“Lili—”

He woke with his hand already clutching the blanket. The word was still in his mouth, half-formed, going nowhere. He lay there breathing until the ceiling stopped moving.

White walls. The smell of antiseptic and something underneath it, something organic and faintly wrong. A bed that wasn’t his.

“Hey.” A hand on his shoulder, light. “You’re okay.”

Veyn pulled away from the hand and sat up. His arms shook with the effort. His legs were there but distant, like they were reporting from somewhere else.

“Where am I.”

“General ward.” The boy beside him straightened, clipboard in hand. He was wearing an oversized white coat with faint stains at the cuffs — medicine, or something close to it. His smile was the kind that arrived before he’d decided to use it. “Nurse Elysium brought you in from the academy. You’ve been out for a while.”

Veyn looked at him. “You’re a student.”

“Well, yeah.” He set the clipboard down. “Except for the adults in Venturial, who show up maybe twice a year and leave, who else is there?” He pulled a stool over and sat. “I’m Alastor. I’m your nurse-in-care.”

He flipped through the pages, “the poison is out of your system,” Alastor said, checking the clipboard. “Coniine: from hemlock.”

Veyn went still. “Poison.”

“Yeah. Someone gave you a solid dose.” Alastor said it the way someone says a thing they’ve already processed. “You’re lucky it wasn’t more.”

Veyn looked at his hand on the blanket. Turned it over once.

“How long does coniine take to act,” he said.

“About an hour.”

An hour. He’d been walking, talking, standing upright for a full hour while it moved through him. He went back through it slowly, the corridor, the water bottle, the bubbles settling as he drank, Sielsia already turning away before he’d finished.

He pressed his lips together and said nothing else.

“For now,” Alastor said, standing, “just rest. The IV will keep you stable.” He moved to check the bag, adjusted something at the line. “You’re not going anywhere for a bit anyway.”

Veyn lay back. The pillow was flat and slightly damp and he stared at the ceiling and did not sleep.

The ward was quiet. Somewhere down the hall something beeped at intervals, steady and indifferent. He pulled the blanket up and lay with it and thought about Sielsia handing him the water bottle with that easy smile, the way she’d done it without breaking stride, without any weight to the gesture at all.

“You sure you’re alright?”

He turned his head. Alastor was still there, perched on the stool with his elbows on his knees, looking at him with the particular patience of someone who had nowhere else to be.

“You’re still here,” Veyn said.

“Two rooms to manage. You’re one of them.” He shrugged. “Quiet hospital is worse than a loud one, trust me.”

“I’m fine.”

“How fine, though.”

Veyn closed his eyes. “Fine enough.”

A pause. Then Alastor said, “How’s it feel? Having a guy as your nurse.”

Veyn opened his eyes. “What.”

Alastor looked down at his coat, tugging at the sleeve. “Just, most people expect something different when they wake up in a ward. Different uniform, different face.” He said it lightly, but there was something underneath it that wasn’t light.

Veyn shifted against the wall. “Society doesn’t make those expectations. People do.”

Alastor looked at him.

“Before the collapse,” Veyn said, “the norms were fixed. Boys into engineering. Girls into nursing. It’s in the novels, the films, everything.” He looked at the ceiling. “But people want to be accepted. So unless their will is strong enough, they follow what they’re told. And when they follow, society points at them and says, see, we were right. It feeds itself.”

Alastor was quiet.

“You didn’t follow it,” Veyn said. “That’s enough. Even without anyone’s approval.”

Alastor rubbed his eye with the back of his hand. Stood. Grabbed his tray.

“You talk a lot,” he said.

“I don’t.”

He laughed; short, genuine. “I’ll get Seulc to bring you something to read. You look like the type.” He paused at the door, not quite turning back. “And, thanks.”

The door clicked shut.

Veyn lay in the quiet. Outside the window, the sky was the pale grey of very early morning, the ruins sitting in it the way they always did.

⁂

Veyn didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he woke up.

The ceiling was the same. The antiseptic smell was the same. His hand was still on the blanket, though he didn’t remember putting it there. He turned his head.

Alastor was on the stool. Clipboard flat on his knees, not reading it. Just waiting, the way someone waits when they’ve decided waiting is the thing to do and have made their peace with it.

