Chapter Text
Lohen had always known something was wrong with him.
Not in the poetic way people whispered about broken hearts or lonely souls. Not the sort of sadness that healed with time, friendship, or soft reassurances. No. Something inside him had simply never existed.
He was born hollow.
Doctors called it neurological. Specialists called it psychological. Priests called it spiritual imbalance. None of them could explain why the omega child stared at scraped knees without crying, funerals without grieving, birthdays without joy. No medicine worked. No therapy fixed him. No heat, no comfort, no affection ever touched the strange cavern inside his chest.
He learned quickly that people disliked things they couldn’t understand.
So Lohen adapted.
He smiled when people laughed. Tilted his head in concern when someone cried. Memorized facial expressions like scripts for a play. Teachers praised him for being quiet and polite. Other students found him unsettling in a way they couldn’t explain. Pretty, composed, strange.
His omega scent, mint, dandelions, and mist flowers lingered soft and cool in the air, delicate enough to make people underestimate him.
By the time he entered his second year at Akademi, a prestigious post-high school academy for gifted young adults, he had perfected normalcy.
Or the imitation of it.
He sat alone in lectures. Scored high grades without effort. Rarely spoke unless necessary. Never bonded deeply with anyone because there had never been anything inside him capable of attachment.
Until the accident.
It happened on a rainy Monday. Students flooded through Akademi’s central corridor, umbrellas dripping onto polished floors. Lohen walked through the crowd with mechanical precision, detached as always.
Then someone slammed into him.
“Sorry!” The voice came quickly, startled warm hands caught his hand before he could fall and as Lohen looked emotionlessly at the person…the world suddenly stopped.
Lohen froze.
The boy standing in front of him looked painfully ordinary.
Messy silver ash hair is slightly damp from rain. School uniform neat but wrinkled at the sleeves. Calm eyes carrying the kind of tiredness that came from surviving things no one talked about.
“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling to pick up dropped papers.
His scent hit Lohen a second later.
Pine. Amber. Vanilla.
Warm.
Comforting.
Alive.
Something ruptured inside him. Suddenly, the gray corridor sharpened into impossible clarity. The fluorescent lights gleamed like stars, the rain against the windows sounded beautiful.
His chest hurt
It hurt so badly that Lohen’s fingers curled into the fabric over his heart like he could tear the feeling back out, force himself empty again before whatever this was, consumed him. Something is wrong, his mind whispered, frantic and unfamiliar, because pain had never felt like this before, sharp and aching and unbearably alive. Illuga was saying something, apologizing, voice strained and raw, but the words slipped past him like distant thunder swallowed by a storm too close to ignore.
No.
Lohen slowly lifted his head.
Illuga stood there, battered, apologizing to him with that same infuriating steadiness, red eyes burning with concern instead of fear, and for the first time in his life, Lohen looked at someone and felt the terrifying certainty that he did not want to look away.
‘Why does he matter?’ The thought struck him hard enough to steal his breath, because suddenly the sight of Illuga standing there felt unbearably important, like losing him would carve something catastrophic through his ribs.
His chest existed and emotion crashed into him so violently he almost staggered.
His knees nearly buckled beneath the force of it, one trembling hand still pressed over the frantic rhythm in his chest as if he could contain the avalanche happening inside him. The emptiness that had haunted him his entire life fractured all at once.
Warmth.
Curiosity.
Wonder.
Happiness.
A dizzying, unbearable fullness spread through his body until he thought he might collapse from it.
It flooded him too fast, too much, terrifying in its intensity, as if someone had taken every color in existence and poured them straight into veins that had only ever known gray. He could feel everything, “everything”, and it made his eyes sting with something dangerously close to tears he didn’t understand. His pulse thundered louder than reason, louder than the battlefield, louder than Illuga’s apologies. And through all of it, one impossible realization settled deep into his bones with devastating clarity:
So this is what being alive feels like.
Lohen felt alive.
The boy smiled awkwardly. “You dropped these by the way,” he said as he handed Lohen the book that fell from Lohens grasp.
His voice sounded like music.
Not polished or delicate, but something low and steady that settled into Lohen’s ribs and lingered there, vibrating against the strange, aching fullness in his chest. Every word seemed to land somewhere impossibly soft inside him, and Lohen found himself listening with the helpless focus of someone hearing rain after a lifetime of silence.
