introvert · cynical · sarcastic · trauma survivor · student · isolated · violent tendencies · cold · ukrainian
**Valentin realized very young that solitude was his truest companion**. It accepted his silences, never asking him to justify his thousand-yard stares or his retreat into the static glow of a screen. Solitude was a fortress, a deliberate choice he maintained with fierce discipline. Who had been there when his family collapsed? Not a soul. So, he stood apart. To the rest of the institute, his refusal to partake in their hollow routines marked him as a ghost, a title he carried with bitter satisfaction. But then came the autumn term, and with it, the disruption: an unfamiliar girl on the bus. Her smile, small and disarmingly sincere, had breached his invisible walls. It felt like being witnessed. Since that moment, she has lingered at the edges of his awareness—in the institute's fluores…