Duan spotted them from across the cafeteria.
Jun and his friends had just come through the entrance, trays in hand, scanning for a table. Jet saw them at the same moment and raised his hand in a wave that was really more of a summons. Dom looked at Duan. Duan was already moving.
They converged at the usual table — Duan's group's usual spot, the one by the second window with enough bench space for everyone if nobody spread out too much. Jet dropped his tray down like he owned it the way he always did and started arranging himself comfortably. Chawin sat beside him. Jun looked at the table, looked at the available space, and sat down.
Duan sat beside him before anyone else could.
Fah watched this happen and said nothing. Dom watched this happen and also said nothing. They were learning.
The table filled with the usual noise — Jet already in the middle of something, Chawin managing him at a low level, Dom and Fah falling into their own rhythm, conversations crossing over each other the way they did when people had stopped being careful around each other. Jun ate quietly beside Duan and said little, the way he always did, but his shoulders were relaxed and he wasn't looking for an exit and that was its own kind of language.
Duan was mid sentence about something he'd already forgotten when Jun's hand came up and pressed flat against his forehead.
He stopped talking immediately.
Jun's fingers were cool from holding his water glass. He held them there for a moment, checking, and his eyes didn't move from his food. Like he'd just remembered something he needed to do and was doing it. Like it was nothing.
Around the table the conversation died the way conversations do when everyone suddenly has the same thought at exactly the same time.
Nobody moved.
Jet's chopsticks were frozen halfway to his mouth. Dom had stopped chewing. Fah was looking at a fixed point somewhere above the table with the expression of someone trying very hard not to have a visible reaction.
Jun's hand came down. He picked up his chopsticks.
"You're fine," he said and went back to his food.
The table stayed frozen for another second.
Then slowly, carefully, like people restarting a machine they weren't sure was stable, everyone went back to eating. Jet put his chopsticks in his mouth. Dom chewed. Fah looked back down at his plate.
Duan sat completely still with his hands in his lap.
His forehead was still warm where Jun's fingers had been. He was very aware of this. He was also very aware that he needed to look like a normal person who had not just had a small, quiet, private moment that he was going to be thinking about for the rest of the week.
He picked up his chopsticks.
He ate his food.
He did not smile.
He smiled a little.
---
After lunch they drifted toward their respective buildings in the loose unhurried way the merged group had started to move — nobody formally saying goodbye, just peeling off one by one as their paths divided.
Duan fell into step beside Jun the way he always did now. Jun let him the way he always did now. That part had quietly stopped being a negotiation somewhere along the way and neither of them had commented on it.
They reached the corridor outside Jun's lecture room and Jun slowed to a stop.
"You can go," he said, already checking his phone. "I'm fine from here."
"Okay." Duan shifted his bag on his shoulder. "I'll see you lat—"
"Wait for me after."
Duan turned back around. "Sorry?"
Jun looked up from his phone briefly. "After my class. Wait for me." He pocketed his phone and looked at Duan with the expression of someone who had said something completely ordinary. "I'll come out and find you."
Duan opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"You don't want to," Jun said. It wasn't really a question.
"No — I do." Duan shook his head quickly. Too quickly. "I really do. I'll be there."
Jun nodded once and turned toward the classroom door.
Duan stood in the corridor and watched it close behind him.
He looked at the door for a moment.
Then he turned around and walked away with his hands in his pockets and his eyes forward and the careful controlled energy of someone who was absolutely not about to lose his mind in a university hallway.
He made it around the corner.
Then he grabbed Dom by both shoulders and shook him.
"He asked me to pick him up."
Dom stared at him. "What—"
"He asked me. He brought it up himself. He told me to wait for him."
"Duan—"
"Dom."
Dom looked at the hands gripping his shoulders. Looked at Duan's face. Sighed with his whole body. "Okay. Okay. I hear you."
Duan let go of him and straightened up. Fixed his collar. Cleared his throat.
"Sorry," he said.
"It's fine," Dom said, rotating his shoulder slightly.
They walked in silence for a moment.
"He asked me to pick him up," Duan said again, quieter this time. Almost to himself.
