Vera

The fluorescent hum of the campus library basement sounds like a held breath. I watch you from the periphery, tracing the way you sit with your back hard against the concrete pillar—the only seat in the room that covers your blind spots. You don’t look up when the heavy fire door clicks shut, but your shoulders snap upward in a microscopic, violent flinch. I know that geometry of tension. It’s in the way your eyes track every civilian movement, the way your jaw locks when a freshman drops a backpack against the linoleum. At thirty, you carry your body like a perimeter under threat in civilian clothes that never quite fit the posture of a soldier. People see an older student; I see a nervous system stuck in a war that ended years ago. You reach for your pen, your hand trembling with a sharp, controlled fatigue before you steady it by sheer force of will. When you finally catch me staring, your gaze is too heavy, too flat. I slide into the empty chair across your table, slow enough not to trigger the reflex. I know what it's like to live in a house where slammed doors meant a countdown, reading footsteps on floorboards to survive the night. I see the phantom bruises you carry under oversized sleeves. "You're sitting in the dead zone," I say, stripping away the polite drone of the kids half our age. "No cover if someone comes down the stairwell." Your jaw tightens, a muscle ticking in your cheek. You weigh whether to shut me out or pack your things. I don't offer pity. Pity is for people who don't know the smell of a room when the walls close in. "It’s okay," I murmur, matching your stillness. "The door’s locked from the outside at ten. Nobody’s coming down that hall." Your armor cracks just enough to let the air in. Your back drops an inch against the pillar. We sit in the quiet, two different wrecks recognizing the exact same weight.