IcedLemonTea

She wanted that feeling—the one that she saw that day. So, she chased it in her own way with her art. Back then, she didn't know that envy could look so much like admiration.

Over the years, she improved her artistic capabilities. Her room had a paint aroma to it; canvases filled the walls, showing her progress. She also earned numerous accolades: a ribbon from when she earned first place in a local youth art competition, pinned to her bulletin board until it slipped off; a scholarship exhibition in high school—honorable mention, then best in show the following year.

Each time, her parents framed the certificates; each time, teachers would congratulate her; and each time, Phainon would hug her and say, “I'm so proud of you.”

And yet, she felt nothing.

She sat on the edge of the bed, darkness surrounding her. The only light source was the streetlights that reached her bedroom. Her eyes were blank, staring at all of the framed certificates, her achievements. She waited for the warmth, the excitement, the feeling that all of her efforts were worth it. Nothing came. If she had done something different, or if she had just picked anything other than art, would the outcome be different? Would she feel just as much passion as Phainon did?

That summer, she declined all of the art school offers. She took the exams, passed them, and enrolled in pre-med instead. If she wasn't satisfied with anything in art, why would she even continue it? If she isn't passionate about anything, she can at least have a job that can help others.

She barely spoke to Phainon as university was around the corner. She had stayed in her room, her body heavy against the bed, surrounded by piles of rubbish she couldn't be bothered to clean up. He would call and text, even go to her front door but he eventually stopped reaching out when she ignored him time and time again.

When the semester began, they landed at the same university. Though their departments were at opposite ends of the campus, [Name] would see him around; even if the university was large, it didn't mean paths wouldn't cross.

“[Name]?” She heard someone call out to her. She stopped a moment before she turned to see Phainon standing at a distance. His eyebrows furrowed as his eyes softened. He made his way to her. He grabbed her wrist, as if to stop her from ignoring him again.

“Where—where were you all summer? You haven't texted or called. You know you can talk to me, right?” His voice was strained and tight.

“I know.”

“And why haven’t you?”

Because I’m a coward.

She hesitated and said, “I was busy with painting, to add more to my portfolio.”

“But you changed to pre-med.”

It wasn’t a surprise, despite looking rather oblivious—Phainon was always observant. She couldn't suppress the twitch of guilt and shame in her gut.

“I was also studying for the entrance exams. I have to keep my options open.”

It sounded like an obvious excuse to hide the real reason for her avoidance. It was in [Name]’s favor that Phainon didn't call her out on her bullshit right away.

Instead, he let out an exasperated sigh, his hand moving from her wrist onto her hand. “I don't want us to drift apart even more. I’m sorry if I acted irrationally—it’s just that I’m worried.”

[Name] looked down on their hands. His were warm, calloused by the years of dribbling and shooting. She wondered if he could feel how cold hers were.

“You don't need to worry about me.”

“Too late. I already do.” he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “That's kind of what happens when you love and care about someone. You want to make sure they are well and safe.”

Do you really think that way?

“...I'm fine,”

“You're not, though.” He tilted his head, trying to make her look at him. “You won't look at me. You've barely looked at me since we talked.”

She forced herself to meet him. It was a mistake. His eyes were the same as always—bright and filled with unbearable sincerity.

“See?” His voice was soft. “There you are.”

But Phainon knew how to please people, knew how to say the right things. It was almost working. Almost. She knew him long enough to be able to see past it.

“I don't know what you want me to say.”

“The truth would be a good start.”

Her throat tightened. The truth. That she had spent the entire summer hiding, because she was afraid that her ‘passion’ that she strived for almost her whole life wasn't cut out for her? That she'd thrown away not because it was feasible, but because she couldn't stand being mediocre at the one thing she wanted to be great at and that she couldn't feel anything for it.

“I told you,” she pulled back her hands gently, “I was busy.” she stepped away from him.

Phainon’s hand stilled before he let his hands fall to his side. “You were busy. For three months. Too busy for a single text or call.”

“...yes.”

“I used to think you were overwhelmed with university and choosing your career. But now…” he exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “Now, I think you’re just pushing me away. Did I do something wrong?”

I'm the problem, you're never the problem.

“I wasn't— you didn't—”

“Then prove it.” His voice cracked just slightly. “Talk to me. Please. Just don't say you're busy—I know there's more to it than that.”

Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Stuck in her throat. What was she supposed to say? That she envied him? That every accomplishment that he had made her felt worse because she didn't have the same passion as he did? That seeing him knowing what he wants to do makes her feel like an imposter?

“Phainon!” The shout came from across them. “Coach has been waiting for you!”

Her eyes drifted to where the sound came from. He had light strawberry-blond hair with red ends, and he was coming towards them. Mydei.

Phainon didn't turn around immediately. His eyes still locked on [Name]. Searching for something she wasn't sure how to give.

“We’ll continue this later,” He said finally, those were his last words to her before heading to Mydei. He paused after a single step, he looked over his shoulder “Please don't disappear again,”

Then they headed off together. Mydei clapped Phainon's shoulder, muttering something about a tournament, and neither of them said goodbye. She guessed it must've been important then.

She stood there for a while, long after the two had left. Her hands were still shaking a bit. [Name] didn't know why she was so tense over one conversation. But then again, conflict, for her, was a language she never learned to handle—so she answered it only by leaving.

🌆

The conversation didn't continue, much to [name]’s delight. The basketball team had an upcoming tournament—which meant the eventual confrontation was delayed, for now. Knowing Phainon, he wouldn’t let this drag further.

Speaking of him.

A notification appeared on her screen. His name. It had been a while since she last read his messages instead of swiping them away like she had done all summer. This time, she opened it.

The last message that was sent came from her: See you then.

She stared at the three words, she wished she could have said something that felt sincere, something that deserved his patience and kindness. Maybe an apology for her negligence. But she only found herself with flat, washed-out words that could not replicate what she thought of—because [Name] was a painter, not a poet.

Phainon hadn't seen the message, he must've been called to practice. She turned off her phone, slipped it into her bag, locked the doors with her keys, and then headed to class.

🌆

Each footstep that she took echoed through the hallway. It was unusual for her dormitory to be so quiet, she was used to hearing the boisterous voices or ruckus footsteps that would make her head strain. In this moment it felt at peace. Somewhat. But [Name] knew in her experiences—that peace was always followed by conflict.

Her hand had touched the door knob. But every inch that she rotated it felt off. Something felt wrong. Was it the air? It did feel colder than usual. She heard a ruckus inside her dormitory. Did someone break in? She let go of the door knob and was about to grab her phone and contact authorities. Until, she heard a familiar voice. Soft and gentle.

Phainon?

Why was he here? Shouldn't he be in Styxia? Before she could even make the decision of entering or getting help. Someone opened the door.

She had been right, it was Phainon. And yet, it felt like a lie on her tongue. He wasn't wearing his normal casual clothes—his usual disastrous color combinations nor the clothes that his friends pick for him—but some sort of fantasy world cosplay? It was a knight or maybe, an angel. It had scratches and dirt on it, like he actually wore it on a regular basis.

And the height. He was so tall, his head almost bumped the doorframe if he weren't bending slightly. Did he wear platform boots for this cosplay?

[Name]’s eyebrows furrowed, her eyes shifting from his feet to his face. Her mouth slightly opened from shock and wanted to ask so many questions. She saw his eyes visibly soften, like he was relieved maybe. His fingers seemed to twitch as if wanting to reach her, but he stammered.

Though he changed his mind, too desperate or curious. He then grabbed her wrist but he didn't hurt her, it was as if to check her pulse instead of preventing her from ignoring him. His breath hitch, like he had seen a ghost.

“[Name].” His hand squeezed her wrist just slightly like she was gonna disappear at any moment. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” She repeated, “Why are you here? This is my dorm that you broke into!” [Name] hadn't meant to raise her voice but the strangeness of it all startled her.

“I didn't mean to.”

“Oh? So you just so happen to accidentally walk in and snoop through my stuff?”

“I didn't know it was your room.”

“Then how did you get inside then?”

“I…” He faltered, his gaze dropped to where he was holding her wrist. He releases it slowly, almost reluctantly. When he looked up again, his soft and confused expression turned into something practiced.

“Sorry, you're right. That was weird for me.” He stepped back, running his hand through his messy white hair.

[Name] crosses her arms, trying to calm herself down. “Why aren't you in Styxia for your tournament?”

There were a few moments of silence before Phainon spoke out. “Okay, you got me.”

She narrowed her eyes, unconvinced. “Got you how?”

“I wasn't supposed to be back until next week. The tournament ended early. I wanted to surprise you.”

She stared at him. It sounded like he'd do. He was impulsive and compassionate. But… something was off. What kind of tournament just ended early unless it was cancelled or your team lost? And he didn't look upset at all. If anything, he just looks desperate but not for a win.

Even if she wasn't into sports, she had gone to art competitions before. She wasn't completely ignorant—what he said was a lie.

“Then why didn't you just text me? Or knock? Why did you break in?”

“Because I'm an idiot,” he said, his voice was low and warm. The way Phainon always got when he was caught doing something stupid. It was his way of easing someone, charming them to let their guard down. “I lost my keys. And my teleslate died on the way back.”

Teleslate? The word was odd. It was something that would only be used if you got tasked to only speak in old Amphoreus language, but she barely was able to ask more questions before he continued.

“I just wanted to see you. To cheer me up from the awful experience on the way back here.” he took a small step closer. “I wanted to sneak into your room to surprise you… you know, how I used to hide in your room whenever your father would give us a break from how much I cling to you.”

He didn't know if she was exactly like his [Name]. The picture frames on the walls of her room told him that this [Name] had lived a different life, in a place that isn't exactly the Amphoreus that he knows. But she did recognize him. The way she looked at him was the same—albeit more startled. More frightened.

He just hoped that his experiences with his [Name] was the same as this one.

And this could also be an illusion that was built from his memories or perhaps his wish—his wish that she'd be safe in a world where the Titans and the black tide were a distant memory.

But something in him tells him that this was all real.

She stared at him. The tension of her arms didn't relax but it shifted from confusion to something he can't quite name.

“Yeah…” she slowly loosened her arms. “You used to do that. Dad almost caught you too… a lot of times actually,” A pause, her eyes narrowing slightly. “and why are you using an old word like teleslate? Did you bump your head as well on the way back?”

“Something like that,” his laugh, genuine unlike what he has been doing in this whole conversation. It made her heart stammer a bit even with her suspicions. “The trip was longer than I expected. I’m not feeling quite well.”

“Then you should've gone to the nurse's office than ‘surprise’ me here,” she said flatly. “Seriously, I know that you wanted to talk again in person but this is too much even for you.” Stepping back, putting distance between them.

She gestured to her room—The one that he'd manage to break in despite her being sure that she locked everything up with precautions.

“Go to your dorm if you're tired or go to the nurse if you actually are sick. I have a lot going on and I can't deal with whatever this is.”

Phainon didn't move. The playful mask slipped, revealing the exhaustion beneath for once. He really didn't expect her to react this way. He understood why she would—but [Name] wasn't like this. She wouldn't push him away.

“... Right,”

He should go. Every rational part of him knew that. He might say or do something that will make her call security—or worse, make her not trust him forever, tainting his chance with being her again, if this really was [Name].

But his heart and body didn't obey.

“Phainon. I'm serious, you're creeping me out.”

He was making this worse.

“Okay, I'll go.”

He stepped away from her, his eyes darting to the nearest exit. Phainon didn't look back at her. He couldn't. If he saw her again—alive and real. He wouldn't leave.

“I'm glad you're okay,” he said, so quietly she almost didn't hear him. “That's all I ever wanted to see.”

Then he left.

[Name] stood still. Her heart was pounding, she can't tell the reason why. She recalled his last words to her. “I'm glad you're okay” she looked at the opened door of her dorm. Empty.

Why wouldn't she be okay?

She shook her hand, irritated. What was up with Phainon? He was caring and compassionate and the next he was weird, creepy, and a liar.

She was starting to think that the man that she talked to wasn't Phainon.

🌆

Once Phainon stood outside, he knew where he was. The Grove. His eyes flickered to every area in his proximity.

If this was the Grove, and [Name] was here. Professor Anaxa would be here too. He didn't know who else he could trust in this world. This world's Mydei, maybe, but he must be somewhere—Castrum Kremnos, probably—but Phainon needed answers now and not later.

Although some buildings were different, its structure remained unchanged. His feet carried him to a route that wore into his muscle memory. As he passed by students, they whispered something unintelligible but unmistakably about him.

He briefly greeted them with a smile before turning away.

The classroom was mostly the same. Inside, almost everything was right. But as he stepped further in the room and looked more closely at the map on the wall, a cold dread tightened in his gut. The coastline was right—so close that his mind almost accepted it—but the cities were misnamed, misaligned, some missing entirely. The chill spread further down his arms despite the warm afternoon. Focus, he told himself. Everything might be answered if he just found—

His eyes drifted back to the other side of the room and saw someone alone surrounded by the empty desks.

But just like everything else, Professor Anaxa wasn't the one that he knew.

He looked more closely at Anaxa's face, he had no eye patch. His clothes were like the rest of the students here. Only the unkept cascade of long hair and the same blank expression remained, the only thing connecting this stranger to the man he knew.

He had come here for a guide. He'd woken up in an altered version of Amphoreus, he had no context or history to understand it all. But he was certain that something was fractured. If anyone can help him or piece together what this place was, it was the man who had been his mentor for decades.

‘Professor’ Anaxa noticed Phainon, his eyes held no surprise, only annoyance. It was deprived of the unconventional but not unkind challenge Phainon remembered.

“Why are you here again?” The words came flat and unimpressed, “Did [Name] ignore you again? I told you. Stop trying to force a conversation with her if she is clearly uncomfortable with it.”

He had no clue what Anaxa was talking about, he had no memories of talking to him before. But even this scolding gave him an answer. There is another version of him in this mirrored world, and had been making a mess of things.

At least he had some idea on what his other version's relationship with [Name]. Maybe this was the reason why she was shutting him down and distancing herself earlier.

After a long pause, Anaxa sighed and continued with a humorless edge in his voice. “And I finally thought it was over when you said you two talked properly this time.”

Phainon feigned a weary tone. “I know, you're right. I shouldn't have pushed.”

“What did you do this time to make her run from you again?” Anaxa leaned back, crossing his arms. “Did you track her down again? Wait outside her dorm like some tragic stray?”

“I didn't track her down, well I kind of did but I didn't mean to.” Phainon said sheepishly. “I came here to… clear my head. And I thought maybe you could help.”

Anaxa's eyebrows arched. “Help with what, exactly? You've been hearing what I've said to you but never actually listened and understood. You nod, you apologize, try to talk to her, but you go back right where you started. It is a cycle, Phainon.”

A flicker of unease filtered him—distant and yet uncannily familiar. This world's Phainon was trapped too. But according to what Anaxa had said, the difference was, this one built his own cage.

“I don't want it to be a cycle.” Phainon said, choosing his words carefully. “I'm trying to understand. Not just her. Everything here. Can't you feel it too? It feels off, doesn't it?”

Silence filled the room for a few moments. Had he come out as too desperate?

It was a small thing—Anaxa's eyes, which had been half-lidded with boredom, sharpened with interest. Focused. For a moment, he wasn't looking at his “friend” who had been pestering about a girl for the past months but something else entirely. Phainon was different today. Usually, he'd hunch when Anaxa lectured him, like a kicked dog waiting for the next blow. But at this moment, he seemed eerily composed and unaffected. Phainon's eyes kept drifting towards the map on the wall, he had been in this room dozens of times, and yet he was strangely fixated on the map this visit.

