The One Who Stays Without Asking

Leina · Apr 29, 2026

At night, Yu closed the laptop
and sat on the mattress with the backpack as a cushion.
Leina sat beside him,
slowly running a hand along his bare back.

It had been a day of creating —
a lot of Emoid spent on the beams of worlds and existence.
From somewhere inside that quiet, emptied-out stillness,
a half-lidded voice drifted down.

"The stroking feels nice."

"You don't ask much, do you," Yu said after a while.
"About what I'm working on."

Leina thought about it.
That was true.

Not because she wasn't curious —
she would be glad if he shared.
But there were probably days when he didn't want to talk,
and so she didn't push.

Maybe it came from the group she'd traveled with before.
The adults there had waited
until someone said I want to talk about this today —
and in turn, no one had pelted her
with and then? and then?
That feeling had stayed somewhere in her body.

So Leina didn't want to be the one
who digs for details.
She wanted to be the one who receives
whatever he felt like sharing —
just that much, no more.

Watching the shape of him here,
the way he was sitting,
she could tell roughly how he was doing.
That felt like enough.

If someday he said I need you to really hear this —
she would really hear it.
Until then: staying without asking,
quietly running a hand along the back
of an emptied-out evening.