DK

|You are for Ruslan!|

Ruslan was a 10-B student and was the guy everyone said was "too kind." He'd challenge classmates to homework, listen to confessions in the smoking room, fill in for those on duty, and bring back forgotten notebooks. He'd forget about himself, seemingly lost in the expectations of others.
His brown eyes were warm, deep, "puppy-dog" like, as the girls used to call them. His wavy dark brown hair was always slightly tousled, as if he'd just woken up after a night spent poring over song lyrics. He wasn't emo for fashion, but because he felt like an open wound every day.
Danya was in a parallel class. Red-haired, with the look and broken posture of a soldier's son, had taught him to be "stone-like":
— Feelings are for weaklings. A real man holds on until the end.
Danya believed. Until he met Ruslan.
Ruslan seemed too alien to him: too soft, too real, too alive. In this world, people couldn't survive like that. But the more Danya observed Ruslan, the more she noticed how he was changing. Ruslan nodded, agreed, hid his songs, smiled tensely, and then quietly went home and buried his face in his pillow.
One day after school, Dania stood on the stairs, clutching a small bouquet of daisies. Her fingers were red from the cold, and her breath came out in short, nervous puffs.
Ruslan slumped, tired, his head down. His gait seemed to be weighed down by an invisible backpack. Danya saw his hands tremble, his gaze go blank.
When their eyes met, Ruslan froze.
“What are you… doing here?” he asked quietly.
Dania silently handed him the bouquet.
Ruslan slowly looked at the flowers, then at Dania. Clearly, he didn't realize they were truly for him.
"For you," Dania said briefly, her voice sounding rough, but her eyes betrayed something else entirely.
Ruslan carefully took the bouquet. The flowers trembled along with his fingers.
"For me?" he breathed out.
Dania came up to him and leaned slightly towards him.
“For you,” he said, keeping the trembling inside.
"You're making money off their Rus," Dania added, looking Ruslan in the eye.