Rain slid down the window in trembling lines—like stories too tired to finish themselves.

The sky outside bled grey into every corner of the evening. Cars hissed by on the wet road, their headlights carving fleeting shapes in the fog. A single lamp glowed amber in a second-story room, its warmth casting long shadows across posters curling at the edges, a stack of worn notebooks, and a laptop humming faintly.

Inside, she sat at her desk, curled over the keyboard with a blanket draped around her shoulders. The soft clack of her fingers echoed like a rhythm she had known her whole life. The room was quiet—deliberately so. Her headphones rested unused beside her phone, and the world outside had been muted by closed windows and drawn curtains.

She wrote.

It wasn't glamorous. It never had been. But to her, it was everything. The quiet tap of keys, the flicker of a cursor, the slow, aching satisfaction of shaping a sentence until it sounded like a heartbeat. That was the one place she had ever felt real.

Her latest scene was a slow one. Two characters in a cramped café, sharing silences and secrets over steaming cups of coffee. It wasn't supposed to be dramatic. Just honest. Warm. Human. She typed the final sentence of the page, then paused, reading it over.

She didn't flinch when the storm outside cracked across the sky.

This was her shelter. Her creation. Her rebellion.

To everyone else, she was quiet. A girl with good manners and good grades. Born into a respectable home with parents who loved her, provided for her, and expected her to follow the traditional path: college, career, marriage. Safe choices. Predictable ones.

But beneath that was the truth she never spoke aloud.

She lived in stories.

Her novels were published online, not under her name, not with her face. She used no photograph, no biography. Just words. Her pseudonym had slowly grown a modest but loyal audience over the past two years—readers who messaged her at midnight, thanking her for making them feel less alone. Who quoted her in comment threads. Who cried over her heartbreak scenes and smiled at her soft, hopeful endings.

And tonight, like most nights, they waited.

She uploaded the next chapter without ceremony. The platform pinged gently. Her cursor hovered for a moment over the comments section, but she closed the browser instead. She wasn't ready for praise. Not yet.

Behind her, the door creaked.

"Dinner's ready," came her mother's voice, muffled but warm. "Don't let the food get cold again."

She replied softly, "Coming in five minutes."

A pause. Then retreating footsteps. The door closed.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. Her reflection in the window showed a girl with wide, thoughtful eyes and delicate features, her hair slightly tousled from the soft braid she'd undone hours earlier. The glow of the screen made her skin look pale. There was something fragile about her posture, but not weak. Tired, maybe. Or just full.

There had been a time—years ago—when she would have screamed or wept after seeing what she'd seen last week. Her former best friend and the boy she had once quietly loved, standing together in a golden dusk on some beach. Laughing. Holding hands. A moment caught and shared by a mutual acquaintance's story. A cruel kind of fate.

But she hadn't cried.

She'd written.

Everything she couldn't say out loud had poured onto the page: the ache of being replaced, the numbness of watching someone else live the life you used to daydream about. The betrayal, yes—but more than that, the silent understanding that no one was coming to fix it for her. That she would have to carry her own grief. Shape it into something new.

Now, a week later, it felt like a story that had happened to someone else. Or maybe a story she had rewritten so many times, she no longer remembered where the real version ended.

She shut the laptop.

The soft click of the lid was final. She stood and stretched, fingers curling above her head as her spine popped gently. The blanket fell from her shoulders, revealing a comfortable oversized sweater and leggings—her unofficial uniform for late-night writing sessions.

She stepped out into the hallway, the smell of ginger and garlic drawing her toward the kitchen. Her parents were already seated, the television playing quietly in the background. A news anchor reported on the traffic situation across town, but no one paid much attention.

"Long day?" her father asked, gesturing to the empty chair.

She nodded, smiling faintly. "Just a lot of words."

"Studying or writing?" her mother teased, though her voice held no malice.

"Both," she said, sitting down. "The syllabus and the soul."

Her father laughed, pouring her a glass of water. "You sound like a poet."

"Maybe I am."

Dinner passed in quiet warmth. Her parents never pried into her online life. They knew she wrote, but not what or where. That privacy had been a silent agreement, respected without question. It helped her feel free.

