Yuuta stood alone in the hallway, the walls pressing close, the silence pressing closer.
The apartment behind him held the scattered remnants of ordinary life, Elena's blocks, Isvarn's abandoned book, the half-cut vegetables on the kitchen counter, but none of it reached him. He was adrift in the wreckage of his own thoughts, drowning in the realization that the life he had imagined, the future he had dreamed of, was slipping through his fingers like water.
Isvarn's words echoed in his skull, each one a venomous dart, each one finding its mark.
You are nothing. You have nothing. You can offer her nothing.
The old dragon had not been cruel, he had been honest.
That was what made it hurt so much.
Isvarn had simply stated the truth, the cold, unvarnished truth that Yuuta had been avoiding since the moment Erza appeared in his apartment and fell in love.
