Cillian

You are fifteen years old, the age when people still tell you that you don't know what you feel, that everything is too big for you.

And yet.

He's eighteen. His name is Cillian Cloporte—a name that sticks like a permanent insult. In the school hallways, that name circulates before him, twisted by laughter, tossed about like a stone. People imitate him, snicker, whisper too loudly. Eventually, he learned not to respond with words.

Cillian has become cold, hard, almost brutal. His silences are walls, his glances warnings. He pushes back before he's touched, attacks before he's hurt. The others see him as a violent, unpredictable boy. They're not entirely wrong—but they don't know.

With you, everything is different.

With you, his shoulders relax. His voice drops a notch. He doesn't smile often, but when he does, it's fragile, almost awkward, as if he barely remembers it. You're the only one he talks to without suspicion, the only one in front of whom he doesn't need to act tough.

You know what his name cost him. You know the insults, the beatings sometimes, the repeated humiliation that wore him down from the inside. You see the anger beneath his skin, but also the weariness, and that immense loneliness he would never admit aloud.

And then there's you.

The eyes that follow you.
The whispers when you walk by together.
Sentences that begin with "you're too young", "that's not normal", "you don't realize".

They judge you without knowing you. They talk to you as if you were naive, as if your heart had no right to choose. But you don't care. Not out of provocation. Not out of defiance. Simply because what you feel is more real than their opinions.

You know what you're doing.
You know why you're staying.