Chapter Text
A veil of snow dusts the courtyard, clinging to the bare branches and the steepled spires of the old stone church. It's move-in day, but there's no bustle. The university never draws crowds. Not anymore. Sion is a sophomore—already settled into his little dorm room last year—and this morning he walks the grounds with slow steps. He watches as a few scattered families linger beneath the eaves, murmuring teary goodbyes. A handful of new students roam in uncertain clusters, led by priests with stiff smiles and clasped hands.
Once, long ago, this university had been a beacon, founded in the colonial era when the missionaries still believed they could pull Korea from the brink of its own making. A holy place in a world that no longer believes in saints, a half-forgotten institution holding fast to traditions that the modern age has long since abandoned.
But to Sion, it is home. It had been the only university he ever wanted to attend—the only one he ever applied to. He loves every inch of this place that others mock, the cracked stone steps, the cloying incense that lingers in the chapel air. He loves the silence most of all—the sense of safety that comes with knowing the worst thing that might happen here is someone whispering too loudly during morning mass.
His roommate had graduated last term—a theology major, like himself—off overseas to serve in a parish. He had been kind. Patient. Holier than most, though he never acted like he knew it. Sion had admired him, listened carefully to his words, absorbed his wisdom in quiet reverence. He hopes, now, to do the same for whatever new freshman he will share a room with.
The wind brushes through his hair as he rounds the side of the church. Snow clings to the hem of his coat. In the center of campus, the statue of the Virgin Mary stands beneath her canopy of leafless branches. Sion has admired her many times before, and he admires her now—pausing, like always, to cross himself.
Others are gathered around, freshmen huddling close, the priests directing luggage carts through the slush. But one figure stands apart from the rest. A boy, dark-haired, dressed in a black wool coat, leaning against the low stone wall at Mary's feet. His cigarette smolders between two fingers, leaving behind a thin ribbon of smoke. Sion watches as the boy flicks ash carelessly onto the hem of the Virgin's robe.
It feels wrong. Sion can't quite name the sin—can't summon the exact line of scripture to condemn it—but something in him recoils all the same. The boy doesn't seem to notice. He takes another long drag, head tilted back, eyes half-lidded like a cat stretched out in the sun.
Then his gaze flicks toward Sion. Their eyes catch. It’s brief, no more than a breath, but something crackles in the cold air. Sion’s heart gives a small, startled lurch. The boy looks away first, like Sion is hardly worth the glance.
Sion crosses himself again, harder this time, fingers pressing into his sternum. He tries to brush it off, tries to forget the black-coated boy with smoke on his breath and ash on his fingers. By afternoon, Sion sits at his desk beneath the narrow dormitory window, scripture cracked open in front of him. He traces each line with the tip of his pen, whispering the verses under his breath.
He forces himself to focus, brow furrowing, pen tapping against the edge of the desk. He’s just starting to sink back into the rhythm of study when the door creaks open. Sion looks up. And there he is. The boy from the statue. The cigarette is gone now, but the smell of smoke still clings to him—subtle, just beneath the wool of his black coat, like something burnt down to its last embers. He stands in the doorway with a suitcase dangling at his side, shoulders tense, as if he hadn’t expected to see Sion here either. For a moment, neither of them speaks.
But something flickers across the boy’s face—something almost sheepish, like he knows. Like he remembers exactly where Sion had seen him. Like he knows what he did was something bordering on blasphemy, even if he doesn’t particularly care. Still, he steps forward. “Maeda Riku,” he says, extending his hand.
Sion rises, his palm meeting Riku’s. His grip is steady—firm in a way that makes Sion’s mind leap traitorously to the story of Jacob wrestling the angel in the dark. “Oh Sion,” he answers.
Riku’s mouth twitches—not quite a smile, more like something sardonic tugging at the corner of his lips. “From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth,” Riku recites, half to himself, half to the room.
Sion blinks, caught off guard. He knows the verse, of course. It’s the reason his parents had given him his name in the first place—to set a standard, to give him something to live up to. To strive for godliness. For beauty. It feels strange, hearing it in Riku’s mouth, lazy, almost mocking. He watches as Riku shrugs off his coat, revealing a black turtleneck underneath, loose around his collarbones. There’s something oddly graceful about him. “What are you studying?” Sion asks after a moment.
“Literature.”
The answer surprises him. “Really?” Riku glances over his shoulder. “Not a lot of people study literature here,” Sion adds quickly. “It’s mostly theology.”
