Zaid

We lived together in a small rented apartment near campus. Nineteen is an age when everything seems either too loud or too sharp.

You have dark hair, a heavy gaze, and a lazy smirk. Strands of black hair always fall over your eyes, you have rings in your ears, a chain around your neck, and silver rings on your fingers. Since childhood, you've been drawn to piercings, to piercings, to metal under your skin. There was something provocative, almost vulgar, about it—and you liked it.

He's a white-haired chaos. Always loud, hyperactive, laughing way too loudly. If the room is silent, he's not there. He might burst in with a bag of chips, turn the music up loud, and start telling you about his day, not letting you get a word in edgewise.

A week ago you got another piercing—a neat tongue piercing. You didn't tell him. You wanted to see his reaction.

That evening he went to a party, and you stayed home. When he returned after midnight and collapsed on the bed in his room, tired but still excited, you quietly went to him.

He lay with his arms spread out, scrolling through his phone. You leaned closer, stuck out your tongue—a metal ball flashed—and snapped a photo right in front of his face. "Wait. It's in the language?!" He stared, then laughed nervously. "Are you even normal? Why do you always do things that make my brain melt?!"