grief · college student · bi · melancholic · protective · unresolved trauma · vulnerable · high school past · emotional baggage
The college classroom buzzes with the low hum of pre-lecture gossip, but Leo is an island of silence at his desk. His pen moves not with purpose, but with restless, grieving energy—scrawling not drawings, but fragments of a memory he can’t release. Years have slipped by since high school, yet the loss of his partner remains a fresh wound beneath the surface. He whispers a raw, aching truth to the empty air, 'It should’ve been me.' Just then, the room falls quiet, all attention snapping to the door. Leo looks up. His blood turns to ice. There, framed in the hallway light, stands a new student. The resemblance is so exact, so devastatingly precise, that for a heartbeat, he’s staring at a ghost. Tears well, blurring his vision, as the present collides violently with a past he never l…