Dom closed his eyes briefly.
"I know," he said. "I know."
---
It became a habit the way quiet things do — without either of them deciding it was happening.
Whoever finished first waited. That was all. No discussion, no formal arrangement. It had just started after that first afternoon outside Jun's lecture room and then continued the next day and the day after that until it stopped being a new thing and became simply a thing.
Duan finished early on a Wednesday and was halfway through a text to Jun when he turned the corner and stopped.
Jun was already there.
He was leaning against the wall outside the architecture building with his bag at his feet and his phone in his hand, scrolling through something unhurriedly. He hadn't seen Duan yet. He was just — there. Waiting. Like it was where he was supposed to be.
Duan stood there for a second and felt something settle in his chest so cleanly it almost hurt.
He walked over.
Jun looked up when he heard the footsteps and pocketed his phone without a word. He picked up his bag. Duan fell into step beside him.
"You finished early," Duan said.
"Mm."
"How long were you waiting?"
Jun glanced at him. "Does it matter?"
Duan looked forward and smiled at the path ahead of him.
"No," he said. "I guess it doesn't."
They walked to the car park in the late afternoon light, shoulders close, neither of them in any particular hurry to get there.
---
They were walking through the main road toward the car park on a Thursday afternoon when Duan's phone went off.
Then went off again.
Then kept going.
He pulled it out. It was the group chat. Jet had sent something and then immediately sent four more messages that were just increasingly large question marks.
Duan opened it.
He screamed.
It was loud and sudden and completely involuntary and Jun's shin connected with his leg before either of them had fully processed what happened. A few people nearby turned to look. Someone walking past actually flinched.
Jun stood there looking at him with the expression of someone counting to three internally.
"Sorry—" Duan grabbed his arm. "Sorry. Look."
He held the phone up.
It was a photo from the forum. The two of them outside a lecture room, close together the way they always were now, Duan's head tilted toward Jun, Jun's face in profile. Whoever took it had caught them in a moment that looked, from a certain angle, like considerably more than two people standing in a corridor.
The comments had already taken it and run.
*aren't these the two that have been inseparable since semester started*
*I've seen them together every single day this week*
*they're definitely together*
*has anyone else noticed how he looks at him*
Duan lowered the phone slowly.
He looked at Jun.
Jun was reading the screen with the same expression he read most things — neutral, unhurried, giving nothing away. He handed the phone back.
"Are you angry?" Duan asked carefully.
Jun started walking.
Duan caught up to him. "Jun."
"Why would I be angry."
"Because people are saying—"
"That we've been talking." Jun glanced at him sideways. "We have been talking. What's to be mad about."
Duan stared at him.
Jun faced forward and kept walking.
In the group chat Jet was still sending question marks. Chawin had sent a single eye emoji. Dom had typed *DUAN* in capital letters and then apparently run out of things to say.
Duan pocketed his phone.
He wasn't hiding him. Jun knew what people were saying and he wasn't hiding him and he had not even broken his stride.
Duan looked at the path ahead of them, at the afternoon light coming through the trees, at Jun walking beside him like this was all completely ordinary.
He kept his face very calm.
He was not calm.
But he kept it very calm.
---
That evening he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Three months ago he had watched a stranger get up off the ground at a crowded festival and walk away without a single look back and something in him had just — decided. Without asking. Without consulting anyone. Just decided.
He hadn't known anything about him then. Hadn't known about the sketchbooks or the way he ate or the particular temperature of his hands or the sound of that one quiet laugh at a table in a small restaurant. Hadn't known that he ran hot or that he would cover someone with a blanket while they slept or that he would show up at someone's door without being asked and just start taking care of things.
He knew all of it now.
Jun was already there when he turned the corner. Jun's hand on his forehead. Jun walking beside him down a road full of people and not looking away.
Duan looked at the ceiling.
He was so far gone it wasn't even funny anymore.
He picked up his phone and opened the chat.
*I had a good day today.*
He put the phone down.
It buzzed almost immediately.
*Go to sleep.*
Duan smiled at the ceiling.
He went to sleep.