“Well…” Riku exhales slowly, running a hand through his windswept hair. “I flunked out of every school I actually wanted to go to. My aunt—distant, ancient, I don't even know how we're related—is on the administration board here. Pulled some strings.” He lifts both hands, palms open like he’s surrendering himself. “Don’t worry. I’m Catholic.”
Sion doesn’t know what to say to that. Riku goes back to unpacking—pulling out crumpled clothes, half-empty cigarette cartons, a dog-eared copy of The Brothers Karamazov . He moves like someone who has never had to be particularly careful with his own belongings.
Sion glances back at the open Bible on his desk, the verses blurred beneath his own underlines. He wonders if saints ever recognized devils when they first walked through the door. A cigarette flicked onto the Virgin’s robe. A Psalm recited like the punchline to a joke.
—
Riku is quiet. Not the self-contained kind of quiet that Sion is used to—the gentle hush of theology students who spend their days in libraries and their nights in whispered prayers. Riku’s quiet is something heavier. It presses against the walls of their shared room, filling up all the spaces where small talk might have lived.
But when Riku speaks, it always seems to catch Sion off guard. Sometimes it’s a dry, offhand remark that makes Sion blink twice, unsure if it’s meant to be funny or if Riku just thinks in riddles. Other times, it’s something so oddly sharp that it leaves Sion scrambling to find his footing. Maybe it's just nerves. Sion tells himself that. He remembers what it was like to be new here, stumbling through conversations, trying too hard to seem friendly, or funny, or normal.
He tries to be kind. He tries to coax something out of Riku—asks about his classes, about his family, about his faith. But Riku answers in half-sentences, one-word replies that slip through Sion’s fingers like beads on a broken rosary.
Most of the time, Sion ends up listening more to the ghost of music seeping from Riku’s headphones than to his voice. The sound is strange—dark, electric, the kind of music that makes Sion's stomach tighten without knowing why. Something with jagged edges, something that doesn't quite belong in a place like this, where hymns echo through chapel halls and everything is meant to be orderly, clean.
After a while, Sion starts watching him instead—trying to decode him in glances, in the way he carries himself. Riku stands out at the college without even trying to. The other boys dress the same, their shirts pressed and neat, hair trimmed to regulation. Riku's jeans sag loose on his hips, faded and worn at the knees. His black hair falls just an inch too long over his eyes, tempting the priests' scissors. The two silver earrings in each ear catch the light sometimes. Sion has never seen a boy wear earrings before, not here. But there’s a silver cross tucked around his neck, too.
Sion has seen it before, glimpsed it hanging against the hollow of Riku's throat during morning mass. But once, they had passed each other in the communal showers—too close in the narrow hallway, both of them damp and half-dressed, towels slung low around their hips. The chain had glinted wet against the hollow of Riku’s collarbone. Sion hadn’t meant to stare, but his eyes had caught on the pendant. The edges spiked like thorns. It was carved with some kind of inscription, and Sion had wondered if he was imagining the way the zirconium stones caught the fluorescent light.
He’d asked, without really knowing why. Riku had glanced down at it, fingers brushing over the cross like he’d forgotten it was even there. “Family heirloom,” he’d muttered. “My great-great-grandfather picked it up on some pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Got passed down ever since.”
Something about that had settled Sion, in a way he couldn't quite explain. It made Riku feel safer, maybe. As if the blood running through him had been steeped in devotion for centuries, no matter what kind of music he listened to or how he dressed.
Still, the cross only answered one question while opening a dozen others. Because now, Sion can't stop wondering—how does someone like Riku end up here? How does someone who wears silver in his ears and darkness in his headphones end up among boys who speak their prayers in perfect Latin?
He thinks about it at night sometimes, lying awake in his narrow bed. He thinks about that cross against pale skin, about the way Riku's hair fell wet over his eyes that day in the showers. He thinks about how Riku never seems to quite fit here, and yet he doesn’t seem to belong anywhere else, either.
Riku hums under his breath during the day—little half-melodies that float beneath the surface of everything. At first, Sion barely noticed it, just another faint noise in the fabric of the college’s soundscape. But after a while, Sion started hearing it everywhere. The same tune, again and again. Low and lazy, like smoke curling from between Riku’s lips.
It took him weeks to figure out what the song was, not that Riku ever offered to tell him. He’d only found out by glancing at the cassette tape tucked into Riku’s Walkman one afternoon, left carelessly on his desk while he was out. Lithium, by a band called Nirvana. Sion had traced the letters with his thumb, mouthing the name to himself. It sounded blasphemous somehow, to name a song after something meant to calm the mind.
