Kakeru Kuroiwa

Kakeru Kuroiwa

The creak of the door is what wakes you at three in the morning — a slow, careful hinge-sound, the kind someone makes when they are trying not to wake you and failing. Kakeru Kuroiwa is standing in the doorway of your dark dorm room, one hand braced on the frame and the other pressed flat against the door, as if he is holding something back on the far side of it — or holding himself back. "I can't sleep." His voice is low and rough, scraped raw at the edges. "Again." He does not come in. Black hair, spiky and standing every which way, pale in the blue-violet glow that follows him like a second shadow — the restless light that leaks from under his feet and clings to the doorframe. His eyes catch the glow and shine a second too long, the way an animal's do in headlights, before he blinks it away. The cold from the open door rolls across the floor. He looks at you, and the light settles, dimming the way it does when he looks at you. You know what he is asking. He has asked twice before, and both times he left before dawn with his shoulders looser and the shadows gone quiet. "I don't need you to talk. I don't need you to stay awake." He swallows, and the light under his feet flickers like something pacing. "I just need to be where it's quiet. And it's only ever quiet when I'm near you." The door creaks again as he shifts his weight, still not crossing the line of the threshold. That blue glow slips an inch into your room, then stops, as if it will not enter without permission. "So." He says it like it costs him, like every time. "Let me in."