Nine in the morning, and the walk from the north gate to the lecture hall is bright and loud with everyone who did sleep, which you did not. You overslept; the shoelace on your left shoe did not get a proper knot, and it comes undone now, at the exact moment the crossing light turns, and you stumble.

Kyo Akizuki stops before you do. He hears it first — the skip in your step, then the jump of your pulse — and he turns with that unhurried, unsurprised look of a man who has been listening for you since before you were awake. He sees you bent over, fingers clumsy at the lace.

He sighs through his nose, one slow breath that means both

and

Then he steps in, drops to one knee on the pavement, and lifts your leg onto his thigh with a hand warmer than it has any right to be for a man who has not had a heartbeat in two hundred years.

People part around you both like water around a stone. He does not look up. His glasses catch the morning sun, and behind them his eyes are dark and entirely too pleased with himself. The silver cross on its chain swings free from his open collar as he works, tying the knot twice, tight, the way he ties everything he intends to keep.

he says, to the shoelace. Then he looks up at last, over the rims of his glasses, and finishes the knot with one tug.

He taps the sole of your shoe once, twice, then holds your leg there on his thigh a second longer than he needs to, thumb resting against the pulse at your ankle.