The hallway outside their dorm rooms was unusually quiet that night. The usual sounds laughter, doors opening and closing, music pulsing from speakers were softened like the building itself knew something tender was unfolding.
Jiang Xiao Shuai stood leaning against the wall, arms crossed, hesitating.
Guo Cheng Yu leaned beside him, hands tucked into his hoodie pockets, head tilted up toward the flickering ceiling light. He didn't speak. He didn't move. He just waited.
"I was seventeen when I met Meng Tao," Xiao Shuai said finally, voice low. "I thought he was everything. Smart, calm, older. He'd always tell me I was too loud, too much, too clingy. I thought... if I was just less, maybe he'd love me better."
Cheng Yu turned his head slowly.
"He didn't hit me," Xiao Shuai continued. "He just... made me feel guilty all the time. Like I was annoying for texting first. Like my feelings were a burden. He'd 'forget' dates. Turn off his phone. Then when I got upset, he'd say I was being dramatic."
Cheng Yu's jaw tightened.
"I got used to apologizing," Xiao Shuai said with a faint laugh. "Even when I hadn't done anything wrong."
Cheng Yu stepped in front of him then, quiet and steady. "Don't laugh that off."
"I'm not." Xiao Shuai met his eyes. "I just... I don't know why I'm telling you this."
"Because I'm listening," Cheng Yu said simply. "And I'm not going anywhere."
Silence settled between them not heavy, not awkward. Just present.
Then Cheng Yu, very carefully, touched Xiao Shuai's wrist. "You don't have to make yourself smaller around me. I like it when you're loud. I like it when you talk too much. I like your stupid videos and the way you hum when you eat and how you always cut your sleeves because you say they choke your elbows."
Xiao Shuai blinked at him.
"Guo Cheng Yu," he said slowly, "did you just say I have choking elbows?"
Cheng Yu's lips twitched. "Yeah. I did. And I like them."
And just like that just like always Xiao Shuai smiled. The real kind. The full kind that pushed the shadows back.
Later, lying in bed, he stared at his ceiling for a long time. The weight of Meng Tao's message didn't feel as heavy now. What echoed louder than the past was the image of Cheng Yu standing in the hallway, looking at him like he mattered.
"You don't have to be less around me."
The boy who used to apologize for laughing too loudly, for texting too much, for wanting to be held — had finally been told he didn't need to shrink to be loved.
And that night, for the first time in a long while, he slept through the night.