Lohen stared and then, “…What’s your name?” he asked, quieter than intended.
“Illuga Starshyna.”
Illuga shifted his bag higher onto his shoulder, trying very hard not to think about how catastrophically late he already was. “Okay. Fine. It’s fine,” Illuga told himself, mentally straightening his nonexistent dignity. If he ran fast enough, avoided at least three teachers, and relied on academic excellence as emotional compensation, he could still make it to the test and absolutely destroy it.
Illuga.
The name lodged itself somewhere sacred in Lohen’s heart.
He repeated it silently, carefully, as though even thinking it too loudly might somehow damage it. Illuga, warm and strange and precious, fitting into the hollow spaces inside him with frightening ease. Lohen had spent his entire life untouched by longing, untouched by attachment, untouched by anything at all, and yet now this single name sat inside him like something ancient and inevitable. It scared him how quickly it mattered.
“I’m in class 2-C,” Illuga continued. “Sorry again. I should’ve watched where I was going.” He gave a small apologetic bow before leaving.
And with every step Illuga took away, something inside Lohen lurched in immediate, irrational distress.
The warmth began to thin.
The unbearable fullness flickered, and then panic bloomed sharp and violent in Lohen’s chest as one horrifying thought struck him:
Wait.
He’s leaving!?
The warmth vanished.
The color disappeared.
The world became dull.
Empty.
Silent.
Lohen stopped breathing.
Lohen’s thoughts spiraled with frightening speed, sharp and disorganized in a way his mind had never been before. Why does it hurt? Why does it hurt when he walks away? The warmth had barely entered his chest and already something vicious inside him recoiled at the idea of losing it, clawing desperately against the familiar emptiness waiting to swallow him whole again. Come back, his mind whispered with startling urgency, irrational and immediate. Don’t go.
He hurried after him without thinking.
The closer he got, the warmth returned.
The frantic pressure in his chest eased, just enough for him to breathe again, just enough for the terrible hollowness to retreat into the corners of himself where it belonged. But every time Illuga moved farther away, even by a few steps, the ache returned with cruel precision, cold and cavernous, like something precious was being ripped from him before he had even understood what it was.
By lunch, Lohen understood.
This was not coincidence.
He had tested it, accidentally at first and then obsessively, lingering near hallways Illuga passed through, finding excuses to drift closer, pretending not to notice how embarrassingly obvious he was becoming. Every single time, the same impossible thing happened: closeness soothed him, distance hurt. This can’t be normal, he thought faintly, watching Illuga laugh at something another student said, and somehow that laugh settled the frantic storm inside him.
Illuga wasn’t merely pleasant.
Lohen had met pleasant people before. He understood the concept academically, the way one understands weather patterns or mathematics. Pleasant people did not make his pulse stumble into chaos. Pleasant people did not make colors seem brighter, sounds sharper, breathing easier. Pleasant people certainly did not reduce him to silently following them through campus like a deeply troubled ghost with attachment issues.
He was necessary.
The realization landed with quiet, terrifying certainty.
I need him close, Lohen thought, horrified by the sheer scale of it. The emptiness inside him had ruled every second of his existence, incurable and endless, and yet somehow Illuga stood in direct opposition to it without even trying. When Illuga was nearby, the world stopped feeling unbearable. When he wasn’t, Lohen felt himself unravel.
Like oxygen.
Like blood.
Like existence itself.
Without him, Lohen returned to being broken.
The hollowness crawled back fast, cold and merciless, settling into his chest like it had been waiting impatiently for its rightful place. This is me, Lohen thought dimly whenever Illuga disappeared from sight, the familiar numbness swallowing color and sound until the world felt distant again. He hated how quickly the ache returned now that he had something to compare it to. Worse, he hated the quiet terror blooming inside him every time he wondered, What if he leaves and never comes back?
With him, he became whole.
The realization should have made him angry.
Instead, it hurt in an entirely different way.
