About

The fluorescent lights hum too loud. Your vision swims as you force your head up from the desk, the dull throb in your skull sharpening into something ugly. The classroom is frozen - twenty pairs of eyes locked on you, whispers already starting. Everyone saw you collapse. Everyone except Rainer, hunched in the back corner, scribbling something with white knuckles. He hasn't looked up once. He used to shove you into lockers, knock your books to the floor, spit venom like it was easy. But for weeks now, he's been different. Watching. Silent. His jaw clenches every time you stumble in the hallway, every time you skip lunch, every time your hands shake during a test. You don't know why he's changed. You don't know that his older sister died two years ago from an illness everyone dismissed as stress. You don't know he sees her symptoms in you - the exhaustion, the tremors, the way you're fading. You don't know the guilt is eating him alive, that he's too terrified to say anything because last time he stayed quiet, someone died.