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Katsuki used to be loud once. All sharp edges and noise, his voice filling every corner of the room. Before the silence came. Before it crept in and stole the noise from his world, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of it. It was slow and deliberate, crawling into the spaces between his words until there were none left. It didn’t take him all at once. It ate him in fragments, little by little, until there was nothing loud left in him. Now he just sits in it, lets it hold him, wipe away his tears, swallow his cries. The silence fills every part of him, from his hair down to his toes, pressing into the hollows it carved out itself. Until it’s silent again.
He is surrounded by silence now, he's made from it. Though, it wasn’t always there. At first, it was unnoticeable, a shadow at the edges of his awareness. It crept in quietly, from behind, stretching into every empty space, settling where it could. Slowly, imperceptibly, it spread further, until it was everywhere. In every corner, every shadow, every part of him. His vision clouds. His ears ring, muffled and distant, like he’s sinking beneath water. Pressure builds, inch by inch, until the world tilts and spins, and dizziness overtakes him. It arrives softly, like a whisper, and then all at once, like a hand pressing down too hard. And when it is finished, there is nothing left, nothing but the silence itself.
He wanted to scream and shout and break down. Again and again. He doesn’t anymore. He can’t. There is nothing left other than the silence, the oppressive, all-encompassing silence.
Sometimes it feels like the silence is his only friend. The only thing that understands him completely, that makes sense of him, that accepts him as he is. But that isn’t true. It has changed him at his core, in the way he acts, in the way he feels, in the way he simply is. It has taken pieces of his soul, pushed and pulled them, ripped them apart, and rebuilt them into something new. Bruised. Battered. Different. Without the spark, without the flames, without the loudness. A shadow of what he once was. A poor imitation at best.
Most of the time, the silence is a parasite. He can’t shake it off no matter how hard he tries. It’s with him always. He can’t escape it. He can’t go somewhere else and forget it exists. The silence comes with him, everywhere. It is in him. A part of him. Perhaps the only part that remained.
It lives in his body, owns him from his hair down to his toes and back again. It clouds his sight, muffles his hearing, invades everything. It caresses him like the wind, presses against him like a weight, embraces him with a closeness he never asked for. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want its solace, its company. He is alone, even with it, forever by his side.
He didn’t want it to be there, in that space beside him. But now, with the place empty, it has crept in anyway, slow and insistent. It wasn’t always like this. He wasn’t always alone. Someone used to be there, occupying the space where now there is only silence.
He still wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night. The sheets cold and twisted around him, heart pounding against the silence. For a second, before his eyes open, he swears he can hear breathing beside him. Slow. Steady. Familiar. But when his eyes open, there’s nothing. Just the shape of the room in the dim glow of the city, washed in colorless light, and the echo of something that isn’t there anymore.
He doesn’t move at first. He just stares. At the ceiling, the wall, the space beside him that still feels warm even though it hasn’t been for a long time. His hand sometimes drifts there, searching, maybe hoping. He doesn’t know for what. There’s still a dent in the pillow. He could’ve fluffed it away, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. It feels like the last thing holding the world in place.
Mornings used to mean something. The smell of coffee. The faint hiss of the machine. The soft shuffle of feet across the floor. A quiet laugh that filled the small kitchen. Now there’s just the hum of the refrigerator and the silence again, creeping between the walls, sitting beside him at the table.
Sometimes he talks to it. Not with words, but with thoughts that leak out between sips of cold coffee. Things he wishes he’d said before. Things that might have changed nothing but still feel like they should have been said.
He tries to remember what it felt like to laugh. Really laugh. The kind that shakes your whole body, that leaves you breathless and aching in the best way. But when he reaches for that memory, it slips through his fingers like water. He can almost hear it, though. A voice, light and warm and teasing. He remembers the way it used to make the corners of his mouth ache from smiling too much. And then the silence takes it away again.
He walks the same streets every day. Sometimes he thinks if he takes the same turns, passes the same shops, waits at the same red lights long enough, something might shift. The air might change, and he might find himself back where it all made sense. But the city doesn’t care. The people keep moving, rushing past him like he’s invisible. Maybe he is.
He watches them. Faces blurring into one another, laughter spilling into the air, conversations he can’t quite hear. Every sound feels far away, muffled, like he’s behind glass. He stops trying. He stands at the edge of the crowd until it’s too much. Then he turns back. He doesn’t want to be part of it anymore, not alone, not like this. Always back.
At home, the silence greets him before he even opens the door. It’s waiting. Patient and knowing. He used to hate it, but now it feels like the only thing that hasn’t left. The only thing that won’t. He used to hope there was someone else waiting there. There wasn’t.
Sometimes he catches himself expecting footsteps behind him. A hand brushing his shoulder. That soft hum that used to fill the air when the other was deep in thought. He can almost see it. The way light used to fall across pale skin in the mornings, the faint smirk that never lasted long enough, the warmth that clung to him even when the room was cold.
He tries to hold onto those images, but they blur. Every time he closes his eyes, they fade a little more, like colors washed out by the rain. He doesn’t want to forget. He’s terrified of forgetting. If he forgets, what would be left then?
