Kian didn't fall in love all at once.
He fell the way people do in worlds like this—carefully, unwillingly, like stepping onto thin ice while telling yourself you'll only stay for a second.
It started with habit.
He waited for me every morning near the station, even when he pretended he wasn't. He remembered how I took my tea—too sweet, barely warm. He learned the sound of my footsteps and looked up before I spoke.
"You're late," he said one day.
I checked the time. "By five minutes."
He shrugged. "That's late here."
I smiled, and for a moment, the city didn't feel so heavy.
Then it became protection.
When someone shouted at me in the market, Kian stepped forward without thinking. When I coughed from the cold, he gave me his jacket and complained the whole time about how dramatic I was being.
"You'll get sick," I said.
"So will you," he replied. "At least I'm used to it."
I hated how easily he offered pieces of himself.
One night, the rain turned violent. The kind that floods streets and drowns sounds. We were trapped inside a small room above a closed shop, the windows rattling like they might shatter.
Kian sat on the floor, back against the wall, staring at his hands.
"Do you ever think about leaving?" I asked quietly.
He laughed once. "Every day."
"But you don't."
"No." He glanced at me. "Not anymore."
The words hung in the air, fragile and terrifying.
I felt the pull then—not strong, not urgent, but present. Like a distant ache. A reminder that this wasn't where I was meant to stay.
"You shouldn't do that," I said softly.
"Do what?"
"Anchor yourself to me."
He frowned. "You talk like you're temporary."
I didn't answer.
Silence stretched between us, thick with things unsaid.
Later that night, I woke to find him sitting beside the window, watching the rain.
"You're afraid," he said without turning around.
"Yes."
"Of this world?"
I hesitated. "Of what I do to people."
That made him turn.
His eyes were softer than I expected. "You didn't do this to me," he said. "This place did."
"But I made it worse."
He shook his head. "You made it survivable."
Something in his voice broke me.
The next morning, the city felt different. Sharper. Louder. Like it was pushing back. Sirens wailed in the distance. The ground trembled faintly, almost imperceptibly.
The multiverse was noticing.
Kian noticed too.
"This place feels wrong," he muttered. "Like it's about to snap."
I forced a smile. "It always feels like that."
But he didn't look convinced.
That evening, as the sky darkened into a bruised gray, he finally said it.
"You're not staying, are you?"
My chest tightened. "Kian—"
"Don't," he interrupted. "Just answer."
I looked at him, really looked. At the boy who had learned how to live in a world that didn't care. At the way he loved quietly, without asking for promises.
"I don't know," I said honestly.
He nodded, like he'd expected that too.
Then he did something that scared me more than anger ever could.
He smiled.
"I think I'm falling for you," he said. "And I think you're going to leave."
The ground shuddered beneath our feet.
Somewhere, glass shattered.
I felt the pull grow stronger, sharper, like a warning turning into a threat.
"I don't want to hurt you," I whispered.
"You already matter," he replied. "That's enough."
That night, I lay awake listening to his breathing, knowing one truth with terrifying clarity:
If I stayed, this world would demand everything.
And if I left—
It would break him anyway.