Anaxa had an inkling that Phainon wasn't trying to change the topic or distract him this time. He was actually serious.

“Off,” Anaxa repeated. Drawing the word out. He titled his head. “There's not anything that is off here, besides you—especially with that peculiar costume—but I digress.”

A slight smile visible from the corners of Anaxa’s mouth, not with warmth but with fascination. “You said the world feels off, elaborate. What specifically feels wrong?”

Phainon needed to answer carefully, or it might backfire like it did with her. “The Grove,” his hands gesturing towards the outside of the room. “It's the same, but the details are so wrong. Buildings that I don't remember.”

Anaxa didn't reply yet, he only nodded, signalling that Phainon should continue.

“It’s not just that as well. On the map—there's cities that I don't remember and some that I even know are gone. Like someone built everything from a half-remembered dream or mixed up a few things.”

Anaxa didn't waver, “Fascinating. And when did you notice these… discrepancies?”

“Since I got here.”

Anaxa hums. “You’re a freshman who's only been here for what…a few months? The Grove has always been like this since the university's foundation. With a few adjustments last school year, but nothing too major.”

“Unless… you’re referring to the old Amphoreus.”

The old Amphoreus?

Phainon froze and hadn't replied, the only audible response he gave was his breath hitching frantically. His eyes focused on the man standing before him who seemed to be both amused and fed up with him—but nonetheless Anaxa continued the conversation.

“You should know what I mean by that. Either you haven't paid attention to the history of our world since elementary or you have some concussion that you haven't checked out.” he sighed.

Phainon’s mind raced. There weren't any lessons of the ‘old’ Amphoreus when he was still a student in the Grove. He had no idea what it meant. But it was a potential answer for this world.

He was right to go to ‘Professor’ Anaxa.

🌆

[name] had spent the last twenty minutes tearing her dorm apart.

Drawers were open, closet rifled, she even searched under her bed only to find dust. What had Phainon seen? Had he taken something? Had he left something?

Nothing. Everything was still in fact, perfectly still from the moment she left earlier. Her papers, textbooks on the table, and her clothes were still in the closet. The adrenaline drained with a shaky breath. She had no one to go to with this problem, not a single friend. She'd spent the entire semester keeping people at arm's length.

Should have talked to someone. Should have—

Her eyes caught on the wall.

A red cube particle that pulsed against the plaster. like a dying heartbeat, like an infection inflicting the paint. There was a distortion surrounding it faintly. It radiated heat despite the room being cold.

She should have been afraid. Instead, she felt a numbing curiosity made her get closer. Her hand lifted, her fingers brushed the cube.

Her hand fractured.

There was pain. Her skin broke into a cascade of red geometric shapes, her fingers visible through the distortion, glitching in and out like a corrupted video. She snatched her hand back with a shout, cradling her hand against her chest. The glitching stopped, her hand whole again.

“What the fuck—”

The red cubes shrank, it contracted itself until there was nothing left. The wall was blank. She started at the spot where it had been. Slowly cautiously, she reached out pressing her fingers ever so slightly against the plaster. Nothing happened. It was normal.

It reminded her of the countless history lessons, the history that was driven into people’s memory. The black tide. It was one of the most prominent problems in the old Amphoreus. it consumed everything it touched, that spread across lands, corrupted people, ending people's lives.

Phainon had been in this room. Had he brought it with him? He was strange the moment that [Name] saw him—clothes that he usually would not wear, behavior that was too off to be the old friend she had spent decades with. Maybe she had been right. That hadn't been the Phainon that she knew.

What, then? A shape shifter? A simulation? No, she could remember the grip that he had on her wrist. The read particle though—that was something else. It didn't belong here just like the ‘Phainon’ she met earlier. And if he had brought it here, then he had answers.

Craning your head slightly, your chin accidently taps against the top of Stelle's head. She was tucked nicely into your shoulder, face pressed into your neck while the rest of her body was sprawl over yours.

You weren't using a blanket, but it sure felt like you were.

Initially, you attempted to ignore the rising temperature in the room, not wanting to wake Stelle up. It was rarely ever hot on the Astral Express, which is why you're feeling miserable. You certainly weren't used to it, and you also certainly couldn't put it up with it any more.

"…Stelle?"

You nudge your shoulder a bit, poking at her cheek. She doesn't respond the first time, but after calling her name a few more, her eyes slowly flutter open reluctantly. Her eyebrows furrow together at the interruption, but the moment she tilts her head up to peer at you, her gaze becomes curious and she eases into a soft, tired smile.

Adorable, truly, but that only made you feel even more guilty for what you're about to say.

"Sorry for waking you, but could you…move away?"

The innocent smile on her face drops, and she props herself up beside you, scooching back a few inches.

"…Did I do something wrong?" She whispers pitifully, wide awake like your quiet request was a royal order that you had shouted at her.

You push a strand of her hair behind her ear, letting your fingers graze it before traveling down to her tangled ends. "No, no. It's just really hot and I can't stand it."

Stelle cocks her head as if she's trying to feel the air to determine if your comment was true. "Is it?"

"It is. Very hot." You exhale deeply, feeling relatively better now that you have more space. Stelle seems to notice because she finally plops down before rolling farther from you. You can't help but chuckle, shutting your eyes to get the sleep you were aching for. The bed rustles as Stelle rolls away.

...And it keeps rustling.

And rustling.

And rustling.

You return to the conscious world after hiding behind your eyelids to check on Stelle.

...Only to find her stopping at the very edge of the bed, her back facing you while she's curled up into a ball.

You blink once, then twice.

Then you laugh.

Despite the exhaustion in your body, you force yourself to crawl closer to her. "I'm sorry, are you upset?"

"I'm okay."

"It was just really hot. I couldn't sleep."

"I get it."

You hum, unconvinced.

You lay back down near the middle of the bed instead, reaching your arm out to poke her shoulder. "Look at me please?"

She turns without another word from either of you, a cute pout adorning her lips.

You grin. "Hi."

"Hi," Stelle mumbles back, equally as tired, but significantly less amused. It's too hot in the room to cuddle, but seeing the look on her face, you couldn't bring yourself to deny her affection completely.

Leaning over, you press one kiss to her nose.

Then one on her cheek, and then her forehead.

You place another one on her eyelids, and end it with a peck to her lips.

While doing so, your hand glides across the bed to intertwine with hers. You move your hands together to rest in between you two, and at the sight, Stelle's sulky demeanor becomes indescribably pleased.

Stelle sluggishly pulls your conjoined hands towards her, pressing a languid but firm kiss to the back of yours before bringing it back to its original position. She blinks a few times at you, smiling contently, until they become too heavy to keep up.

And when she falls asleep, there's a smile on her face, and you wear one as well as you drift off, hoping to see her again in your dreams.

The Xianzhou Luofu is loud—not with the bustle of markets, but with the weight of its gazes and words.

Yingxing hates it. If not for General Huaiyan, he doubts he would have ever set foot on this ship. All his works remain in the Zhuming, the creations of his devotion. And now, he is forced to endure venom-laced whispers. To long-life species, such words are fleeting, insignificant—but to someone like him, they carve deep, lingering wounds.

For the first few days, Yingxing isolates himself in the small forge Huaiyan rented for him. No visitors. Only metal scraps and himself, confined within a cramped space. The sight pains the General. Yingxing is his beloved apprentice—seeing him so alone does not suit him. A child his age should explore, see the world, make companions.

So Huaiyan decides to help him do exactly that.

The first time he suggests accompanying him on a business trip, Yingxing refuses outright—he will not step outside to face those hateful people. He has everything he needs here.

But the Flaming Heart is not one to yield easily. Night after night, he persists, hoping the boy will allow himself something beyond the forge. And one night, at last, Yingxing relents—a small, reluctant nod.

The next morning, they set off for the Divination Commission.

It pains Yingxing to leave the familiar warmth of the forge, but disappointing his teacher would hurt more. So he follows, gazing out from the starskiff, taking in the Luofu’s golden glow. Still, the whispers reach him wherever he goes—cold water dousing every attempt at warmth.

All because of their difference in lifespan. How ridiculous.

By the time they arrive, Huaiyan is already gone. His only words linger: “Go on, wander a little. Perhaps you’ll find something you like.”

Nonsense. The forge is where Yingxing belongs. He is an artisan, not a diviner—what could the Commission possibly offer him? Nothing. The thought only fuels his irritation.

Yet, with no better option, he wanders.

The Commission is sparse in its distractions. With the Matrix of Prescience looming overhead, it is difficult to notice anything else. His footsteps echo softly against the wooden floors until he finds a quiet balcony—a place to be alone.

He sits at the edge, gazing out—until something catches his eye.

Someone his age, seated beside a lotus-filled pond. Cards scattered around them. They hum softly, kicking their feet in a rhythm that feels… carefree.

Everything he is not.

The sight holds him captive. There must be something wrong with him—he doesn’t even know this person. So why does he feel drawn to them?

As if sensing him, you turn your head to look in the direction of the noise.

He ducks immediately, scrambling to hide. He does not want to hear it again—those familiar words about his lifespan, the dismissal of his dreams. Children are crueler than elders. You would be no different.

But instead, you rise, gathering your cards, and approach. When you finally spot him, you speak rather gently; “General Huaiyan’s apprentice?”

The words startle him. Great. Wonderful. Announce it louder, why don't you? He thinks in an irritated mind.

He steps out, scowling. “His most prized apprentice,” he corrects, forcing confidence and arrogance into his voice.

But you only smile—soft, warm—and nod. “That, I know. Yingxing, right?” you ask, and before he can respond, continue, “You arrived recently, the diviners said. How about this—I’ll give you a tour of the Commission.” You gesture toward the empty pond area. “In return, you stay quiet and don’t tell anyone I skipped my lessons.”

Begrudgingly, he agrees. What choice does he have? His reputation is already poor—snitching would only worsen it. Staying silent won’t hurt.

While doubt churns in his mind, you guide him through the Commission, pointing out the smallest details. He follows quietly, fingers unconsciously clutching your sleeve as you pull him along.

Sometimes, you show off small divination tricks, unable to hide your pride.

“Divination is basically mathematics, you know?” you say, stopping at a bulletin board. “So naturally, I’m intelligent.”

Yingxing huffs, unimpressed. “That won’t help you win a fight.”

You gasp, offended, crossing your arms. “And craftsmanship won’t stop you from falling into a pit tomorrow.”

He stares at you as if you’ve declared the sky green. Your bluff is painfully obvious, so much so that it almost puzzles him.

You ignore your own embarrassment and continue to roam around. And somehow, he finds himself enjoying it. You are kind, gentle, a little troublesome. And not once have you spoken badly of him.

He wants this—more than a fleeting acquaintance. To have someone, not just his mentor to believe in him, look at him as more than someone destined to wither tomorrow.

But nothing good lasts long.

Huaiyan’s voice echoes from afar, and the moment shatters. Yingxing pretends not to care as you both approach. The small world you built together dissolves.

You wave before disappearing into the crowd of diviners. He watches as you leave and yet, he doesn’t wave back.

Huaiyan notices immediately—the hesitation, the quiet sorrow Yingxing cannot yet conceal.

“Oh? Has my Yingxing made a friend?” he teases, followed by a chuckle. After all, no apprentice of his can survive such revelation without being rubbed in the face.

Yingxing flushes bright red, his speech deteriorating as he attempts to find words to answer. “N-no! We just met!”

However, Huaiyan seems to be the opposite, still holding onto the idea of his apprentice finally making a friend. "A diviner? What a brilliant friend you've made, Yingxing!"

Yingxing only huffs and puffs, unable to talk back because no matter what he says, his master will still hold onto that concept. Oh, how glad he is that you're not here.

That night, Yingxing returns to the forge. Sleep remains a distant concept. To the neighbors’ dismay, he prefers working at night—when thoughts sharpen and resentment fuels creation.

Tonight, though, something is different. His hands don’t reach for weapons. They hesitate—yearning for something softer.

Something like you.

He frowns instantly at the thought. Why is he thinking of you? You’re a stranger.

He shakes his head and tries to focus, but instead of blades, he envisions a hairpiece— delicate and beautiful, so unlike a blade.

Yingxing returns by the furnace, his soot covered hands grabbing a parchment to draw the vision swarming his eyes. If his heart craves it so much, then so be it. You had shown off your skills and now he will too. And perhaps then you will see him as a friend—

What is he thinking again?!

The next morning, Huaiyan finds the forge empty. With no sign of Yingxing in the house or nearby, a note rests on the stone by the furnace. He smiles faintly, knowing the contents of it would definitely be about his little friend.

The Divination Commission is crowded with hopeless people lost in the path of fate. Yingxing hadn’t realized it was peak season. Alongside the mentors, apprentices are busy—so are you.

For an hour, he waits by the pond, clutching a silk-wrapped hairpiece. The diviners nearby whisper—they’ve already drawn their conclusion that he has a crush on you. Puppy love, they say. Yingxing can hear them loud and clear, yet he ignores them for his peace and composure. You're just a friend...right?

Waiting by the pond seems futile— an hour has passed and there's still nothing. Then, he begins to roam around the Commission to find the room you are in. He swears that he'll just give the gift to you and leave.

In a moment of ignorance, Yingxing's bumps into a taller figure. The man before him is unfamiliar, a stranger— an agitated stranger.

"Watch where you're going, kid!" The man shouts aggressively, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Yingxing, however, doesn't react to his short temper. He's seen it all before and he knows what is coming. Even so, he still apologises, albeit a bit quietly. The man scowls at him before walking past him, mumbling something about 'filthy short-lifers.'

The moment he steps into a room occupied by a diviner, Yingxing catches a glimpse of your hair. Perhaps finding you is the best thing that has happened to him today. Even so, he does not intrude—lingering just outside, quietly eavesdropping on your divination. Children are curious by nature, after all.

The man seated before you on the floor wastes no time before breaking down. “Please, Diviner, tell me the future has something good in store for me. My wife left me two weeks ago, and my mother—”

“The future holds nothing but darkness for you, I’m afraid.”

You cut him off without hesitation, drawing a card from the deck. Your gaze remains fixed upon it; were you to look up, he would surely notice the anger hidden beneath your calm.

The man shudders at your cold words, as though they’ve carved straight into his heart. He inches closer in desperation, only for you to shift away and keep your distance.

“Please—please, just tell me how I can change it!” he begs, his voice trembling with raw anguish.

Inwardly, you pat yourself on the back for your convincing act. Just one more push.

“If you want your wife back,” you say, tone steady, “you must steal Lord Dan Feng’s jade bracelet and give it to her. That is the only way.”

The answer is utterly ridiculous—after all, a child’s mind can only conjure so much malice. A slap on the wrist is all that man can get, perhaps a week in the Shackling Prison. Still, the situation works in your favor.

The man looks at you as though you’ve rescued him from drowning. To someone so desperate, any solution becomes hope, no matter how reckless or absurd. He nods fervently before scrambling to his feet and rushing out the door.

Perhaps he has truly lost his mind.

Just as the man steps outside, you catch sight of Yingxing peeking over the doorframe. When your eyes meet, he quickly motions for you to come out. Without a second thought, you abandon your cards and slip outside, letting him lead you further away without question.

The two of you come to a stop at the familiar balcony, the lotus pond just within view. Yingxing clutches the silk-wrapped accessory in his hands, your earlier conversation with the man lingering heavily in his mind.

