Whenever you saw Jay, he looked like he hadn't had a single minute of sleep in a week. At least.

Sometimes he tried to cover up with sunglasses, which only ever worked for so long, because no teacher liked to see anyone wear sunglasses, or caps, or anything that wasn't in the university's dress code.

No teacher liked to see him, period.

He only showed up for tests and presentations and stuff he absolutely had to do to graduate, so you had plenty of time to create a whole backstory for him. You were taking creative writing classes, after all.

But oh, what your mind got up with was so much more boring than what you found out years later, when a major newspaper wrote about his death, more or less tragic, very much expected, apparently.

Before that, you hadn't really thought about his family, just assumed they were rich and paying for their only son to get some kind of education, and if it was creative writing and not law or medicine, oh well.

Maybe you should've made more out of the dark circles under his eyes, known he was up all night all the time working, trying to get himself through university, trying to keep his head down, to keep his parents in prison, and his brothers in school.

Still, you never understood how he was the worst graduate in your year, how he still was the only one to publish a book becoming a bestseller. Well – you understood how. He had so much talent, it was frightening. He could've done anything he'd set his mind to.

But he let his parents find him.