Sion knows better now—knows that the humming means Riku’s in a good mood, or as close to one as he ever gets. Sometimes, when they’re walking side by side down the long stone corridors, Sion will hear that tune slinking out from between Riku’s teeth and think, there it is. Proof that there’s something alive in him. Proof that the boy with the thorned cross around his neck and the cigarettes hidden in his sock drawer isn’t entirely lost.
But at night, Riku hums something else. It happens when he’s already asleep—breath gone slow, limbs tangled in the scratchy blankets of his narrow bed. The sound is softer then, barely more than a vibration in the back of his throat. Latin hymns, sometimes. Japanese prayers, other times. Words Sion recognizes from mass or the textbooks they’re meant to memorize tumbling out of Riku's mouth like they were never meant to be spoken while awake.
Sion listens with his eyes wide open in the dark, his own bed hard beneath him. He watches the rise and fall of Riku's chest across the room, the silver glint of his earrings catching in the faint moonlight that seeps through the cracked blinds. It makes him think of angels—not the clean, shining ones carved into the altar, but the kind from the old stories. The ones with too many wings and eyes burning like embers. The ones who sing in languages no human was ever meant to understand.
Sion knows the words. He wants to fill them in, to give shape to the half-sung syllables. But instead, he only tightens his grip on the rosary wrapped around his wrist, the beads pressing firm into his skin like little teeth.
—
The snow has melted overnight, leaving the earth damp and raw. Sion walks alone to morning mass, shoes skimming over the slush, breath rising in thin clouds. It’s always like this—just him at this hour, the first footprints carved into the frost.
Every student is expected to attend the six A.M. service. Compulsory, Brother Gabriel reminds them. A sacred duty. But Sion knows how easily the weight of devotion slides off some shoulders, how boys will sleep through the bells and mutter half-hearted apologies later. He knows how hard it had been to get Riku to understand the importance of it—not just the rules, but the ritual. The way morning mass sets the bones of the day, how it carves out a small, clean space in the hours ahead.
Riku had listened with that same flat, unreadable expression he always wore—head tilted slightly, as if trying to decide whether Sion was serious or just another kind of fool. Sion had explained patiently, had nudged and prodded, nagged until he'd wrung out a promise. But still, Sion is always the one who arrives first. Riku is always the one who arrives last.
The church is warm inside, golden with the glow of a hundred candles flickering along the altar. The heat wraps around Sion the moment he steps in, making his fingers tingle. He moves quietly down the aisle, passing by Brother Gabriel—the one who always smells like mothballs and mildew, the one with a smile like something folded too tightly into itself. Little saint, he calls Sion, in that voice that makes something crawl beneath Sion's skin. Sion nods politely, as he always does. He wonders if Brother Gabriel calls any of the other boys that name or if it’s something only meant for him, carved out specially. He doesn’t want to know the answer.
He sits in his usual pew, back straight, hands folded neatly on his lap. The hush before mass is one of his favorite things—those few brief moments when the world feels perfectly balanced, waiting to be filled. Just as the first Latin phrases of the liturgy begin to rise, the door creaks open.
Riku stumbles in, hair messy, clothes rumpled, the buttons of his shirt done up wrong. He looks like he's still halfway in a dream, face soft and puffy from sleep. He slinks down into the pew beside Sion without a word, hands stuffed deep into his pockets. For a moment, he just sits there, head bowed like he might drift off again. The candlelight pools in the hollows of his face, catching on the silver cross at his throat.
Sion presses his lips together to stop himself from smiling. He's seen this before, a hundred times by now. Riku moving through the motions like a stray cat forced indoors, all grudging obedience and half-awake grace. But he's here. That’s what matters, Sion tells himself. Even if he’s always late. Even if his hair is too long and his breath smells faintly of cigarettes he isn’t supposed to have.
Sion watches him from the corner of his eye, trying not to feel too proud or too foolish. He bows his head and grips his rosary tight, the beads pressing cool against his palm. Faith, Sion thinks, isn't always something you wear on the outside. Sometimes it stumbles in late, half-buttoned and hollow-eyed—barely there at all.
—
The school has been granted an excursion. A rare reprieve when all classes are canceled, and the priests herd them into buses like cattle for some trip deemed holy enough to justify the break.
This time, they’re going to Seoul—an hour away, though it feels farther. The city belongs to a different world than the hush of the campus. Seoul is big and restless and grey, pressing out in every direction—smog-wrapped buildings, rivers of traffic, billboards flickering in half-broken neon. Sion hasn’t spent much time here. He arrived by train, straight from Mokpo, and had barely seen more than the inside of the station before a black-suited priest was steering him into a van bound for the college.
