School resumed and everything slid back into its usual shape.
Lectures, assignments, the familiar noise of a campus waking itself back up after a break. People complained about being back in the same breath they were hugging each other in hallways. The architecture building smelled like fresh print and cold coffee and mild panic.
Everything was exactly the same.
Except at lunch, when Jet appeared at Dom and Fah's table with his tray and dropped it down like he owned the spot. Chawin followed quietly behind him. Jun came last, looked at the table, looked at Jet, and sat down without a word because apparently this was happening.
Dom and Fah stared.
"We're all friends," Jet said, already helping himself to his food. "Friends eat together. This is normal."
"We've never eaten together," Dom said.
"We have now." Jet pointed his chopsticks at Fah's plate. "Is that the garlic pork? That looks good."
"It's mine," Fah said.
"I'm just looking."
"You're looking at it like you're going to take it."
"I would never—"
"Jet."
"I'm just looking Fah—"
Chawin reached over and redirected Jet's chopsticks back to his own plate without a word. Jet accepted this with the energy of someone who was used to being managed.
Jun ate quietly and said nothing. The table had a different energy from what he was used to — louder, more chaotic, people talking over each other with the ease of people who had been doing it for years. He watched Dom steal something off Fah's plate the moment Fah turned to say something to Chawin and felt something close to amusement move through him that he kept off his face.
It was fine. It was loud but it was fine.
Jet was already deep in a story about something that had happened during the break that involved a motorcycle, a fruit stand and a series of decisions he described as reasonable at the time. Dom was laughing before the story was even finished. Chawin was shaking his head slowly with the expression of someone who had heard too many of these stories to be surprised anymore.
Jun picked up his water and looked around the table.
Something was missing.
He hadn't said anything about it but it had been sitting at the back of his mind since they sat down. The table felt slightly off in a way he couldn't fully explain and it took him longer than he would admit to identify why.
Duan wasn't there.
He looked at Dom and Fah. Both of them were laughing at Jet's story. He looked at the empty space on the bench beside Fah where a third person would naturally sit.
He put his water down and kept eating.
It was Chawin who finally said it out loud.
"Where's Duan?" He looked between Dom and Fah. "It feels strange without him. You three are always together."
The laughter at the table settled. Dom and Fah exchanged a look that had a whole conversation inside it.
Dom set his chopsticks down.
"Resumption curse," he said.
The three of them stared at him.
"The what?" Jet said.
"Every resumption week," Fah said patiently, "Duan gets sick. Without fail. First week back, every semester since we've known him. He'll be fine in a few days."
There was a pause and then Jet started laughing. Not a small laugh. The kind that takes over his whole body and makes the people around him deeply unsure whether to join in or feel secondhand embarrassment.
Dom and Fah looked at him.
Jet read their expressions and stopped laughing. "Wait."
"Yes," Dom said.
"Every time."
"Every single time," Fah confirmed.
"How does a person just — every resumption—"
"We don't know," Dom said. "He's perfectly healthy otherwise. That one week, every semester. It's just how it is."
Jet leaned back in his chair looking genuinely stunned. "That's the most specific curse I've ever heard of."
"We know," Dom and Fah said at the same time.
Chawin smiled. Jun said nothing. He looked at the table and turned something over quietly in his head that he didn't examine too closely.
---
After lunch the group scattered back toward their respective departments. Jun fell into step beside Chawin and then slowed down just slightly as he spotted Fah a few steps ahead.
"Fah."
Fah turned around.
Jun caught up to him. Chawin kept walking, tactfully finding something interesting to look at in the other direction.
"Duan," Jun said. "How bad is it."
Fah studied him for a moment. "His immune system just drops around this time of year. It coincides with resumption so we started calling it that. He runs a high temperature, gets weak. He'll be okay in a few days with rest but the first day or two are always the worst."
Jun nodded slowly.
"His address," he said. "Can you send it to me."
Fah went completely still.
He looked at Jun's face — completely neutral, tone completely even, like he was asking for directions to a convenience store. Fah opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened his phone without a single question and typed the address into a message.