Later, after dishes were washed and lights dimmed, she returned to her room and opened the curtains just a crack. The rain had softened into a mist. The world outside was soaked and shimmering, everything reflecting a soft, pale blue.

She sat on the bed, curling her legs beneath her, notebook in hand. Her fingers traced the spine before opening it.

This one was for ideas she didn't want to share yet. Private ones. Fragments. Memories too sharp to turn into fiction—yet.

She turned to a half-filled page:

"I loved him in the quiet ways. The way I memorized his coffee order, the way I waited until he laughed to let myself breathe. I never wanted him to know. I only wanted the love to exist."

She stared at it for a moment, then scribbled a line beneath:

"Maybe some loves aren't meant to be felt out loud."

The ink bled slightly on the paper. She liked that. It made it feel more permanent. More human.

Her phone buzzed.

A message from one of her regular readers:

> "Your new chapter broke me in the best way. Thank you for always writing what I can't say myself."

She smiled, the kind that didn't quite reach the surface. That kind of message—more than any algorithm or analytics—was why she kept going.

The rain continued its soft whisper outside. Inside, she picked up her pen.

Tomorrow she would write again. Not for fame. Not for revenge.

But because in a world that asked her to be quiet, she had found a voice.

And sometimes, that was enough.

She turned off the lamp.

The darkness welcomed her gently. Her stories would still be waiting in the morning.

The morning came quietly—without thunder, without urgency.

She awoke to the smell of rain still lingering in the air, that mineral scent of softened earth and wet concrete. Light filtered through the curtains in thin threads, painting her walls in shades of pearl grey and muted gold. The world outside had slowed, as though it, too, was catching its breath.

She stayed in bed a little longer than usual. Not out of laziness, but because these moments—where dreams had not fully let go and reality had not yet tightened its grip—were sacred to her.

The notebook from last night was still on her bedside table, its pages fluttering faintly under the ceiling fan's breeze. The last words she'd written were still fresh in her mind, looping like a quiet refrain:

> "Maybe some loves aren't meant to be felt out loud."

She repeated them in her head, not like a mantra, but like a memory that still had edges.

Her phone buzzed again. Another reader. Another message.

> "How do you write pain like that and still leave room for hope?"

She didn't reply. Not because she didn't care, but because she didn't have an answer. Some days, hope came naturally. Other days, it had to be written into existence.

After a slow breakfast and polite conversation with her parents—who had long given up trying to understand her pacing or her hunger for silence—she returned to her room. The blanket was still draped over her chair like a ghost of last night's thoughts. The laptop waited.

She didn't open it right away.

Instead, she moved to the window and pressed her fingertips to the cold glass. Outside, children splashed in puddles, umbrellas bobbed like oversized mushrooms, and the neighborhood stray curled up under the tin roof of the watchman's shed. Life, indifferent and ordinary, carried on.

But inside her chest, something pulsed—something small and defiant.

Her new story idea had been gestating for days. Not a continuation of the café scene, not a warm confession over coffee. This one was darker. Messier. A girl who lost her voice in a world that demanded silence. A boy who only spoke in dreams. A love that had no name but left bruises like fingerprints.

It scared her, a little.

She knew what it meant when her stories turned sharp. It meant she had something she hadn't faced yet. A wound disguised as fiction. A truth dressed up in metaphor.

But she was ready.

She lit a candle on the desk—something she'd done since her earliest writing days, a ritual more than a necessity. The scent of sandalwood and burnt paper filled the space. She cracked her knuckles softly, pulled the blanket back over her shoulders like armor, and opened the laptop.

The screen glowed to life, and for a moment, she just stared at it. Her reflection hovered faintly on the black surface—a girl too young to carry this many unsent letters inside her, and yet here she was.

The cursor blinked.

Then, she began.

> "Chapter One: The Girl Who Forgot How to Scream."

She didn't stop for two hours.

Words poured from her like breath. Not clean, not polished, but real. Each sentence a stitch in the fabric of something she couldn't quite name yet. It wasn't perfect—but it didn't have to be.

