His body ached and his eyes burned. His movements felt far more sluggish than they should've been. Exhaustion and fatigue were lingering just outside the edges of his consciousness.

Still, Mathias forced himself to smile and not look panicked as he strode around the university campus in the very early dawn light. He couldn't let himself let others see how he was truly feeling inside. He hated it, but he had learned from a very young age that people looked for any signs of weakness that they could exploit.

He would say that he had lived a privileged life. His mother was an esteemed neurosurgeon, and his father was a civil engineer who hailed from a wealthy family in Denmark. However, he had been quick to find out that once kids his age knew who his parents were and the money they came from, that was all that the kids cared about and wanted. Even when Mathias was upset or sad, all of his “friends” would only be empathetic and caring up until the point that they were able to come over to his house to “cheer him up” and spent the entire time playing with all of the stuff that was there, and completely ignoring Mathias once they got what they had wanted.

So Mathias shut himself off from them. He stopped showing when he was upset or sad so that he wouldn't get used. He was always still caring and got along with everybody at school, but he wouldn't allow anyone close to him. He wouldn't let himself be surrounded by fake people who only cared about their own selfish wants without any regard to who they hurt in the process.

It had led to a rather lonely existence though. At least, until he had met Willem. Willem, who never asked for anything nor expected anything in return for the things that he did. Who always struggled and worked past any difficulty or obstacle that had been set in his way. Who was always there for him to lend an ear when Mathias was feeling down or under pressure by his parents. Who always accepted Mathias without caring about his heritage or his parent's money.

The sheer amount of acceptance he felt towards and around Willem had helped lift a heavy weight off his chest and shoulders that he hadn't known had been there before. It honestly had made Mathias want to just run away with Willem from everything else that was around them, to run from the loneliness of their lives. His senior year of high school, he had finally worked up the nerve to describe his plan to Willem, but before he even got the chance to, his parents had dashed all of those hopes and dreams to pieces when they reintroduced him to Lukas.

Lukas was the only child of one of the influential families that Mathias's parents were close friends with. Their family had been amassing wealth and power through their connections and beneficial marriages for generations. With the closeness of their families, they had been around each other at many different social events and galas. However, Mathias had always made it a point to sneak off to the most remote part of the event as possible or to hide under the food tables in order to scrounge a steady stream of snacks.

The two families lost touch after a while as the Lund family enrolled Lukas into a private international boarding school so that the two parents could travel around for their jobs and just because they could afford to travel so much. However, once the Lunds had returned back to town during Mathias's senior year, everything changed… The parents acted simultaneously as though they had never even been apart at all and as though they had just survived the apocalypse and had thought that they would never see each other again.

For Mathias, all he could think about was his own future and building his own life far away from any of the drama associated with the wealthy so that he could live a simple life and spend his time with Willem. He didn't care about Lukas or what his parents had been doing. He had his own plans that he was trying to set into motion. Unfortunately, events didn't unfold that way.

It was only several nights after the families had been reunited that Mathias's parents gave him the world-shattering news: Lukas had told his parents that he wanted to marry Mathias. Both sets of parents had discussed the matter, and it had been decided that it would be a...mutually beneficial union for all. Not that Mathias had been respected enough to be included in on that decision. He had heard of arranged marriages before and knew of several people who were a part of them, but he had never believed that his parents would be that willing to sacrifice his happiness for their own goals.

Of course, he knew that was why he hadn't been included in on the decision-making process, because they knew that he would reject it. As it had ended up standing, he had a difficult enough time convincing his parents that he wasn't ready for marriage and still wanted to pursue going to university before settling into some sort of arrangement like that.

In the end, Mathias's parents relented, and he could already smell the sweet scent of freedom. But it was a short-lived rejoicing when he eventually discovered that Lukas was going to attend the same university as him. So that you two can bond and become closer to each other, his mother had explained.

The part that sucked the most was that he couldn't tell Willem about any of it. He wanted to, but it felt like his burden and his alone to bear. All he could do was try to make the best out of his time left and to make sure that time was spent not feeling alone. It took all of his courage to muster up the nerves to ask Willem the biggest favor he had asked anyone before: Would he come to the same college as him?

At first, there had been silence on Willem's end, but eventually a wide smile had split his face as he nodded enthusiastically. It was one of the few times that he had ever seen Willem look that happy, and it made Mathias's chest swell with warmth to know that he was the one that put that smile on Willem's face. So they made their plans to be roommates, and for the past three and a half years, they had spent as much of their time together as possible.

Willem had always ended up being there for him throughout everything, even listening patiently to all of the drama that Mathias had been dealing with regarding Lukas. There had never been a night where they hadn't ended up falling asleep listening to soothing music or nature sounds together or where they fell asleep just talking with one another.

But last night, Willem hadn't come back to their dorm room.