𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐑𝐮𝐢𝐧 X Reader (Dark/Angst)

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 ✶ 𝟏𝟑

Weeks stretch into a blur. Your life is stuck on autopilot, a numbing haze of disconnection and despair. It's like someone pressed pause on everything that mattered, leaving you to drift, hollow and aimless, through the motions of daily existence.

That night... God, that night. Ritsu's breakdown was like nothing you'd ever seen. It began with the trembling of his hands, his eyes wild, darting from side to side as if he was searching for an escape from an invisible enemy. Then came the sobs—wracking, uncontrollable sobs that left him gasping for breath, curling in on himself like a wounded animal.

"Ritsu," you had whispered, reaching out to him, your voice as steady as you could make it despite the chill running down your spine. "Please, just talk to me. What's happening? I'm right here."

But he couldn't hear you through the storm raging in his mind. His tears fell faster, his breath hitching in desperate little gasps, and you stood there helpless, watching the person you thought you knew so well come undone in front of you. It was terrifying. You were terrified. Not of him—no, never of him—but of how far he seemed to be falling, slipping through your fingers no matter how tightly you tried to hold on.

"I can't... I can't do this," he had choked out between sobs, his voice breaking like shattered glass. "I can't... I can't breathe..."

You had no idea what to do. None. And that gnawed at you, burrowing deep into your chest, a jagged hook of helplessness and frustration. So, you stayed close, hovering just outside the door of the spare bedroom when he fled, bolting himself in. He'd locked you out—physically and emotionally—leaving you to pace back and forth like a caged beast. Every few minutes, you raised a hand to knock, your fingers hovering over the wood, your throat tight with unsaid words.

What if he hurts himself?

That thought ran circles around your mind, over and over, an echo you couldn't silence. You pressed your ear against the door, listening, waiting for any sound, any clue. The minutes dragged into hours. Two whole hours of standing guard, your body tense, heart thundering with anxiety. Eventually, the sobs subsided into silence, the kind that settled too thickly, too eerily. You hated that silence. It filled your chest with dread, and you stood frozen in place, afraid to find out what had caused it.

Finally, when you were sure he had fallen asleep, you retreated. But even in sleep, Ritsu seemed a world away.

And by the time you woke the next morning, the house was eerily still. Too still.

He was gone.

You found his text—Sorry—and it was like a physical blow, a punch to the gut that knocked the wind out of you. That single, inadequate word filled you with an icy fury. What was he apologizing for? For leaving? For breaking down? For shutting you out? You wanted to scream at the phone, to demand answers from him that it couldn't give.

But there was no answer. Not that day, not in the days that followed.

His absence became a yawning chasm in your life. The longer it stretched, the more the questions gnawed at you. Why was he avoiding you? Why wouldn't he pick up your calls, answer your messages, or give you even the smallest bit of reassurance that he was okay?

The emptiness he left behind festered like an open wound, and in that wound, something darker began to grow.

He's avoiding me.

He's hiding something from me.

Every day, the silence between you both stretched further, twisting tighter like barbed wire around your thoughts. Ritsu had never avoided you before, not like this. He was always clingy, always needy for your attention, for your presence. Now, he was a ghost—flickering in and out of your life with a vague text here and there, just enough to remind you he was still out there, but never enough to answer the aching questions burning in your chest.