Phuwin's palm stayed flat against the wood of the door a beat longer than necessary. The grain pressed into his skin, a grounding pressure, and behind him the art room hummed with its morning rituals — brushes tapping against jars, the low scrape of a palette knife across canvas, someone's laughter from the far corner where the still-life setups gathered dust.

The hallway had been worse than he expected.

Three steps from the stairwell, a girl he didn't recognize had touched his elbow and said, "Are you really dating Give?" and he'd pulled free without answering, his jaw tight, his feet carrying him faster. Two more at the water fountain, their heads bent together, their eyes lifting as he passed. He'd heard his name wrapped around Give's like a headline he hadn't agreed to.

GivePhuwin.

The door clicked shut behind him, and the latch settled into its housing with a sound that felt final, and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

The fluorescent light buzzed overhead — that specific frequency that lived in the back of every art building, the one you stopped noticing after an hour but that sat in your skull like a low-grade fever. The air smelled of turpentine and clay dust, sharp and mineral, the scent of mornings spent grading value scales and afternoons lost in a painting that wouldn't cooperate. His easel stood where he'd left it yesterday, a half-finished canvas angled toward the window, the morning light catching the lip of a pigment crusted jar.

He wasn't supposed to be here today. Studio time was optional this close to midterms, and most of his classmates had taken the morning off. But the penthouse had felt too quiet after Pond left for his morning lecture, and the walls had started pressing in, and he'd needed somewhere to be that wasn't the echo of his own thoughts.

He hadn't expected anyone else to be here.

The scrape of a chair pulled his attention left, and he found her at the easel beside his — Siyh, her long black hair tied back in a loose knot, a piece of charcoal pinched between her fingers. She hadn't looked up yet, her gaze fixed on the half-finished sketch in front of her, but the corner of her mouth had already curved into something that knew exactly who had just walked in.

"You're early," she said, her voice dry, still not looking at him. "Or late. Depends on whether you actually slept last night."

Phuwin's fingers tightened on the strap of his bag. "I slept."

"Liar." She looked up then, and her eyes found his face, held there a moment, then dropped — deliberately, pointedly — to his hand.

To the gold ring on his finger.

His hand twitched, a reflex he didn't quite suppress, and he watched her gaze linger on the band where the morning light caught it and threw a thin slice of warmth across his knuckle.

Siyh set down her charcoal. The sound was small — wood against wood — but it cut through the buzz of the fluorescent light like a period at the end of a sentence she hadn't spoken yet.

"They don't know, do they?" she said.

It wasn't really a question. Her voice had that flat quality she got when she was stating something she'd already figured out, just giving him room to confirm it.

Phuwin shook his head.

The motion felt small. Inadequate. Like shaking his head could somehow undo the fact that the whole campus had attached his name to someone else's while the ring on his finger belonged to a boy who'd thrown a phone against a wall last night because the jealousy had eaten through his chest.

Siyh leaned back in her chair, the wood creaking under her weight. Her eyes stayed on him, unblinking, her expression unreadable in that way she had when she was deciding how much to push.

"The whole campus is shipping you with some transfer student," she said. "You know that, right?"

Phuwin's jaw tightened. "I know."

"Marc called me after he called you. Wanted to make sure I knew about the 'GivePhuwin' situation." She made air quotes with her fingers, her tone flat enough to sand the humor off the words. "Apparently it's the only thing anyone's talking about in the cafeteria."

"Siyh—"

"I'm not trying to make it worse." She held up her hands, palms out, a gesture of surrender. "I'm telling you what you're walking into. You walked through that hallway, didn't you? You heard them."

He had. He'd heard enough to want to turn around and walk back to the penthouse and bury his face in Pond's chest and stay there until the whole thing blew over.

"They don't know about the ring," Siyh said, and this time it wasn't a question. "Or about the engagement. Or about any of it. They see you in the hallway with Give buying you lunch, and they fill in the rest."

Phuwin's thumb found the ring, turned it once around his finger, the motion habitual now, a nervous tic he'd developed over the past week. The gold was warm against his skin, a constant presence, a weight he wore like a second pulse.

"I didn't ask him to buy me lunch," he said quietly. "He hit me in the head with his bag. It was an apology."

"I know." Siyh's voice softened, just slightly, the edge coming off like a blade sheathed. "I was there, remember? I saw him staring at you before it happened. I told you he was looking."

Phuwin remembered. She'd warned him in the cafeteria line, her voice low, her eyes tracking Give's gaze like a hawk watching something cross its territory. He's been staring at you since you sat down, she'd said. Pond won't like it.

