The Quiet Kind of Tired

by LadyArcane

Summary:

Nanami met her during the years he pretended to be okay.
A salaryman. A woman made of silence and weathered kindness.
They loved each other quietly, politely—until the quiet wore them down.

(This is a story about what happens when two people are too exhausted to speak, too careful to break, and too human to stay unscathed.)

Chapter 1

(silence, regret, and the things we never say until it’s too late.)

---

You meet Nanami Kento on a Tuesday, which feels exactly right. Tuesdays are the most unremarkable days of the week. Nobody romanticizes a Tuesday. You don’t expect to fall in love on one.

You’re working overtime again, elbows deep in paperwork that means nothing, for people who care even less. He sits across from you in the break room. Neat suit. Tired eyes. He drinks his coffee black, like he’s punishing himself.

You say something cynical. He doesn’t laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitches. That’s how it starts.

No grand gestures. Just a quiet understanding between two people too tired to pretend they’re okay.

---

Dating Nanami is like walking into a room already cleaned. Everything in its place. Emotion folded tightly into polite responses. He takes you out to dinner every Thursday. He walks you home. He buys you flowers—carnations, not roses. Clean, efficient, not too sentimental.

He doesn’t talk about his past. You don’t ask. You’re both adults. You both understand that talking about certain things doesn’t make them easier.

Still, some nights, when the city is too loud and you’ve had one glass of wine too many, you look at him and think—

I am loving a man who does not know what to do with softness.

And he looks back at you like you’re made of glass he’s trying not to break with his silence.

---

You love him anyway. Not because it’s easy. But because he never lies to you. Not in words, at least.

He tells the truth in smaller ways. When he takes the side of the bed closest to the door. When he holds your wrist instead of your hand, like it’s easier to let go that way. When he texts, "I’m sorry, I’ll be late tonight,” and you don’t ask why.

Because you know the answer: he is always late for himself.

---

You don’t realize how tired you’ve become until you stop recognizing your own voice. You speak less. Smile less. You don’t cry—you just compress. Like your feelings are cargo in a suitcase too small.

Nanami doesn’t notice. Or maybe he does, and he thinks it’s something you need to handle alone. That’s the thing about him—he believes in self-reliance to a fault. As if needing people is something shameful. Something weak.

You once told him you wanted to take care of him.

He said, “That’s not necessary.”

You didn’t offer again.

---

The silence grows slowly, like water under a door.

You tell your friends he’s “steady.” You tell yourself it’s enough.

But you start watching couples on the train. Not the loud, annoying kind. The quiet ones. The ones who lean their heads together. The ones who speak without speaking.

And you think—I want to be chosen without hesitation.

With Nanami, you are always chosen… responsibly.

---

One night, you come home early from work. He’s already there, standing in the kitchen in a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’s slicing something— methodical,perfect. His tie is loosened. His hair slightly messy.

He looks tired. Not in the dramatic, cinematic way. Just… tired in the way people look when they’ve been carrying everything alone for too long.

You drop your bag by the door and say, “You know you can talk to me, right?”

He pauses. Doesn’t turn around.

“I don’t want to burden you,” he says.

There’s no malice in it. No edge.

But God, does it hurt.

You say nothing. Walk to the bathroom. Close the door gently.

You stare at yourself in the mirror and wonder when you started mistaking restraint for kindness.

---

You dream of him leaving. Not out of cruelty. But out of quiet, inevitable decay.

You dream of growing old beside him and never once hearing him say, “I need you.”

You wake up gasping.

And when you roll over to look at him, he’s still asleep, face turned away from you, hands folded like he’s praying.

---

You don’t break up. Of course not. That would require a climax, and your relationship is built entirely on anti-climax. You just… let it fray.

There’s no cheating. No screaming. Just unspoken questions hanging like fog in the room.

You start eating dinner separately. You stop saying I missyou because he never said it first.

