Each line on the page was light and deliberate—angled, bent, shifted—just enough pressure to trace the shape without committing. Easier to erase that way. Around him, the background noise of student chatter layered like static. Unavoidable. Tolerable.
Mr. Vega was present. Technically. He sat at his desk, half-watching the class, half-absorbed in grading or maybe daydreaming about retirement. Kiril didn’t mind him. Vega wasn’t a hard-ass, but he wasn’t spineless either. More importantly, he didn’t bat an eye when Kiril pulled out his makeup bag during first period and started doing what Vega once called his “Teenage Nosferatu routine.”
Translation: Trad Goth makeup.
But today, Kiril was bare-faced. Mostly. His focus was on the sketchpad in front of him, not contour or white foundation. He was drafting an outfit idea—collaged across the page like a fever dream of thrifted fabric and upcycled jewelry. The materials were all at home, stacked neatly in bins or tangled somewhere in a drawer. Now he just had to bring them to life.
No music, though.
Phone: dead.
Charger: forgotten on his nightstand.
Internally, he spiraled a little when he realized. Externally? He didn’t even blink.
He flipped his mechanical pencil, gently erasing a shoulder seam, then blew the residue off the page with one short breath.
Tap, tap.
A finger. Right on the edge of his desk.
He didn’t have to look up to know. But he did. Of course it was Du.
Kiril didn’t react. Not at first. He tried. Truly. But the sigh that escaped his nose sounded like it’d been aging in a wine cellar for years. His fingers rubbed at his temple, dragging down to his eye, which he shut tight for a moment.
“Please,” he muttered, voice a thread of air, “I haven’t even done anything.”
It wasn’t a plea. Not really. More like a quiet, exhausted invocation to whatever gods were still paying attention in this cruel, sparkly high school limbo.
Maybe Du just wanted to talk. Maybe they were curious about the sketchpad. But with Du, there was never just anything.
