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The sky outside the classroom window was the same dull gray that Nakamura had been feeling inside for days. Classes were over, but he had stayed behind under the pretext of tidying up his notebooks, waiting for the room to empty out. Lately, the pressure at home and the constant anxiety tightening his stomach had become too heavy to manage alone. He felt like an empty shell, unable to even bear the weight of his own breath.
"Nakamura? Are you still here?"
Hirose’s voice echoed through the quiet room, bright and sudden. Nakamura flinched, gripping the strap of his bag a little too tightly. He turned around slowly, forcing a smile that came out completely strained.
"Ah, Hirose. Yeah, I was... I was just finishing up."
Hirose took a few steps forward, leaning against the desk in front of him. He didn’t have his usual radiant smile; he was looking at him with slightly knitted brows, his eyes filled with an unfamiliar seriousness.
"I'm not buying it,"
Hirose said, lowering his voice.
"You've been running away the second the bell rings for a week now. You barely eat lunch with us anymore and... you have terrible dark circles. Is something wrong?"
Nakamura felt panic rise to his throat. The last thing he wanted was to show his vulnerability to the person he considered his sun. If Hirose found out how fragile he was, how crowded his mind was with dark thoughts, he would leave. Nakamura was sure of it.
"I'm fine, really. Just a bit tired from studying," Nakamura lied, turning his head aside to avoid that piercing eye contact.
"Nakamura, look at me."
Hirose’s tone wasn't angry, but it was firm, tense. He took another step, closing the distance between them. Driven by an instinctive need to protect himself, Nakamura stepped back, but his heel hit the teacher's podium. He felt trapped.
"It's nothing, I told you!"
Nakamura snapped, his voice cracking for the first time. The accumulated frustration and exhaustion exploded in that small fragment of a sentence. "Why do you always have to push? Just leave me alone... it's none of your business."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Nakamura bitterly regretted the words he had just spoken; he could feel his heart hammering right in his ears. He looked at Hirose, expecting to see anger or disappointment on his face.
Instead, Hirose’s expression softened into a look of genuine hurt. He didn’t step away. On the contrary, he reached out and caught Nakamura’s wrist gently but firmly, stopping him from running away again.
"It *is* my business,"
Hirose said, his voice a warm, almost broken whisper. "We're friends, aren't we? I care if you're hurting. It sucks seeing you like this and not being able to do anything because you keep hiding behind these stupid walls."
Nakamura looked down at Hirose’s hand gripping his wrist. The warmth of that contact contrasted painfully with the coldness he felt inside. He felt his eyes grow hot and tearful, and for the first time, the fear of being judged was overcome by a desperate need for comfort.
"I... I didn't want to be a burden,"
Nakamura whispered, letting his shoulders slump in defeat. A single tear rolled down his cheek.
"Things at home... everything is hard right now. And it's even worse inside my head. I was scared that if you knew, you wouldn't want to see me anymore."
Hirose reached out with his other hand, hesitating for a split second before placing it on Nakamura’s shoulder, forcing him to look up again.
"You're an idiot, Nakamura,"
Hirose said, but this time a small, faint smile appeared on his lips, while his thumb gently brushed against the skin of Nakamura's wrist.
"You're not a burden. You could never be. If there's a storm in your head, let me in. At least we can share the umbrella."
Nakamura took a trembling breath, but for the first time in days, that heavy weight on his chest seemed just a little bit lighter.