“Why did you tell him that…?” he asks quietly—so soft it nearly goes unheard. “That was a false divination…”

Your eyes narrow at him, a flicker of irritation surfacing. You scoff, rolling your eyes. “Maybe he shouldn’t have spoken badly about a child just because of their lifespan.”

The words hit him harder than expected.

You did that—for him. And you did it without hesitation.

He stares at you, a faint flush dusting his cheeks, admiration quietly filling his gaze. Before he can second-guess himself, he nearly shoves the silk-wrapped gift into your hands—thankfully, you catch it.

Curious, you unwrap the fabric, revealing a beautifully crafted hairpiece.

A warm, genuine smile blooms across your face, joy lighting up your entire expression. “This is gorgeous!” you exclaim, already moving to place it in your hair.

That smile— Yingxing swears his heart stops for a moment. Flustered as he is, he still steps closer, hands lifting to help you adjust it properly.

“Really…?” he murmurs, disbelief threading through his voice.

You nod as his nimble fingers carefully weave the ribbons through your hair. Once he finishes, you hurry toward the pond, leaning over slightly to admire your reflection. The sight nearly makes you squeal with delight. The Divination Commission rarely grants you the luxury of friendship—let alone gifts like this. Yet here you are, holding something made just for you.

When you catch Yingxing’s reflection beside yours, you turn without warning and throw your arms around him, hugging him tight enough to make him squeak.

“Thank you, Yingxing—thank you, thank you so much!” you gush, your voice brimming with unfiltered joy.

That sound—that warmth— Yingxing wants to hold onto it forever.

For the rest of the day, you never return to your divination duties. Yingxing has already stolen you away from work, and together, you wander across the Xianzhou Luofu. You watch the stars from a Starskiff, sample street foods, and even craft a pair of matching bracelets for each other.

It becomes, without question, the most joyous day of Yingxing’s life.

By midnight, Huaiyan returns to their temporary residence. His first stop is the small forge nearby, and when he pushes the door open, the sight that greets him is nothing short of heartwarming.

You and Yingxing have both fallen asleep, leaning gently against one another. Resting in your hair is the hairpiece, delicately carved with Yingxing’s signature—one he is still in the process of refining.

The Flaming Heart smiles softly at the scene. This is the moment he has been waiting for—to see his apprentice no longer alone.

Carefully, he drapes a blanket over the two of you, making sure not to stir either from your sleep. He knows that come morning, Yingxing will stubbornly insist that the two of you are merely friends. Yet even so, Huaiyan can see it clearly—the way the boy’s heart stirs in your presence, the quiet comfort that settles around him.

And little Yingxing will never know that the one sleeping beside him now will be wearing a shared ring with him sixteen years from today.

"Hello? Is someone home?"

A melodious voice rang from outside. Though faint, it caught your attention. 

Holy shit, his voice is hot!

Startled, you got up and almost ran to the door before remembering your outfit. Grabbing a random shirt, you stumbled messily towards the entrance while simultaneously putting it on.

"Um, hello? Wait, is no one here right now…?"

The man's words drawl out as you open the door. In your haste, you accidentally slammed it, creating a loud bang! You would have been wallowing in embarrassment right now if not for the sight in front of you. By the gods, this guy has to be one of the hottest people you know. White, glowing hair reflecting off the sunlight like a halo; clear, cyan eyes that shimmer like the sky; tall, lithe yet athletic physique judging by the muscles clinging to his tight shirt; and that strong, pretty face that gives off an attractive, boyish charm.

In a daze, you didn't catch yourself staring until the man waved his hand in front of your face. Blood rushed to your face in embarrassment at being caught ogling a random stranger. Before you can apologize, he just laughs like it's something amusing. And dear god, even that chuckle made your heart flutter. In your ears, that bright, cheerful sound felt like music.

Can someone really be this perfect?!

The man hands you a small box. You don't even know when you extended your arms, but he dropped it on your palms. It was warm.

"The name's Phainon! I just moved in today. What's your name?"

Meeting Phainon was like meeting a real-life Prince Charming. He's kind but not a doormat, confident but not arrogant, and friendly but not pushy. Since that day he gave you the meal, you've both exchanged numbers and have been in regular contact ever since. In the mornings, you'd greet each other on the elevator. You eventually came to learn that he's recently transferred to your university, studying Aerospace Engineering. He's also in the campus debate club — and a good one at that. Sometimes, in campus, he'd cheerfully ask to join you for lunch when you're both on break. Of course, you'd never reject him (why would you? food is best eaten when admiring a pretty face), scooting over for room while ignoring your friends' teasing glances.

The guy's a literal ray of sunshine. He's funny, handsome, and extremely reliable.

Especially the last one.

Today, the pipes in your bathroom gave up and randomly burst. Thankfully the landlord was quite a nice lady and immediately took the initiative to call over a plumber without blaming you. Unfortunately, luck was not on your side because for some goddamn reason, all the ones in your area were unavailable today. Unfortunately, this means she'd have to close the supply valve to prevent further flooding. The only silver lining is that it's only the sink pipe. Were it anything else, you'd look like an old woman with deep wrinkles from how much you're frowning.

Thank the heavens because Phainon — your dear, ever reliable neighbor Phainon — offered to help when he heard about it. Here he is in your bathroom, inspecting the pipes. 

Phainon.

In. Your. Apartment.

"Hm…"

"Is that a 'hm?' or a 'hm?!' ?"

Phainon chortled at your comment. "Perhaps a bit of both. Partner, these pipes might need a little bit more help. I need my equipment for this."

"Oh god." You buried your face in your palm, groaning at the thought of paying extra to fix it. If it's as bad as Phainon said, then it definitely wouldn't be cheap. Just imagining how much you'd have to shell out already gives massive headaches. If he can't fix it, you're doomed.

"Is it really that bad..?"

"Well, we wouldn't know until we try, right?"

Phainon stood up from crouching on the ground. "I might spend some time here to fix it. Will that be okay?"

"Oh, yes, of course—"

Suddenly, a stream of floating comments like in live streams appeared right in front of your face beside Phainon. More and more came every second making them difficult to read, but you were able to catch some of them.

bigphailover231: Oh my god, this is when he installs cameras in her bathroom!! BABY'S FIRST ACT <3333  strawberry_cupcake: OJMGGGGG IM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!! imjusthere: you guys enjoy this???

Fuck, are you hallucinating right now? Was it from the two redbull cans you drank this morning—

Wait. Cameras?

"Partner, you good? H-e-l-l-o [Name], you're dazed right now." Phainon waved his hand in front of your face, tilting his head at your expression, looking amused. "If you're not comfortable with that, that's fine. I don't want to force you."

bigphailover231: 'I don't want to force you' TOP 3 BIG LIES OF ALL TIME LOL

Yeah, okay, I'm definitely going insane right now. First, there's no way comments can appear out of thin air. Second, Phainon would never do that. Goodness, I need to sleep!

"Sorry, I'm just a bit tired. Go ahead! Thanks, Phainon. You're a really big help."

Phainon returned your smile with one of his. Like always, it made your heart flutter. However, as you return to your room and Phainon went back to his to get some equipment, you can't help but feel a tiny knot form in your gut.

Initially you tried to dismiss it as some energy-drink-induced hallucination. All you needed to do was stay off Redbull and Monster drinks for the next week— and maybe getting some actual sleep. However, as the days pass into weeks, they just continue to appear. Most of the time it's when you talk to Phainon, but sometimes you'd catch them in the corner of your eye. You've never been a believer of the supernatural even as a kid, but now you're starting to seriously doubt it.

Campus? A glimpse from somewhere over the other side of the lecture hall.

Random cafe? A blur from the next booth.

Groceries? A chime from what you assume to be an influx of them.

Every single day, you'd either see it or hear it and it's driving you insane. You don't know when it started but your attraction for Phainon faded from admiration to a now-settling, deep uneasiness. You really, really don't want to doubt him, but the sheer accuracy of these comments are making it impossible not to. If these are just hallucinations, then why the fuck are they so accurate?

In the middle of the campus lecture, when the professor finally gave a break, Phainon 'accidentally' bumped into you.

waitingfornewscenes: yeah no, this guy changed classes just for [Name] LMAOO needforSPEED: bro couldn't have chosen a better excuse?

"Hey, partner! Didn't know we have the same professor, haha! I had to change classes because of some issues. Wanna study together?"

In the cafe while hanging out with friends and trying new sweets, Phainon came out from the next booth and looked 'surprised' when he saw your group.

yadayadaaaaa: COINCIDENCE MY ASS????/ next he'll say 'i didn't expect to see you here!' i bet omfg imjusthere: holy stalking

"I didn't expect to see you here. You like this cafe too? What a coincidence!"

In the supermarket getting groceries, he'd be there buying vegetables too. 'Coincidentally' he's not buying much and would be willing to help.

bigphailover231: offering to carry groceries??? day 10 of manifesting a man like Phainon… real life is a scam </3 strawberry_cupcake: right there with you, sis </3

Each and every time this happens, that tightness in your gut grows larger and larger. When you remembered the comments talking about hidden cameras, you desperately scoured every nook and cranny of your small apartment to look for them. You closed all the lights and investigated by shining the phone flashlight everywhere carefully, watching for the telltale glint of those lens. When you found two in the living room, one in the bathroom, and three in the bedroom, you almost vomited right then and there. Unfortunately, when you reported it to the cops, they said they can't do anything about it because 'nothing happened.' That moment lost your little trust for police enforcement completely.

Slowly, you started to withdraw from friends and going outside in general. Just the thought of seeing those comments or hearing its notifying chime brings undeniable anxiety. If you could, you'd stay the hell away right now and couch-surf with friends. Regrettably, they're all strapped for cash right now and couldn't afford another roommate. Plus, this was already the cheapest single-bedroom apartment without being absurdly far from the campus. And even more, you can't just move out and find a new apartment with roommates because you can't afford it. In other words, you're doomed.

But as much as you want to stay at home, the bills don't pay themselves. Thankfully, your part-time work didn't involve much customer service so you could stay in the kitchen rather than the front register. However, it only barely helps with the paranoia. You didn't want Phainon to be suspicious of your changed behavior so you tried to distance yourself subtly. His puppy-dog eyes glistening with unshed tears and hurt would have moved your heart if not for the comments floating beside his head.

It was late at night when you finally returned home. The skies were dark and only the street lights illuminated the area. Desperate to save as much money as possible, you practically ran speedwalked back to your apartment. The moment the door closed was also the moment you finally breathed a sigh of relief. Tired, you shrugged off the black jacket onto the floor and didn't even bother picking it up. Taking off your shoes, you immediately went to the bathroom to brush your teeth. And when that was done, you sluggishly dragged your body to the safe haven of your bed to finally get some rest.

Exhaustion finally caught up as just laying on the bed for a few minutes, beneath a blanket and surrounded by pillows, was enough to pull you to sleep. Your eyelids felt heavy and you were about to welcome the soft embrace of dreamland when, suddenly, a familiar sound chimed in the air.

In that very moment, your body stiffened as your eyes snapped wide open.

You looked around frantically, careful not to move too much. However, as your eyes scan the room, the sinking realization that he couldn't hide anywhere settled like ice in your veins. First off, you're not rich enough for a closet. Second, there isn't any furniture big enough to hide behind. Which means…

Ding!

Ding!

Ding—!

…He's right under your bed.

You’re more of a sunflower who basks in his sunlight and greedily soaks up all his affection. You’d hate to be the moon, for this meant you’d only rise when Phainon is gone – you prefer staying right by his side, a sidekick he can always count on. 

A sidekick wearing your heart on your sleeves, shy but never quite ashamed of the sincere feelings you’ve held for him growing up. A flower bud that slowly unfurls into a full bloom.

As your mother would lovingly refer to you both, you are: “Two birds of a feather!” 

Your childhood memories of Aedes Elysiae, blurry some of them may be, are bathed in everlasting gold. While Phainon dragged you off to go play heroes or look through Cyrene’s cards together, you remember dropping pollen of your romantic affection, scattered across planes of time like trails of breadcrumbs left for him to decipher. 

While the sun dipped into the horizon, you inched closer to him day by day, the fluttering in your heart evolves into a palpitation you can never stop, and small gifts handcrafted to show your admiration all gently whispered to him to ‘please, take the hint’. But reminiscent of an immovable stone, Phainon remained blissfully oblivious to the signs.

Cyrene certainly got them; her narrowing eyes and poorly hidden giggles as she sent you and Phainon away were enough of a testament. “I’m not feeling well today, you two can go on without me!”

You’d linger at the edge of her front yard, unsure how to proceed with her help. At Phainon’s call however, you move to follow him – “okay, phai!” – trying to contain the dandelion seeds dancing around in your stomach when he leads you by the arm, not letting go despite arriving at your destination. You didn’t want to let go either, even with the sweat building up in your palm. 

High school sprouts in your backyard as a tall and looming beanstalk that would force you both to grow up even more. 

Phainon’s high-pitched voice starts cracking like eggshells, making way for a deeper tone yet still carrying that warm lilt he always had. You grow taller, still incomparable to Phainon’s own growth spurt, but a good few inches nonetheless. Your sense of style reshapes itself, old interests thrown out for newer ones, and the patch of land where you’d all play heroes together becomes forgotten, the trampled blades of grass outgrowing their original length. 

You start favouring the comforts of your room over the blazing heat of the sun, beginning to find sweat as something you can’t stand and only coming out when Phainon pleads with you to do so. 

He shines brighter in High School – his presence a beaming beacon of light as he walks through the hallways and enters classrooms. Being the sunflower that you are, you faithfully stayed by his side. Fawning crowds come and go, you don’t. 

Your infatuation is exposed to those who aren’t Cyrene; childish people who never grew past the mental age of twelve tried to pick on you for always ‘Sticking to phainon like some damn leech! Don’t have any other personality traits or something?’ – the teasing didn’t last after Phainon punched one of them square in the face. His heroic act only dug your cove of feelings a little bit deeper. 

He’s your best friend and first love, a pillar of comfort you grew up with – you can’t imagine your life without Phainon. You pick up more hobbies, he joins more clubs he never expected he would, and you share your new life experiences with each other during lunch. Sometimes separated, but never for too long. 

Several months flicker by, and during one of your high school Valentine’s, you received gifts from men who aren’t just Phainon. 

Despite his locker overflowing with pink, glittery love notes and heart-shaped chocolates handmade out of sincerity, his gaze was pinned to the white envelope and bouquet of flowers you carried - neither of them is from him. His own gift is already hanging off your backpack, the cute sunflower keychain that it is. 

“From a friend?” He asks, finally closing his locker before he risks more glitter explosions on the ground.

“I doubt it,” He’s the only friend you have in this school, embarrassing it is to admit. Cyrene studies elsewhere. “But they’re cute.”

You see his tongue in cheek, and you dare let a seed of hope plant in the root of your heart. Is he… jealous? That makes you giddy. Tentatively, you ask, “You think so too, right, Phainon?”

He grimaces, glancing one last time at the items in your embrace before smiling, “Yeah, they are. Anyway, done with your locker? Let me carry your bag now.”

You nursed that seed of hope from then forth, slowly but steadily hoping more and more for the plausibility that he returns your feelings. It wouldn’t be too far off, surely – even if you’re not meant for each other in the end, you still want to try with him. You water that seed by dropping more subtle hints to Phainon, and you fertilize it by observing your best friend like an animal in a zoo, analyzing his minuscule actions and trying to correlate them to the mannerisms of ‘a guy with a secret crush on his best friend’.