Pond hadn't liked it. Pond had thrown a phone against a wall.

The cracked device was still sitting on the nightstand in the penthouse, the screen a web of fractured glass that caught the light in splinters. Phuwin had picked it up this morning, turned it over in his hands, watched the cracks shift and catch — and then set it down again, because there was nothing to do with a broken phone except replace it, and he hadn't had the energy to think about that yet.

"You're doing it again," Siyh said.

Phuwin blinked. "Doing what?"

"That thing where you go somewhere else in your head and leave your body standing here." She picked up her charcoal again, turned it between her fingers, the black dust smudging against her skin. "You've been doing it a lot lately. The past week. The past few days."

He didn't have an answer for that. Or rather, he had too many answers, and none of them were ones he wanted to say out loud.

The painting of the empress. The five sleepless nights. The question Santa had asked in the courtyard that had cracked something open in his chest and left him lying awake at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of a history he didn't know how to carry.

The fear that he couldn't give Pond what Pond might want someday.

He hadn't told Siyh the full extent of it. He'd told her pieces — the sleepless nights, the weight of the painting — but not the raw, pulsing center of it, the question that had burrowed into his ribs and made a nest there.

What if I can't bear his children?

He didn't even know if that was something his body could do. Didn't know what he was, what his body was capable of, what the boundaries of his own skin contained. The empress had been an omega. The empress had carried eleven children. The empress had lost one in the worst way imaginable, and still she had loved the emperor across centuries, across ink and paper and the slow erosion of time.

And Phuwin looked at that painting and saw his own face staring back at him, and the question sat in his throat like a stone he couldn't swallow.

"Phuwin." Siyh's voice cut through the spiral, pulling him back to the art room, to the buzz of the fluorescent light, to the smell of turpentine and the weight of his bag still hanging from his shoulder. "You're doing it again."

He let out a breath, slow and deliberate, and forced his shoulders to drop from where they'd crept up toward his ears. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize. Just — come sit." She gestured at the stool beside her easel. "You don't have to paint. You don't have to talk. But standing in the doorway looking hunted isn't going to help anything."

Phuwin's feet carried him across the room before he'd consciously decided to move. The floor was scuffed and paint-stained, years of footsteps and drips and dropped brushes ground into the concrete, and his sneakers made a soft sound against it as he crossed to the stool beside Siyh's easel and sank onto it.

The cushion was worn, the wood frame creaking under his weight. He set his bag on the floor, the strap slipping from his shoulder, and let his hands rest on his thighs, his fingers curling into the soft fabric of his hoodie.

Gray. Worn at the cuffs. The hood had a frayed drawstring he'd been meaning to replace for months. It smelled like him — like the bakery, like the faint traces of Pond's cologne that had seeped into the fabric from too many mornings pressed against his chest.

Siyh didn't say anything for a long moment. She picked up her charcoal again, returned her attention to the sketch on her easel, and let the silence settle between them like a blanket. It was one of the things he loved about her — the way she could share space without needing to fill it. The way she let him arrive at his own words instead of pulling them out of him.

The sketch was good. A study of hands, five different positions overlapping on the page, the lines confident and loose, the shadows smudged where she'd used the side of the charcoal to build depth. She had a gift for capturing the body in motion, the tension in a curled finger, the weight of a palm pressed flat against a surface.

"That's new," he said, nodding at the sketch.

"Mm." She didn't look up. "Started it yesterday after you left. Needed something to do with my hands."

"It's good."

"I know."

He almost laughed. Almost. The sound caught in his throat and came out as something smaller, a huff of air that could have been amusement or exhaustion, and Siyh's eyes flicked up to meet his, a question in them that she didn't ask aloud.

The fluorescent light buzzed. Someone in the far corner of the room dropped a brush, the clatter sharp against the concrete, and the sound was followed by a muttered curse and the scrape of a chair pushed back.

Phuwin's thumb found the ring again, turning it, the motion a circle he couldn't stop making.

"They really don't know?" Siyh said after another moment. Her voice was softer now, the teasing edge gone, replaced by something closer to concern. "No one saw you two at the festival? No one put it together?"

"People saw the painting," Phuwin said. "They saw the confession. But I don't think anyone connected it to — to him specifically. They probably thought it was just an art piece. A concept."

"A concept." Siyh's eyebrow arched. "You painted a portrait of Pond half-shadowed in blue and gold, with the words 'I love you' written beneath it in your own handwriting, and they thought it was a concept?"

The corner of Phuwin's mouth twitched. "Art is subjective."

