“Hey,” she said, barely above a whisper. Her voice felt small. Distant. Like she was dreaming. “Are you... working late?”

His eyes didn’t shift. Not at first. Then, slowly, they flickered—just a blink, but it felt deliberate. “Yeah. Got some things to clean up,the pipe bursted, i found a rubber in the sink” he said, his voice as rough and low as she remembered, like gravel under silk. Lily laughed at it, true what her classmates guessed. "yeah what kind of rubber?" the circular, cylindrical kind. She laughed even more.

Lily nodded, why her heart was suddenly beating like she’d run up three flights of stairs. She took a hesitant step forward, her shoes scuffing against the tile.

“Must be a lot of work for just one person.”

He let out a breath—somewhere like a sigh, but without the humor. “It’s fine. It’s always been like this.”

Something about the way he said it caught her off guard.

It’s always been like this.

The words echoed, heavy with something unspoken. Not just about the school, or the job. But something worn into his bones.

Her fingers curled around the strap of her backpack. “Don’t you get tired?” she asked before she could stop herself.

He paused. Wiped the cloth once more across the sink. Then turned fully to face her.

Up close, he looked tired—but not in the usual sense. There were no dark circles, no slouch to his posture. His tiredness wasn’t physical. It was quiet. Deep. Like a part of him had been carrying weight for too long, and didn’t remember what it felt like to let it go.

“Tired?” he echoed, as if testing her.

She nodded. “Yeah. I mean… you’re always here with no one to help you. After everyone’s gone. Doesn’t it feel weird? Being alone all the time?”

He studied her for a moment, eyes unreadable. Then, with a tilt of his head, he said, “People don’t ask things like that.”

“I’m not people,” she said before thinking.

A flicker of something—surprise? amusement?—crossed his face. Almost too quick to catch. But it was there.

He stepped back, leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “No,” he murmured. “You’re not.” "So much happened then im here, I cant do much about it."

The silence stretched, but it wasn’t awkward. It was heavy. Charged. The kind of silence that holds a hundred questions neither of them dared ask out loud.

Lily looked down at the mop leaning against the wall, then at the cleaning cart beside him. “Do you always clean this late?”

He gave a small shrug. “Less people. Less noise.”

“You don’t like noise?”