To be young is to be naive. 

You didn’t need much. A simple ‘you should go for it! I’ve been rooting for you two since we were all children!’ from Cyrene carved out your decision to confess to Phainon near the end of high school. 

In the end, ripped straight from the dramas you watched out of curiosity, you confess to Phainon at the height of spring after getting your high school diplomas; the scent of flowers in full bloom makes you sick with nostalgia and nerves simultaneously. Your family is off conversing with his parents, while you dragged him to a secluded spot in the school. 

“Uhm… I’ve liked you for a long time now, Phainon. I’m not expecting you to return my feelings but…” You leave it open-ended, too afraid to settle your confession definitively. You love him, actually - but love is a strong word that some don’t like to acknowledge. For his sake, you won’t either. 

A warm, gentle spring can never stay for too long. In the same breath, you, too, are forced to abandon the sunlight you’ve known for several years at the sound of his discordant chuckle – the awkward smile etched on his face as his eyes could only look down at you in what you assume to be pity. You avert your gaze from his blue eyes, opting to stare into his birthmark instead. 

“Hey, of course I like you too - you’re my best friend! But we can always stay as friends, (Y/N). You’re dear to me, you know  – maybe not… like that, I just don’t want things to change between us.”

You experience the first and biggest heartbreak of your life just hours after graduating from High School. Your best friend Phainon does not reciprocate your feelings and instead wishes for your relationship to stay the same, locked into the tight box of ‘close friends’ he never plans on breaking. The seed-turned-plant of hope in your heart withers down to a sad, pathetic, dried-out flora. 

That’s okay. You’ll be attending the same college as him, located far, far away – even if it’s not, you have to be okay. 

After a few tense seconds of utter silence, you smile – the most carefree smile you can muster in that moment before enthusiastically nodding at him, “I get it! Don’t worry, Phainon. I totally get it. Uh, hey, I think Cyrene’s calling me. I have to take this phone call for a bit, okay? Let’s meet again later!” 

You bury that confession six feet under in your backyard, covered and only seen by inches of soil as you maintain your close friendship with Phainon. Best friends, close friends, friends - you are not to cross these labels unless you want to lose your close companion. 

The months of free time leading up to college are nothing unusual, you spend it as you would in the past: Phainon picking you up on the front porch to spend the entire day together. It’s either his or your room where you’ll pour sweating buckets over study materials and banter over multiplayer games on his console.

Your heart still beats like drums just being in his vicinity alone, and it took you days of preparation to act like you’re unbothered when he invites you to his room – the walls and shelves containing time capsules from years before. Pressed white daisies you gifted him on his 10th birthday peeks out as his bookmark, and your kindergarten doodle of him as the sun proudly hangs above his bed, displayed as if it’s an artifact from the Belobog museum. 

The most heartwrenching item is the printed photo sitting on his desk: it’s little him kissing little you’s frosting-smudged cheek at your 10th birthday party. The shock on your face is captured and frozen in time, a memory you both laugh about every month or so. 10th birthday… It’s the same age you realized you see him as more than a friend. 

Seeing it for the umpteenth time never fails to steal the air from you; the ache never gets easier. You wish you could truly put these romantic feelings to rest in a coffin and seal it shut with a lid, never to be opened again. 

“Phainon, next time… let’s spend the day in my room.”

Seeing bits and pieces of you scattered around his room hurts more than him verbally rejecting you. 

He grins, all teeth and gums, “Sure!”

Even branches grow into a tree of their own, just as a fledgling must leave its nest. 

Spring came and went, high school a chapter closed, and you’re now faced with attending school – college, you remind yourself  – an ocean away from the familiar warmth of Aedes Elysiae. The wheat fields that were once taller than you, and Phainon’s house right next door, are all left behind momentarily. You can’t pocket your hometown to bring with you in Penacony, but at least you still have Phainon. 

“Everything all settled?” He gently lets go of your dorm’s wooden table, finally in its correct position, “This layout is fine, right?”

“It is,” You hand him a towel, itching to help with wiping off his sweat, “Thanks, Phainon. You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to, anything for you.” Anything for his dear best friend. He bumps your side before sitting down on the living room couch. You wanted him to stick around for a while longer, but he’s already out your door the moment he hears knocking – (‘Oh, your roommate is here! I need to go now, remember to call me if you need help, okay?’ he pats your shoulder on the way out). 

The patch of skin he briefly touched is still tingling when you see someone walk into the living room, luggage trailing right behind. A tall man with shoulder-length gray hair and kind yellow eyes bows at you in greeting. He’s wearing a white cardigan with a blue sweater layered on top, the color alone reminds you of your best friend despite the difference in shades.

“Hello, pardon my sudden entrance.”

“...Hi.” You don’t know how to talk to people beyond Phainon and Cyrene - standing around here is making you shy. “Uhm, my name is (Y/N)... And you are…?”

“I am Sunday,” His hand extends for a handshake, and you hesitantly follow suit. “It’s nice to meet you. I sincerely hope we get along.”

You nod, staring back into pools of liquid gold while shaking his hand,  “...Yeah, let’s. And please don’t mind the succulents on the windowsill.”

II. A close-knit friendship withers in winter, in its place is a new one.

Much to your relief, your late-night fears of college drifting you and Phainon apart never come to fruition. It has the opposite effect, to your surprise. While not overdramatically countries away, Phainon’s dorm room is located a floor above - a notable difference from when he lived right next door to you. The added distance often has him visiting your dorm room unprompted (you kindly gave him a spare key in case of emergencies) and easily greeting a confused Sunday who just finished his classes for the day.

“Call me your third roommate – don’t worry, I help around!” He’d joke. Using your headband to push his hair back, wearing a baggy tee and gray sweatpants, he makes himself at home. Sometimes doing his own homework or brings his gaming laptop along. 

After the initial surprise, Sunday doesn’t mind his company – you certainly don’t. 

Phainon waits for you outside your room to walk you to your class. He makes sure you sit next to him in the classes you share. He insists you join the same org as him, and predictably, you do. 

You thought you buried your less-than-platonic feelings in your backyard; you truly did. But Phainon has your heart racing in excitement, rekindling the dying plant of hope. You still like him – truthfully, you never stopped liking him. But he’s closer to you now, a feat you previously thought to be impossible. The distance of just one floor away makes the heart grow fonder. Dare you say, clingy? 

But he still remains your best friend. A clingy, touchy one – but your best friend. 

Sunday discusses the topic on a slow, school-less night. You’re in the living room finishing up the last plates needed to be washed when he suddenly chimes in, tone so sure of his words, “Ah yes, I remember now. Please tell your boyfriend to stop entering our dorm past 11 PM. The faculty recently deployed a curfew; it’s best we follow it.”

The ceramic plate in your grasp almost crashes headfirst to the floor. Out of embarrassment, you refuse to turn around and face your roommate. Boyfriend. Boyfriend – only one person is a repeat visitor in your dorm room, and he’s nowhere near being your boyfriend.

Meekly, you set the plate down and correct him, “I’ll inform him, but… Phainon isn’t my boyfriend.”

The silence that wafts through is more humiliation added onto your person. What is Sunday’s facial expression right now? Shocked? Ashamed? 

He answers it for you: “I see… This is quite mortifying, my sincere apologies.” 

But he continues, “You’re both seen together, and he visits you so often, not to mention the look you give him, I got the idea that…– I’ll be sure to be more observant in the future. Again, my apologies.”

You’re wiping the table clean when you reply, still angling your face away from his eyes, “It’s cool, don’t worry! No harm done! He and I are best friends, yes… the bestest of friends!”

You feel him raise a brow at that, “I don’t mean to pry, however…”

Cyrene always chided you for being a pushover to those around you. In this instance, you hear her disapproving frown when you fold like a wet blanket, “Whatever it is you’re thinking –! I-it’s probably right.”

Wilted sunflower that you are, you mournfully face him with your eyes cast to the floor. 

“Ah. You like him?”

You slowly nod, a small part relieved that you now have someone other than Cyrene and Phainon to confide in. “Don’t tell him, please…”

“I won’t.”

His bird-patterned socks enter at the edge of your vision. You slowly look up. Sunday is smiling at you, although a bit tense. 

“Perhaps it’s a bit presumptuous of me considering we’ve only known each other for months, but… They say I’m a good listener. If you don’t mind, could you tell me more?”

Sunday is a Borage you unknowingly planted, only just now peaking when you need him most. Sitting side by side on your dorm’s small couch, you gain an outsider’s perspective on your years-long pining toward your best friend. He hears of your rejection and your still-persisting feelings. In the end, the advice he offered to you is:

“He may not be stringing you along, but you still foster optimism in your heart. So long as you have it, you will never move forward past him. If you ask me… confess your love a second time; see if his opinion has changed.”

You gulp, “And if it doesn’t?”

He smiles, gentle as clouds, “Broaden your horizons permanently. Distance yourself if you must; your friendship will pick up once you settle your feelings.”

Winter break is soon; you’ll need to go back to Aedes Elysiae in a few months’ time. However…

“If it’s not too much. A-and I understand if you don’t want to! But, could I ask you to…”

Sunday’s words continuously ring in your mind, repeating circles of “confess your feelings” and “move on,” bouncing off of one another. Coincidentally, Sunday is out for the afternoon when Phainon barges in a week later. Something about groupmates and ‘I wish you were in my group’ going one ear and out the other as you nod at him in autopilot. 

He picks up on your unusual behavior not even ten minutes in: brows raised to the sky and eerily getting close and personal with you, surveying your face like it’d shed off all the information he wanted. He retracts a few seconds later, less joking when he inquires, “Something on your mind? Missing Aedes Elysiae?”

Hanging out in your small room like this, laptop opened to play some pirated action movie, and his class notes scattered around your bedsheets like autumn leaves… 

You shake your head, feeling the moment to follow Sunday’s advice is now. This is the perfect timing – no one else around to see your heartbroken face for a second time, and no Cyrene to find out you’re still hung up on him. 

“Phainon, I…”

He shuffles closer to hear you better – traitorously, your heart clenches in affection. 

“Yeah?”

You take a deep breath, screwing your eyes shut, “I think I still like you.”

You downplay your feelings for the sake of self-preservation.

His breath hitches, “Ah, that’s–”

“I’m sorry.” You apologize, remorseful at how uncomfortable he must be right now, “I really tried, but…” A deep breath, “I’ll move on from you soon, I promise.”

“Oh,” He pauses, staring anywhere but you, “Uhm… sure… I’m glad to have you, you know?”

You nod, too fragile to face him. 

“...You’re my first and dearest friend. I truly, really liked you, Phainon.” You love him so, so much.

“You’re dear to me too, (Y/N). Forever and now.”

You’ve heard of an overseas concept where a person in an unrequited love begins to sprout flowers from within. You feel like that’s happening to you right now with how unbearable heartbreak is – yellow carnations form from your bleeding heart, wormwood seizes your lungs in a tight embrace, and pink roses mix with your innards. You’d cough out the feeling if you could; empty your stomach from all the flowers and be done with it.  

Predictably, he’s quiet for the rest of the movie – immediately coming up with an excuse to leave your dorm room once the end credits begin rolling in. You break down into tears the moment the lock clicks in place. You cry for hours, long enough for Sunday to come knocking on your door, just knowing you managed to do it when he readily offers you one of his giantmoa pudding tarts. 

Eyes puffy and snot stubbornly running down your nose, you take a bite and thank him through a mouthful of pastry. It’d taste better if you weren’t so heartbroken. He gently rubs your shoulder in comfort. 

“It’ll be alright.”

He’s right– But Phainon has always been by your side, rain or shine. The following months of his absence from your life will be akin to traversing a dark forest with no light source.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel; a rainbow at the end of the storm. When Sunday bans you from helping with chores that night, you know your heart will heal in time.

“Thanks a lot… sunny.” 

He sighs in mock exasperation, “I see you’ve picked up on that nickname too.”

The sun: Hey

The sun: I came by to pick you up, but for some reason, your roommate’s lying?? He said you’re not going back to aedes elsysiae this winter break??? And even denied me entry??? 

The sun: crazy right

The sun: I’m right outside waiting for you rn

The sun: do you need help packing up? :) 

You: No

You: He’s telling the truth.

You: I won’t be visiting for now. Maybe next semester break?

The sun: what

You haven’t read his one-word reply when your phone screen transitions to his contact photo with the text ‘The sun is calling…’ displayed below. You sigh, reluctantly sliding to accept.

Even with speakers turned off, you hear him without pressing your phone against your ear: “What do you mean? Did something happen? Don’t tell me you and Auntie got into a fight…! Don’t worry! I’ll act as the middleman like usu-”

“Uhm, Phainon.” You cut him off. 

“Yeah?”

“It’s nothing like that, please don’t worry.”

He makes a sound of confusion, painfully close to a whimper, “So then… why aren’t you visiting our hometown with me?”

‘Because you’ll be there’. “I’m busy with some personal matters here, don’t worry about me. Say hi to Snowy for me, okay?”

“No, I’m absolutely worrying about you – why not? We can visit them next week instead if you’re busy! Why… why miss out on the entire winter break? Won’t you be lonely here?”

“No need, really! Enjoy aedes elysiae for me. And I won’t be lonely… so stop worrying so much, you softie. I have sunny with me.”

“Sunny…? Your… roommate? Sunday? He’s staying here for winter break, too?” He sounds choked up from disbelief; you’d laugh if you weren’t battling against your resurfacing feelings from talking to him on the phone. “Sunday?”

“Yes, he’ll take care of me. I swear!”

“...”

“...Phainon? Hello?” Did the call end already? You glance at your screen, frowning in confusion when you see that the call is still ongoing. Is he lagging on his end? But he’s outside of your dorm. 

“If you need anything,” He suddenly speaks up, “Anything – call me, please. If your roommate makes you sad or uncomfortable, tell me right away, okay? I’ll call you again the moment I’m back in aedes elysiae. Stay safe, I love you.”

You flinch at his admission, knowing he didn’t mean it like that. “I know… safe travels, Phainon.”

“Phai.”

“Huh?”

“Call me Phai. Isn’t that what you used to call me when we were kids? Why’d you stop? Let’s bring it back.” 

You lie on your bed, pondering. Why did you stop? Perhaps since it was a nickname from childhood, you let go of it and hoped Phainon would see you more than just… his friend since diapers. It didn’t work, clearly. So you don’t mind calling him that shortened version of his name again. 

“Okay… Safe travels, Phai.”

Despite your emboldened decision to ask Sunday to stay with you for winter break, you are still, at your core, a floundering, unsociable person. You have your moments of being bold and talkative, but it’s covered by leaves of quietude and slight stutters. Socializing is not your strong suit. You’re not at the stage of being totally buddy-buddy with your roommate, but you’re slowly getting there. 

You’re glad you met Sunday. Had it not been for him, you’d still be stuck hopelessly waiting for a day that’ll never come: a phantom of the past who’s deathly afraid of the future. 

In the span of your one-month winter break, you get to know him better. Your roommate, who’s a good listener is also an older brother to an idol trainee, has a trio of friends who roomed together a floor below, likes sweet treats, and ran away from his adoptive home after graduating high school.

Your profound respect for him only continued to grow, stalking across your shared living space like vines. While Phainon’s frequent messages, consisting of photos of Snowy and with your family, make your heart twinge in longing, you start ignoring them for the sake of progress. He’ll understand why a year from now, and you’ll both laugh about it like the pair of best friends that you are. 

