Gojo Satoru was a heart-eater.

Not a heartbreaker—no, that would have been too gentle a thing for him.

Heartbreak implies a fracture. A crack. A slow, regrettable splitting. What he did was something far less civilized.

This man—this creature, this ghost-white god of a boy with eyes like glacier runoff—devoured. He sank his teeth into soft, vulnerable things and swallowed without chewing, smiling all the while. A predator with a sweet tooth.

They said he had the body of a sinner and the mouth of a saint. That he kissed like a man starved, that his touch left girls hollowed out, skin gleaming as if polished from the inside.

And so—wisely, you thought—you stayed away. You, with your stained fingertips and thick-soled boots, your over-washed clothes and paint-pocked knuckles. You, who loved no one more than the ache of a good canvas and the bruised scent of watered down oil pastels.

Your friends, meanwhile—God bless them, poor lobotomized things—practically competed to see who could get him to look their way. They would’ve happily lit themselves on fire, if only to conjure a spark, like girls trying to tempt the ocean to part for them.

You watched from a safe distance. Your safety was creation. Your sanctuary: a dim-lit studio with floor-to-ceiling windows, where you could render the world into something kinder with nothing but your palette knife and your grief.

It was past midnight when it happened. The campus cafeteria had long since closed, abandoned like a carcass after the lions had had their fill. Without food, the students—ever fickle, ever hungry—had scattered; no incentive to stay.

You saw him before he saw you. He was turning the corner, hands in pockets, coat open despite the bite of wind. Like he was immune to cold. And then—collision. The water jar slipped from your paint-slicked hands. It arced in mid-air like some tragic ballet, splashing you from collar to hip in an ungodly mess of rainbow pigment and chalky residue. You looked like a Jackson Pollock fever dream. A Lisa Frank notebook.

You gasped. He cursed.

The nickname sparked like static under your skin.