He watched Jun read it, pocket his phone and walk away.
Fah stood there for a second.
Then he turned and found Chawin had circled back and was standing right behind him wearing a very small smile.
"Don't," Fah said.
"I didn't say anything," Chawin said.
---
Jun arrived at the building after lectures.
He took the elevator up, found the door and stood in front of it for a moment. He pressed the bell and stepped back.
Silence.
Then shuffling. Slow and uneven, like someone navigating a room they were too tired to be upright in.
The door opened.
Jun looked at Duan and felt something tighten in his chest before he could stop it. He looked terrible. Pale in a way that was different from his usual skin, eyes glassy and unfocused, hair flat on one side, oversized shirt hanging off one shoulder. He was holding onto the door frame with a grip that suggested it was doing more structural work than it appeared to be.
He looked at Jun with an expression that was equal parts confused and something else he was too out of it to hide properly.
Jun stepped inside.
He put his hand flat against Duan's forehead and felt the heat immediately. He moved him by the shoulders, firmly but carefully, back toward the couch.
"Sit down."
Duan sat.
Jun looked around the space quickly — kitchen to the left, bathroom down the short hallway — and started moving. He found a bowl under the sink, filled it with cool water, grabbed the small towel hanging by the basin. He came back to the couch and sat on the coffee table directly in front of Duan.
He wrung out the towel and pressed it to his forehead.
Duan's eyes closed.
Jun moved the towel to his neck, held it there for a moment, then folded it and ran it slowly along the inside of Duan's forearms. The heat coming off his skin was uncomfortable even through the cloth.
Duan let him work without saying anything for a while. Then his hand came up and wrapped loosely around Jun's wrist.
"What are you doing here," he said. His voice was rough and quiet, stripped of its usual brightness.
Jun looked at the hand. Loosened the fingers gently and kept working.
"You need to be in bed," he said.
"I'm fine here."
"You're not fine anywhere. Come on."
Getting Duan from the couch to the bedroom was a slow process. He was heavier than he looked when he wasn't cooperating fully and Jun had to take most of his weight through the short hallway. He pulled back the covers and helped him down and Duan sank into the pillow with a long exhale like he'd been carrying something very heavy and had finally been given permission to put it down.
Jun straightened up.
He looked at Duan for a moment — eyes already closing, one arm loose at his side, the tension that usually lived in his shoulders completely gone.
He turned toward the door.
Duan's hand found his in the dark.
"Don't go."
It came out small. Not a performance. Not the usual Duan wheedling or negotiating or deploying the face. Just two words said simply by someone who genuinely meant them.
Jun stood there.
He turned back around and sat on the edge of the bed. He placed his hand lightly on Duan's back and felt him breathe.
"Sleep," he said quietly.
He patted him slowly, evenly, until the breathing deepened and steadied and the hand around his loosened completely.
---
The room was warm and dim and quiet.
Jun hadn't meant to stay as long as he did. He'd told himself he would leave once Duan was properly asleep and then the minutes had kept passing and his body had decided not to move and at some point without fully agreeing to it he had drifted off sitting upright against the headboard, head tilted at an angle that was going to make itself known in the morning.
He didn't hear Duan wake up.
Duan sat up slowly and blinked the room into focus. His head felt clearer. Not better exactly but clearer. The weight behind his eyes had eased slightly and he could breathe without it feeling like effort.
He turned his head.
Jun was asleep beside him, back against the headboard, arms loose in his lap. His face in sleep was different from his face awake — softer, the careful stillness he usually wore replaced by something that just looked like rest. He looked younger. He looked tired in a way that had probably been there for a while without showing.
Duan looked at him for a long moment.
Then he carefully peeled himself off the bed and slipped out of the room.
---
Jun's eyes opened.
He sat up and the space beside him was empty and something in him moved faster than he expected it to. He was on his feet and at the door before he'd consciously decided to stand up and he pulled it open—
And walked directly into Duan.
The collision was quiet but close. Duan grabbed the nearest thing to steady himself which was Jun's waist, both hands, and Jun's hand caught his arm automatically and they ended up standing in the doorway with approximately no space between them.
