Work Text:
"okay, class dismissed."
the clamor and chatter of students filled the air, a noisy tide of bodies flowing toward the exits. saint lingered at the back, moving slower than the rest. more like falling, really. or maybe sinking. lost in thought. drained.
it felt like walking in circles.
he hated school. the assignments were a constant weight on his chest, the lecturers' voices grated on his ears, and waking up early every morning made him feel like a prisoner serving time. he went through the motions, but it was all so meaningless.
still, home wasn't any better. home didn't feel like home. it wasn't warm or safe or comforting— not the way people always talked about. it was just a roof over his head, four walls that confined him, a bed he collapsed onto out of sheer exhaustion.
for him, school wasn't a place to learn. it was an escape. and home wasn't a refuge; it was a temporary stop before the cycle repeated.
same suffocation, different setting.
every day, he woke up with a hollow ache deep in his chest. like something had been ripped out of him long ago, leaving an empty, echoing void. If he could, he'd rip his heart out himself— just to see if there was anything left to feel. anything at all.
he wanted his days to be numbered. waking up felt like a punishment. sleep was the only thing that offered relief, a fleeting taste of oblivion. if he could, he'd stay in that nothingness forever. no alarms. no suprises. no pretending.
but that wasn't how the world worked, was it? he wasn't a god. he was just another nameless, unremarkable soul in a crowd of millions. invisible. forgettable. he didn't even deserve the luxury of an escape.
"oh, how I wish to be dead," he muttered under his breath, the words falling like stones into the stillness around him.
no one heard.
no one ever did.