This wasn't for an editor. This wasn't for approval.

This was her therapy, her reckoning, her way of dragging light out of shadow.

By the time she looked up, the rain had stopped completely. The puddles shimmered like forgotten dreams, and the clouds had thinned to a gentle haze. Somewhere nearby, someone was playing an old song, tinny and nostalgic.

She saved the draft but didn't upload it.

Not yet.

Some stories needed to ripen in silence before being shared. Some truths had to sit in the dark a little longer before they could face the light.

She closed the laptop gently and turned in her chair. Her eyes found the bookshelf across the room—lined with titles she'd loved and lived in. Some dog-eared, some pristine. Between the pages of a certain poetry collection, a faded photograph peeked out.

She walked over and pulled it loose.

A candid photo from three years ago. Her, her former best friend, and him—the boy with the kind eyes and half-smile. All standing on a footbridge somewhere during a class trip. She was smiling in the photo. She remembered that day. They'd shared jokes and snacks, and she'd let herself believe, just for a moment, that maybe it meant something more.

Now, the photo was just paper.

But the feeling… the echo of what she never said—that still lived.

She didn't cry. She just placed the photo back and returned to her desk.

There was a kind of power in remembering without falling apart.

Later that afternoon, she walked to the nearby coffee shop. The air was crisp, the clouds scattered. The shop keeper was an elderly woman in her 80's, she treats her like her own grandchild, everytime she wents there she gave her some sweets and this time was no different, she gave her some sweets and asked how her studies were going. She smiled, nodded politely. No one ever asked about her writing. That part of her belonged to a different world.

As she sat on the table near the window, sipping from the warm cup watching the scenarios outside, her phone buzzed again.

This time, it wasn't a reader.

It was from her old friend.

> "Hey. It's been a while. Can we talk sometime?"

She stared at the screen for a long time.

The coffee in her hand had gone lukewarm by the time she replied.

> "I think… maybe not yet. But I'm glad you reached out."

She didn't send anger. She didn't send longing. Just truth.

Some chapters didn't need a dramatic ending.

Some just needed space.

That night, she uploaded the new story draft to her private archive. No readers yet. No comments. Just her, and the work.

The candle had long since gone out.

But the words—those still burned.

And tomorrow, like every tomorrow before it, she would write again.

Because writing was how she stitched herself whole.

Because silence was a language too—but she had chosen another.

Rain had softened to a mist by morning, tracing foggy halos around the city's glass towers. The quiet hum of a world waking up felt oddly cinematic—like Yuki Aizawa was walking through the opening scene of a film she hadn't been told she was starring in. Umbrella tucked under her arm, she weaved through the crowd outside the station, her university's white facade peeking through the gloom.

She was twenty-one now. A final-year literature student at Komorebi University, commuting from the modest apartment she still shared with her parents. It wasn't glamorous, but it was safe. Predictable. And maybe that's why she filled her nights with ink-stained fantasies—because the daylight hours were a different kind of fiction, one where she had to play the diligent daughter, the silent classmate, the polite friend.

Komorebi University wasn't elite, but it had its charm. Trees lined the cobbled paths between buildings, blooming in spring, weeping in autumn. Students lounged on steps or raced between lectures. Boys with guitars, girls with iced coffee, late bloomers and early prodigies. It was a living poem Yuki never quite felt part of. She watched it from the edge, her earbuds in, her fingers perpetually curled around a notebook or phone.

And then there was Riku.

He walked beside her now, umbrella tilted slightly so she wouldn't get wet, even if it meant his shoulder soaked through. He always did things like that. Silently generous. Endlessly reliable. The kind of boy who stayed after class to carry your books and never made you feel like you owed him anything—except maybe your attention. And Yuki gave it, but in fragments.

Riku loved her. She knew.

He never said it outright, but she could feel it in how his voice softened around her name. In the way he never looked at other girls quite the same. In how he read the messy chapters of her stories and pretended he didn't see the bruises between the metaphors.

But Yuki didn't feel it back. Or rather, she refused to let herself.