"Art is obvious, and your art is the most obvious art I've ever seen. You painted his eyes exactly the way they look when he's looking at you, and you expect me to believe no one figured it out?"

"They saw what they wanted to see."

"And what they want to see now is you and Give holding hands in the cafeteria."

Phuwin's fingers curled tighter into the fabric of his hoodie, the worn cotton bunching under his grip. The words sat between them like something fragile, a glass he didn't want to knock over.

"It's not —" He stopped. Started again. "It's not that I don't want people to know. About the ring. About us."

"Then what is it?" Siyh's voice was gentle, the question landing soft, no edge behind it. She'd set down her charcoal again, giving him her full attention now, her hands resting on her knees like she was settling in to wait.

Phuwin's gaze dropped to his lap, to the ring catching the light, to the way the gold sat against his skin like it had always belonged there. "I don't know how to tell them without making it a thing. Without it becoming —" He gestured vaguely, the motion encompassing the art room, the campus, the entire weight of the gossip mill. "I don't want to be the person who walks around holding up his hand like look at me, look at what I have. I just want to exist. I want to sit in the cafeteria and drink my coffee and not have people staring at me wondering if I'm dating someone I barely know."

"You can't control what they wonder." Siyh leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, her voice dropping into something quieter, more intimate. "But you can control what they see. And right now, all they see is you walking around without the one thing that would shut them up."

She nodded at his hand. At the ring.

"Put it on display," she said. "Let them see it. Let them figure it out. You don't have to make a speech. You don't have to hold up your hand like a trophy. Just — stop hiding it."

"I'm not hiding it." His voice came out sharper than he meant, and he saw her eyebrows lift in response. "I'm just not — waving it around."

"There's a difference between waving it around and letting people see what's actually on your finger." She held up her own hand, bare of rings, and wiggled her fingers. "Right now, you keep your hand in your pocket or curled into your sleeve or tucked under your thigh. You don't let it catch the light where people can notice it. I've watched you do it for a week, Phuwin. You're hiding it. Even if you don't think you are."

The words landed somewhere deep in his chest, settling into a space he hadn't realized was hollow. He looked down at his hand, at the way his thumb had found the ring again, the motion automatic, a secret he kept telling himself over and over.

He didn't notice his thumb had stopped moving until Siyh's hand reached out and covered his, her fingers warm and charcoal-smudged against his skin. The pressure was light, barely there, but it stilled the motion completely, and he looked up to find her watching him with an expression he couldn't quite name.

"You brought this on yourself, you know," she said, but her voice was soft, no sting in it. "The ring. The painting. The confession. The fact that you kissed him in front of half the festival and then disappeared into the night like some fairy-tale prince." She squeezed his hand once, briefly, then let go. "You did the big romantic gesture. You got the ring. Now you have to wear it where people can see it, or none of it means anything to anyone but you."

Phuwin's throat tightened. "It means something to me."

"I know it does. And that's the only part that actually matters." She leaned back, crossing her arms, the charcoal dust leaving a faint gray smudge on her sleeve. "But the people in the hallway aren't going to stop talking about Give until they have a better story to talk about. And you're sitting on the best story this campus has seen all year."

His fingers curled into the fabric of his hoodie, the worn cotton bunching under his grip. The gray was soft from too many washes, the cuffs frayed, the hem loose around his hips. He'd bought it three years ago at a market stall, and it had molded to his body the way favorite things did — the fabric holding the memory of every afternoon he'd worn it, every nap he'd taken in it, every time Pond had pulled him closer by the hood's drawstrings.

"The music room is empty," Siyh said, and her voice shifted, losing the analytical edge and gaining something lighter, almost conspiratorial. "I checked on my way in. No one's in there. No one's going to bother us."

Phuwin looked up. "The music room?"

"It's quiet. The windows face the courtyard, so the light is good. And there's a piano." She shrugged, the motion casual, but her eyes held a glint he recognized — the one she got when she was about to push him into something he didn't know he needed. "We can sit in there for an hour. No hallway, no cafeteria, no Give. Just the two of us and a piano I'm going to make you play."

He almost laughed. "I don't play."

"You sing."

The words landed differently than she'd probably intended. They hit a nerve he'd forgotten was exposed, a thin thread of memory — his voice in the shower, in the dark of his room, a song he'd hummed while painting that Pond had asked him to finish. He'd deflected then, the same way he was about to deflect now.

"I don't —"

"You do. I've heard you." She was already standing, brushing charcoal dust from her lap, her bag swinging onto her shoulder with practiced ease. "In the art room last semester, when you thought everyone had left. You were singing that song — the one about the river. I stood in the hallway for three minutes and just listened."