“You slept,” Alastor said.

“I noticed.”

“Good kind of sleep or bad kind.”

Veyn considered this with more seriousness than the question probably deserved. “Neither. Just sleep.”

Alastor nodded like that was an acceptable answer. He reached for the clipboard, checked something, set it back down. Outside the window the sky had shifted, the pale grey of early morning now something closer to white, the ruins sitting in it the same as always.

“Seulc heard you were here,” Alastor said.

Veyn looked at him.

He held the book out. “He asked me to give you this. For the boredom.”

Veyn took it.

Crime and Punishment.

He said the title quietly, almost without meaning to. Just the words arriving in the room.

“He’s rarely into philosophical books,” Alastor said, half to himself, with the specific confusion of someone who knows a person well enough to be surprised by them.

Veyn turned it over. Then opened it, not to the beginning. His thumb found resistance near the middle, something pressed between the pages. He drew it out.

A bookmark. Dried. Flat. A purple hyacinth, its color still faintly there, between pages 252 and 253.

He held it up toward the window light.

“Pretty, right?” Alastor’s voice had shifted into something easier, more personal. “He loves flowers. Has a whole drawer of them — pressed ones, dried ones, I don’t even know where he gets them all.” He leaned forward on the stool. “When I told him it was you in here, he went through the whole drawer. Hectically. I had to tell him to stop, rest, and just tell me what he wanted.” A small pause. “He said purple hyacinth. But he felt disappointed — what he really wanted to give you was red carnation.”

Veyn looked at the flower for a moment longer, then set it carefully back between the same pages.

He flipped to somewhere near the middle. His eyes moved across a line without reading it.

“I started Crime and Punishment once,” he said. “Never finished it.”

“Oh.” Alastor brightened slightly. “Then this is fortunate timing.”

“I dropped it.” Veyn closed the book. “Found it quiet boring.” He looked at the cover. “But I’ll finish it here.” A beat. “It feels important to him.”

Alastor looked at him for a moment with an expression that didn’t quite become a smile. “Thanks for respecting that.”

The ward settled back into its usual sounds. The beeping down the hall. The faint creak of the building doing what old buildings do.

“You and Seulc,” Veyn said. “You’re close.”

Alastor blinked. Then laughed once, short. “Of course you noticed.” He set the clipboard on the floor beside the stool. “Yeah. Closest I’ve got.”

He didn’t say it with any particular weight. Just the plain fact of it.

“I wasn’t a social person,” he said. “Genuinely. Didn’t like talking to most people, didn’t see the point, they didn’t see me.” He propped his elbows on his knees. “Seulc was the opposite. The kind of person who mixes easily, who people just — gravitate toward. I still don’t know what he noticed in me.” A small smile. “But he offered his hand anyway. Brought me along. And when everyone eventually drifted away, we were both still there.”

He was quiet for a moment. The smile stayed but changed shape, the way a smile does when memory starts pulling at it from underneath.

“Being kind makes you easy to target,” he said.

Veyn waited.

“He was getting bullied. Seniors. The kind who pick someone bright and decide to see how long the light lasts.” Alastor’s voice stayed even, measured, but something in it had gone careful. “I stayed. Didn’t leave him. And eventually they were gone.”

“Gone,” Veyn said.

“Gone.” Alastor picked the clipboard back up. Looked at it without reading it. “There are a lot of students in this building. People disappear into it.” A slight smile returned, a different one now, quieter, facing away from something. “Seulc never told me what happened to them specifically. But they stopped. And that’s what mattered.”

He stood. Moved to check the IV bag, adjusting the line with the practiced ease of someone who had done it enough times it required no attention.

“I continue to protect him.” The smile stayed but something underneath it shifted, the way ground shifts before you feel it. “But even that has limits, apparently.”

His voice didn’t break. It just, tightened, slightly, around the next words.

“He caught something. I don’t know what exactly, or if —” He stopped. Started again, quieter. “He can’t walk. He hasn’t been able to for a while now. And I don’t know if he’s going to get better, or if this is just—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

The ward held its usual sounds. The beeping down the hall. The faint give of the building settling.

Veyn looked at the book in his hands for a moment. Then opened it to the first page and started reading.

