Chapter Text
Every night he hugged his pillow as he fell asleep, feeling it's softness squish within his embrace as it kept him warm and cozy. Burying his face inside, his consciousness would falter as he slowly drifted to sleep. And every night the moonlight (as long as the moon was visible on the sky) would cast upon his limp body, snuggling the only pillow he had ever so tightly. This way, he resembled a newborn baby: feeble, helpless, vulnerable.
And when the sunlight filled his room instead, the Vadim of the night would leave it's place to the Vadim of the day, one that had to carry on a façade, one that under no condition, not even to himself, would like to admit that he was hugging a pillow when sleeping, or the reason for such. He cracks his neck, aching from the uncomfortable sleeping position, but a small price to pay for the warmth. He starts the routine as usual, most likely another day to pass by without nothing noteworthy to remember, he thinks. Putting on his school clothes, his jacket, and finally the heavy backpack on his shoulders, he leaves the house and soon enough he's outside, dragging his feet through the snow on his way to the school building. The cold, the crisp of the snow, the sharp air cutting his lungs like a thousand blade, it was nothing like the coziness of his bed. After some time he was now climbing the stairs with his body feeling as heavy as it was yesterday, and the days before, he was most likely late to the class by now. But 5 minutes wasn't that much of a big deal, isn't it? Or was it 9 minutes already?
Two knocks on the door. The door was opened by his History teacher with her typical frown on her face, signaling him to sit down to his chair. His classmates were all in their usual places, everything was as it always was, how it was supposed to be. And yet there was this feeling of dread rising from within, almost out of habit, until he remembered the reason why.
The girl.
Sitting behind him.
The one with the ugly bob cut.
The girl whose name was Asya Shubina
Asya Shubina has always been on his nerves since day one. She wasn't particularly pretty, so terribly meek and silent as if she was constantly apologetic about her mere existence, and despite being intelligent that advantage was also hindered by the fact that she had her head in the clouds most of the time, so it was a miracle if she could follow the entirety of what the teacher would explain in classes. But hey, at least she finished all of her homeworks, and this was useful to him, and other friends of his. Speaking of which, Vadim realized that he had forgotten to do his Math homework yesterday.
Under normal circumstances, he would've just start pestering and harassing her about the homework right after this class ended, but nowadays there was something that stopped him from being able to do that with the same carelessness as he once was able to do. Something has resurfaced since the last Friday.