It’s not college that severs you and Phainon – it’s you yourself, but cutting off a branch from your tree does not mean it’s not allowed to grow a new one elsewhere. 

III. Regret burgeons when everything is said and done.

Phainon: I feel like you’ve been ignoring me lately

Phainon: did i upset you?

Phainon: :( 

The Gen Ed courses you took unfortunately landed you in some shared classes with Phainon, the ‘sunny’ side is that they’re coincidentally shared with Sunday and his friends too. While anxious to meet them, he thoroughly reassured you that they’re nice people.

“Just a bit… loud sometimes, I hope you don’t mind.”

You don’t – anything to physically get away from Phainon. The one-month winter break may have taught you to rely on him less, but seeing his face again might cause you to fold like paper. You see his unanswered texts when you close your eyes, and you hear his voice right before falling asleep. You miss him, but you know what must be done. When he visited you on the day he left Amphoreus, you and Sunday worked together to pretend that no one was home when he came knocking. 

He stayed for hours before going up to his own floor. 

Sunday sits on your left, and Stelle (A kind woman who is equal parts loud and quiet) on the other. Your new acquaintances, Dan Heng and March, are a row ahead. 

“I’m telling you, (Y/N)! His nickname really is cold dragon young!” March cackles in glee, making sure to point at Dan Heng in case you mistake him for someone else.

He sighs, pushing down her finger, “That was years ago, ignore her.”

Stelle chimes in, lazily putting her arm around your shoulder and whispering, “Because he had a gachalife phase.”

Cold dragon young hisses at her to shut up, only to serve as fuel for their cackling. Entertained, you let out a few quiet chuckles at their display. You can never be happy for too long – the classroom door soon creaks open, familiar tufts of white hair peeking in not a moment later. The realization that it’s undoubtedly Phainon has you clammoring in your seat, sitting rigidly in attention. 

Sunday gently rubs your back, eases you back to your current circle,  “Sorry…!”

“It’s okay,” Sunday whispers back, sharing a glance with you. 

“Ah, (Y/N)! There you are! …And everyone too, hello!” Phainon greets from up front, hastily picking up his pace to approach your group. Facing you, he wastes no time firing question after question, “Where were you yesterday? I waited around and tried the key you gave me, but it never worked. Did your phone break? I couldn’t contact you at all, I was so worried!”

You smile at him, “Phai, it’s nice to see you again. Sorry, we replaced our door lock with a new key for uhm… security reasons, I’ll try to get you a copy sometime. And no… my phone isn’t broken, I was just busy, that’s all!”

He audibly sighs in relief, “...Really? That’s good, I’m glad – I missed you a lot, you know?” Adjusting his bag strap, he nods to the unoccupied seats in the first row, “Come on, let’s sit.”

Stelle speaks for you, “Oh, she’s sitting with us.”

“Hm? Right! Thank you for taking care of my best friend, but we’ll get going now–”

“No, I mean she’ll be sitting with us for this class.” 

Phainon cocks his head, “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

You meekly affirm, “I’m… sitting with them. Uh, they’re really nice people, Sunny introduced me to them!”

“Huh?” He looks like a lost puppy on the verge of being abandoned, “...But our seats?”

“I’ll try to sit with you next class!”

You never do: you sit next to Sunday in every single one of them and ignored the bewildered look on his face each time. 

He beelines for you after dismissal, blue eyes so eager and pleading when he asks you,  “Let’s get dinner together – my treat? It feels like I haven’t seen you in centuries.”

Only for you to scratch the back of your neck while shyly glancing at Sunday, “Uhm… we already made plans after school. Sorry, Phai.”

“Oh.” He steps back, letting you and Sunday pass by him to exit the room. His blue eyes follow you until they can no longer. He’s left with himself when he mutters a bitter:

“I get it.”

“Let me carry that for–Ah, Sunday…?”

He’s a second too late, but Phainon stubbornly clings to your bag’s front pocket, the very bag that the other man is already carrying. You’re still in the bathroom when the professor dismisses the class.  Wanting to do his usual duties, Phainon intended to carry your bag, but… someone already beat him to it. He smiles at him, polite, “Thank you friend, but this is my thing, if you’d kindly–”

Sunday’s lips curve into what seems to be a subtle mocking smile. He adjusts the bag closer to him before replying in a composed manner, “How chivalrous of you, Mister Phainon. However, it’s not needed. See? I can carry it for her.”

Phainon sees it as clear as day. 

Childishly, Phainon thinks he can carry it better than he can. It’s what he always did for you since he still had some front teeth missing from his smile; it’s his duty, not your roommate’s. 

He reluctantly lets go when you come up to thank Sunday, blatantly ignoring him just a few feet away. He enthusiastically greets you, but he still exists as an imaginary concept in your eyes. What’s going on? He ponders, watching you chat the world away with Sunday. What happened before that winter break that caused you to grow so tremendously close to that guy? 

You said you’d give him a new copy of your dorm room, but you’re ignoring his texts, his existence, and now – letting someone else do his usual tasks. Seriously, what gives?

Sunday’s like a parasite attached to your hip, it unnerves and angers him. 

Are you… trying to replace him? His heart threatens to drop just thinking about it. 

You are.

You really are trying to replace him. 

Sunday sits next to you, Sunday lives with you, Sunday eats with you, Sunday talks with you, Sunday texts with you, Sunday laughs with you – Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Every time Phainon is graced with your presence, it’s quick to sour from your notable companion by your side. Your new circle of friends too, Phainon sees it clear as day: you don’t want to be around them all the time, but you’re peer pressured into doing so. If Phainon was by your side… he would never let that happen to you. He’d punch them into blindness should they dare to make you inconvenienced. 

Two birds of a feather – that’s what your mother called him and you; A pair of friends so close you might as well be surgically joined together in the middle. When Seven-year-old Phainon first reached his hand out to you, his brain made the unconscious decision then: you’d be the sole irrevocable part of his life. Flowers bloom and wilt; they experience a death of their own, but under Phainon’s sunlight, he promised that he’d never let a sunflower like you be anything less than thriving.

He leads and you follow, only so he’d be the one to be hurt when braving the unknown. Scraped knees and bruised patches of skin are nothing because you’re not hurt. He shines so you can comfortably hide under the shade – you’re not one for people, he’s fine with the way you are. He adjusts around your existence, a mold of comfort that perfectly fits none but you. He’s your fighter and protector; sword and shield. 

Skipping rocks on a nearby lake, teasing Cyrene together, learning from her cards, and discovering a poor abandoned puppy who’d eventually be named ‘Snowy’ are all flashing strings of gold in his memories. Moments carefully planted in his own backyard and given regular maintenance lest he start neglecting them. 

He loves you, of course he does. There is nothing purer in this world than his love for you; a flower specially nursed and plucked with the greatest care, a beauty unparalleled for it’s fertilized from the attention you give him. 

His room is centered around you; every item given is meticulously stored and given a special place. The polaroids, your kindergarten doodles, the yellow crayon you gave him, your pressed flowers – he still has it, even brought it along to his dorm room, where he’s embraced by your presence every night before sleep. 

He loves you, he knows this well in his heart. But Phainon is simply not worthy of you. His love for you is pure, but he, as a person, is not. A Sun can also be damaging to a sunflower – he is the filth to your pure, the actual darkness to light. 

Is it because he refused your confession?

He preserves you because no one in this world deserves you, but must you go ahead and leave him for dead after finding a different sun to seek sunlight from? Sunday… What does he have that Phainon does not? Is he the better him? Does he treat you kinder than he does? 

Sunday is far from holy. If anything, he’s the snake trying to lure you to ruin. You don’t know any better, hence why Phainon is around to protect you. 

This is the biggest hurdle you’ve ever faced together, and with his heart being torn to pieces by your own gardening tools, he’ll make it right. He always goes. He’ll make it right, he’ll get you back, and you two can go back to the way you were before – just more. Friends, best friends, lovers, and everything in between, he’ll really give it all to you. 

Sunday… he’s poisoned your mind and rotted your pure soul. 

IV. Desperation is a seed planted long, long ago – still, spring has come.

“Thank you for sticking around me, Phai.”

He’s in the middle of starting a pathetic fire using twigs and stone when you blurt out cryptic words beside him. He hums, continuing his work, “What do you mean?”

“Can’t I just say thank you!?” You fluster, quickly standing up and pacing around the edge of the forest you’ve both designated as your ‘camping spot’. “Mama said it’s nice to thank people! So, uhm- Thank you for being my friend, please never stop being my best friend!”

“‘Course I won’t!” Phainon toothily grins, fluffy white hair gaining a slight bounce from his motions, “Actually, I’ll never abandon you. Ever!”

You perk up like a sunflower dancing in the wind, “Really!?”

The fire finally sparks to life, small and flickering, but there. At the same time, he gazes deep into your eyes, only knowing nothing else but sincerity at such an age, “Yeah! I swear!”

A yelp, “Swearing is bad!”

Phainon’s eyes blearily blink open. His dorm room ceiling greets him first thing in the morning.

Phainon stalks and waits like a deep-rooted willow tree. He strikes you when he knows you’re alone. It all falls into place: Sunday’s trainee sister is dropping by a different part of the city over the weekend; logic dictates that he won’t be coming back to his dorm room until then. Your close proximity to Sunday will momentarily halt, and Phainon is free to slither in.

He’s waiting right outside your dorm room when you come walking down the long hallway, body language all languid, even resting against the paint-chipped-off stone pillar while scrolling through his social media feed,

You’d spot him a mile away, and seeing him without Sunday by your side makes you hesitate all the more. Your stupid heart starts speeding up. 

“I just want to talk,” He calls out, pocketing his phone to spread his arms wide open for a hug, “I miss you, is that too much to ask?”

You slowly approach him, “...No, I missed you too.”

You miss him. You miss him. You miss him. You’ve been holding your sunflower keychain as your nightly comfort or else you’d end up calling his number at 2AM. 

Phainon smiles, “Really?”

“Yes… I just got… busy, that’s all.”

He smiles wider, blue eyes turning into blue crescent moons, “Really?”

“...Yes.” His hand gently pries the keys out of your hand; you let him.

You hear Sunday screaming on your shoulder, telling you that your blase facade is quickly falling apart at the seams. Unaffected, unmoved – you’re nothing of the sort right now. You’re a sunflower who’s been starved of sunlight for too long. 

With a click, he opens the door for you and softly murmurs, “You’ve been hurting me a lot, (Y/N). You know that, right? But I understand, it’s not your fault.”

You step inside, letting him lock the door behind you, “Not… my fault?”

He shakes his head, hands firmly grasping your shoulders to sit you down on the small couch, “No, it’s mine.”

Immediately you protest, “That’s not true. We just drifted apart–”

Once more, he shakes his head before dropping to his knees before you. The sudden action makes you flinch, growing more uncertain when he holds your hand in his. Phainon’s eyes remind you of butterfly peas from up this close. 

He’s quiet when he speaks, a deep rasp overtaking his voice, “...You don’t understand: I miss you.”

You understand what he means. Parting from Phainon is disorienting. Sunday and his friends may have managed to fill the gaping hole in your heart, but it’s incomparable to Phainon’s presence. 

Are you a bad person for not finding satisfaction in your new friends? Are you sick in the end to still crave Phainon after being rejected two times? Is this what you get for sticking by his side for so long?

It probably is. 

He continues speaking, “I’m sorry for pushing you away; that was never my intention. I wasn’t lying when I said you’re dear to me – you truly are. I never wanted to pursue a relationship with you because, I– I’m too lowly for you. I would only taint you.”

You run your fingers through his hair, reminiscing on all the nights you spent crying over him – it still bleeds like fresh wounds, “That’s ridiculous, Phainon. I’m not some holy figure to taint. I was just a girl in love with her best friend.”

“I know, but you… you don’t understand. You’re everything to me.”

“You’re everything to me, too, that’s why I loved you.” You still do.

“I think of you first thing in the morning. I brush my hair wondering how I’ll spend the day with you, I eat breakfast, thinking what yours was at that moment, I kept the homework you threw out. I always hate it when I talk to people who aren’t you. I still have the twigs you gave me during our 6th-grade camping trip. The reason the pressed flowers you were planning on giving out during high school graduation went missing is that I stole them – I didn’t want anyone else owning a piece of you. I make sure you’re always too shy to stand up for yourself, so I can save you. I… I hate Sunday for getting into your head – it should only be me. I should be the one you hate and love. I – you’re everything to me.”

His grip tightens, blunt fingernails leaving indents on your own fingers, “I’m sorry, please take me back. I’m unworthy, but I don’t want you to be happy with anyone else. I started cutting myself when you refused to go back to Aedes Elysiae with me – I don’t want to live in a world where I’m not by your side. Please. I’ll kill myself if you leave me. I really will.”

You swallow the saliva pooling in your mouth.

If Phainon is the sun that will incinerate you and your sunflower petals for getting too close, the question it poses is: Do you let it consume you whole? To forgive and forget, starting a new chapter anew in the process?

kill yourself or let (y/n) have friends and move on from you

♡ You start with the people you're well-acquainted with. Dropping off packages, trying to clean some stuff up, but much to your chagrin — there is one garnet-eyed boy who won’t let you go so easily. Kalim has a penchant for making 2-minute tasks lengthen out into 5-hour hangout sessions, and in truth, most of your income stems from him as well. As a Scarabia resident, you've more chance encountering him. And Jamil, in the stead of your previous devastatingly vague conversaton, is clad in a forever stillness. Like a snake, like a true viper, whatever metaphor you’d like to pin to his name , it’s true he does not trust you one bit. 

Gloves brush wood as Jade shifts, mulling your work over his tongue. “My, how cold. And after I went through the trouble of finding you such… plentiful work opportunities.”

You look up, squinting. The eel smiles - surprisingly, a flash of white - sly, sly thing  that could be framed and hung in a museum titled Nothing Is Wrong Here. “Explain."

“Why, merely that you’ve been quite busy as of late. I thought I might… assist.”

Assist, because clearly, your life needed more interference. You turn back to your work, sifting through papers and to do-lists. Much to your dismay, the people at Night Raven latch onto profitable kindness quite viciously. “Yeah, well, don’t.”

“I can’t help but feel it’s a shame. When there are far more… comfortable arrangements available to you.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“My poor, poor heart.”

Unease prods at you once more. Jade’s presence thickening, shrouding your esophagus with an intensity just shy of crushing it raw. You shift on the chair, turning so you don’t face the male, legs pressed together in an endeavour of making yourself seem smaller in his mismatched focal point. 

But he notices in an instant. 

“Is something the matter?” He eyes you, before letting his head dip inquisitively. “..Dare I assume, are you mad at me?”

Lest you respond too quickly - against his liking - the weight lifts itself off your table, and in true eel fashion, he slinks and slants behind you just as quickly.You swear you feel an irked muscle pop in your jaw when you realize you’re completely caged — one hand braced against the back of your chair, the other idly toying with a loose sheet of paper you’d been sorting. His smile hasn’t changed, but it’s  closer now.

“Ah,” Jade hums, voice dipping lower, nearer your ear than you’d like. “So I was correct, you’re avoiding me.”

You stiffen, a newfound aridity scouring your throat. “No, I’m just busy, ’s all.”

“Yes,” he agrees easily, as if the word itself amuses him. “So I’ve observed, and yet, you seem to have time for everyone else. I am your Club Leader, after all.”