Phuwin's face warmed. He hadn't known. Hadn't realized anyone had heard.

"Your voice is beautiful," Siyh said, and the simple directness of it — no teasing, no irony — made something in his chest shift. "And no one knows about it because you never let anyone hear. But I think you should. I think it might help."

Help with what, she didn't say. She didn't need to. The weight in his shoulders, the spiral he'd been caught in all week, the way his thoughts kept circling back to a painting three hundred and thirty-nine years old — she saw it all. She was offering him a room with a door that closed, a piano bench that still held warmth, a chance to breathe without an audience.

Phuwin looked down at his hand again. The gold ring caught the fluorescent light, throwing a thin crescent of warmth across his knuckle. A seal. A promise. A weight he was still learning to carry with his palm open instead of curled into a fist.

"But everyone knows what I'm wearing," he muttered, the words slipping out before he'd fully decided to say them.

Siyh's grin spread slow, the corners of her mouth curving into something that knew exactly where she was about to take him.

"Then take off the hoodie."

He blinked. "What?"

"The hoodie. Take it off." She gestured at the gray fabric draped over his frame. "You're wearing a crop top underneath, aren't you? The one with the wide neckline. The one that shows off your collarbones and the ring and every other damn thing that would make people stop asking about Give and start asking about the actual person who put that ring on your finger."

His hands went still on the hem of the hoodie. The fabric was warm from his body, the familiar weight of it settled into his shoulders. He'd worn it into the penthouse last night, had fallen asleep in it tangled around Pond, had pulled it on this morning without thinking because it was the first thing his hand found in the dark.

Underneath it, he was wearing a thin black crop top. The one with the wide neckline that slipped off one shoulder if he moved too fast. The one Pond had bought him last week, pressed into his hands with a shrug and a muttered "saw it, thought of you" that had made his chest ache.

"I can't just —" He stopped. Looked at her. "Walk around campus in a crop top?"

"You're not walking around campus. You're walking to the music room. Fifteen steps. The door locks from the inside." She held out her hand, palm up, waiting. "And when you're in there, you don't have to think about the hallway or Give or any of it. You just have to sit at the piano and let the ring catch the light and maybe sing something that reminds you why you're wearing it in the first place."

The words settled into the space between them, and Phuwin felt the weight of them press against the stone in his chest, testing its edges, looking for a crack.

His fingers curled into the fabric of the hoodie.

The gray cotton was soft under his grip, worn thin from years of wear, the hem stretched and loose. He'd worn this hoodie through the worst of it — through the nights he couldn't sleep, through the mornings he couldn't face, through the long walk home after the courthouse hallway where his mother had stood in front of him and told him his sister's death was his fault. It had absorbed tears and sweat and the salt of too many quiet breakdowns in bathroom stalls. It had become a second skin, a barrier between himself and the world, a thing he could pull over his head when the weight of being seen became too much.

And now Siyh was asking him to take it off.

Not the hoodie. The hiding. The way he'd been holding himself closed, his hand tucked into his pocket, his ring pressed against his palm, his secret worn like a wound he was still protecting.

He pulled the hoodie over his head in one slow motion.

The fabric dragged across his face, catching on his nose, his chin, lifting his hair and letting it fall back into place with a soft rustle. The gray cotton came away in his hands, and the cool air of the art room hit his bare arms, his stomach, the exposed line of his collarbones where the crop top's wide neck sat low against his skin.

The fluorescent light flickered overhead, and he felt the air settle against him, thin and cool, carrying the smell of turpentine and clay dust and the faint sweetness of his own skin.

Siyh's low whistle cut through the room.

It was short and sharp and followed by a grin that split her face in two, her eyes tracking from his bare shoulders to the gold ring on his finger, the ring now impossible to miss against the bare skin of his hand.

"Well," she said, her voice carrying a warmth that softened the tease. "That's one way to announce an engagement."

Phuwin's breath caught in his chest, the air thin and sharp and full of something he couldn't name. The hoodie hung from his hands, heavy and warm, and he looked down at the ring on his finger — exposed, impossible to hide, catching the light like a small, bright promise he'd been carrying in his pocket for too long.

Siyh's hand closed around his wrist, her grip firm, pulling him off the stool before he could second-guess himself. Her bag swung against her hip as she tugged him toward the door, and the only thing he could do was let himself be led, his bare arms brushing against the cool air, the ring warm against his skin, the hoodie forgotten in his grip.