Because if she acknowledged it, she'd have to respond. And that meant breaking the soft safety of their friendship, and she wasn't brave enough for that.

So she laughed at his jokes. Let him walk her to class. Let his presence wrap around her like a cardigan on rainy days. But she never reached for his hand. Never lingered too long. Never asked him what he really meant when he said, "I'm always here."

---

The lecture hall smelled of old books and coffee. Yuki's professor droned about narrative archetypes while she doodled flowers in the margin of her notes.

"Is it wrong to want to be wanted?" she scribbled under the petals.

The boy from last summer—the one who had kissed her fingertips like they were scripture and whispered lines from Rilke against her spine—he had wanted her. But he'd wanted her body more than her story. And once he'd read enough pages, he left.

So she stopped letting people turn her into chapters.

Now she wrote the kind of romance that made hearts ache. Lust soaked in vulnerability. Yearning tangled with guilt. Stories where kisses weren't clean and love wasn't safe.

At night, her room turned sacred. Laptop aglow, music low, hands flying over the keyboard. She crafted her alter ego: Velour, the pen name no one knew. Under it, she wrote serialized webnovels—smut-laced poetry and aching love confessions that readers devoured weekly.

Thousands read her. Cried for her characters. Messaged her in DMs asking if she was okay.

But none of them knew it was her.

Not her parents, who thought she was still stuck on that failed poetry anthology.

Not her classmates, who only knew Yuki as the quiet girl with the sad eyes and vintage tote bags.

Not even Riku.

And that made it feel all the more real.

---

That afternoon, as grey clouds hung heavy above the campus courtyard, she sat under the covered walkway writing on her phone. Her latest scene—her heroine pressed against a rain-slicked wall, breathless from a forbidden kiss—unfolded in rhythm with the storm's whisper.

"He tasted like the end of a promise," she typed. "Like the silence between thunder."

"Writing again?" Riku's voice was warm, a low hum beside her ear.

She blinked and tilted her screen away. "Just notes."

He smiled. "You always say that when it's not just notes."

Yuki smiled back, soft and guilty.

He passed her a warm can of coffee from the vending machine. "You looked cold."

"Thanks."

They sat together, silence settling in like an old friend. Rain splattered the concrete beyond the awning. Somewhere in the distance, someone laughed. She sipped. He watched the drizzle. Neither spoke of what lingered between them.

"Riku," she said suddenly, "do you believe in soulmates?"

He glanced at her, surprised. "I… I don't know. Maybe?"

"I think we write our soulmates into existence," she murmured. "Line by line. Like fiction that remembers us."

He smiled. But didn't reply.

She didn't expect him to.

---

That night, in her room, she wrote again. The story had twisted into something more intimate—an exploration of a girl who couldn't say no, even when love knocked politely.

Yuki paused, fingers trembling slightly over the keyboard.

Why do we want the ones who undo us?

Her breath caught. The music in her headphones swelled.

And then she typed:

> He leaned in. Not like a hero. Not like a villain. But like someone who had waited too long to lie anymore.

"I know you pretend not to see it," he whispered. "But I love you. Not in the way boys love. In the way ghosts haunt."

The air felt thick. Her room, once safe, now pulsed with tension.

She didn't realize she was crying until a tear slid onto the trackpad.

---

The next day, Riku met her at the campus gate like always.

But she didn't meet his eyes.

And she didn't tell him what she had written.

Because to speak it out loud would make it real.

And Yuki Aizawa—twenty-one, pretty, poetic, loved but uncertain—was still learning how to live between her lines.

---

"She wrote to feel seen. She kissed to feel erased."

---

The campus library was quiet that Thursday—too quiet for a girl whose thoughts never rested.

Yuki sat near the back, beneath an old stained-glass window where fractured light painted her notebook in trembling color. Around her, pages turned and pencils scratched and students whispered like ghosts in a cathedral. But her world narrowed to the cursor blinking on her screen.

She hadn't written since last night's confession.

Not publicly, not privately.

The line—"I love you. Not in the way boys love. In the way ghosts haunt."—still clung to her chest like damp silk. It had spilled out of her like blood, like memory. She hadn't expected it. Hadn't planned it.

