Standing at the front of the lecture hall, the words coming from my professor barely registered.
Yes, I knew I handled the report well, flawlessly, even. That was expected of me.
What wasn't expected were the remnants of that feeling from a few days ago, the thoughts I still couldn't tear out of my mind.
My gaze wandered across the room.
Claps. Praise. Smiles.
And then I saw him, sitting near the back, looking at me with an expression caught somewhere between admiration... and something softer. Something warmer.
My chest tightened.
How can he look at me like that...?
Is he pretending? Or... did he really mean it back then?
It didn't match the face he wore after Noah confronted him about us.
It didn't match the words he forced out that day.
And that discrepancy unsettled me more than anything the professor could have praised or criticized.
Their voices faded. Time slipped past. Class ended, but everything felt like a blur. Eventually, through the haze, a stray thought surfaced:
Oh... right. It's already the second semester...
And then a voice—
"Athy, you okay?"
Him.
His hand brushed my forehead, gently pushing my bangs back as he leaned in to check my temperature.
"You're red," he murmured, eyes meeting mine.
Red? Me? Why would I be-
Then that feeling surged again. A sudden warmth, rising from somewhere deep and spilling into my cheeks.
I didn't understand it. I still couldn't.
I wanted to tell him, to ask, to make sense of this - but... I knew I shouldn't impose on him.
There was a brief silence.
Then I smiled, the kind meant to bury whatever was twisting inside me.
"I'm fine, really. But... I'll tell you if I do start to feel weird."
A lie. One that broke the promise I'd made with him months ago, back when this... connection first began.
"Are you sure? You're getting really red though..." he said, slowly pulling away. He wore that same look of concern, the same fear I glimpsed during our argument back then.
Even so, I could still feel his hands lingering on my arms, his grip tightening slightly, probably without him realizing it.
As if he was afraid of losing me.
I reached out, gently cupping his cheek. A touch meant to steady him more than myself, and forced a smile onto my lips. One meant to reassure... but not erase the fear he didn't realize he was showing.
"I'll be fine, really. I don't get sick that easily, remember?"
My hand slid into his hair, brushing it softly in the way I knew tended to calm him, or at least, I hoped it would. I didn't want to add to the weight he was already carrying.
"That being said... how about we go out for a bit? We don't have any more classes after this one, after all."
I tried to lighten the air between us. Not erase the tension, just ease it enough so he could breathe.
His fingers tightened around my arm for a moment... then slowly eased, as if he'd only just realized how hard he'd been holding on.
"Yeah... let's do that."
His voice trailed off, the last of the tension slipping from his grip before he finally let go.
My hand drifted away from his cheek, brushing along his arm before slipping into his hand, our fingers threading together with a familiarity I still didn't quite understand.
"Let's go, then."
The air around us lightened, and the strain that once pinched his expression softened at last. Good.
Our walk was quiet, but quiet in a way that felt easier than before. My heartbeat thudded steadily beneath my chest, warmer and heavier than usual. I felt my cheeks warm as well, for reasons I couldn't name.
Above us, the afternoon sun glowed softly. Clear blue skies stretched far and wide, and the cicadas' sharp buzzing filled the still, heavy air, a reminder that summer was slowly approaching.
The silence between us lingered.
Not awkward. Not forced.
Just... gentle. Familiar.
Something like comfort.
Something like belonging.
"Summer's finally here... huh..." I murmured, lowering my gaze. My eyes drifted left, to where our hands were still intertwined.
Normally, he would've let go by now. He always did, out of habit, or politeness, or fear of crossing some invisible line.
But this time... he didn't.
That fear was still there beneath his softened expression. Subtle. Almost invisible.
But there.
He wanted me close. That much I could feel, even without understanding the full shape of the feeling forming in my own chest.
I knew the weight I'd brought into his life, enough for him to show this quiet vulnerability whenever I was near.
For him, it had been five... no, nearly six months.
For me, that time was nothing more than a single breath.
Of course it would feel different.
Time didn't move evenly between us - not anymore.
For him, six months... a hundred eighty-two days... was long enough to grow attached, to trust someone, to build something fragile and meaningful.
For me...
It was barely a moment.
And that was one of the chasms between us.
One of the differences I couldn't close no matter how deeply I sank into this world.
He was human, mortal, fleeting, unbearably temporary.
And I was...
Or rather, I had become something that existed outside this story.
Outside his story.
Or any story for that matter.
A being looking in from the beyond, trying to understand the warmth of a hand that shouldn't matter to someone like me, yet somehow did.
It was something I had accepted, or convinced myself I had.
That someone like me, an existence that isn't bound by any means, could never truly form an attachment with someone like him.
A human.
A fleeting existence.
A creature bound by time, by mortality, by limits I had long since surpassed.
The notion was absurd. Impossible.
Unheard of.
At least... that was what I kept insisting to myself.
And yet, somewhere along the way, I let myself grow attached to him.
Quietly. Carefully.
But I forced it to stop there, told myself it could not go any further.
My attachment already defied what I was.
I couldn't... shouldn't... test how far those boundaries could stretch before they snapped.
But now, walking beside him, watching the small, unguarded shifts of emotion on his face. Something deep within me whispered that I couldn't keep denying this.
Not forever.
Every time I tried to push the feeling down, something in my chest tightened. A foreign pressure, almost painful, as if I were rejecting a truth I was never meant to deny.
At the very least, I tried to appear natural.
For him.
I couldn't fall into this... endless rabbit hole I kept circling.
A feeling even my omniscience couldn't decipher,
something my ability to see every possibility would still fail to predict.
The unknown.
A concept I should have long since mastered.
And yet here I was, staring at something I could not understand...
not without him.
I felt myself slipping deeper into thought, further away from the present, and I forced myself to breathe, to act normal.
For his sake.
He had already seen what I truly was once.
And I... I almost lost him because of it.
I altered his memories to keep him by my side, a decision I knew I should regret, yet could not.
My teeth clenched.
That moment replayed in my mind, the sheer dread in his eyes the instant he glimpsed my true nature.
Even if it lasted only a second, it was enough.
Enough for me to understand that he had seen something no human should ever witness,
the real me.
The one humans were not meant to grasp, let alone survive looking at.
Maybe this feeling I'd been wrestling with...
was fear.
Fear of losing him.