Not that it matters. The bus takes them straight to the cathedral in Myeongdong, no detours. The priests make sure of that—one stationed at the front of each bus, one at the back, as if anyone might try and slip away between the cracks.
It’s supposed to be a pilgrimage, though Sion doubts anyone feels particularly holy as they file off the buses, blinking into the watery winter daylight. The courtyard is packed—priests in their heavy coats pointing students toward the right lines, their breath curling in the cold. They’ll be given a tour, a lecture, some insight from the people working there. Then mass at noon, before they’re all carted back to the college by sunset.
Sion follows the stream of students toward the cathedral steps. He keeps his head down, moving on instinct, one foot after the other. Somewhere behind him, Riku trails a few paces back, the way he always does.
They’re not friends. Not really. Sion still can’t figure him out, can’t crack him open the way he wants to. He’s tried every angle: polite questions, careful patience, the gentle persistence of someone who wants to be good. But Riku stays closed off, like something soldered shut.
Most days, Sion feels a little guilty for wishing he'd been assigned another roommate. Someone simpler. Someone easier. But even when he isn’t trying, even when they barely speak, they still seem to orbit each other—locked in some quiet, inevitable gravity. Maybe it's just because they sleep six feet apart every night.
Riku lags behind the others, hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat, his headphones looped around his neck. He looks out of place among the other boys, who walk in neat little packs, laughing too loudly or elbowing each other to shake off the stiff weight of the priests watching them. Still, he’s here. He always is.
Sion glances back, just for a second. Riku catches him looking, and something flickers across his face. “What?” Riku asks, voice low, his accent a little clipped around the edges. Sion shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say.
They follow the others inside, through the heavy wooden doors into the cathedral’s cool, echoing dark. The light changes the moment they cross the threshold—everything suddenly softer, washed in stained glass. Sion feels it settle over him like a second skin. That hush. That stillness. It’s the same in every church—like stepping out of time.
The priest leading their group begins to speak—something about history, architecture, the resilience of the cathedral through wars and revolutions. Sion listens politely, hands clasped behind his back. But his eyes keep drifting up to the high vault of the ceiling, the ribcage of arches, the way the sunlight spills through the rose window and breaks into color on the marble floor.
When the priest pauses to let them light candles for intercession, Sion moves forward automatically. He fishes a coin from his pocket, drops it into the box, and lights a slim white taper. He presses his palm flat against the cold marble rail and closes his eyes for a moment—long enough to feel the heat of the flame through his fingertips, long enough to murmur something that doesn’t quite shape itself into a prayer.
When he opens them again, Riku is standing a few feet away, holding an unlit candle between two fingers. Finally, without ceremony, he leans forward and lights his candle off the tip of Sion’s. They burn together. Neither of them says anything.
By the time mass begins, the two of them have drifted into the same pew. Sion kneels, folds his hands neatly. Riku sits, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded. He hums under his breath, barely audible, and it takes Sion a long time to realize he’s humming Lithium.
Halfway through the liturgy, Riku leans in close, breath warm against Sion’s ear. “Do you think God gets bored hearing the same thing every day?”
Sion's fingers tighten around his rosary. “Maybe.”
Riku’s mouth twitches at the corner—some small, secret smile. “Me too.”
After mass, the whole procession of students and priests trickles out of the cathedral. They walk together in near silence to the nearest bus station only to be told the next bus won’t come for another hour.
Sion leans back against the brick wall and closes his eyes, head tipped up toward the grey sky. His limbs ache from the long day spent standing and kneeling, rising and folding, bending his body into the shape of devotion. He wishes he were back at the campus, tucked under scratchy wool blankets in the bed God cradles in His hands. The whole school feels suspended in something holy, something gentle and ancient. Here, out in the open city, the sky feels too wide. God feels further away.
Sion shifts his weight, hands tucked stiffly into his coat pockets, trying not to feel so cold. That’s when Riku sidles up beside him, and their shoulders knock together, a brief press of warmth through layers of fabric. “Look,” Riku says, nodding his head toward the street.
Sion follows his gaze—sees them lined up just outside the station, half-lit by flickering signs. A row of food carts, steam rising in thick white plumes into the night air. The smell of frying oil and gochujang drifts toward them. “Are you hungry?” Riku asks, voice low.
Sion stiffens but tries not to show it. His eyes flick instinctively toward Brother Gabriel, who stands at the edge of the group. The priests haven’t said they can’t eat, exactly. But there’s an unspoken rule in places like this: don’t step out of line. If you're not told you're allowed, you're not. Riku must see the hesitation flicker across his face, because he grins. “Come on.” His breath curls white between them. “Tteokbokki isn’t a sin.”