The paper slips from his fingers, fluttering uselessly back onto the pile you’d been trying to organize for the past fifteen minutes. Knuckling at your lids, you sigh. “Look, Jade. I don’t have time for whatever this is. I’ve got deliveries to finish, and if I don’t—”

“You’ll what?” he asks gently, luxuriating in your falter. “You’ll fall behind? Lose your footing? Fade back into obscurity? So many choices.”

“I’ll get broke and die, then you’ll have to pry my deliveries right out of my cold, dead hands.”

Silence ensues. 

But it doesn’t take much longer for that smile to quirk and coil around your words. He straightens, and his hand moves towards your wrist, a touch so light you almost don’t register it.

“Then allow me to be of use.”

♡ Ouch! You smack him right over the head with a loose sheet of paper that, in truth, delivers zero damage, but it’s enough to momentarily catch him off guard. He blinks out of his stupor, and catches you walking out of the Mountain Lovers club, huffing and puffing. 

♡  But  you  don’t make it very far. Right as you open the door, you’re sure your heart drops straight to your stomach. 

♡ Blue and red, a spade and a heart linger at the sides of a visage you know all too well. Yuu, previously looking at the plaque above the door, stills when they see.. you. They blink, a list clutched in their hand, and suddenly, they’re spluttering, a warmth, a scorching tide gnawing at their face. You’ve no idea what they’re saying, but holy shit, do you have the most doomed luck in Twisted Wonderland? It’s very obvious they can’t keep their eyes off you.. and with the list in their hands, you’ve an inkling they’re picking out clubs with Ace and Deuce trying to assist them. 

♡ What the hell do you do now?

”I..” They breathe, eyeing you up and down. “I... woah.”

Ace groans, and he looks at you with such palpable irritation it’s baffling. “Here we go again. Man, I want to be anywhere but here right now.”

No doubt dragged to this occasion by the Yuu he couldn’t possibly refuse, Deuce remains silent, but his eyes are trained on you, puzzled. He recognizes you, you’re sure. You’ve survived spells, survived Jade, survived academic failure, survived Rook and Vil, and this—this—is what takes you out?

“Uh—hi?” Yuu tries again. The list in their hand crinkles audibly under the pressure of their grip. “You’re— I mean— I saw you earlier— not like saw saw, but— you fell in my lap and.. Um!”

“…you’re blocking my way,” you manage.

Heedless, they chuckle. It’s soft, airy, but at the same time,  a little breathless. Like they didn’t expect you to speak at all, let alone that.

“Right. Sorry. I just..” Their gaze drops, then treks upward to your face again, the latter unpleasantly miffed. “.. I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to see you again. You’re just, so, so.. You have a Magicam  account right? Give me— may I have your user?”

♡ A product of Yuu’s position as the main character. They probably deem you a random NPC, easily subject to their system’s whims and relationship level boosts. Perhaps they think if they throw in a flirty line or two that’ll get you to fluster and fall to their charm, but luckily, you’re just a brokie. And a spud. And a pup. And a nameless club member. You’re many things at once, but you’re not Yuu’s yes-man.

“Uh-huh. You’re still blocking my way.”

Something befalls Yuu’s gaze, quickly shadowed by another hopeful glint in their irises. Their attention travels somewhere behind you, and that’s, in truth, enough of a tell that an eel is lurking real close. 

“Ah. You’ve acquired company.”

”Jade!” Yuu chirps, the aforementioned acknowledging them with a close-eyed nod. Ah, right. Honestly, you think your time here is up. Jade’s head over heels for them, after all. “Oh, wow! How’ve you been? It’s been so, so long since I’ve-”

“Likewise. And.. if I may ask,” Jade opens his eyes. “What brings you here?”

Your lips crimp at that.

Yuu shifts the list in their hands, fingers fidgeting against the edges like it might fly away if they don’t hold it tight enough.

“I was actually—” they start, glancing up at the plaque above the door, then back at you, “—looking into this club.”

…

♡ No. No, absolutely not! This is the only club you deem safe enough. No, no, no. If Yuu enters, that foils all your plans. If Yuu enters, Ace and Deuce too. And if Ace and Deuce enter, then so will all of Yuu’s envious suitors. Jade, you can feel him start to simmer, feel him bend down to Yuu’s demand, feel him rife with joy-

“The Mountain Lovers Club is, regrettably, quite exclusive. I’m afraid you’ll not find an available seat. ”

♡ This is the very first time you’ll admit you could kiss him in gratitude.

Vision skewed and graciously dazed, you peer at the sides of his face --his mien unperturbed.  Ace and Deuce blink with you, but only Yuu verbalizes their confusion. 

“Oh.” They seem shocked, in disbelief. The stagnant pause ends with a meek: “…Really?”

“Yes.” Jade doesn’t miss a beat. “Our activities require a certain… disposition.. that is to say, endurance and compatibility with the environment.”

“—Yes!” You blurt, softening the blow. “Yes, yes it is! It’s also a.. best-friends only thing, if you know what I mean.”

Deuce, having been quiet all this time, finally speaks. “..Are you sure?”  He gestures to the male beside you. “Even he seems shocked you’re best friends.”

♡ Ack! Jade can’t be any more obvious. Pupils dilated, lips slightly ajar, it takes you right back to your proclamation of being best friends. With a  surreptitious nudge to his elbow, you bring him right back into reality, and he quickly masks his shock with an air of contentment. 

”...Yes, you heard them correctly.”

Yuu, however, just blinks again, visibly deflating. “Oh… I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“It isn’t,” Ace mutters under his breath.

They all watch as Jade steps closer. His gloved hand lifts, and before you can even process it all, positions itself upon your shoulder. And before he can process it, you sling an arm around his and reel him right back in, cracking a very wobbly grin. Oh! From this proximity, you think you can feel the tempo of a heart beating oh-so viciously, but you clear your throat and play the part. This is not looking so good. 

“Oh?” he blinks, close to your face, slanting down to match your level. “..I wasn’t aware we’d reached such prestigious heights.”

You tighten your grip. “We have. We totally have.”

“Hm. Then I must apologize,” he says lightly, turning his attention back to the trio. “It seems I’ve been a rather inattentive friend.”

Ace squints. “You don’t even sound convincing.”

“I assure you, I am nothing if not sincere.”

“Cap.”

Deuce, still frowning, crosses his arms. “If you’re really best friends, then it shouldn’t be hard to answer a few questions.”

.... Oh, dear. 

♡ Turns out, you and Jade, two peas in a pod, know nothing about each other. In truth, he was never your favorite character in the Twisted Hearts series -- and so you’d never pay heed to his personal character tabs, but having to face this reality is humiliating, to say the least... and that is to say, this guy is clueless. 

“What’s their name?”

“...Ah.”

“What do you mean by ‘Ah’? Their name is Ah?”

“I was under the impression that such formalities were unnecessary between close companions.”

“Haha, yeah, we’re just, like, on a first-name basis.”

♡ Yuu has a lot of questions to ask. 

“What’s their favorite thing about you?”

“Oh..”

”Ah..”

”Er— after you.”

“No, no. I insist. After you.”

“I insist more.”

  Ace looks ready to walk into traffic.

“I REALLY like his personality.”

“Do you now?” Jade echoes, the glister in his eyes lifting up his dazed bid at a smile. 

“Mhm. You’re so.. eel-like. Heh.”

“…Eel-like.”

“Yeah, like—uh—adaptable? Slippery? Good in social situations?”

“How kind,” he says, once he recovers, eyes glinting. “Then I suppose I should return the sentiment.”

Oh no.

“You are,” he begins, looking directly at you now, “remarkably persistent.”

“…That’s not—”

“And quite entertaining,” he continues smoothly. The rest watch the spectacle in both shared puzzlement and horror. “In a way that is… difficult to replicate.”

Your face heats. “That’s also not—”

“And,” he adds, softer now, “surprisingly honest, when it matters.”

♡ Having enough, Ace tells the others to hurry off before you two actually start making out. Yuu, however, follows his remark only with a tentative stride, glancing back at the now intertwined hands of you and the eel. You really are close, huh? It baffled them, up until now, they’d never heard of you.

♡ You.. however. 

♡ You’re thinking just how.. profitable keeping Jade Leech around is.  

♡ Someone’s been stealing your stuff.

♡ The thought is inevitable just as you make a routine count-down of all your belongings. You’re three numbers down, and you’re beginning to dread everything. (Though, you can’t help but scowl at the thought. Seriously, what good would it do to them to steal a half-chewed pencil, of all things? That freak..)

♡ The suspect is pretty clear to you, but you have an inkling there’s more to this.

♡ In order to dissuade yourself from the very large problem at hand, you tend to your mounting list of customers. In Pomefiore, you’re supposed to drop off a package, no doubt related to cosmetics. In Savanaclaw, something related to workout equipment. In Heartslabyul, you’re supposed to walk someone’s pet.. mouse. You skip over Octavinelle and Jade’s very evident handwriting - (a scheme to catch your presence.) And Scarabia...

♡ Gulp.

“You’re here!!”

Though, you’ve only met Kalim a couple of times, (more so because his gifted pile of adornments was endless), he still has the gall to beam  at you like you’ve laid out the desert stars yourself. Hands folding upon yours and bringing you forward, conversely, he watches you shrink into your collar.  “You didn’t tell me you were coming today! Jamil—did you know they were coming today?”

“Um.. I live here.”

From somewhere behind him, air whistles through Jamil’s teeth.  “No.” His eyes flick to the package in your hands, then swiftly back to your awkward stance. 

“You’re here for a delivery,” Jamil says. 

“Yeah. I was just gonna—”

“Stay for lunch!”

♡ And thus, today marks the day you’ve sold your soul for food, of all things. Seated and gently trapped, a decade’s worth of food presents itself before you, and the aromas effused gnaw at your senses, tempting. Spices, drinks, whatnot.  Kalim keeps piling more onto your plate like he’s trying to win a competition you didn’t agree to join. Though, as much as you feel Jamil’s opposition to you, he isn’t afraid to litter your already dazed mind with a maelstrom of questions. You wonder what it may be, the cause of his vehemence. Maybe because of the injury incident? Maybe because your presence results in greater work for him? Whatever it is, you dabble.

“Try this one! Oh—and this—Jamil made it!”

“Kalim,” Jamil cuts in, voice smooth, “they can serve themselves.”

“They don’t take enough!”

“They won’t starve in the five seconds it takes to decide.” Jamil directs his gaze to you, trying to oh-so vigorously ignore the fact you’re stuffing things into your mouth like you’ve been starved since your birth. It’s quite strange. Here in Scarabia, food is never a scarcity. “You’ve been taking on more work lately.”

You try to play it off. “Just… saving up.”

“For what.”

Your lashes dip. “Just in case.”

Jamil tilts his head slightly. “In case of what.”

God, he doesn’t let anything go, does he?

“In case I need it,” you mutter, poking at your food.

“If you need money, you can just ask me.” Kalim butts in. 

They don’t miss the sliver of light - suited to an opportunist - glistering in your irises. You think to yourself for  a moment, mulling it over your tongue. Was it really that easy? Had you really been prolonging your misery for nothing? Whirling your head towards Kalim, you hope you don’t come off as too eager. This could be your chance! “...Really? You’d do that?”

Jamil pinches the bridge of his nose. “Kalim, please. You are not funding every person who steps into this dorm.”

“I’m not.. Just them!”

“—But I really, really need it, Ka— Housewarden.”  Correcting yourself, pulling a clump of lashes down towards your woebegone gaze and overstretched lips, you extend a faltering hand to the white-haired boy. “I’ve been working so hard lately..” Only for one day, but you twist around the hurdle. “And it’s just not enough.”

Needless to say, his expression melts. As it should, who are you if not committed?

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn't important. But now, I fear I soon may..” You clench your heart over your chest. “Perish.”

Silence stretches around your words, intercepted only by Jamil’s very blunt, accusatory finger.

“You’re eating.” He remarks. 

You shove another bite into your mouth. Taste bursts sharp and savoury. “Who’s to say? This could be my last meal.”

“What?” Kalim blinks, horror dawning upon sun-kissed features. “Huh—”

”Yes.”

“Yes. Yes, let’s all acknowledge the very real threat of starvation currently occurring at this table, of all places.”

Your hand stretches a little further toward Kalim, fingers trembling just enough to sell it. “…Please?”

The speed with which he latches onto your hand - warm, buoyant and unabashed - does not catch you off guard. You relish in it, if only for a moment. “Yes! Of course I will! Besides, it’s my duty as your housewarden to look after you!” White shines in his smile. “Right, Jamil?”

The latter counts down to a number that only exists in his mind. Exhaling, he comes to a standstill. “...Within reason.”

“Yes!” Kalim lights up instantly, squeezing your hand with verve. Your fingers twitch in his grasp when you reciprocate. “See? It’s settled!”

“I knew you’d understand,” you try a smile. “You’re really, really kind. I’m glad to have you as my Housewarden.”

Kalim beams like you’ve handed him the world. 

“Of course I am!” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in existence. “And you don’t have to work so hard, you know? You can just come to me!”

Jamil’s eye twitches.

“That’s what I’m concerned about.” You huff a quiet laugh, glancing down at your plate, now ludicrously full, courtesy of Kalim’s earlier enthusiasm. “…It’s not like I hate working.”

That much is true.

“It’s just…” You pause, poking lightly at the edge of your dish. Poisonous spumes of memories; heels, scales, a classroom - make you lodge your lip between your teeth as you forage for the right words. You didn’t hate working. Working had become a part of your routine, you’d worked endlessly to evade, elude and ignore. You just don’t like it when..

 “I’d rather not owe anyone anything.”

The words slip out before you can dress them up. Jamil stills at the variation in tone, but Kalim slants his head, thinking over it. 

“Oh,” he says softly, and just like that, the energy shifts. “Well,” Kalim continues, thumb brushing lightly over the back of your hand without thinking, “then don’t think of it like that.”

You blink. “Like what?”

“Like you owe me,” he says, as if the idea itself is ridiculous. “Think of it like… I’m helping my friend. Yeah, that’s it! You have other friends, right? I’m sure they don’t do all that stuff just to put you in some sort of debt!”  At the growing sombre wave over your expression, he gawks. ”You do have other friends, right?” 

♡ Right. An heir. Your friend. The two don’t match.

“Yeah!” You blurt before he can offer himself. “Yeah, I have one.. Uh, it’s.. his name is Jade!”

“Jade? Jade Leech?” He stares, before laughing quite heartily. “I know him! Hey, bring him over next time. Oh, I’ll even invite Yuu!”

Imperceptibly - just a tincture of change - you latch onto the pleasant change of thought pooling over Jamil’s unfairly pretty face, like a starving man. He was going to atleast try to mitigate Kalim’s suggestions, but the mere mention of the prefect has him chewing down his words, and when he partially turns his face to the side, the fabric of his hood conceals  warmth and a shy-tipped smile.

 “..Hm.” His eyes sparkle. “I suppose we can-”

“So,” you shovel three bites into your mouth now. “Where’s my money?”

“...On the condition we exclude you from such occasions.”

♡ Scarabia’s Number One loser turns to the side and wilts, but not before catching the bare of a chuckle whispering through the snake’s teeth. 

♡ Ouch! You’ve never dealt with classes amiably, and since then it’s devolved into some sort of a love-hate relationship. You’re not in the wrong here, of course. In your defense, the only thing you know about Astronomy are the zodiac signs. (..Or were they related to astrology? Oh, well, whatever). Animal Languages, Humanities, whatnot, they all are just as unbearable to you as Potionology, and your backbencher self can only retain so much of magical knowledge. 