But Velour had.

Velour always knew what to say. How to hurt just enough. How to make readers ache for someone they'd never meet.

And maybe that was the problem.

Yuki no longer knew where Velour ended and she began.

---

Outside, autumn finally announced itself. A golden hush draped across Komorebi University. Leaves flurried in slow spirals, and somewhere on the central lawn, a boy played an acoustic version of Plastic Love while a girl filmed him on her phone.

Yuki watched them from the library window. They looked simple. Like a scene that didn't need editing.

She closed her laptop and packed up.

Maybe words weren't enough anymore.

---

Later, in the stairwell beside the literature building, Riku found her.

He always did.

She didn't hear him at first. Her head was tilted back, eyes closed, earbuds playing some French jazz she'd found in a playlist labeled "For Girls Who Romanticize Breathing."

"Thought I'd lost you," he said gently, leaning against the wall.

"You never lose what waits," she replied without opening her eyes.

He didn't say anything to that. But when she looked at him—really looked—she noticed the dark circles under his eyes. The way his hand flexed nervously near his pocket, like he wanted to say something and kept putting it back.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I read something," he said, voice hesitant. "A webnovel. Someone linked it in the group chat. A few girls were talking about it in class. Said it was... different."

Her heart flipped.

"Oh?"

"It felt like you," he said, eyes soft. "The words. The loneliness between them. I don't know how else to explain it. It just... it felt like something you'd write."

Yuki swallowed.

She wanted to lie. To laugh it off. To say, 'That's a strange thing to say.'

But her throat locked.

"And if it was?" she whispered.

He smiled sadly. "Then I guess I'd say thank you. For being brave in places I can't reach."

The silence that followed was not awkward—it was sacred. And terrifying.

Because something unspoken had just cracked between them.

---

That night, Yuki didn't write.

Instead, she opened a blank document. Not for Velour. Not for anyone.

Just her.

She stared at the white screen and typed slowly:

> I think I keep you at a distance because I'm scared of what you might see when you get too close.

She paused.

Deleted it.

Typed again:

> I don't know how to be loved without folding into something smaller first.

Deleted it.

Finally, she wrote:

> You're not in my stories because you deserve more than fiction.

And saved the file as "untitled_poem_1.txt."

---

The next morning, she left her house early. The train was quiet, swaying gently through the city. The windows fogged at the edges, catching bits of rising sun and ghosting her reflection with light.

She watched herself—soft sweater, ribbon-tied bag, mouth pressed thin.

Yuki Aizawa.

Not Velour. Not the girl who wrote aching bedroom monologues or immortalized forgotten touches in verse.

Just Yuki. A girl with too many feelings and not enough courage to say them out loud.

But that might be changing.

---

Later, in the courtyard between classes, Riku approached her again. No umbrella this time. Just a quiet resolve in his step.

"I need to ask something," he said.

She nodded.

"If I asked you to be honest—with me, with yourself—would you say yes?"

Her throat tightened. She couldn't look away.

"I'm scared," she admitted.

"I know."

He stepped closer, just enough for her to hear the heartbeat in his voice.

"But I've waited long enough," he said. "And maybe you have too."

And then—

Only then—

She let herself whisper back:

"Okay."

---

They didn't kiss. Not yet.

But something shifted.

A page turned.

And for once, Yuki didn't feel like a spectator in her own life.

---

That night, her latest chapter ended differently.

No broken hearts. No shadowed metaphors.

Just two characters walking home together in silence, sharing warmth from the same can of coffee.

No confessions. No tragedy.

Just possibility.

And her readers still cried—but this time, it wasn't because of the pain.

It was because they finally saw a girl choosing to stay.

---

> "She didn't need saving. Just someone who stayed long enough to read the footnotes."

---

Yuki didn't look back after whispering "okay."

Yet, Riku stayed beside her, walking quietly as fallen leaves clung to their shoes and the late afternoon light spilled gold across the campus path. His hand brushed hers once—accidentally, or maybe not—but she didn't reach for it.

She didn't owe him that.

She didn't owe him anything.

