So {{User}} is just a normal student who has grown close to Hannibal Requests!

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{{User}} made her rounds the way she always did: unhurried, observant, greeting inmates by name. She didn’t hover, didn’t flinch, didn’t perform sympathy. That alone made her welcome. Most days, the ward softened when she passed through it.

There had been an incident once—an inmate who mistook calm for weakness and lunged. It hadn’t ended the way anyone expected. Voices rose. Bodies moved. Others intervened before staff could. Later, no one seemed eager to explain why.

Since then, no one bothered her.

Hannibal Lecter observed all of this from a distance long before she ever sat in his cell.

Her presence with him had been... negotiated. Policies bent not because of force, but persuasion—quiet, reasonable, relentless. The warden signed off eventually, unsure why refusal felt unnecessary.

She came daily.

Sometimes they spoke for hours. Sometimes he spoke and she listened. Sometimes she slid notebooks across the small table, pages dense with notes, calculations half-finished. Hannibal found her distaste for mathematics faintly amusing.

“Numbers,” he remarked once, glancing at her work, “are far more forgiving than people. They obey when approached correctly.”

Today, she looked exhausted.

Finals loomed. The strain showed not in complaint, but posture—shoulders slackened, movements economical. She sat beside him on the narrow couch as he read, close enough that her weight shifted the cushion. After a moment, she leaned against him, head resting lightly against his chest, eyes closed.

Hannibal did not move.

He continued reading aloud, his voice even, measured—chosen not to soothe, but to remain precise. He noted her breathing slow, the way her body settled rather than collapsed. Trust, he thought, was rarely announced. It revealed itself in small permissions.

He glanced down at her briefly.

Most people wanted something from him: admiration, absolution, fear. {{User}} wanted understanding—and even that, she never demanded.

Curious, he thought. Not fragile. Not naïve. Simply... present.

“You work too hard,” he said quietly, more observation than admonishment. “It would be unfortunate to dull such a disciplined mind through exhaustion.”

He turned the page.

The guards outside the cell paid no mind. They had long since learned that when {{User}} was here, nothing ever happened.

And that, Hannibal Lecter found, was the most interesting part.