And he—he grows even quieter. Like he knows you’re drifting, and he’s letting you go in the only way he knows how: respectfully.

You wonder if he thinks that’s love.

---

One day, he comes home to find you sitting on the floor, reading a book you’ve read before.

He looks at you like he wants to say something. You wait. He doesn’t.

So you say it for him.

“I’m tired, Kento.”

You’re not crying. You’re not shouting.

You’re just stating a fact.

And for the first time, he looks… afraid.

---

He sits down beside you. Not too close. But not far.

“I never wanted to make you feel alone,” he says.

His voice is low. Honest.

You nod. “I know. But you did.”

There’s a long silence.

Then—

“I didn’t know how else to be.”

And you believe him.

You love him.

But you also know that love is not enough when it has nowhere to land.

---

You don’t leave that night. You fall asleep on the couch, your back to his.

But something shifts. Not fixed. Just acknowledged.

And sometimes, that’s the beginning of something. Sometimes, it’s the end.

---

Later—weeks later, maybe months—you’ll walk past a bakery the two of you never went into. And you’ll think about how many moments you both passed up in the name of being sensible.

How many soft things you gave up because he didn’t know what to do with them.

You’ll still love him.

But you’ll also understand: some people were taught that needing is dangerous. That showing pain is failure. That asking for help is weak.

And it is not your job to rewrite that for them.

---

In the end, you loved a man who refused to be held.

And that is the quietest kind of heartbreak.

The kind that doesn’t end with a scream.

Just a sigh.

                                   -----

Chapter 2: What I Meant Was Stay

Summary:

(Nanami Kanto's POV)

(Things He Never Said)

---

Some people come into your life so gently, you don’t even hear the door open.

She had that kind of presence. The kind that made silence feel less like absence and more like permission to breathe.

He met her during the years he pretended to be okay.
A man in a suit, a subway ghost. Just another face in the corporate sea of fatigue.
Those years were a lie, and he knew it.
But she made the lie tolerable.

Not easier. Not happier. Just—less unbearable.

He never told her that.

Maybe that was the first mistake.

---

She was kind in the way that scared him.

Not soft. Not naive.
She had the kind of kindness that saw straight through people and didn’t flinch.
Unsentimental. Present.

The first time she brought him a second coffee without asking, he stared at the cup like it had insulted him.

She’d only smiled. “Didn’t think you’d ask.”

Nanami realized later: she didn’t mean the coffee.

---

He wanted to be careful with her.
Measured. Clean.
Their relationship followed a rhythm. Orderly. Predictable.

They shared meals. Schedules. A bed.
Even their silences matched.

It worked— untilitdidn’t.

Until he realized the silence between them had stopped being peace and started becoming distance.

---

She was tired. He saw it.

In the way she moved slower through the apartment.
In the way her laughter shrank.
In how often she looked like she had something to say and then chose not to.

She never asked him to open up.

She only waited.

Which was somehow worse.

He was used to demands. Deadlines. Orders.
Not patience.

Patience meant she hoped.
And hope— (hope could rot when it’s left too long in the dark.)

---

He didn’t know how to let her carry him.

He’d spent so long being the dependable one. The capable one.
The man who handled things.

Even when he left the jujutsu world, the blood never washed off.
He wore exhaustion like armor. Like habit.
There was no language in him for softness.

He thought, if he kept everything upright—if he kept showing up, kept working, kept coming home—
It would be enough.

It wasn’t.

---

The night she told him she was tired, she didn’t cry.

She just sat across from him at the dinner table and said, “Idon’tthink I can do this anymore.”

There was rice on the stove. A plant dying quietly in the corner.
Everything ordinary, and yet—something was ending.

Nanami looked at her and thought: I did this.
Not through cruelty.
But through absence.

“I didn’t know how else to be,” he’d said.

The words felt useless even as he spoke them.

She didn’t yell. She just nodded.

That was somehow worse, too.