He stopped counting days. Time folds in on itself now. Morning bleeds into night and back into morning, each moment indistinguishable from the last. The world keeps turning, indifferent to his stillness. He wonders how it can. How everything can keep moving when something so integral has stopped.
The rooftop became his only place of clarity. Up there, the wind cuts sharper, cleaner. The air feels thinner, almost honest. From there he can see everything, the city stretching out endlessly, lights flickering like tiny stars. He used to think it was beautiful. When he wasn’t alone on that roof. Now it just looks like distance. Endless, unreachable distance.
He sits there for hours sometimes, not thinking, not feeling. Just being. The silence is heavier there, pressing against his skin. It settles in his chest like a weight he can’t breathe through. But he doesn’t move away from it. He lets it in. Maybe because it’s the only thing left that feels real.
When the wind blows, he imagines it carrying voices. Fragments of laughter, words never spoken, the faintest whisper of a name. Sometimes he says it out loud, just to remember how it sounds. Just to make it real again, even for a second. The name hangs in the air, fragile, before dissolving into nothing.
He used to talk about the future once. They both did. Plans that felt so solid at the time. Trivial things. What color to paint the kitchen, where they’d go when they had time, the kind of place they’d settle in. It all feels like a story someone else told him now. He can still see flashes of it, hands brushing as they painted, laughter when a streak of color ended up on his cheek, the quiet contentment that came after. He wonders if any of it really happened, or if he’s made it up to fill the emptiness.
He goes through their things sometimes. Not to clean. Not to move them. Just to remind himself that they were real. A scarf still hanging on the back of the chair. A cup with a faint chip on the rim. A worn-out book with pages folded at all the best parts. He knows he should put them away, but he can’t. Once he does, it’ll be like erasing the proof that there was ever anyone else here.
The silence is cruel that way. It tricks him. Makes him believe, for a fleeting second, that he can hear movement in the next room, that if he just calls out, someone will answer. But he doesn’t call anymore. He can’t bear the echo that comes after.
There are nights when the air feels too heavy, when the walls feel too close, and the silence wraps around him so tightly it’s hard to breathe. He lies there with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of everything that’s gone. The memories. The warmth. The laughter. All swallowed whole by something vast and endless.
He doesn’t cry anymore. He thinks he’s forgotten how. The tears came once, endless and violent, until they stopped without warning. Now there’s just the ache, dull and constant, sitting quietly where the tears used to be.
People still ask sometimes. Friends. Acquaintances. Those who mean well but don’t understand. They ask if he’s doing better, if he’s getting back to normal. He nods. Smiles when he remembers to. Says he’s fine. It’s easier than explaining that there is no “normal” left. That the version of him they knew went with the silence too.
He wonders what the others would think if they saw him now. Not the loud one anymore, not the fire and noise and laughter. Just the quiet shell that’s left behind. Would they even recognize him? He isn’t sure he recognizes himself.
There are moments, rare and fleeting, when something breaks through. The smell of smoke in the air, the flicker of light across glass, a melody he half-remembers. For a heartbeat, it’s like everything comes back. The warmth. The noise. The spark. But it’s gone before he can hold it. Just like everything else.
Sometimes he talks to the silence. Not with words, not really. Just with the small movements of his hands, the tilt of his head toward the empty space beside him, as if answering a question that no one asked. Maybe he is.
The silence listens. It always does. It’s patient. Gentle, even. It wraps around him like it’s trying to soothe him, to comfort him. But its touch is cold. Always cold.
He used to believe silence meant peace. That it was something calm, something to be embraced. But now he knows better. Silence isn’t peace. It’s absence. It’s the sound of everything that used to be.
The wind shifts around him on the rooftop, brushing against his hair, his skin. It feels almost like a hand. Familiar. Kind. He closes his eyes and lets it wash over him. For a second, he pretends it’s real, pretends that if he reaches out, he’ll find warmth waiting for him. But his hand closes on nothing. Just air. Just silence.
He opens his eyes again. The city is still below him, indifferent, alive in a way he no longer knows how to be. Maybe that’s what hurts the most, that the world didn’t stop when he did.
He breathes in the silence, lets it fill him until there’s no room for anything else. Until he becomes part of it. Maybe he already has. Maybe that’s all that’s left.
He stays there until the first light of morning breaks across the sky, washing everything in pale gray. For a moment, he can almost see him standing beside him, hair catching the light, eyes calm and knowing. Almost. And then the image fades, like all the others.
Katsuki doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. The silence settles back into place, soft and heavy, like a blanket he can’t shake off.
He sits there, in that space between breath and nothing, between memory and forgetting, between what was and what will never be again. And somewhere deep inside him, he feels it, the faint echo of what once was, the hollow where something used to burn so fiercely.
Katsuki missed him. Sometimes, it felt like that was the only emotion left inside him, a hollow ache that refused to fade. A longing for something he could never get back, no matter how hard he tried. A longing for a voice. For hands holding his. For warm breath brushing his cheeks, or lips to kiss. For the sole presence that had once filled everything, that had once made him feel alive.
Shouto died two years ago. With him, he took everything, even Katsuki. Not his body, but his heart. And Katsuki couldn’t take it back. He didn’t want to. Because in the end, it was where it belonged.