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“Why, Ruki? Why did you want to do that?” Jun heaved a gasp when a conclusion landed in his chest, heavy as stone. “Ruki?”

Ruki didn’t answer.

“Were you hurt this whole time?”

He lay there, staring up at Jun, who had started to sniffle again.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me you were in pain?”

Ruki’s mouth parted as if to answer. But nothing came. His lips twisted. His own eyes watered. He let out a soft cry that turned into a piercing, anguished sob—a sound Jun never heard from Ruki.

Arms wrapped around Jun’s neck and pulled him close. Ruki’s wailing reverberated through Jun’s bones, deepening the ache in his heart. Jun’s tears spilled onto Ruki’s dress shirt. Ruki buried his face into Jun’s hair.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jun. Sorry.”

Ruki held him tighter. Jun squeezed back, pressing his face into Ruki’s chest until the shirt was soaked through.

Neither of them went back to the ceremony. Somewhere in the distance, the applause came, then the cheering. Excited voices began to spill across the campus as everyone took their pictures and said their congratulations.

They lay there the entire time, sobbing under the beating sun.

The car horn blared. Jun flinched his head up from the horn pad, and the rooftop was gone.

His hands were on the steering wheel. The engine idled. The science building stood dark and silent in front of him, its glass doors shut.

He missed him. He missed him so much that his whole body ached.

His sobs filled the tiny car, reverberating against the windows, almost shaking the silence of the empty night.

The memory pained him because he understood now what it meant—that Ruki had been depressed for a long time. Jun hated that he would never know when it started. He hated that this was the moment Ruki started to fade from him. And now it was too late.

Alex was right. He was useless. He was the only one who knew Ruki was suffering, and he could have been the one to stop him. But he was a coward who never spoke up. All because he was afraid Ruki was slipping away. Perhaps he had always been fading away. He didn’t know what scared him more: that he’d come to that conclusion, or that he’d pretended this whole time it wasn’t happening.

Jun banged his head onto the steering wheel. Tears dripped onto the handle. “Ruki…” His voice broke.

He sucked in a shuddering breath. His body trembled from the intensity of it all. He wiped his face, gathering his senses. The blurriness cleared, and the science building’s doors came back into focus.

The air inside the car had become suffocating. He’d spent too many hours, too many days, staring at ceilings—the car ceiling, the garage ceiling—waiting for the episodes to pass, whether tears came or not.

He had no more tears.

He didn’t want another episode to swallow him.

Jun flew out of the car and slammed the door behind him.

He dragged his soles across the asphalt, almost stumbling on the curb. His footsteps were louder than everything else in the roaring silence of the night. He stopped at the edge of the concrete steps, facing the glass doors. Both were closed. Parallel. Locked tight.

The last time he’d been inside a building with Paragon’s name on it, he was carrying a bento box and couldn’t stop smiling.

Before that, it was pizza.

Jun had been chewing on the long strands of cheese off a thin slice, listening to Ruki’s every word. When Ruki had just broken the news. Jun’s eyes widened, happiness rushing to his brain.

“That’s so amazing!” he said with a mouthful of pizza.

Ruki smiled, the smile turning into a bubbly laugh. “It’s not that big of a deal, honestly.” He brought a napkin to Jun’s bottom lip.

“Are you joking?” Jun grabbed the napkin from his fingers. One clean wipe, and he grinned at him. “Paragon chose you! That’s like one of the biggest companies in the world right now!”