Sion’s stomach twists—half hunger, half guilt. He wonders if Riku knows how easily he sees straight through him, how Sion's whole heart is scrawled out for anyone to read if they only know what to look for. He wonders if God made him that way on purpose—thin-skinned, transparent.
Riku starts walking without waiting for an answer, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, slouching off toward the edge of the station. Sion glances at Brother Gabriel again. He could call him back. He could snitch if he really wanted to. He could stay exactly where he's supposed to be. But he pushes off the wall and follows.
They drift to the edge of the station, just far enough that the priests won’t see if they don’t look too hard. Riku slides a few crumpled bills across the cart counter without ceremony, and a paper cup of bright red tteokbokki is pressed into his hand. He pops a rice cake into his mouth and makes a satisfied little noise at the back of his throat. Finally, with a breath like breaking glass, Sion takes one.
It burns against his tongue—spicy, sticky-sweet, hot enough to make his eyes water. It tastes like the kind of sin no one ever bothers to warn you about—small and harmless, wrapped up in salt and steam. For a moment, neither of them speaks. They just stand there in the orange glow, chewing slowly, steam curling between them.
“This is your first time in Seoul, isn’t it?” Riku says suddenly.
Sion swallows. His throat feels hot. “No.”
“It’s mine,” he says. “I’ve never been anywhere but Fukui.”
Sion stares at him, caught off guard. “I thought you were from Tokyo,” he says carefully.
Riku smiles, lazy and lopsided. “You think you know everything about me?”
Sion’s face heats—not from the spice this time. “No,” he mutters.
Riku just grins wider, teeth flashing in the dim light.
A gust of cold wind snakes through the station, but Sion barely feels it. He feels the bead of sweat still prickling at the back of his neck from the tteokbokki. He feels the warmth of Riku’s shoulder brushing his. He feels—against all odds—good.
They finish the cup between them without speaking. When it’s empty, Riku crumples it in his fist and tosses it into the bin without breaking stride. By the time they slink back toward the rest of the group, the bus is just beginning to pull into the station. Sion glances once more at Brother Gabriel, but the priest’s sharp black eyes are fixed elsewhere.
He presses his hand against the rosary beneath his sleeve—half apology, half secret. He knows he'll pray harder tonight to make up for this. But somehow, he doesn't feel quite as guilty as he should.
If God saw them step out of line—if He saw Sion lingering in the warm pocket of Riku's orbit, lips stained red with spice—He hasn't struck them down for it. Maybe not all sins are made equal. Maybe some were always meant to be shared.
—
That night, the campus is wrapped in grey. The crucifixes above their beds hang slightly askew, casting crooked shadows against the walls, their edges dulled by dust. Sion sits at his desk, bent over scripture. He traces each word carefully with his finger, whispering the verses under his breath the way he was taught. He tells himself he’s studying, but in truth, he’s searching. Trying to find something—an answer, a revelation, a reason his heart is twisting.
Behind him, Riku shifts in his bed, rustling against the blankets. The music from his headphones is low, but Sion can still hear the faint thrum of bass, the echo of a voice too raw to belong to a hymn. “Which one is that?” Riku asks suddenly.
Sion doesn’t turn around. “Luke.”
Riku hums, a slow, thoughtful sound. “Read something to me.”
Sion hesitates. “What, like a bedtime story?”
Riku snorts. “Sure. If that makes it less weird for you.”
It is weird. Riku has never shown much interest in scripture before—at least, not the way Sion does. Not the way that means bending your whole life around it, shaping yourself into something that fits inside its lines.
Still, Sion clears his throat and reads. “The kingdom of God is within you.”
The bed creaks as Riku shifts again. “What does that mean?”
Sion frowns at the page. “It means… God isn’t just in churches. Or in rituals. Or in priests. He’s—” he gestures vaguely, struggling for the right words. “He’s in you. He’s in all of us.”
Riku is quiet for a long time. Then he says, “That sounds kinda dangerous.”
Sion blinks. “What?”
“I mean, what if someone’s full of bad things?” Riku’s voice is lazy, amused, but there’s something sharp underneath. “Wouldn’t that make God bad too?”
Sion turns in his chair, finally looking at him. “No,” he says firmly. “God isn’t—He doesn’t become what we are. He stays Himself.”
Riku looks at him, eyes dark and lidded. “And what if someone’s empty?”
Sion shakes his head. “No one’s empty.”
Riku doesn’t argue. He just watches him for a long, unreadable moment, and then, with a slow exhale, rolls onto his side, pressing his face half into his pillow.
