbol felt like it was written in a different language.
I ate alone, the only sounds the click of my chopsticks against the ceramic bowl and the muffled, enthusiastic shouting from the TV. Dad used to say that a fighter eats for fuel, not for flavor. I'd taken that to heart. Every meal was an exercise in efficiency.
My room was my fortress. A bed, a desk, a bookshelf with texts on kinesiology and anatomy, and a single, framed photo on my nightstand, turned face down. The walls were bare. The floor was spotless. It was a space I could control completely.
My routine was the steel framework that held me together. Homework. One hundred push-ups. One hundred sit-ups. Thirty minutes of stretching. A cold shower. Clockwork.
Discipline was my shield. It was something I'd learned early on. I started martial arts when I was six. Not because I was passionate, not because I wanted to be strong. But because the world had shown me, in one swift, brutal lesson, that it was a place of chaos. And the only defense against chaos was to build a world of your own so rigid it could never be broken into.
So I kept everyone out. It was safer that way. People were unpredictable. They had needs. They had expectations. They had feelings that could shatter like glass. I had control over my body, my schedule, my grades. I had no control over people.
I sat on the edge of my bed, the silence of the room pressing in on me. I tried to focus on the familiar burn in my muscles, the clean, cold feeling after my shower.
But the silence was different tonight. It had a shape. The shape of a pale boy with ink-stained fingers and eyes that held no fear.
He hadn't been afraid of me. And he hadn't tried to get closer. He simply existed in my presence, a stillness that somehow resonated with my own. He was a paradox, and my mind, which craved order and logic, couldn't file him away. He was a loose thread, and I had the sudden, infuriating urge to pull on it.
My mind drifted back. To the library.
I saw it again, with a strange, sharp clarity. The weight of his book in my hand. The spine was soft, the corners frayed. It was a book that had been read, and reread, and loved. I remembered thinking it was a fragile thing.
When I'd placed it on the desk, the sunlight from the window had cut across the dark wood, illuminating a universe of dust motes dancing in the air. Time had seemed to slow down, the ambient hum of the school fading into nothing.
He had looked up. His eyes, for a moment, held a flicker of surprise. Not at me, the "Iron Queen," but at the book. As if he were surprised it had found its way back to him.
"...You kept it?"
His voice was soft. Not weak, but soft. It didn't try to fill the space. It respected it.
Data point: Subject shows gratitude, but it is expressed as a question, indicating surprise at the act of kindness itself.
That's how I'd processed it at the moment. A simple, detached observation. But now, sitting in the sterile quiet of my room, the memory felt heavier. Warmer.
He didn't make excuses for being cornered. He didn't gush with thanks. He just met my gaze and said what was true. I didn't expect that.
Honesty. It was a rare currency. And it unsettled me far more than any display of fear ever could.
The quiet in my room was becoming too loud. The walls felt like they were closing in. I needed air. I needed to move.
I grabbed my wallet and keys and slipped out of the house, the night air a cool balm on my skin.
The convenience store near the station was an island of harsh, fluorescent light in the dark. It smelled of instant ramen, sterile floor cleaner, and the low, electric hum of the refrigerated coolers. It was a place of pure function. No pretense. I liked it.
I was reaching for a bottle of cold green tea when I heard it.
A cough.
It was low and ragged, ending in a sharp, painful hitch. A sound that tried to hide itself.
My head snapped up.
A few aisles over, behind a display of potato chips, I saw him.
It was Yuuto Amamiya. He was slumped against a magazine rack, his face pale and slick with a thin sheen of sweat under the unforgiving lights. His school bag was pooled at his feet. He looked like a puppet with its strings cut.
The store clerk, a tired-looking university student, was already moving toward him. "Amamiya-kun? You okay? Is it happening again?"
The clerk's tone was casual. Concerned, but routine. This wasn't a one-time event. This was a pattern.
"I'm… fine," Yuuto breathed, his voice thin and reedy. "Just… got a little dizzy." He pressed a hand to his chest, his knuckles white.
I froze. My hand was still outstretched, inches from the cold plastic of the tea bottle. I was hidden by the beverage aisle, an unintentional observer. My first instinct, the one honed by years of discipline, was to turn and leave. This was not my problem. This was a complication I didn't need.
But I didn't move.
I watched as the clerk helped him to a small stool behind the counter and handed him a bottle of water. I saw the tremor in Yuuto's hands as he tried to twist the cap. I heard the shallow, uneven rhythm of his breathing.
This was the boy who had faced me without fear. The boy with the quiet, steady eyes. And here he was, unraveling under the buzzing lights of a conbini.
Something inside me shifted. It wasn't pity. It was… recognition. The sight of someone fighting a battle alone, trying to pretend the walls weren't closing in.
My feet moved before my brain gave the order.
I rounded the aisle. The clerk looked up, startled to see me. Yuuto's head was down, his dark hair hiding his face. I stopped in front of the counter.
I reached out, took the water bottle from his trembling hands, and twisted the cap open with a sharp crack of plastic. I pushed it back into his hand.
He finally looked up. His eyes were unfocused, clouded with pain, but they widened slightly when they registered my face.
"Kanzaki… san?"
"You're a mess," I said. The words came out blunt, devoid of softness. It was the only language I knew.
He seemed to shrink into himself. "Sorry to… be a bother."
"Don't apologize," I said, the command sharp. "Just breathe."
We stayed like that for a long moment, the only sound the hum of the freezers and Yuuto's slow, ragged breaths.
When some of the color had returned to his face, he tried to stand. He wobbled.
"I can walk you," I said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
"You don't have to," he protested weakly.
"My house is in the same direction." It was a lie. He lived three blocks in the opposite direction of the station, away from my place. I didn't know why I said it.
He was too tired to argue. He just gave a small, defeated nod.
The walk was quiet. The streets were empty, bathed in the orange glow of the sodium lamps. Our footsteps were out of sync. Mine, steady and even. His, punctuated by a slight, almost imperceptible limp he was trying hard to hide.
I consciously slowed my pace, matching his uneven rhythm. The feeling was alien. I always walked alone, at my own speed. Adapting to someone else's felt like learning a new language.
The silence between us wasn't awkward like it was with other people. It was… full. Weighted. I was hyper-aware of everything. The way he kept his shoulders hunched, as if trying to make himself smaller. The way his breath would catch every few steps. I filed the information away, not as a list of weaknesses, but as facts. Indisputable facts about the boy walking next to me.
For the first time in my life, I didn't want the silence to end.
We stopped in front of a small, neat house with a well-tended garden. A light was on in the window.
"This is me," he said, his voice still a little rough. He turned to face me. "Thank you, Kanzaki-san. Really. For… everything."
Gratitude. It was like a physical weight. It implied a debt. It implied a connection I wasn't ready for. I needed to cut it off.
I looked at his front door, then back at his pale face. My own armor, my own rules, felt thin and useless.
"Just try not to fall over on your own doorstep."