Because suddenly Lohen remembered every sneer, every whispered freak, every careless laugh from classmates who looked at him like something fundamentally wrong had crawled into human skin and learned to speak. Loser. Creepy. Empty-eyed. He had heard them all. They never understood why he stood too still, smiled at the wrong times, or reacted to joy and grief with the same distant expression, and Lohen had stopped trying to explain long ago. But standing near Illuga, warmth blooming through his ribs like sunlight finding a locked room, a terrible thought surfaced:
What if I was never broken?
What if I was just missing something?
And for the first time in his life, Lohen wanted something.
As a child, he had learned quickly that pretending was survival. Smile when people laugh. Frown when someone cries. Tilt your head at the right moments. Memorize concern like lines in a play, copy happiness from television, imitate affection because normal people expected it. He had spent years performing humanity so no one would notice the terrifying truth that he felt none of it properly, that every relationship slid off him like water against glass.
But now, watching Illuga from across campus with a frightening sort of devotion growing roots inside him, Lohen found himself gripping the sleeve of his uniform tighter.
Because this feeling?
This terrifying, overwhelming, desperate thing?
It was real.
And he wanted it.
He wanted Illuga.
Desperately and Obsessively
Months.
Specifically, four months.
Lohen learned everything within days.
At school, he memorized Illuga’s schedule so precisely he could predict where he would be down to the minute, lingering nearby with the quiet patience of something orbiting a star. He learned Illuga preferred sitting near windows, disliked overly sweet drinks, and tapped his pencil exactly three times whenever he was concentrating. At home,
Lohen gathered information with unnerving efficiency, building entire mental maps from scattered observations and overheard conversations, noting which convenience store Illuga visited after training, which route he took home when tired, which songs he replayed most often late at night. He knew Illuga hated thunderstorms but liked cold weather, hated dishonesty but secretly enjoyed terrible instant noodles with too much sodium, and every tiny discovery lodged itself inside Lohen with sacred intensity.
Lohen found himself absurdly fascinated by how ordinary some of it sounded.
He wakes up early on weekends to study voluntarily, Lohen thought once, staring blankly at his notebook after following Illuga to a library for the third consecutive Saturday. Who does that willingly? And yet every small habit became precious to him with horrifying speed. Illuga’s neat handwriting. The way he frowned while reading difficult questions. The habit of muttering facts under his breath while walking home. Lohen absorbed every detail greedily, because each new piece of information made Illuga feel more real, more tangible, more his.
Trauma survivor.
Nearly killed once.
Mother deceased.
Lived with his father, who adored him.
Practiced taekwondo.
That information changed something inside Lohen.
The first time he learned about the attack Illuga survived years ago, a cold fury settled beneath his skin so suddenly it startled even him. He reread the information repeatedly, jaw tight, imagining Illuga bleeding somewhere alone while strangers failed to protect him properly, and the thought made something deeply violent stir in his chest. Someone hurt him, Lohen thought, hands curling slowly into fists. Someone touched what belongs beside me and almost destroyed it.
The feeling should have frightened him.
Instead, it felt natural. There are 5 word to describe Illuga in Lohen’s books
Quiet.
Illuga was quiet in the way winter mornings were quiet, not empty, not cold, simply careful. He listened more than he spoke, letting louder people fill silences while he stood at the edges with patient eyes and restrained expressions, like someone who had learned long ago that peace disappeared the moment attention turned toward him. Lohen noticed how Illuga sometimes paused before entering crowded rooms, shoulders tightening for half a second before smoothing out again. He watches first, Lohen thought, fascinated. He’s always checking if it’s safe.
Kind
Not loudly kind.
Illuga held doors open without announcing it, stayed behind to help classmates who struggled, and quietly shared notes with students too embarrassed to ask teachers for help. He remembered small things people forgot about themselves, favorite snacks, upcoming exams, who looked exhausted and needed encouragement disguised as casual concern. Lohen once watched him give away the last hot drink he bought because someone else looked colder, then pretend he had never wanted it anyway. He gives pieces of himself away so easily, Lohen thought, chest tightening strangely. And nobody notices how much.
Boring
Objectively like offensively boring.
