The door slammed shut behind Leon with a dull, heavy bang that echoed down the empty corridor for a heartbeat, then vanished, like the campus itself swallowed the sound and left him alone with the cold.
It slipped under his clothes almost immediately, biting through fabric and skin, forcing a short, involuntary shiver out of him. He instinctively pulled his coat tighter, as if a thin layer of cloth could do anything more than pretend to be protection.
The air was sharp, damp, and miserable, the kind that, in normal times, meant bad weather and a cold. Not the kind that meant your body might simply fail if it weakened at the wrong moment. For a second Leon found it almost ironic how quickly something as ordinary as being cold returned to being a real problem the moment civilization stopped cushioning it with heaters, hot tea, and a dry bed.
