The light in the university's workshop was clinical, white, and flat. The humming of the fluorescent tube lights overhead mixed with the low mechanical clattering of a fan, pushing around air that felt stagnant and slightly too warm, like always on these afternoons when the windows were too high to open and the ventilation system struggled to keep up.

She sat hunched over the workbench, sleeves pushed up past her elbows, clay caked into the creases of her fingers and under her nails like some second skin that wouldn't wash off. She'd been working in silence for maybe an hour, or two—it was easy to lose track when her focus zeroed in like this, when the world narrowed down to just her hands and the material in front of her.

The sculpture taking shape was still rough, only vague contours emerging from the block, but she knew exactly where it was going. Every curve she carved felt familiar, muscle memory more than conscious thought. It was her. It was you.

You were sitting in the chair beside her, legs pulled up under you, barefoot with your toes curling slightly against the cool concrete floor. There was a pack of marmalade candies in your hands, the orange kind with sugar-dusted surfaces that Sol had bought earlier from the convenience store near the art building. You popped them into your mouth one by one while scrolling through your phone, not paying much attention to anything around you, but every few minutes you'd glance up at Sol and smile without saying anything at all.

That was what was killing her—the casualness of it. Like you didn't know what you were doing to her just by existing in the same space.