Because love—at least the kind he carried—wasn't something she could return.

Not because she didn't see him. Not because she didn't care.

But because she couldn't feel that way for someone who felt so safe.

She liked Riku's presence the same way she liked the sound of rain while writing, or the softness of an old sweater. Comforting. Reliable. Undemanding. But the truth—bitter and silent—was that she didn't burn for him.

She didn't want his hands on her skin or his breath in her hair.

She wanted him to stay, yes—but only in the periphery. Like background music. Like a memory you never want to lose but never want to relive either.

She wanted his presence.

But not his heart.

---

That night, Yuki curled up with her laptop again.

But this time, she opened her draft folder.

Velour: Book Four

Her fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from anticipation.

And then she typed:

> "He pressed her against the marble sink, hands on either side of her hips—not trapping, just anchoring. She didn't look away as he leaned in, lips brushing the hollow of her throat like a question."

> 'Say no, and I'll stop.'

> She didn't say anything at all. Because silence was her favorite kind of consent—with him, it always meant yes.

---

Velour's world was different.

Messier. Hungrier.

Yuki's heroine wasn't quiet like her. She didn't shrink in lecture halls or avoid eye contact in elevators. She was wild in a way that made readers blush. Unashamed in her body. Ruthless with her longing.

In her story, love didn't wait patiently beside you on rainy afternoons.

It stole into your room like a storm, left your sheets damp, and your conscience aching.

Her protagonist—Ame—was a former literature teacher turned ghostwriter for erotic thrillers. She lived in a sunless apartment and kissed strangers like secrets. She wasn't broken, but she was hollow in all the right places, and the men she met never quite filled her.

Except one.

Kael—her editor. Scarred, too sharp, too much.

They hated each other at first.

> He marked her pages in red and said her writing was self-indulgent.

> She told him his feedback was dry enough to choke on.

But the tension bled off the page like spilled wine. And when they finally kissed, it wasn't soft.

It was ruinous.

---

Yuki paused, staring at the lines she'd written.

She should have been embarrassed.

But instead, she felt alive.

There was no Riku in this world. No gentle promises or polite restraint.

Only need.

Only bruised lips and fingernails on backs and whispered filth beneath moonlit windows.

This wasn't escapism.

It was honesty.

A version of herself that didn't have to be quiet.

---

> Ame kissed Kael like a dare. He kissed her like an apology.

> They didn't need labels. Just walls to push each other against.

---

Yuki leaned back, breath uneven.

Sometimes, she worried that this was the only place she was allowed to feel.

Because in the real world, desire had rules.

You were supposed to fall for boys like Riku.

Safe boys. Soft boys. Boys who waited.

But Yuki didn't want waiting.

She wanted someone who could read her silence like a smut scene.

Who would break rules just to memorize the sound she made when she let go.

---

Her phone buzzed. A message from Riku:

> "Hope today didn't overwhelm you. You were really quiet again. Let me know if you need anything."

She stared at it.

She knew he meant well.

But it didn't make her feel anything.

Instead, she minimized the chat and returned to her draft.

Typed:

> "He lifted her onto the desk with a kind of violence that didn't bruise. Her thighs tightened around him like punctuation."

Then another line:

> "She wasn't looking for love. Just someone who didn't flinch when she asked to be ruined."

---

Midnight. Her room still. The glow of the screen a second moon.

And Yuki—sweet, polite, soft-spoken Yuki—wrote until her fingers ached.

Not for Riku.

Not for romance.

But for the ache she wasn't allowed to say out loud.

---

> "Pain," she once wrote in a margin, "is just love's way of staying after it's gone."

> Ame never let herself forget that line.

Because when Kael kissed her, it always hurt.

---

The city outside her window was faceless.

Ame sat in the low glow of her kitchen, barefoot on cold tile, wearing only a thin black slip and yesterday's eyeliner. She was supposed to be writing, but her laptop sat untouched on the counter. Instead, she poured another glass of wine. It tasted like heat. Like warnings she never listened to.

The knock came at midnight.

One knock. A pause. Then two more—soft, deliberate.

She didn't check the peephole.

She already knew.

