The snow came early that year. Silent, uninvited—like most things in the Kurokami estate.

Melissa had just finished scrubbing the outer walkway of the tea house, her hands raw from the cold, her breath a thin mist in the air. The wooden planks beneath her knees had frozen over in places, and each time she moved, it felt like something inside her ribs cracked with the effort.

Still, she worked. Quietly. Methodically.

She was not like the other maids—born in the province, trained in custom. She was foreign. A curiosity the household pretended not to notice. Her name, her silence, her pale eyes. None of it belonged here. That was the point.

“Do not go near the west wing after dusk.” That had been the only warning when she arrived.

No one explained why.

From a distance, the estate was beautiful: wrapped in cedar and pine, with eaves that curved like calligraphy and lanterns that blinked gold through the twilight fog. But Melissa had long since learned that beauty often grew from rot. The kind that crept beneath lacquer and behind the shoji walls, where no light reached.

The Kurokami clan were known for three things: their loyalty to the shogunate, their mastery of the blade, and their tragedies. None were spoken aloud. Only the snow spoke, and even it was cautious.

That morning, as the sky greyed and the snow began to fall in earnest, Melissa looked up from her work.

He was standing there.

Lord Kaito.

No announcement. No footsteps. Just the sudden stillness of the world as he entered it.

He was dressed in black, his robe simple but impeccably tied. A sword hung at his side—not ceremonial, but used. His hair was pulled back with precision. His eyes, unreadable.

“Why are you working outside?” he asked.

His voice was low, flat, but not unkind.

“I was told the snow dulls the footfalls of guests,” Melissa replied, bowing low. “I thought it best to clear the path.”

“Do not labor for vanity,” he said. “The snow will return by nightfall.”

“Then I will clear it again.”

A pause.

She did not look up. She had learned not to.

“I do not recognize you,” he said.

“I arrived a week ago.”

“Your name?”

“Melissa.”

That earned the faintest flicker of reaction in his eyes. “Not a name of this country.”

“No,” she said. “But neither is silence, and yet—”

“We speak it fluently,” he finished.

The wind shifted, stirring the snow around them like ash. The camellia bush beside the path had not yet lost its color—its blossoms full, heavy, and red as spilled ink.

For a moment, the only sound was the soft hiss of snow melting on stone.

Then he turned. Left without another word.

And Melissa, still kneeling in the cold, stared after him long after he had vanished behind the inner gate.

She told herself it was curiosity.

She lied to herself not know what will be the outcome of this.

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Chapter Two: The Lord Who Does Not Look

The lords of the house rarely mingled with the servants. When they did, they spoke like wind through reeds—sharp, fleeting, and never to be caught.

But Lord Kaito was different. He didn’t just keep his distance; he kept his gaze. He gave no one the dignity of being seen.

Melissa noticed it first at the morning procession. But with only for her that's her guessing and claimed.

She had been refilling ink stones in the study wing when he passed, flanked by attendants. He moved like a shadow that had learned the discipline of a blade—every step measured, every breath silent. His eyes swept the hall, never resting on anyone. Not even those who bowed deeply as he passed.

He doesn’t look at people, she thought.

Not truly. He looked through them. As if they were ghosts.

“Cold man,” one of the older maids whispered that evening over pickled daikon. “Sharp as his father's blade, they say. And twice as hollow.” She doesn't even know the father of the Lord yet from the other lips, she can figure out of who he is.

They spoke in hushes. As if the house had ears.

Melissa said nothing. But the memory of his voice—its strange stillness, the way he’d finished her sentence—sat beneath her skin like a bruise that hadn’t bloomed.

That night, she dreamt of camellias blooming beneath snow. Of eyes that never looked, and a mouth that said her name like it shouldn’t have known how.

---

The next time she saw him, she wasn’t ready.

She was kneeling near the koi pond, trimming the frost-bitten lilies. The stone path was slick with meltwater, the winter sun reflecting in pale bursts across the surface. It was quiet enough to hear the fish breathe.

Then she felt it—the shift in air. A stillness, heavy and full of expectation.

He was there. Watching her moves.

Not in a leering way. Not with interest, even. Just... watching. As if trying to place her in a puzzle he didn’t remember starting.

She looked up. Their eyes met.

And for a moment, he didn’t look through her. He looked at her.

Like a man seeing something unexpected in a mirror.

She didn’t bow. Not right away. She wanted to see how long he would hold it.

He was the one to look away.

The spell broke.

“My lord,” she said, inclining her head just enough.

He said nothing. Just turned and walked down the stone path, slower than usual.

---

Later, as Melissa lit the evening lanterns, she whispered his name aloud once, just to feel how it sat on her tongue.

“Kaito.”

It was a quiet rebellion. A name she was never meant to say alone in the dark.

And yet she did. It feel something on her mouth. Something sweet yet not intending to devour.

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The Kurokami estate was made of paper, wood, and whispers.

Sound traveled strangely through it. A conversation in the front corridor could echo faintly through the tea house two rooms away. Footsteps on polished floors became drumbeats in quiet hours. Doors slid without a sound, but eyes—eyes were always watching.

Melissa learned this quickly.

She also learned that no one spoke of the west wing.

It loomed on the far side of the estate, set apart by a long hallway that bent sharply like a sword's curve. There were no lamps along its path. No maids were assigned to clean it. And yet, it remained free of dust.

One morning, while carrying tea to the council chamber, she paused at the turn.

The corridor yawned before her, dark and too quiet. The wooden floorboards there gleamed faintly in the morning light, but something about the air was wrong—heavy, still, like the breath of something waiting.

A soft shuffle echoed from deep inside the corridor.

Melissa turned and walked away. Slowly. Never running. But walking faster than her normal walking.

---

By week’s end, she’d found her rhythm.

She rose before the sun, cleaned the outer stones, prepared tea and rice for the lower lords. She was neither praised nor scolded, and that suited her. Eyes off her meant safety.

But Lord Kaito disrupted everything.

She passed him more frequently now. At odd hours. In places she hadn’t expected: the narrow library alcove, the inner garden bridge, the hallway near the shrine. Always alone. Always quiet. As if he, too, avoided being seen.

He never addressed her.

But each time, he hesitated—just slightly—as though something should have been said. As though he knew her name, and was swallowing it like something dangerous.

Melissa began to feel it—the shift. The heat beneath stillness. A gaze held just a moment longer than courtesy allowed.

Once, as she carried a tray past the camellia hall, she paused at a half-open screen door. Inside, Lord Kaito was seated alone at the low writing desk, ink brush in hand. He wasn’t writing. He was staring at the parchment, unmoving.

Then, softly, he said, “Melissa.”

She stiffened.

Her name—spoken so quietly, and not meant to be heard.

She backed away before he could turn.

---

That night, the wind howled through the beams. Melissa sat in the servants’ quarters, warming her fingers over a coal brazier. The other maids laughed softly among themselves, trading stories about the upcoming wedding, their voices feather-light and oblivious.

Melissa said nothing. Because no one will understand what's really not spoken and that's not really a truth.

She stared at the wall, and the faint outline of a camellia petal where someone had once leaned too hard and stained the paper screen.

Paper walls remember everything, she thought.

And sometimes, they whisper it back.

Because by the end of the day mutter of this echo through the walls of the households.

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