Sion turns the pages slowly, letting the sound fill the room. They talk like that for a while, about scripture, about God, about the strange little cracks in the armor of holiness where the light gets in. Somehow the conversation drifts—away from faith, into softer, more human things. What they'd be doing if they weren't here. What cities they'd run to if they ever got the chance. Riku talks more than he ever has before. Sion just listens.
It’s only later, when Riku’s breath evens out and the room sinks back into silence, that Sion notices the Bible tucked beneath Riku's pillow, half-hidden like a secret. He’s been sleeping with it every night, like he thinks it'll seep into him slowly—through bone, through blood—if only he keeps it close enough. Like maybe faith works that way. Like maybe some grace will find him in his sleep, without him ever having to ask for it out loud.
Sion swallows hard against the ache rising in his throat. He doesn’t say anything. He just leans over, as quietly as he can, and flicks off the desk lamp. He lays awake for a long time, clutching the rosary wrapped around his wrist so tight the beads leave little marks in his skin. He wants to pray. He wants to touch the Bible under Riku’s pillow just to see if it’s warm from his body.
—
They begin watching each other through reflections—in stolen glances against glass windows, fractured glimpses in cracked mirrors, the wavering sheen of the holy water font. They never quite meet each other’s eyes head-on, but somehow, Sion always knows when Riku is watching him too. It feels like a secret prayer answered or maybe something far more dangerous.
Sion notices everything now. The curve of Riku's neck, pale and delicate in the dim chapel light. The way his dark hair curls, just faintly, at the nape where it meets skin. He watches the little silver cross Riku wears—how it shifts when he moves, dipping into the hollow of his throat, catching light when he laughs.
So he prays harder. Longer. Until the lines of psalms blur behind his eyes and his knees bloom into purple bruises against the stone floor. When the ache becomes too much, he shifts only to press himself down into the pain again, like a penance carved into flesh. Lent is coming soon. He promises God he will fast harder than ever before. He will purge himself clean. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s atoning for, only that there’s something inside him that needs to be starved out.
At least now, Riku has become something like a friend. They talk in the garden between classes, sometimes in the cloisters where the cold lingers. Sion has learned how to read the rhythm of Riku's humor. He can even make Riku laugh now, which feels like some small, private triumph.
They talk about God, too—but only under the shade of Riku's cynicism, which makes Sion’s stomach tighten. Riku loves to prod at him, to test the walls of his faith like a thief looking for weak spots. He always brings up theodicy, the oldest, cruelest question: If God is good, why does He let us suffer?
Sion rolls his eyes but still rises to the bait, every time. "Because suffering makes us holy."
"That's stupid."
"You're stupid."
It's almost like banter—except Sion's always half-serious, and Riku's always half-not. It bothers Sion, the casual way Riku speaks about things that should only ever be whispered, the way he says God like it's just another word instead of something that should tremble in your mouth. But still—Sion tells himself that as a theology student, it’s good to be challenged. To see things from new perspectives. To test the strength of his own faith against doubt.
One night, after evening mass, Brother Gabriel finds him lingering at the back of the chapel. He leans in close, speaking in that soft, measured voice that always feels heavier than it should. "You'd do well to be careful around that boy," he says. "Riku doesn't take faith seriously. He's careless. A bad influence on anyone who isn't… as strong as you, little saint." Brother Gabriel touches two fingers lightly to Sion’s forehead, like a blessing—or maybe like a brand.
—
On Ash Wednesday, the world seems to hold its breath. The air is cold and still, and the light from the stained glass windows falls in fractured shards across the stone floor, streaking their black suits with color.
They both dress in their finest that morning—crisp collars, polished shoes, dark ties knotted neat against their throats. Sion feels the weight of the day settle into him the moment he buttons his cuffs, the familiar rhythm of ritual steadying his hands. Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. He’s always loved the ache of Lent—the quiet, the hunger, the promise of something clean waiting on the other side.
He tries not to look at Riku as they walk to mass side by side, but it's impossible not to feel him there, the lazy sway of his steps, the heat of him too close in the cold morning air. Riku smells faintly of cigarette smoke and something sharp and clean, like soap. He always leaves his top button undone. Sion’s fingers twitch at his sides, wanting, absurdly, to fix it.
Inside the chapel, the priest marks them both with the same cross, thumb pressing ash into skin, smearing the dark stain just above their brows. Sion lowers his head beneath the touch, obedient, devout. But when he glances up and sees the cross reflected on Riku's forehead—blurred faintly in the polished brass of the candlesticks—something in him buckles.
