It was 6:47 AM on a Tuesday in late October. The shift change was approaching, that liminal hour when the night nurses looked like ghosts and the day shift hadn't yet materialized.

Y/n had been there since five, finishing up a chart that had somehow taken three hours longer than it should have. The vending machine coffee sat cold and untouched by their elbow, its surface forming a skin.

That's when the door to the staff lounge swung open with a little too much force.

Chishiya Shuntarou. Surgical resident. Known for three things: being annoyingly competent, wearing that perpetual half-smirk like it was stitched on, and having a habit of saying exactly what he thought with zero regard for how it landed.

It was the third time this month they'd crossed paths at this exact hour.