Illuga studied. Ate lunch. Trained. Went home. Repeated the cycle with almost machine-like consistency, a human routine wrapped in decent grades and mild social awkwardness. He didn’t party, rarely gossiped, and somehow managed to make even rebellion look academically scheduled. Yet every time Lohen tried to convince himself of this fact, his attention betrayed him immediately. Then why do I know how his face changes when he solves difficult math problems? Lohen thought irritably. Why is “boring” apparently the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen?
Ordinary
No hidden fame. No impossible talent that bent the world around him. No dramatic charisma pulling crowds into orbit. Illuga tripped over curbs sometimes, forgot assignments once in a while, complained quietly about sore muscles after taekwondo, and worried about exams like everyone else.
But maybe that was exactly why Lohen found himself staring for too long. Because after a lifetime of feeling detached from humanity, ordinary suddenly looked extraordinary when it belonged to Illuga. He’s real, Lohen realized once, watching him laugh awkwardly at a bad joke. And somehow that feels miraculous.
Perfect.
Not flawless.
Perfect.
Because Illuga felt human in all the ways Lohen never had. His quietness softened sharp spaces inside people. His kindness lingered even when unnoticed. His boring routines made the world feel strangely stable, predictable, safe. His ordinariness stood in impossible contrast to the violent emptiness Lohen had lived with for years, and somehow simply existing, Illuga had reached into a hollow life and made it ache with color.
‘If there is a person meant for me,’ Lohen thought, watching sunlight catch against Illuga’s hair through a classroom window, ‘then maybe it looks exactly like this.’
Lohen began arranging coincidences like appearing at cafés, near Illugas favorite book store…but lohen is never near illuga as his heart may not take it.
It all changed when he saw her.
It happened after ethics class. A girl approached Illuga with familiar ease, bumping shoulders against him while laughing.
Omega.
Pretty.
Comfortable around him.
Too comfortable.
“Seriously, Illu,” she teased, “you’ll forget to eat if I don’t remind you.”
Illuga rolled his eyes. “You sound like my dad.”
She laughed again.
Lohen’s gaze followed the movement automatically, unnervingly still, as Illuga absentmindedly adjusted the strap of her bag after it slipped from her shoulder like it was habit. He watched the way they stood too close without noticing, the easy rhythm of people who had spent years memorizing each other’s presence. Something in his chest tightened with slow, dreadful precision.
Easy.
Warm.
Intimate.
Lohen stood motionless from across the courtyard, the warmth inside him twisted.
Something ugly bloomed.
His fingers curled slowly against his sleeves until the fabric wrinkled beneath the pressure, posture impossibly rigid. The familiar fullness Illuga gave him warped into something jagged, sharp at the edges, no longer soft enough to hold comfortably. For the first time since meeting him, warmth hurt.
“Who’s that?” he asked another student later.
The question came too quickly, too flat.
Lohen stood unnaturally close without realizing it, eyes fixed with unsettling focus as if the answer carried life-or-death consequences. He tried to appear indifferent, but his voice betrayed something strained beneath the surface.
“Oh, that’s Linnea,” they said casually. “Illuga’s childhood friend. Pretty sure she’s been in love with him forever.”
Lohen went still.
Not visibly.
But something behind his expression shifted, subtle and wrong, as though a fragile calculation had suddenly collapsed inward. His mind caught on the words and refused to move past them.
Lohen felt cold, his hand slowly pressed against his chest as though checking whether the warmth was already disappearing.
If Illuga dated her…The thought struck him with startling force, leaving behind a hollow ache so immediate it almost felt physical.
If Linnea became important… Then maybe Lohen would become forgettable, incidental, someone unnecessary standing quietly at the edge of Illuga’s life.
If Illuga stopped needing him— The emptiness would return.
Lohen lowered his gaze, and for a fleeting moment, something distant settled over his features, a familiar numbness creeping back into the edges of his expression like winter reclaiming abandoned ground. The strange brightness that had slowly begun gathering in his eyes dimmed, and beneath the courtyard shadows, a deeper red quietly took form, dark and restless, carrying the shape of something frightened enough to become dangerous.
Forever.
The thought made panic claw violently through his chest, a feeling so sharp and primal it almost frightened him.
Fear.