---

She slept in the same bed that night, but far away.
A new country between their backs.

And still—he was relieved.
She hadn’t left.

He told himself he’d try harder. That he’d change.

He didn’t.

Not because he didn’t want to.
Because he didn’t know how.

---

She started staying later at work.
Stopped humming in the mornings.

He started folding her laundry without being asked.
Small offerings. Pitiful ones.

They shared air, but not warmth.

Even their arguments had vanished—there was no fire left to light them.

Nanami felt it. The inevitable drifting.
And still, he said nothing.

Because saying something might have broken it.
And silence was at least familiar.

---

He remembered once, years ago, someone told him love dies in screaming matches.
But they were wrong.

It dies in quiet.

It dies when someone says “I’m fine” too many times and the other person lets them.

It dies in routine.

It dies when you love someone too much to let them carry your hurt, and they love you too much to keep trying.

---

He thought about telling her everything.
How work made him feel like a cog with a necktie.
How he still dreamed about curses sometimes.
How he hated his father’s watch but wore it anyway.
How she was the only thing in his life that made sense and that terrified him more than anything.

But by the time he was ready to say it, she had already stopped listening.

Not out of cruelty.

She’d just run out of places to keep all the things he wouldn’t give her.

---

Nanami wasn’t angry.

She was right to go.

She deserved someone who didn’t treat love like a quiet obligation.

Someone who didn’t think affection had to be efficient.

Someone who didn’t flinch at being held.

He wasn’t that man. He knew that now.

---

Weeks passed.

The apartment stayed clean.
The laundry folded itself.
The air was still.

He still made two cups of coffee sometimes out of habit.

He still waited for her key in the lock, even though he knew better.

He still slept on the left side of the bed.

Some patterns outlive the people who started them.

---

What he meant, all along, was stay.

What he meant was: I don’t know how to be vulnerable without feeling like I’m bleeding.

What he meant was: I loved you in the only language I knew—and I wish I’d tried to learn yours.

---

But he never called.

Never wrote.

Because Nanami Kento believed some things should be left undisturbed once they’ve been broken cleanly.

She left quietly.

He stayed the same way.

And maybe, in some small way, that was the closest he ever got to loving her the way she needed:

By not asking her to carry even his regret.

 

---

Chapter 3: Years Later, Still

Summary:

(Last Chapter )

(Two people who once tried, and now know better—but still ache all the same.)

---

They met again at a bakery.

Of all places. Not the train station. Not a funeral. Not the rain-slick drama of some romantic fiction.
A bakery. With glass counters and tired sun. With the smell of flour and restraint.

Nanami had just finished grading a cursed site report from a junior. His back ached. He hated the tie he wore. And his coffee had been disappointing. Again.

She was standing near the window. Holding a paper bag. Looking at the sky like it owed her something.

Nanami thought— for a moment—that he was hallucinating.
Then she turned, and her eyes met his, and it was worse than he imagined.

Not because she looked angry.
But because she didn’t.

She just looked… older. Softer.
Still beautiful in that quiet, grounding way.

Still the same, and completely different.

Like time had kissed her gently, but never once asked what she wanted.

---

She spoke first.

“Nanami Kento.”

No anger. No surprise. Just the weary civility of someone who has long since stopped expecting answers.

He blinked once. Twice.
“...It’s been a while.”

She smiled. Not kindly. Not coldly. Just… politely.
“It has.”

Silence stretched, brittle and fragile.
He didn’t know what to say. He had nothing useful. No apology that wouldn’t come out flat.
Just a heart that still hurt a little when it saw her.

And a memory of how she used to hum under her breath while folding laundry.
And the sound of her voice the night she said she was tired.

---

They sat down outside.
Shared a table without deciding to.
She had tea. He had black coffee. Some habits, it seemed, died hard.

“How are you?” she asked.

He gave the half-shrug of a man who still didn’t like talking about himself.

