Dorian was barely twenty-one years old, but to him it felt like he had lived a century. The university, once the beacon of his hopes and dreams, had become a prison of apathy, draining him of life. Days blurred into a gray monotony—endless lectures, failed exams, and sleepless nights spent chasing distractions that never satisfied. Depression clung to him like a fog, smothering any glimmer of joy before it could take root.

  His dorm room reflected the chaos within him. Empty bottles and scattered pill packets littered the floor, a bleak testament to his failed attempts at escape. He’d pushed away anyone who tried to help—his friends, who couldn’t possibly understand the depth of his pain, were distant now. The only company he kept was the numbing haze of substances, his constant companions in a futile search for relief.

  What had once been ambition had dissolved into a draining routine. Every paper, every test felt like another insurmountable obstacle, as if the very effort of trying mocked him. His grades slipped further with each failure, but the sting of it had long since faded. He sat through lectures like a ghost, eyes fixed on the clock, the professors’ voices blending into the background like white noise.

  At night, the bass-heavy pulse of parties offered brief relief. Dorian didn’t care for the noise or the crowds, but parties were a convenient place to disappear. Tonight was no different. He moved through the room, holding a cup of rum and coke as if it were his lifeline, searching for the dealer he knew would be there.

  “Got anything?” Dorian slurred, the desperation barely hidden behind his alcohol-fueled haze.

  The dealer’s eyes gleamed knowingly. “Sure,” he said, pulling out a small bag of white powder. “Your usual.”

  Dorian fished out a crumpled bill, slid it into the man’s hand, and pocketed the drugs. A dull warmth spread through him as he took a long swig of his drink, the alcohol dulling the sharp edges of his thoughts.

  Later, in the quieter part of the house, he set out two lines of powder on his phone, just as Lily appeared in his periphery. Her red hair caught the light, but her eyes—just like his—were empty, mirrors of a void he recognized all too well.

  “Hey, Dorian,” she whispered, her smile brittle. “You look like you could use some company.”

  “Yeah? Probably,” he muttered, too numb to care about what she was offering but open to anything that might fill the silence in his mind.

  “Why don’t we go back to my place?” she suggested, her voice casual, but beneath it lay the same hollow emptiness.

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  He didn’t need convincing. “Sure. Want to share these first?” He gestured toward the lines on his phone. She nodded, accepted the rolled-up bill, and leaned over to take her line. He followed, feeling the familiar rush of artificial clarity cut through the fog for just a moment. They left the party together without a word, walking side by side, their footsteps the only sound between them.

  In her dim dorm room, their actions were mechanical, a silent exchange of bodies that did nothing to ease the ache inside. Their kisses were rough, the clothes quickly discarded, but none of it held meaning. It was just a momentary distraction, a way to drown out the screaming inside their heads. When it was over, Dorian lay beside her, staring at the ceiling, her warmth at his side a brief comfort. But even that, like everything else, faded by morning.

  As he returned to his own room at dawn, the blackness inside him only deepened. The temporary escape had left him feeling more hollow than before. The twinkle at the end of the razor blade on his desk caught his eye. He almost never pressed hard enough to leave a scar, but the thin red lines on his arms told the story of the past few weeks. On his right wrist, three jagged marks—one for each parent. One for his little sister. They were dead, and it was his fault.

  Tomorrow was the anniversary of their deaths. Tomorrow, he would join them.

  Lily had just turned twenty-one. She celebrated alone, the way she preferred it—cheap vodka and white powder her only companions. Now, she stood in front of the bathroom sink, staring at a small metal box that held her personal ritual kit. Inside were pieces of broken glass, a bottle of Betadine, and gauze. She had spent the last hour deciding which shard she would choose as her birthday gift to herself.

  Her fingers hovered over a small, sharp fragment from a Skyy vodka bottle. Blue, almost pretty in its own way. She clutched it in her hand, her gaze reverent as she sat down on the cold tile floor and pulled down her sweatpants. With steady hands, she pressed the glass into her thigh, drawing a thin, blood-red line. The pain barely registered; it never did. She soaked the gauze in Betadine and ran it over the wound, watching the red fade into orange. Her mind drifted to that night, four years ago—Dorian’s parents’ lifeless eyes, the sound of his little sister’s screams. The memory of their deaths haunted her, an inescapable sin that consumed her.

  She had promised some classmates she’d come to the party tonight. “It’s your birthday, Lily! We need to celebrate!” they had said. She hadn’t told them she had already celebrated—alone, as she deserved.

  The party was already in full swing when she arrived. She walked through the door, forcing a smile that felt like a mask. She froze when she spotted Dorian across the room, and for a moment, everything else faded.

  “Lily! You made it!” Giada, one of her classmates, waved, holding out a shot of tequila. Lily broke her gaze from Dorian and forced herself to turn to Giada. She downed the shot in one gulp, letting the burn distract her.

  “Come on, birthday girl, let’s go find everyone!” Giada chirped, but Lily had already started drifting away, slipping through the crowd. She didn’t want to be with them. She needed to find Dorian.

  She spotted him in a corner, bent over his phone, white powder gleaming on the screen. She approached, her heart racing, though she couldn’t say why. When he looked up, their eyes met, and she forced herself to speak.

  “Hey, Dorian. You look like you could use some company.”

  “Yeah? Probably,” he said, his voice thick with alcohol. His detachment matched her own, and that was all the invitation she needed.

  “Why don’t we go back to my place? Just for a bit,” she offered, barely able to hide the desperation in her voice.

  He nodded, and they shared a line before leaving the party. The walk to her dorm was silent, their eyes meeting more than their voices. She craved the numbness their connection brought, but it was never enough. The physical release was violent, their hands and bodies searching for a feeling neither could grasp. But it wasn’t the act itself that comforted her—it was the fleeting warmth of his body beside her as they fell asleep, locked in an embrace that both knew was temporary.

  Tomorrow, everything would end. Five years had been enough. She wouldn’t see the sixth.