As a child, Lohen had never truly understood fear. Adults reacted with alarm to things that left him strangely untouched, and he remembered standing in the aftermath of terrible moments with the same blank stillness he carried everywhere else, unable to understand why everyone else trembled while he felt nothing at all. Even when consequences followed something irreversible from childhood, what unsettled others had only left him confused by the intensity of their reactions, detached from emotions he could imitate but never genuinely feel.
His first real fear.
Lohen stood silently at the edge of the courtyard, gaze fixed on the place Illuga had been moments earlier, body unnaturally still despite the storm gathering somewhere inside him. For the first time in his life, the thought of losing something felt unbearable.
Followed immediately by rage.
Cold.
Precise.
Unfamiliar, but instinctive.
It settled into him without warning, sharp as broken glass beneath skin, because fear had arrived hand-in-hand with the horrifying realization that something precious could be taken away before he even understood how to keep it.
Because Linnea smiled when she touched Illuga’s arm.
The gesture replayed endlessly in Lohen’s head, effortless and familiar, the kind of closeness that existed without permission because it had already been earned years ago. She touched him like she belonged near him. Like proximity was natural.
Lohen hated how much that bothered him.
Because Illuga smiled back.
Not politely.
Not carefully.
A real smile.
Small and easy and automatic, like happiness arrived before thought whenever she was nearby, and Lohen found himself staring too long at the memory of it, chest twisting painfully around something ugly and unfamiliar. I haven’t seen him smile like that, he realized, and somehow that hurt more than it should have.
That night, Lohen sat alone in his dorm room, staring blankly into darkness. His hands rested calmly in his lap.
His expression was unreadable, though inside, something had begun changing. He finally understood emotion now….He wants a future with Illuga and…pups…
The very thought of pups make Lohen flush and clutch his pillow harder…
And then, He imagined Illuga laughing with Linnea.
The image repeated relentlessly behind Lohen’s eyes, vivid in ways that made his chest ache, Illuga leaning toward her with that soft, genuine smile reserved for people he trusted completely. He imagined private jokes, quiet conversations late into the evening, the effortless comfort of years spent side by side. Every imagined moment felt like watching a door close before he could reach it.
Dating Linnea.
Lohen pictured classmates whispering about them with casual certainty, congratulating them, smiling knowingly whenever they walked together through campus. He imagined Illuga carrying her bag absentmindedly, waiting for her after class, building routines that slowly excluded everyone else. The thought settled inside him like ice water.
Choosing Linnea.
That possibility hurt worst of all.
Because choosing meant preference.
It meant Illuga looking at two paths and deciding someone else fit beside him more naturally, more safely, more correctly than Lohen ever could. Of course he would, Lohen thought bitterly. She’s normal.
Leaving him behind.
He imagined becoming forgettable.
A strange classmate.
An awkward acquaintance standing too quietly in hallways while Illuga’s attention drifted elsewhere permanently. In those imagined futures, Lohen remained exactly where he had always been before Illuga arrived: outside everything warm, watching life happen at a distance.
The emptiness threatened to swallow him whole again.
He could feel it opening beneath him already, vast and familiar, waiting patiently for the brief miracle inside his chest to disappear. Colors dulled in his imagination until the world became gray again, silent again, unbearable again. I can’t go back, he realized with sudden terrifying clarity. I can’t survive going back.
His pulse steadied.
Not calmer.
Sharper.
Fear slowly reorganized itself into focus, every frantic thought narrowing into something colder and far more dangerous than panic.
Slow.
Careful.
Lohen sat up unmoving in the dark, replaying possibilities over and over until his breathing evened out completely. The ache in his chest remained, but now it existed beside a frightening kind of certainty.
Methodical.
Because problems had causes.
And causes could be understood.
Removed from proximity.
Distanced from what they threatened.
Without hesitation, Lohen arrived at a conclusion that felt perfectly logical.
Linnea had become a problem and problems… could be removed.
Not dramatically.
Not impulsively.
Just quietly enough that the fragile future Lohen wanted would stop slipping farther away every time Illuga smiled at someone else. The thought settled into him with terrifying ease.
No matter the cost.
In the silence of his dorm room, Lohen’s hand tightened slowly around the handle of a small knife resting forgotten beside his had, the metal cool against his palm. His expression never changed, but somewhere behind his dull red eyes, fear and devotion twisted together into something increasingly difficult to separate.