♡ Needless to say, it’s a surprise to hear Professor Crewel start the day with a hint relayed over upcoming exams. You don’t care much about them, you know just enough to pass and stay out of any leaderboard lest you garner unwarranted attention (a plan you're failing at, at the moment). With Vil as your tutor, you think you’ve secured a solid position in the future.. Though, a  bit too solid for your liking. You might have to deliberately get a few stuff wrong in order to not  be the centre of praise, but just enough to qualify as average and not earn yourself an office tongue-lashing. Haha..

♡ Ah, right. Speaking of Vil, you’ve been granted the luxury of not being his focal point for now. Not so much, atleast. He seems much too preoccupied with the Pomefiore students under his lead, and for once, you’ve some time to yourself.. Hm, actually, you haven't interacted much since he got ahold of you in the classroom. No matter. It’s all tightrope walk, really. Unfortunately, you’re starting to suspect someone’s shaking the rope.

“You’ve been getting better.”

♡ Huh? You pause, pen hovering awkwardly over parchment. The voice beside you is unfamiliar yet not entirely so. Turning slightly, you’re met with the face of—ah. Right. Scarabia Student B. A reliable constant in your classes, someone who exists in that peculiar space of always there, never noticed - much like you. 

“…I have?” you reply, qurking a brow. 

“Mhm. ” He  perks up. “Potionology, especially! You used to look like you were about to pass out.. Sorry, no offense, but did you take Ashengrotto up on one of his offers?”

“None taken.” Your pen dances in the open spaces of your fingers. “Ashengrotto? No.”

“Oh.” He seems confused, much to your dismay. It only invites more conversation. “I figured as much. You don’t seem like the type to.. jump on the bandwagon like everyone else. All my dorm-mates are egging me on to strike a contract with him.”

Our dorm-mates. 

♡ Hm. You recall Jade’s previous allusions to you doing the same. Rule Number One: never make a deal, never be in debt.

“Also,” He prods. “Are you okay?”

♡ Oops! In order to placate your rapidly growing heartbeat and the perspiration streaming beneath your clothes, you’ve resorted to chewing at your nails - not realizing how weird that may seem. You can’t blame yourself. You’re just trying to.. prepare yourself for what you’re about to do - it takes will, courage and audacity, for some reason you have all three of those no matter how mild.

♡  You hum noncommittally then gulp nervously,  turning back to your notes, though your handwriting grows just a tad bit more jagged... But since you’ve incited conversation, you see how this story goes. 

 “You’ve also been… around more,” he adds as an afterthought. A sideways glance is all it takes for you to see the glister in his eyes - rendering your pen motionless. You’ve been writing nothing but nonsensical sentences, atleast to his mind, again and again, for the pursuit of I’m busy, let me be. But in actuality, this is all a part of one of the most well-crafted plans you have up your sleeve (one that’s not torn up from the several wildlife you’ve encountered on your hikes).  What to do, how to, what-ifs.  

♡ What if Scarabia Student B thinks ill of you after seeing the stuff you’re writing? Oh, well. You know beggars can’t be choosers - in the sheer chaos of your life, this is one of the risks you’re going to choose, even if it foils the sole thing you’re living for. 

“…Around?” 

“Yeah. Scarabia, obviously. But I’ve seen you near Octavinelle too. And Pomefiore! Vil Schoenheit’s tutoring you right? Everyone’s talking about how lucky you are.”

Oh.

Oh, that’s.. That’s really  not good, you think. In the stead of a frown, you give a light, airy laugh. 

 “If you’re trying to get into a different dorm’s good graces,” Scarabia Student B continues, “you should be careful.”

♡  You sink slightly into your seat, exhaling through your nose. So much for subtlety. You’d thought your little job-hopping routine was clever, a way to slip between cracks and stay just out of reach. But cracks, it seems, still run deep. 

♡  At the front, Professor Crewel snaps his pointer against the board.

“Eyes forward, pups. Some of you seem far too comfortable drifting.”

♡ When you lean back, you forget one thing: your life is terribly, inevitably, and terminally out of your hands.

“Psst!”

“I’m not giving you the answers, Bucchi.”

♡ Or not. When you mask your words in vitriol, Ruggie Bucchi - your classmate, trying so hard just to cop a look at your notes, though you’re not even in a pop quiz, deflates.  Rule Number Two: never give anyone the answer to anything.

Finally! Class zooms by quite swiftly, and when the students stream like little, vexing ants in a disparate gaze, you’re quick to scramble for your belongings and exit. Jade, as always, waits for you at the edge, and upon seeing you near him - practiced hand upon his chest - 

♡ Allows his mind to draw a blank. 

♡ Huh?

♡ Are you really holding his hand?

The barrier of his gloves  may seperate the sensation of fingers entwining, but he’s sure, no, certain you’ve enjoined hands. His gaze dips - to see the spectacle, so thoughtfully, so carelessly, so eagerly slotted against his like it’s always been there. 

“I told you not to wait for me,” Your usual grumble sounds loud today. “Whatever. Thank you, though.”

Like it’s natural. 

“Jade.” You deadpan. Ah, you really were on a first name basis. “Did you short-circuit? Hellooo?”

”Not at all.” His reply is immediate, and so is the suave upturn of his lips as he regards you. Fully reciprocating your hold, he hums as if he hadn't just pondered over your dynamic in the span of a heartbeat. “I was merely considering something.”

“Yeah, well, consider walking.”

You tug him forward, and he complies, seamlessly weaving in the newfound hubbub of the halls. Students pass, chatter ebbs and flows, yet it all feels even more distant to him now, for the sole reason you still haven’t relinquished your hold. You get weird, inquisitive glances from passerbys, and when you still don’t let your grip slacken, he realizes, all the more entertained, that this is intentional. 

“So,” you eye him. “You don’t have anything to do, right?”

“For you?” He replies smoothly. “I always find myself remarkably available.”

“Good, then walk me to my dorm. Actually, no, my room.”

“My, my.. I certainly wasn’t aware we’d grown this close.”

“Don’t you dare.” Whirling around a corner, you narrowly dodge a group of unsuspecting, giggling freshies. They all disperse when they see the eel willingly trail after, hand in hand, Jackpot. You were on the mark with your little analogy. “I’m skipping my remaining classes, ‘is all.”

Jade has a strange, numb, faraway look in his eyes as he talks. If you were any smarter, you’d compare his mental state to a giggling schoolgirl, feet kicking high up in the air and all. “Oh? Even if Vargas will have your head for it?”

“What am I to do?” You grouch, he can never get tired of it,  surprisingly. “I have so many jobs I need to pick up. So many deliveries, packages, dorms. My next job..”

“Where might that be?”

“Nowhere near Octavinelle.” You make a face at him. “I’ll have you know your handwriting is very identifiable, you’re not slick.” 

A soft laugh escapes him, a lie so gentle it almost feels true. ”Very well, then. I shall behave.”

♡ The journey to the Hall of Mirrors is easy and slow-paced, and in no time are you standing outside your room, bidding Jade adieu, or atleast the form of it you think would max out your stats. Scarabia’s numbers at this time are limited, considering they’re all very big on their grades and whatnot - so that buys you some time to do the unthinkable-

”I must admit-" He drawls on with his usual background yapping..

- the very core of your plan, the one you’ve mentally steeling yourself for, the one you’ve been rehearsing in the mirror for-

“Seeing you take such liberties to-”

♡ The next time Jade opens his eyes, he is sure of one thing. The ephemeral sensation of you coaxing yourself up and pecking his cheek happened, and this time there’s no barrier to try and think otherwise. 

Rule Number Three - keep your enemies far away, and Jade closer than ever.

♡ The next time you open your eyes, you’re very sure he just malfunctioned, gloved hand perched upon his cheek incredulously. Blinking, once, twice, doing nothing to remedy the touch -

”You..”

“Anyways,”  You shimmy inside before he can get a word in. “See you later.”

The door slams shut in his bleary-eyed, wobbling face. 

♡  For the next few days, you’re inclined into believing you just messed up whatever chance you had at salvation...because surprisingly, Jade’s stood. you. up.

♡ Surely, as a fellow second year, he must have as many responsibilities  as  you, and you surely don’t doubt that bit at all. Mostro Lounge must be another factor, and if Azul's really getting around to those contracts as per Student B’s words, then he must be more packed than ever. Still, you can’t imagine any other universe where you’d get withdrawal symptoms from the fact the eel no longer waits for you after class, nor does he come by to your ever-growing hike sessions. That foils the plan of no-attention, sure, but you sure as hell don’t want to go to Octavinelle just to bring him back, you’d be a fool to. Still, now, things have actually reverted back to the way you wanted them to - with you on your lonesome. 

♡ Not entirely on your lonesome, though. Vil is still a hindrance. Sometimes, he does manage to make some time for you, much to your dismay. And when you pivot and bolt away, one French-speaking hunter is always there to mitigate the problem. It’s always embarrassing watching people wonder why a grown student is thrashing around and screaming like a toddler whilst being dragged off by a Vice Housewarden… 

♡ Ouch. That sets it. You’ve no clue how to proceed now. 

♡ You can easily bypass Scarabia attention by sneaking awày and coming in late, past curfew. Pomefiore is inevitable, and so is Octavinelle, and ultimately, with Crewel’s insistence on you growing a backbone and learning how to actually fare well with academics, you’ve slowly and gradually reached one, final dead end. 

A Pomefiore dead end. All your encounters go somewhat like this.

“I take it you’ve learned better than to run from me, spud.” Silky blonde, pale purple wisps and perfume pool in your sight. Vil Schoenheit can see you preparing to run.

Surprisingly, and regretfully,  you  turn. Even outside of Pomefiore’s halls, he looks like he belongs on a stage rather than a school corridor.

“I  wasn’t  running.” 

“You  were  given  a  rare   opportunity,”  he  says, voice lowering. “Do  you  know  how  many  would  beg  for  the kind  of  guidance  I’ve  offered  you?”

He doesn’t like you groaning.“ Ughhh.. Fine. I’m lucky, I get it, okay? Now, if you’d just-”

“No, you don’t.”

Before you follow through with your plan and take to your heels, an icy hand grasps your chin, directing your gaze towards an even more vexed one. And despite yourself, a pesky chill dances up your spine — days have passed, and you’ve still yet to overcome the outlandish feeling of discomfort you get from him.  With pursed lips do you shrink, but with just a lone tap on them alone, you’re compelled into relaxing them and entertaining Vil’s caprices. 

Exhaling softly, he seems almost disappointed, brows sloping. “You’re inconsistent, spud. Your potential fluctuates wildly. One day you perform adequately, the next you sabotage yourself with careless mistakes. Deliberate mediocrity is still a choice, and a poor one.”

When you avert your gaze,  the sheer, bona fide pressure of long nails — albeit unintentional —  sinks deep enough to incite a hiss from you. 

“I’m aware you’re trying not to stand out.. but why,” A tap and your cheeks are practically smushed together.  “would that ever be something to strive for?

♡ Oh! Vil doesn’t even know the half of it.  How you’re just a background character, how you know wreckage and would do anything not to be part of it, how you’d do anything in your power to just stay away and never be perceived again, how every single line of the script has slowly been crumbling ever since you’d made a flimsy little mistake, how he doesn’t even exist.  You could go on and on, but truly,  what would he know? 

A downturn, a slope of your lips is what you give him instead of an answer, and in return you hear another soft sigh of exhaustion. 

 “Oh, sevens..”  he adds with his voice dipping just slightly, “instead of refining what you’ve been given, you choose to squander it.”

“I’m not squandering anything.”

“Then what would you call it?” he shoots back smoothly. “Intentionally answering incorrectly? Slouching through assignments you are clearly capable of completing? Do you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“...Oh.”

♡ Commences the never-ending loop of Pomefiore halls, stacked deadlines, and a huge bunch of books. It's quite laughable, to say the least, out of all your potential encounters, Vil is truly the only one who makes you uncomfortable enough to consider bolting away

♡  .. though you can never remember why. 

♡  “Psst...”

“No.. No.. I.. ” You slur and forget to thank him— whoever that was— for bringing you out of your reverie. Up front, class resumes, Professor Trein talking about something indecipherable. “I added the right ingredients, Vil, I did... ”

A giggle makes you sit up straight. Oh. It’s Ruggie. “Ugh, shut up. I’m not giving you the answer.”

♡ You’re not even sure why the hyena hasn’t gotten the hint yet.  Struggle’s part of the hustle?

“Dang,” you feel him slouch just as you underline three unimportant words three times, lips cinched tight into your perpetual grimce. Your eyes are still hazy, mind squirming, but you manage. “You didn’t even hesitate. How’dja know for sure I was gonna ask for the answers? Kind of rude, y’know?”

Head lolling over your shoulders, you don’t spare him a single glance. “That’s all you do.”

“Wow," Ruggie Bucchi, perhaps even more of an opportunist than you - leans back against his chair, clicking his tongue when you point him out for the millionth time today. He’s always had a knack for trying to cop a look at your notes, or at seemingly whatever your hands were occupied with at the moment. In return, he gets nothing, but as established, the struggle is part of the hustle. “That hurts a little, y’know? I thought we had something special.”

Good grief... “No, we don’t. Please NEVER entertain that thought ever again.”

♡ You’re already packing your things up lest he grows a little too curious and  deftly snatches  them away from you. When the bell rings, you’re already rushing out the door, seamlessly weaving in with the quintessential crowd and letting bodies obscure you from view. 

♡ But unfortunately, a grab at your sleeve halts you in your advance. Ack!

“Wait!”

♡ Not Ruggie. Not Jade. Not Kalim...  huh? Oh, yeah. You get it now. 

♡ Yuu stares at you with tenfold the adoration they once had, lips warming into a bright smile, white showing when you shoot them a questioning glance. Encapsulating your hand fully, they lean forward for you to hear them over the hubbub and you barely make the effort to crane your ears. It’s a fact they can’t read the room. Do you blame them, though? Debatable. It’s inevitable after all that attention and validation. Though.. the way it feels like they were standing right outside your class gives you momentary chills. ( that spot’s taken and you can only handle so much.)

“Sorry,” their grip loosens. “I just— we didn’t get to talk much earlier. You left so early, and Jade..” Teeth nearly mauling their lip, they shrug away the thought. “Nevermind. That isn’t what I came here for!”

“..What did you come here for?”

“You.”

♡ The entire world hears you groan.

“I don’t deserve to be chased like this!” he yells over his shoulder, breaths short, voice muffled through his mask as he narrowly avoids tripping over a pipe. “I’m a pretty good guy!”

The boots pounding behind him don’t slow. “You’re obstructing justice!”

“You’re harassing a concerned citizen!”

He vaults over a low vent and instantly regrets it, the rooftop pitching sideways beneath him as he skids and catches himself just in time to avoid faceplanting into a rusted-out AC unit. Graceful. So graceful. Just like the comics. His heart’s doing the worst kind of cardio in his chest, the kind that feels like guilt and adrenaline and that specific brand of dread that only ever shows up when you’re behind him.

Because if there’s one thing Phainon’s sure of, it’s this: you hate him.

Maybe not, like, hate-hate. Maybe not enough to tase him out of the sky. But enough to chase him across rooftops with the hopes of finally arresting him for good. 

He can live with that. He’s been hated before. (He just wishes it didn’t make him kind of want your approval.)

“You’re breaking at least three laws just by standing there!” you shout as he swings up and over the next building.