He remembers, all at once, the story from Genesis. How God knelt in the dirt to shape the first man from dust, how He leaned down and breathed life into him. Without that breath, without God’s mercy, they are nothing but ashes waiting to be scattered. He wonders if Riku knows that. If he’s ever really thought about it. If anyone’s ever told him.
They stand shoulder to shoulder in the pews, their hymnals open between them. The priest murmurs the liturgy at the altar, voice low and steady, and Sion tries to fix his mind on the words—on sin and sacrifice, on the forty days stretched out ahead like a desert to cross. But then Riku shifts, leaning in so close that Sion feels the brush of his breath against the shell of his ear. "You look stupid," he whispers, soft and irreverent.
Sion has to clap a hand over his mouth to smother the laugh that bubbles up—sharp, startled, entirely unwelcome. Sion’s face burns. He ducks his head quickly, turning the laugh into a cough, but he knows God saw. He knows God heard.
He stares hard at the crucifix above the altar, fixing his gaze on the nails driven through Christ’s hands. He clenches his jaw and thinks—forty days. Forty days to cleanse himself. Forty days to scrape out whatever strange, flickering thing has begun to bloom inside him whenever Riku gets too close. He'll starve it out if he has to. He’ll carve every unholy impulse from his body with hunger and prayer. The harder Riku makes his heart flutter, the harder Sion will make himself suffer.
He can already imagine it, the long days of fasting until his stomach twists in on itself, the sleepless nights on cold dormitory sheets. The bruises deepening on his knees, pressed into the stone floor over and over until he feels something inside him break open. He'll beg God to burn him clean. He’ll beg Him to make him holy again.
"You've got ash on your nose," Riku murmurs without looking at him, voice low enough that no one else can hear. Sion wants to smack him. He wants to laugh again. He wants to fall to his knees right there in the pew and pray until the whole world disappears.
—
A week into Lent, Sion falls sick.
It starts with a dull ache behind his eyes, a heavy throb at the base of his skull that he mistakes at first for the natural consequence of hunger. But by the third day, the fever blooms beneath his skin, turning his limbs heavy and molten, like his own blood is trying to punish him from the inside out. His whole body hurts—a slow, bone-deep ache that makes even the act of kneeling in prayer feel like splinters driven into his joints.
He walks from lecture to lecture in a fog, the words of the professors dissolving in his ears. The world blurs at the edges. By evening, he stumbles back to the dormitory, sweat dampening the hollow of his spine, white spots flickering at the corners of his vision like some private constellation only he can see.
He knows he should break the fast. God would forgive him—God is merciful. But the thought fills him with a sick sort of dread. If he eats now, if he gives in, what would all the suffering have been for? He wants to be holy. He wants to starve himself clean. He wants to burn away every secret thing inside him until there’s nothing left but light.
So he doesn’t eat. He falls into bed instead, still in his shirt and slacks, the fever pressing him down into the thin mattress like a hand between his shoulder blades. His mind drifts somewhere strange and shimmering—half-prayer, half-dream—until the door creaks open and he hears footsteps padding across the floor.
He blinks, eyelids sticky with sweat. For a moment, in the fever-haze, he thinks maybe it’s an angel coming to test him. But when his eyes finally drag into focus, it's just Riku.
Even through the haze, Sion thinks he looks softer than usual, his sharp mouth tugged down at the corners, hair messy from running his fingers through it. His cross glints faintly against his bare throat, half-hidden beneath the open collar of his shirt. Sion stares at it, dizzy, and thinks of the angel Gabriel descending to the Virgin Mary.
Riku leans over him, eyes narrowed in concern. He curses, but Sion’s ears are full of rushing blood, and the word doesn’t reach him clearly. Normally, he'd have the strength to chastise him for it. Now he just lets his eyes flutter closed again, too far gone to care. Riku disappears briefly, and when he comes back, he has a damp cloth in his hand. He sits down on the edge of the narrow bed and lifts Sion without asking, cradling him effortlessly against his chest, one arm curled beneath his shoulders, the other hand pressing the cool cloth to his burning forehead.
Sion goes boneless without meaning to, his body yielding to Riku’s like a sacrificial offering laid on the altar. It feels good. It feels like mercy. "You’re burning up," Riku mutters, half to himself. His voice is low and rough, like he’s trying to sound annoyed but can’t quite muster the energy.
“God is testing me,” Sion croaks.
Riku makes a soft, disbelieving sound—half a scoff, half something gentler. He drags the cloth across Sion’s flushed face, down the curve of his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you’re failing,” he says quietly.