Neither of them moved.
Jun could feel Duan's hands at his waist. Could feel him breathing. The hallway was dim and the apartment was quiet and the world had narrowed down to the few centimetres of air between their faces.
Duan's eyes were very still. Not the bright restless energy they usually carried. Just — still. Looking at Jun like he was the only thing in the room worth looking at, which he usually did, but like this, this close, it was different. It landed differently.
Jun's throat moved.
He cleared it.
They both took a small step back at the same time. The space between them returned. The world expanded back to its normal size.
"Where did you go," Jun said. His voice came out slightly uneven and he didn't acknowledge that.
Duan held up the glass of water in his hand. "To drink."
Jun looked at the glass.
"I'm leaving," he said.
Duan moved in front of the door with the speed of someone who had been preparing for this moment.
"I'm still not better."
"Go to the hospital."
"I don't want to go to the hospital."
"Then call Dom or Fah."
"They're busy."
"Duan—"
"Please." He looked up at Jun with the full devastating force of the face. Eyes wide, slightly glassy from the fever, lower lip doing something that should not have been as effective as it was. "Just a little while longer. I feel better when you're here."
Jun looked at the face.
Looked away.
"A little while," he said.
Duan stepped aside from the door immediately.
---
They settled on the couch, the television on low, the evening coming in soft through the curtains. Duan sat beside Jun with the careful distance of someone who was thinking about closing it and thinking about whether he should.
He looked at Jun's lap.
Looked at Jun.
Jun was watching the television with the focused expression of someone who was very aware of being watched.
"Jun."
"No."
"I didn't even say anything."
"You were about to ask something."
"I was just going to ask if—"
"No."
Duan turned to face him fully and Jun continued watching the television with great determination.
"I'm sick," Duan said.
"I know."
"Sick people need comfort."
"Call your mother."
"Jun—"
"No."
Duan pulled out the face. Jun looked at the television. Duan held the face. Jun's jaw moved slightly. He looked at the ceiling briefly like he was asking it for patience.
"Do whatever you want," he said flatly.
Duan lowered himself sideways onto the couch and settled his head in Jun's lap with a slow exhale that sounded like a person who had finally arrived somewhere after a very long journey.
Jun sat with his hands in his lap and looked at the television and didn't move.
"Thank you," Duan said after a while. Quietly. "For coming. You didn't have to do that."
Jun said nothing.
"I mean it." A pause. The television murmured. "Honestly I kind of wish I got sick more often if this is what happ—"
Jun's hand came down on his shoulder.
"Say something stupid again."
"Sorry." Duan smiled. "Sorry. I'm done."
Silence settled back over the room. The good kind. The kind that had stopped feeling like something that needed to be filled.
Duan watched the ceiling and felt the warmth of Jun beside him and the coolness of the apartment and the way his body had finally stopped feeling like it was fighting something. He felt Jun shift slightly and then something rested on his hair. Light. Careful. Jun's hand, just sitting there like it had found somewhere to be.
Duan didn't move.
Didn't say a word.
He kept his breathing even and his eyes on the ceiling and let the feeling settle into him slowly, the way good things do when you're afraid that naming them will make them disappear.
The television kept going. The evening kept coming in through the curtains.
Duan's eyes grew heavy.
He fought it for a while.
Then he stopped fighting and let the warmth of Jun's hand and the quiet of the room take him under.
---
Jun sat there for a long time after Duan fell asleep.
His hand was still in his hair. He hadn't moved it. He looked down at him — the long lashes against his cheek, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the way his face in sleep looked like it had finally stopped working so hard at everything.
Jun looked at him for a moment longer than he meant to.
Then he carefully lifted his hand and stood up.
He found a spare blanket in the cabinet by the television and laid it over Duan slowly, making sure not to disturb him. He straightened up and looked at him one more time.
Then he picked up his bag, let himself out quietly and pulled the door shut behind him.
He stood in the corridor for a moment.
The building was quiet. The elevator hummed somewhere below him.
He took a slow breath and started walking.