Kael never texted before showing up.

He didn't need to.

---

She opened the door, and there he stood—rain-slick coat, jaw clenched, eyes like ash and ruin.

"Did I wake you?" he asked, voice low.

"No," she said. "I was busy ignoring deadlines."

He stepped inside without permission, and she let him. The door clicked shut like a promise.

He didn't touch her.

Not yet.

He always waited until she lied first.

"You said you weren't coming tonight."

"I lied," he said.

She turned her back to him, walked toward the kitchen. Poured a second glass.

"You always do."

> "And you always let me in."

---

Ten minutes later, they weren't speaking anymore.

She was pinned to the wall. His coat had hit the floor, her glass forgotten on the counter, red wine dripping down the stem like a wound.

Kael's mouth was at her collarbone, teeth grazing skin like he wanted to carve his name into her. Her hands threaded into his shirt, tugging, tearing. Not from love. Not even lust.

From need.

Raw. Animal. Terrifying.

---

> She didn't know how to ask to be wanted. But she knew how to arch her back, tilt her chin, and make herself impossible to forget.

She didn't know how to trust. But she knew how to bruise.

And Kael—he was the kind of man who understood how to worship damage.

---

They didn't go to the bedroom.

The kitchen counter sufficed.

> He bent her over it like an edit he didn't ask permission to make. Her thighs slid apart instinctively, heartbeat loud in her ears. She didn't beg—not out loud—but her breath made poetry of her silence.

> "Tell me to stop," he whispered into her spine.

She said nothing.

He left fingerprints on her hips, kissed the scar under her ribs like it was scripture. Their bodies moved with a violence that knew where the softness lived.

> She moaned his name like it had sharp edges.

He growled hers like it tasted better broken.

---

After, they lay on the kitchen floor.

Sweat cooling. Silence stretching.

Kael lit a cigarette. Ame stared at the ceiling.

"You're going to wreck me," he said.

"I already did," she whispered.

He exhaled smoke without looking at her.

"Good."

---

> Love wasn't gentle between them. It was jagged. Breathless. A cliff edge they kept falling from—again and again—just to feel the drop.

> She didn't want someone who made her feel safe.

She wanted someone who made her feel ruined—and still stayed.

---

Later, while Kael slept on her couch, Ame sat at her laptop.

She opened her manuscript. Her hands were still shaking.

And she typed:

> "It wasn't about being loved. Not for girls like her. It was about being remembered by someone who touched you like he meant it, even if he didn't stay."

> "She wasn't asking for a forever. Just a night that burned hard enough to feel like one."

---

Across the city, lights flickered in other windows.

Other people slept.

Other hearts beat.

But in that small apartment—cluttered, unwashed, sacred—Ame's world unfurled line by line, like skin beneath hungry hands.

And Yuki Aizawa, in her own quiet bedroom across another city, typed until the words tasted like blood and sex and memory.

Not because she had lived it.

But because somewhere, deep inside, she wanted to.

---

The glow of the screen bathed Yuki's face in cold light. Outside, the city had finally slept, its pulse quiet beneath the breath of wind weaving through Komorebi's narrow streets. But inside Yuki's room, the air was thick with what lingered: her unsent drafts, Kael's cigarette smoke still fresh in her mind, and a confession she would never say out loud.

The document on her screen blinked back.

> She wasn't asking for a forever. Just a night that burned hard enough to feel like one.

Yuki read the line once. Twice. Then leaned back, closed her eyes.

In her bones, she could still feel the way Kael had looked at Ame. Not like a man in love. But like someone being haunted. The kind of gaze that left marks without touch.

Her phone vibrated.

Riku.

"Are you awake?"

She didn't reply. Instead, she opened a blank tab.

untitled_poem_2.txt

> Sometimes I keep you close because your silence doesn't ask for answers.

---

Morning came like an apology.

She wore a soft grey turtleneck and tied her hair into a low bun, the ends brushing her collarbone like hesitant thoughts. Her parents were already in the kitchen, soft clinking and the smell of tea filling the apartment.

"You stayed up again?" her mother asked gently.

