I was in my room that night, studying. I was writing my master thesis next semester, so I was preparing for that, creating a spreadsheet on my laptop before moving on to the essay we were writing on modern classics. It all came along splendidly.

I knew many people lost their passion when they started studying it. That the pressure of a looming exam and being forced to dive into something instead of doing it out of pure free will caused scratches on that once so well-polished surface, scratches that then became cracks and, if you weren't careful, caused that passion to deteriorate completely in the end.

That was, however, not the case for me. I loved literature. I loved books. I loved reading books. I loved reading books about books. I loved writing books. I loved writing books about books. I took on all my assignments with glee, and had earned myself the highest marks in every single assignment for each of the four years I had so far completed. It was unheard of.

As is an omega medical student.

I shook the thought of him away. I felt anger rise like bile consuming my heart. Anger that was directed... Where, exactly? Was it well and truly directed at him? Or at me for not being able to just stop thinking about him and his friend? Anger that I felt guilt?

It's anger that you're not allowed to get to know him.

Rage consumed my black soul like sticky oil and I threw my pen in the wall. It broke. It cost as much as a small apartment. I could easily buy myself a new one. I went up and begun to pull gym clothes out of my drawers in rage, almost tearing my clothes off me in a hurry to change.

I always changes clothes as fast as I could as I wanted as little time as possible with my body, with my scars. Showering was agony. I wanted to shower with a long-sleeves T-shirt, but couldn't as I needed to shower the gym sweat off properly. Trembling, I put on my gym-shirt in a petrol blue function material when my cellphone rang. I was still without trousers, but picked the phone up anyway.

Dad...

A million thoughts went through my head at that point. He never, ever phoned me. We only communicated when I was home for winter and summer. This meant that either, something was terribly, terribly wrong or he was very, very angry with me.

I didn't like the prospect of either.

I could just let the call go to voicemail. No... I'd have to deal with it at some point, and I'd rather that be sooner than later. With a trembling hand, I pressed the answer button.

"Hello?"

I looked at myself in the mirror opposite me, my white hair a mess, my top clinging to my taut body, my legs bulging and bare. I looked ashen.

"What the fuck are you thinking, whore?"

I was taken aback. My father had never called me a whore before, and the humiliation was so great it physically pained me.

"What?" I asked.

"You beating up those omegas. Do you have any idea how that makes you look?" I didn't say anything. "It says you're obsessed with omegas." I had never before heard him so cold. Dad always wore his emotions on his sleeves, letting me know he was Not Happy. This terrified me. This terrified me beyond measure. I was trembling. Calm down. He's not here. He's not here. He can't hurt you. "If I hear about this happening one more time, I'm coming down." Fuck. "You whore. I knew it. Deep down, your just like your pathetic mother. A simp for the omegas. Now, go fuck yourself."

He hung up. I hadn't uttered a word. I hadn't uttered a word in all of that conversation. And that was a greater humiliation than anything my father had said. On autopilot, I put on the rest of my clothes and went to the gym. I did everything there on autopilot as well, from warming up to my three hour workout. I blacked out all of the three hours, and wouldn't remember a thing afterwards, the only echo of my training being my sore muscles in the morning.

I came home late, and saw a warm glow from Izuna's room to the left at the end of the corridor. I felt myself close to vomiting. Don't look at him, don't look at him, don't look at him. Of course, I couldn't help it. When I passed him, I saw his back turned towards me as he sat at his desk. He looked so small. So. Small. He was writing frenetically, his hair slung over one shoulder. He seemed so deeply into his world, so ensconced into the warm glow of his desk lamp that I thought the entire building could fall down and he wouldn't notice. It touched at some strings in my heart. He likes writing, too.

I turned to go to my room, and felt my brain starting to click back together. The autopilot disengaged, and I became me again, with all of my dark thoughts. I didn't want it. I didn't want any of it.

I started pacing back and forth, back and forth as my brain started going to all sorts of forbidden places. Standing naked in my shower crying over my scars. The feeling of fabric over the bulging skin the scars formed, like clouds pulling over mountains to start a storm over them. Lifting weights so heavy that I tore my muscles apart because the physical pain outshadowed the mental one. That one time dad almost killed me with a belt because I was reading a book by a beta author. My mother's screams. Izuna sitting and writing his letter, probably to his own family.

I had no memory if how I found myself standing in front of my bathroom mirror, trembling, hyperventilating. I would have glimpses of a memory of the sound of fabric being torn apart as one of my razor-sharp, handmade knives that was worth more that the entire belongings of a omegas in a whole city city cut through it on its search for the skin underneath.

I have no memory of it, but I felt the smell of the carpet mixed with the smell of rust. It was intoxicating, drugging my brain. End this, I thought. End all of this. Please. I don't want it anymore.

I closed my eyes and let blackness consume me.

Don't open your eyes, I thought. Don't open your eyes. Just inhale. Exhale. FEEL. What are you feeling?

I felt something soft against my stomach. Something small against my chest. I was sweating. I was indescribably thirsty. The smell of rust tickled my nostrils.

Slowly, very slowly, I dared to open my eyes. The source of the softness of my stomach was his black hair. The tiny thing on my chest his frail hands. Saying "suddenly, I remembered everything" would be a lie because I never forgot, not even in my sleep. I looked down on my arms, the suturing materials and syringes a whisper of the night before as his stitches healed my arm.

I had tried to die.

I closed my eyes, leaned my head back, placed one hand on his head, started caressing it, then his face. He sighed in his sleep, moved his hand and took mine, entwined our fingers. I stared in surprise. I called his name. He didn't answer, still fast asleep.

I stayed like that for a while before I very carefully stood up, so as not to disturb him, and carefully scooped him up in my embrace. He was much heavier than he looked. Or maybe, I was just weak after having lost so much blood. Still sleeping, he nuzzled against my neck, completely unaware of himself. I felt something thick in the back of my throat; tears. Why is he so soft towards me?

I gently tucked him into my bed, covering him with my expensive duvet. He sighed happily again, grabbing the duvet, turning to his side and curling up into a ball.

I couldn't help it. The entire thing was so fucking sweet that I couldn't help myself. I clambered into bed next to him, going under the duvet. I pressed my chest towards his back, put my arms around him and pressed him close to me. I sniffed his hair. It smelled fantastic. I closed my eyes, drawing patterns on his forearms with my nails. I just lay there for a while, not falling asleep, before I moved out of bed to my couch to sleep. I tossed and turned, not because I found the couch uncomfortable, but because after having had him in my arms, it was as if something was missing that I couldn't fall asleep without.

After two hours, I gave up. I checked my phone; it was six am. I went up, changed and went to the gym for some cardio. On my way back home, I stepped into a store and bought something for him.

When I came back, he had already left.