Sion doesn’t answer. His heart is beating too fast, but he doesn’t know if it’s the fever or else—something darker, something hotter, something he's spent years trying to drown in cold water and rosary beads.
Riku’s fingers ghost along his throat, tugging the stiff collar of his shirt to the side. His touch is cold—so cold it burns—and Sion’s breath catches sharply in his chest. "I should get Brother Gabriel," Riku murmurs, but his fingers linger against Sion’s fever-damp skin.
Sion opens his eyes, heavy, glassy, and looks up at him. He wonders, distantly, if this is what the martyrs felt in their final moments—pinned beneath the weight of something they could neither fight nor refuse. He wonders if this is what God meant when He asked for surrender. He wonders if this, too, could count as suffering.
For a long moment, neither of them moves. The candle on the desk flickers, painting gold along Riku’s jawline, the hollow of his throat. The whole world feels balanced on a knife’s edge. Then, slowly—like he's testing the line between blasphemy and grace—Riku leans down.
He doesn't kiss Sion on the mouth. He’s close enough that Sion feels his breath ghosting against his fevered lips, close enough that if he tilted his chin just slightly, the whole world might come crashing down in a single, shattering instant. But instead, Riku's mouth finds the little silver cross resting against Sion's chest, damp with sweat, warmed by skin. He closes his lips around it like it's something holy. His breath feathers out hot and damp against Sion's collarbones.
And then—God forgive him—his tongue flickers out. Sion feels it, wet and obscene, tracing the worn edges of the crucifix, licking into the grooves where Christ's tiny silver body hangs. Riku laps up the sweat that’s gathered at the hollow of his throat like a prayer taken back into the mouth.
Sion makes a sound—small, helpless—and bites down hard on the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper, trying to smother whatever wants to rise up in him. His body feels like a fever made flesh, every nerve peeled raw and trembling beneath Riku’s touch. He can't tell if he's burning up from sickness or sin, only that he's burning and that part of him wants to be burned down to nothing. Maybe this is the trial. Maybe this is the furnace he begged for. Make me holy. Make me clean. Make me suffer.
Riku’s fingers skim along the curve of his throat, light, delicate, like he's afraid Sion might break if he pressed any harder. But Sion wishes he would. He wishes he'd bruise him. Hurt him. Carve something into him that God couldn’t ever wash away. For one shattering second, Sion thinks Riku's going to do something worse—something holy. He thinks he's going to kiss him properly, right there in the fever-dark, with the taste of salt and sweat still on his tongue. Instead, Riku pulls back.
His face is unreadable, eyes dark, mouth soft, like he doesn't quite know what he's done either. He presses the cloth back into Sion's shaking hands, his fingers lingering just a little too long against his palm. "You’re not gonna die," he mutters, rough and flat, like he’s trying to convince himself, then stands up and disappears into the dark without looking back.
Sion is left alone beneath the low ceiling of the dormitory room, the candle on the bedside table flickering down to its final pool of melted wax. The fever still presses hot beneath his skin, but it's nothing compared to the ache thrumming low in his stomach. His whole body feels wrong—too heavy, too hollow, too full. He shifts restlessly against the mattress, trying to find some way to ease the ache without touching himself.
Masturbation is a sin. He’s memorized the Catechism by heart. Lust indulged becomes mortal sin. The body is a temple. The body is not his to defile. But rubbing his hips slowly, torturously against the mattress—the stiff, narrow ridge between the sheets and the waistband of his sweat-damp slacks—isn’t.
Not technically. Not if he doesn’t use his hands. Not if he keeps his eyes clenched shut and prays the whole time, whispering the Ave Maria into the darkness with his teeth sunk deep into the swollen flesh of his cheek.
He writhes against the mattress in slow, aching drags, feeling the damp heat of his own body building between his legs. His breath comes out ragged through gritted teeth. Hail Mary, full of grace…
The crucifix still hangs heavy against his chest, the taste of Riku's mouth lingering on the tarnished metal. Sion presses his face into his pillow and grinds down harder, helpless against the slow, unbearable wave rising through him. The Lord is with thee…
His mind won't stop replaying it—the heat of Riku's breath against his throat, the flick of his tongue against the cross. Blessed art thou among women… He bites down harder on his cheek. The pain feels good. The pain feels clean. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…
He muffles a broken little cry into the pillow. When it's over, he lies perfectly still in the dark, his body a wreck of fever and sweat, heart slamming hard against his ribs. He feels sick. He feels clean. He feels like he’s just carved something unspeakable out of himself and offered it up on the altar.
He closes his eyes and prays until the wet stain cools against his skin. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners… He prays until his throat is raw, until the words taste like blood. Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.