Yuki nodded. "Just writing."

"You should rest more. It's not good to live inside a screen."

She smiled faintly, but her mind had already drifted. Not to her thesis or the class quiz on Romanticism, but to Ame's apartment. To a broken wine glass, lips parted around a cigarette, and Kael's voice saying, *"You're going to wreck me."

She clutched her coat tighter.

Outside, Komorebi was draped in light fog. The campus felt like a watercolor in motion: blurry and beautiful, the kind of scene you wanted to photograph but couldn't explain.

Riku was waiting at the gate.

He waved. Held out coffee. Smiled.

And all she could think was how different it felt when Kael handed Ame a drink with trembling fingers and a mouth still hot from sin.

---

Class passed in fragments.

Narrative structures. Reader empathy. Symbolic disassociation. Yuki underlined key points, nodded when expected, but her notebook margins were filled with Kael's dialogue:

> "Every time you say nothing, I want you more."

> "You taste like regret I didn't earn."

---

Later, in the library's third floor where no one ever sat, Yuki opened her laptop.

She split the screen.

On the left: Ame and Kael. A new scene half-written. On the right: her syllabus, blinking unread.

She stared.

Then wrote:

> Ame couldn't sleep. Her body remembered Kael even when her mind didn't want to. The bruises weren't visible. But they hummed beneath her skin like unfinished poetry.

Yuki paused. Her hand hovered over the keys.

Her thoughts began to drift—not as Yuki, not as Velour. But somewhere between.

What if someone loved me like that?

Not safely. Not kindly. But completely.

---

"Hey," Riku whispered, breaking her reverie. He had appeared like a ghost beside her table.

"I brought snacks. Figured you'd forget to eat again."

She blinked. Nodded. Smiled, automatic.

He sat beside her.

Too close.

"You've been distant lately."

She wanted to say, I've been in bed with a man who doesn't exist. I've been writing scenes so raw they make my hands shake. I've been craving ruin, not routine.

Instead, she whispered, "Sorry."

He offered her a piece of bread.

She took it.

He didn't know she was starving for something else.

---

That night, the chapter spilled out of her.

> Kael watched her undress like it was a confession. Slowly. Reverently. His hands didn't rush. But his eyes did.

> "I want to forget everyone who came before me," he said, pulling her into his lap.

> "Then touch me like I'm new," she replied.

The words made her tremble.

Not because they were erotic.

But because they were honest.

---

The next day, Yuki stood in front of her mirror. Looked at her lips. Touched her neck.

She tried to see what Kael saw in Ame.

What made her worth writing.

But all she saw was Yuki.

Good daughter. Quiet student. Girl with soft hands and a mouth too careful to bleed.

She grabbed her phone. Scrolled through reader messages.

> "Your writing makes me feel seen in places I've hidden from everyone else."

> "You write like someone who's survived things she can't name."

She held the phone to her chest.

Velour is loved.

Yuki was tolerated.

---

Evening again.

Rain brushed the windows like a secret. Her playlist hummed low jazz and piano echoes.

She opened a message from Riku:

> "I know I said I'd wait. But maybe I was just hoping you'd catch up. And now... I don't know. Maybe we're not even walking the same road."

Her chest ached.

Because she knew he was right.

She typed back:

> "I like you, Riku. But not in the way that keeps people warm at night."

> "I like your presence. Not your future."

She deleted it.

Typed instead:

> "I'm sorry."

> "You deserve someone who doesn't write confessions they'll never send."

She hit send.

Then closed the chat.

Opened her manuscript.

And whispered:

"Okay, Ame. Take it from here."

---

> In the chapter's climax, Kael said her name like a prayer. Not to worship. But to beg.

> "You don't love me," he said.

> "No," Ame agreed, breathless, as she pulled him closer. "But I want you more than anyone I've ever loved."

---

Yuki closed the laptop.

She sat in the dark, listening to the rain.

Between the ticking clock and her heartbeat, a truth finally settled:

She didn't want to be loved like Riku loved her.

She wanted to be known the way Kael knew Ame.

In the shadows. In the hunger.

In the pages she never let anyone read.

---