The classroom emptied out after another long lesson, voices echoing in the corridor as students left in groups. Kuro stayed seated, staring down at the faint scratches on his desk. His hand hovered over them like he wanted to trace them but stopped halfway.
Mika noticed. He always noticed. Sliding into the seat beside him, his voice was low and sharp. "You've been quiet. More than usual."
Kuro forced a smile, one of those thin, brittle ones. "I'm fine. Really."
{Fine. That's the word I always use, isn't it? It's easier. Easier than explaining. Easier than dragging people into… me.}
[Fine, my a**. You've been carrying s*** heavier than a goddamn dragon carcass, and you still say fine.]
Kuro's lips twitched faintly, but he didn't answer Elvastia right away. His chest ached with that same hollow pressure that never went away.
"I was just… remembering things," Kuro admitted at last, his voice barely above a whisper. "But it's nothing. It doesn't matter."
Mika's pale eyes narrowed. "Nothing? You call that nothing?"
Kuro finally lifted his gaze, and though his face was calm, his words cut softly, emptily:"Yes. It's nothing. Nothing worth attention. Nothing worth worry. Not from you… not even from Eryndor."
The name hung bitterly between them.
Mika's fingers curled against the edge of the desk. His voice was low, cold, almost dangerous. "Don't compare me to him. And don't decide what I should or shouldn't care about."
{He's angry. Why is he angry? I'm trying to make it easier.}
[Because you're acting like your pain is f***ing garbage when it's not. That emptiness in your eyes? It's louder than any scream. And trust me, Eryndor doesn't deserve to even breathe the same air as you.]
Kuro closed his eyes for a moment. That hollow ache gnawed at him, the same one that made food taste like ash and warmth feel fleeting. Yet he spoke with an unsettling calm. "I just don't want anyone wasting their time on me. Not you. Not him. No one."
Mika leaned in slightly, his icy tone hiding a thread of something rawer. "Kuro, if you think caring for you is a waste of time… then you don't understand me at all."
Kuro blinked at him, confused by the conviction in Mika's words. It made his chest feel strange—tight, heavy, uncertain.
[Oh s***. He's dead serious. Like 'I'd-kill-a-man' serious. Careful, elf boy, you might actually matter to someone. Scary, huh?]
{…Scary. Yeah. That's the word.}
For a moment, Kuro didn't know whether to flinch away from Mika's intensity or lean closer to it. But that hollowness inside him remained, whispering that he wasn't worth this… that he was only dragging others into shadows better left ignored.
Still, Mika didn't look away. He didn't leave. He stayed, watching that emptiness in Kuro's eyes with a fury that wasn't directed at him—but at everything that had made him this way.
And that alone… felt heavier than anything Kuro had endured.