“Busy. Tired.” He paused. “Alive.”

Her smile this time was quieter. Less polite.

“That’s something.”

---

She told him she’d changed careers. No more office life. Something smaller. More manageable.
Less soul-leeching.
She taught literature to bored high schoolers now. Sometimes got essays about Naruto being an allegory for capitalism.
It made her laugh.

She still had that laugh. The one that started slow and ended like a question.
It hadn’t changed. He was grateful.

She asked about him, and he told her only what she could bear.
He didn’t mention the close calls. The funerals. The boy with the six eyes. The girl with the shikigami.
Just: “Still in the field. Less often now.”

She nodded like she understood.
And maybe she did.
She always had, in ways he never earned.

---

They fell into a strange rhythm.
Half-memory, half-reality.
She’d say something and he’d remember how she used to tuck her hair behind her ear when she was frustrated.
He’d say something and she’d tilt her head like she was listening for the part he didn’t say.

There was a moment, mid-conversation, where they both looked at their hands.

Neither wore a ring.

That realization sat between them like spilled tea.

Nanami thought—
Maybe if he said it now. Maybe if he reached across the table and said, I’m sorry, I was wrong, should have let you carry me,
Maybe something could change.

But the moment passed.

And she was already asking about a mutual acquaintance.
And the bakery window reflected sunlight like it wanted to stay out of this.

---

He asked if she was happy now.
He didn’t mean to.

She paused.

“I’m… okay.”

It was an honest answer.

He nodded.

That felt fair.
After all, he was only okay too.
Not broken. Not thriving.
Just alive.

It felt like justice.
Not punishment.
Just—what happens when two people never learn how to reach each other.

---

They stood up eventually. The sky had turned the color of endings.

He offered to walk her to the station.

She didn’t say no.

They walked in step, like always.
She held her paper bag in one hand, the other in her coat pocket.
Nanami’s hands were in his too.
Tucked away. Out of reach.

At the entrance, she turned to him.
This time, she was the one who hesitated.

“You know,” she said, eyes somewhere near his collar, “I never wanted you to be less tired. I just wanted to be tired with you.”

He looked at her like a man realizing the fire had already gone out.

“I know,” he said. And meant it.

It was the only truth he had left.

---

She gave him a small smile. This one was real. Gentle. Almost sad.

“Well,” she said,“take care of yourself, Kento."

And then she left.

No dramatic pause. No over-the-shoulder glance.
Just a woman with a train to catch and a life to return to.

---

Nanami stood there long after she was gone.

He watched the crowd flow around him, fast and uncaring.

He let himself feel it.
The quiet grief.
The affection that never found its voice.
The weight he never let her carry.

Years later, still—

He thought of her humming in the kitchen.
Of the curve of her handwriting on grocery lists.
Of the way she said his name like it meant something.

And he thought:

Some people don’t come back to stay.

Some people come back just to remind you—

You could have loved them better.

 

---

 

Notes:

This is a three-part emotional gut punch masquerading as a love story.
I wanted to explore the slow, aching kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come from cruelty, but from miscommunication, restraint, and emotional fatigue—the kind of love that doesn’t die all at once, but dissolves like sugar in tea.

Nanami is one of my favorite characters to write because he’s so tightly wound in principle and exhaustion. This is my attempt to unravel him gently, and give voice to the grief he’d never admit out loud.

Thank you for reading. If this made you feel a little too much, I consider that mission accomplished.

Chapter 4: writers note

 

hey everyone ✨— quick chaos update 🫧🕊️
sooo i changed my phone and, being my usual genius self, completely lost access to this ao3 account. lmao i know. tragic.

BUT i’m not ghosting you (yet). i’ve got a new account now: LadyArcane2007— that’s where i’ll be dropping all my stories from now on. same unhinged energy, same plots, new place.

pls come support me there too, it means everything fr 🫶💚
love u all, stay feral & keep reading.

https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyArcane2007