Alastor watched him. Then picked up his clipboard, stood, and walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the frame, not turning back, just pausing, the way people do when a room has given them something they didn’t expect.

Then he left.

The door clicked shut.

Veyn read. Outside the window the sky was white and the ruins sat in it and nothing moved. The pressed hyacinth stayed between pages 252 and 253, waiting for him to reach it.

⁂

“Letter for you,” a call from the doorway came to him, while he was busy reading the book.

“Letter, to me?” He looked at the doorway to find a familiar figure. “Snirt?”

“Yes, me.” He came in and handed it over, glancing around the ward like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to be there. “How did you even end up here?”

“Food poisoning.”

Snirt squinted at him. “You? Food poisoning.”

“Yes.”

“Right.” He clearly didn’t believe it. “You can never just have a normal week, can you.”

Veyn looked at the envelope. His name, in handwriting he didn’t recognize. “Who would even send me a letter.”

“Oh come on.” Snirt pulled the stool over without being invited and dropped onto it. “You’re not that lonely.”

Veyn ignored this.

“Anyway, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Of course you do.”

Snirt stopped. “Please.”

“Keep it brief.”

“Ok, ok.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “So after Trin was arrested, I got his post. Which is a lot. But I’m managing, that part’s fine.” He picked at the edge of his sleeve. “It’s just, I keep thinking about Trin. How his whole thing with work made him lose everything else. And I started noticing I’ve been doing the same thing, spending less time with my girl, and she’s been getting angry about it and I don’t—” he stopped. “I don’t know how to fix it without dropping the work.”

Veyn stared at him for a moment. Then facepalmed.

“Why me. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Yeah but—”

“I never had a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, I know, but you’re still the right person—”

“How does that make sense.”

“It just does.” Snirt looked at him earnestly. “Please.”

Veyn sighed. Thought for a moment.

“Before the collapse, people got married.”

“Common knowledge, yes.”

“Then you’ve heard about divorce.”

“Yeah.”

“Rates were very high in the modern era.”

Snirt frowned. “But marriage is serious.”

“It is. But it became a legal form of dating for a lot of people.” Veyn pulled the blanket up slightly. “Still better than living with someone you don’t want to live with for the rest of your life.”

“I mean, yeah, I guess.”

“There were many reasons for divorce. Infidelity, abuse, loss of love. But the most common one was lack of commitment.”

Snirt blinked. “Just that?”

“It’s not just that. Life moves, and moving demands choices.”

“What kind of choices?”

“A relationship is a choice between compromise and loneliness.” Veyn said it flatly. “Every time. You pick one.”

Snirt opened his mouth. Closed it. Sat with that.

“For some people, opportunities mattered more than love,” Veyn continued. “For others, they gave up everything for their partner. Either way something gets sacrificed.”

“That’s...” Snirt’s face fell slightly. “That’s kind of bleak.”

“Or you both compromise something. Together.”

“Oh.” He brightened a little. “That’s, ok that’s better actually.”

“You can’t neglect your work. You can’t neglect her. So you both have to adapt. If the first way of loving her doesn’t fit anymore, you find a different way. And she has to understand that too.” A pause. “Or you separate. Better to move on cleanly than to stay somewhere neither of you can move.”

Snirt was quiet for a long moment. Then he let out a breath. “So basically... just talk to her. Actually talk.”

“Miscommunication becomes argument. Argument becomes the kind of silence you don’t come back from.”

“Right. Yeah.” He nodded slowly, like he was filing it away. Then he stood, stretched, moved toward the door. Stopped with his hand on the frame.

He looked back.

“I still wonder,” he said, almost to himself, “why you always choose loneliness.”

Veyn didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Snirt left. The ward settled back into its sounds. The beeping down the hall. The faint give of the building.

Veyn sat with the envelope on his lap for a moment. Then he opened it.

Ah, you must have realized by now: I poisoned you. I’m sorry for that. Tehe~

But it seems like you can’t move, and you shouldn’t, for now. Once everything is finished, if you need anything, ask me. I’ll decide whether I can help.

He folded the letter. Turned it over. Looked at the blank side for a long time.

The handwriting was neat. Unhurried. Written by someone who knew exactly where he was and exactly what condition he was in.

He set it on the bedside table.

“Something’s wrong,” he whispered, to no one.