Chapter Text
Haru’s hands were stained—not with paint, but with absence.
The studio smelled of turpentine and dust, the air thick with the ghosts of unfinished work. Canvases leaned against the walls like silent witnesses, half-alive with strokes that had once meant something. Now, they were just shapes. Just colors.
Just things that didn’t breathe.
He dipped his brush into the palette, the bristles dragging through crimson. It looked like dried blood.
Do you hear me?
The question hummed in his bones, unspoken, unanswered. He pressed the brush to the canvas, but his fingers locked. The shape wasn’t right. The feeling wasn’t right. Nothing was right anymore.
A knock at the door.
"Haru?" Seita’s voice, low and careful, like stepping around broken glass. "You’ve been in here for hours."
Haru didn’t turn. If he turned, he’d have to see the concern in Seita’s eyes, and that would make it real. That would mean he was really—
The brush snapped in his grip.
Seita didn’t flinch. He just exhaled, slow and measured, the way one does when standing at the edge of a cliff. "You can’t keep doing this to yourself."
Haru’s laugh was a cracked thing. "Define this."
"Pretending you’re fine. Pretending you don’t—"
"I’m painting, Seita." A lie. Both know. "Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to create again?"
Seita’s silence was heavier than any answer.
Haru’s gaze flickered to the corner of the studio, where a single canvas stood covered in cloth. The last one. The one he couldn’t bear to look at, couldn’t bear to finish.
Because if he did, it would mean Yu was truly—
Do you hear me?
The words clawed up his throat, but he swallowed them down.
Outside, the rain began to fall.
And Haru wondered if, somewhere beyond the noise of the world, Yu could still hear him at all.
Seita lingered in the doorway, a shadow caught between leaving and staying. "You need to eat," he said, but the words were hollow, a script they’d both tired of.
Silence.
"You think he’d want this?" Seita asked quietly. "You, wasting away in this room?"
Haru’s jaw tightened. "Don’t."
"Don’t what? Say his name? Pretend he wasn’t—"
"I said don’t." The words came out sharp, brittle.
Seita exhaled through his nose, raking a hand through his hair. "You can’t hide forever."
Haru almost laughed.
Why not?
Hiding was easier. Hiding meant he didn’t have to face the truth: that every stroke of his brush was a plea, a prayer, a desperate attempt to bring back what was already gone.
Night fell, heavy and damp. The rain still tapped against the window like fingertips asking to be let in.
Haru stood in front of the covered canvas. His hands shook as he reached for the cloth.
Do you hear me?
He pulled it away.
Yu’s face stared back at him—half-finished, forever caught between existing and fading. The eyes were just outlines, the mouth barely sketched. Haru had never been able to get the smile right.
His chest ached.
He picked up a brush, dipped it in black. One stroke. That was all it would take. One stroke, and he could finish it. One stroke, and he could let go.
But his hand froze.
Because finishing it would mean admitting Yu was never coming back.
The brush fell to the floor.
Outside, the rain fell harder, as if the sky, too, was mourning.
Why did it have to be this way?
The question coiled in his chest, venomous and unanswerable. A breakup would have left scars, but scars healed. A betrayal would have left rage, and rage burned out. But this was an endless, gnawing void.
Because death wasn't just an ending. It was a thief.
It stole Yu's warmth, his voice, his future.
It stole the way he would have aged, the way his hands would have weathered with time.
It stole the arguments they never got to have, the reconciliations that would have followed. It stole the mundane, precious moments of shared cups of coffee, the quiet evenings, the way Yu would hum off-key in the shower.
It stole Yu before the world was done loving him.
Before Haru was done loving him.
Do you hear me?
But there was no answer. There would never be an answer.
And so Haru sat in the dim light of his studio, surrounded by the ghosts of his art, and wondered how long a person could ache before they, too, became something unfinished.