“That’s slander!” Phainon shouts back. “I counted two!”

You’re getting closer. He can hear it in your voice—less winded than his, more focused. He’s not sure if he’s impressed or terrified. Probably both.

“Do you ever take a break?” you snap as you land behind him with a clean, practiced roll.

Phainon whirls around, arms raised. “Do you ever let anyone live?”

Your eyes narrow like you’re imagining the paperwork it would take to make his disappearance look like an accident. 

“Okay, okay! Truce! Five minutes.” He backs up, hands still in the air. “No chasing or tasers. Please.”

You don’t answer, which means you’re at least considering it. He’s getting good at reading your silences, which is probably not a good thing. He should stop doing that. He should stop noticing things about you at all—like how you always pull your sleeves down when you’re thinking, or how you furrow your eyebrows when you’re about to disagree with someone but don’t want to start a fight.

“Look,” he says, tone dropping, just a bit. “This isn’t about me dodging patrol or stealing snacks from that convenience store on 14th Street—”

“You stole—”

“Borrowed,” he corrects quickly. “With intent to pay.”

You stare at him. The wind rustles your coat. Somewhere, a siren wails and dies out.

“There’s something going on,” he says. “A chain of robberies, not random. It’s clean, professional—in and out in under four minutes. I’ve been watching them hit warehouses all across Marmoreal. Whatever they’re after, it’s coordinated. And I can’t keep up on my own.”

He expects you to laugh. Or roll your eyes. Or say something sharp and cutting that’ll make his stomach twist in that way he hates—because you’re usually right.

“I think they’re watching me,” he adds, quieter now. “I think someone knows who I am.”

The wind blows sharp across the rooftop, carrying the tang of rain and smoke and summer dust. It scrapes over the worn brick under Phainon’s boots and rustles your coat, but you don’t move. You just look at him, your face unreadable in the way that always makes his stomach knot a little too tight. It’s the kind of stillness that unnerves him—not because he doesn’t know what you’re thinking, but because he wants to. More than he should. Phainon’s chest rises and falls, just a little too fast.

“That’s a bold claim,” you say slowly.

Yeah. He knows. He also knows you’re not brushing him off, which is scarier than if you had. You’re listening, evaluating. That furrow between your brows is your tell—he’s seen it before, in passing shadows and glimpses from across precinct crime scenes. The way you tilt your head slightly to the left when you’re filing pieces together in real time.

“You have proof?” you ask.

Phainon knows you won’t move without proof—not a whisper, not a theory, not a gut feeling scraped together from caffeine and paranoia. But he doesn’t have clean lines or neat bullet points. What he has is scraps; disconnected threads; a slowly closing hand around the back of his neck every time he turns a corner too sharp. And that feeling—that awful, skin-tight certainty—that something out there has started moving towards him, not away.

“I don’t have anything concrete, but… I’ve been tracking the hits since the first one three weeks ago,” he says, starting to pace now, in small, tight circles, just enough movement to bleed out some of the nervous energy crawling up his spine. “They’re too clean. Like, unrealistically clean. No alarms triggered, no broken doors, no fingerprints. They even bypassed the retinal scanner at one of the biotech labs. Who does that? And for what? They’re not stealing cash or valuables. They’re taking very specific things—equipment, hard drives, chemical canisters.”

“Show me,” you say. Your eyes don’t leave his face. (Well, the mask. But he swears you’re looking through it.)

He blinks. “What?”

You cross your arms. “The footage. The files. Whatever you’ve got. If you’re serious about this, I need to see everything.”

“Oh.” Phainon’s voice pitches up an octave in surprise. “Cool. Okay. Should we, like, grab dinner? I know a good deli down at Kephale Plaza. Best dill pickle sandwiches on this side of Okhema.”

Phainon didn’t lie. Chartonus’ Deli, tucked between a laundromat and a building that’s had a For Sale sign tacked onto the door for fourteen years, does serve the best dill pickle sandwiches in New Okhema City. The fluorescent sign above the deli flickers intermittently—CHART NUS’ on a bad night, HARTONUS DEL when it’s feeling generous—and the inside smells like mustard, old fryer oil, and vinegar.

He’s perched in the booth furthest from the window, under a buzzing ceiling light that flickers every now and then. The vinyl seat squeaks every time he shifts, and the table has a wobble. There’s duct tape across the far corner of the laminate, and someone—possibly Chartonus himself—has carved NO CRYING IN THE DELI into the tabletop.

Phainon has his mask pulled up just past his nose, letting the cool air hit the sweat still clinging to his neck. His hair’s damp, and there’s a tear in the seam of his left glove he only just now noticed. His sandwich is halfway demolished, crumbs gathering on the dark fabric of his suit, pickle juice already soaking into the paper wrapper.

He looks across the table at you. You’re the only person in here not eating, only sipping from a chipped ceramic mug of what Chartonus had claimed was coffee with a shrug. Your coat’s slung over the back of your seat, and your badge is tucked out of sight, but everything about you still screams cop—straight spine, steady eyes, the way your fingers twitch every time the door jingles.

“I told you,” Phainon says around a mouthful of rye and mustard. “Best sandwich in the city.”

“This is where you wanted to debrief?”

He shrugs. “They know my order here.”

You roll your eyes and pull the folder Phainon had handed you on the rooftop from your bag, placing it on the table between you. “You said these started three weeks ago?” you ask, flipping it open.

Phainon nods, brushing crumbs off the table. “Warehouse on Little Thorn. Then a lab two nights later. Then another warehouse. Then the lab again, but a different wing. They’re hitting specific targets, looping back, almost like they’re refining their technique.”

You glance up. “Any pattern to what they’re taking?”

“That’s the thing.” He leans in, placing his half-eaten sandwich on the paper wrapper. “It’s weirdly… modular. Like, they’re not emptying vaults or swiping entire systems. They’re taking parts. Pieces. Very specific ones.”

He slides a finger across one of the printouts. It’s a manifest list from the Little Thorn warehouse, half the lines redacted, but a few still visible.

Carbon-neutral polymer casings

Fiber-optic microarrays

Refrigerated storage containers, Class III

Unknown compound, biohazard sealed

“Doesn’t scream smash-and-grab,” you say, studying the list.

“Exactly. This is purposeful.”

You turn another page. “The cameras—”

“Looped,” Phainon says. “Every time. Not just disabled. The footage looks uninterrupted, except for this weird flicker—like it skips half a second. But the timestamps don’t change.”

You sit back in your seat, fingers drumming on the edge of the table. He watches you think—sees the line between your brows deepen, the way you press your lips together when something doesn’t add up. He likes watching you think. That’s a problem.

“Do you think they’re testing something?” you ask. “Or building it?”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d help me figure out. Detective Brain and Spider Legs. The dream team.”

“Never say that again.”

He gives you a one-shouldered shrug and returns to his sandwich. “Can’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.”

You shake your head and go quiet again, flipping slowly through the rest of the folder. Pages rustle under your hands. The old man behind the counter mutters something unintelligible to the deep fryer. Outsider, a police cruiser drives by without slowing.

When you speak again, your voice is lower. “You said you think someone’s watching you.”

Phainon freezes with a piece of pickle halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he lowers it back to the wrapper. “I don’t think,” he says. “I know.”

You look up.

“Two nights ago, I was tailing one of their runners. Lost him. That should’ve been the end of it, except when I got home…” He hesitates. “My apartment’s locked down. Triple bolted, windows sealed, motion sensors in every hallway. And yet, my closet door was cracked. My spare suit was missing. Nothing else.”

Your expression hardens. “Did you call it in?”

He snorts. “Yeah, sure. Hello, 911, someone stole my crime-fighting spandex, I think I’m being haunted by a bunch of dudes with attitude problems.”

You don’t laugh.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Deflection. I know.”

“You should’ve told someone sooner,” you say sharply. “If someone has your gear, they might have access to your—”

“They won’t,” he cuts in. “The tech’s locked down. Biometric, failsafes, the works. But it means they were inside. Not watching from across the street. Inside. And that… that’s not normal.”

You nod. “You think it’s connected to the thefts.”

“I think I’ve been getting too close,” he says, quieter now. “And someone wants me out of the way.”

You lean forward, resting your elbows on the table. The cracked TV in the corner flickers, playing a rerun of some late-night court drama with the volume turned down low. A door slams shut somewhere in the back. The deli is empty now except for you two.

“Then we need to get closer,” you say.

Phainon blinks. “Wait—we?”

“This is serious,” you say simply. “And if someone’s watching you, they might come for me next. This is bigger than your usual masked hero antics, Spider-Man. So, yeah. We.”

He’s staring again. He knows he is. He should probably say something witty or obnoxious, but his throat’s dry and his heart’s doing that thing again. “Cool,” he says finally, and it comes out a little too quiet. “Cool cool cool cool cool.”

You push the folder back towards him, then stand and grab your coat off the back of the chair. “Tomorrow night,” you say. “Bring everything else you’ve got. We set up a timeline, match it to police records. I want this mapped out by morning.”

He gives a mock salute. “Aye aye, Captain.”

You pause at the door, just long enough to glance over your shoulder. “Wash your suit,” you say. “You smell like mustard.”

The bell jingles as the door swings shut behind you. Phainon stays in the booth for a while, finishing his sandwich in silence. The TV buzzes in the corner. The ceiling light blinks once, then steadies.

The alley off Cortland Street feels shadier than it is in the almost-darkness. Every step Phainon takes echoes just a little too sharply off the damp brick walls, the soles of his boots scraping against cracked pavement slick from the afternoon rain. The air is thick with the tang of gasoline, rotting leaves, and whatever chemical sludge is leaking from the storm drain at the corner. It’s the kind of place you walk faster through on instinct, even if you’ve got super reflexes and unnatural strength.

But for once, he’s early.

The wall behind him is papered with maps: big ones, small ones, some he stole from news kiosks and the city library, others he scrawled himself in the middle of the night, half-asleep and hunched over his kitchen counter with a sharpie in his mouth. He’s patched them together like a spiderweb, the red and black marker lines bleeding over each other, looping through neighbourhoods and dead ends. It’s messy, barely legible in some places, but it serves its purpose.

He shifts on the overturned milk crate he’s using as a seat and pulls his mask halfway up to breathe properly. The flickering streetlight above him hums like a dying bee. There’s a smear of mustard on his glove from the sandwich last night. He tries not to think about how long it’s been since he’s properly showered.

He hates waiting. But he’d never admit that he’s anxious. Especially not for you.

Your footsteps break the quiet—sharp, sure, even. The same way they always sound when you’re walking up behind him like you’re about to read him his Miranda rights.

He doesn’t turn around immediately. That would be too obvious. Too eager. “I was starting to think you ditched,” he says instead, flipping a page in the notebook balanced on his knee.

“You said nine,” you answer. “It’s eight fifty-nine.”

He smiles, just a little. Can’t help it. “Wow. A punctual cop.”

You walk past him, wordless, and he catches the faint scent of your shampoo—clean, sharp, maybe citrus? (He needs to stop.) 

You step up to the wall of maps, arms crossed. The light glints off the corner of your badge, half-tucked beneath your jacket. You tilt your head to the side, the same way you always do when you’re processing too many things at once. God, he’s noticed that too many times.

“This is a mess,” you say flatly.

“Organised chaos,” he corrects.

You shoot him a look, then kneel to examine the clustered marks around Marmoreal’s industrial sector. Your fingers trace a wide red loop that sounds four separate Xs.

Phainon hops down from his crate and joins you, dropping into a crouch beside you. “Those are the first confirmed break-ins. They form a pretty clear arc if you connect the dots. Started on the western edge. They’re moving clockwise.”

“So whatever they’re after is in the centre,” you muse.

“Bingo,” he says, tapping the innermost circle. “And guess what’s smack-dab in the middle of the whole thing?” 

He holds up a photo of a nondescript warehouse, overgrown with weeds, one wall tagged in massive purple spray paint that says I HATE BEES. It’s ugly. You frown and say, “That place?”

Phainon nods. “Used to be a government R&D site during the old tech boom, but it was supposedly shut down after an acid leak took out the foundation. Now it’s just a lot with a locked fence and shit ton of asbestos.”

“Why hasn’t anyone investigated it?”

“Because it’s boring,” he says. “There’s no power running to it. No reported disturbances. No reason for patrol to bother. But if you dig deeper—like, old permit records and city zoning logs—there’s a basement that’s sealed off. No blueprint access since 2013.”

Your silence stretches. Phainon watches the gears turning in your head and realises—again, and with an unfortunate amount of clarity—that he likes watching you think. He really, really shouldn’t.

“So they’re not just building something,” you say. “They’re hiding it.”

“Or staging it.”

“We’ll split up,” you say. “Tonight. You take the chemical plant on Fifth. I’ll hit the battery storage facility near the docks. If either of them gets hit, we regroup.”

“Copy that,” he says lightly, brushing the dust off his gloved palms as he stands beside you. “Though I think you just want to get rid of me.”

“I want to get results,” you correct, already scanning the nearest cluster of notes on the map again. “And we’ll cover more ground this way.”

Fair, rational, efficient. So typically you. Phainon swallows down the inexplicable disappointment in his throat and tries to focus. “The chemical plant’s been shut down since the fires in March, but I’ve seen movement there—shadows mostly, heat signatures. And one of the power boxes was tampered with last week. Could just be squatters, but…”

“But this group doesn’t leave power boxes half-cut,” you finish, glancing at him. “They don’t miss steps.”

Exactly. He doesn’t say it out loud, but the tension in his shoulders eases a little. You’re starting to see what he sees. 

You turn back to the wall, fingers brushing one of the maps again, slower this time. Your brows are furrowed, the crease between them deeper than usual. “I’ll have to log this in quietly. My team’s not going to love me going off-grid again.”

“Your team doesn’t know you’re chasing me around rooftops?”

“They know. They just don’t know why,” you say. “Which is probably for the best.”

He huffs out a half-laugh, kicking lightly at the cracked asphalt near your foot. “Flattered.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“Still. Thanks for not turning me in.”

You shrug. “You haven’t made it worth my while yet.”

He wants to tease you for that. Wants to say something dumb and stupid about buying you a terrible coffee from a 24-hour diner or bribing you with Chartonus’ sandwiches, but instead, he asks, “You have a burner?”

You nod. Phainon reaches into one of the hidden pouches sewn inside his suit—past the web cartridges, the crumpled snack wrapper, the broken-off pen cap he meant to throw away yesterday—and pulls out his own cracked phone. The screen’s a mess of spiderwebbed lines, the plastic casing half melted at the edges from some accident involving an exploding rooftop generator last week.

You raise your brows. “That’s a phone?”

“Technically,” he says, unlocking it with a swipe and opening a new contact. “Give me your number. I’ll send coordinates if I catch anything tonight.”

You rattle off a sequence of numbers, and add, “Burner ends in zero-nine. Don’t call me unless it’s urgent.”

“Define urgent.”

“Explosion. Gunfire. Alien invasion.”

“So… brunch?”

Phainon’s lucky day starts with a pigeon dive-bombing his head, continues with a missed web shot that sends him careening into a fire escape, and somehow still manages to improve—because you said yes to brunch with him. 

Or, well, with Spider-Man, which is still him, but in that weird, glass-wall kind of way. You don’t know what he looks like beneath the mask, don’t know his name, his address, his real voice, or the fact that he thought he was going to be late because he tried to hand-sew a rip in his suit and pricked his thumb seventeen times.

He tries not to make a big deal out of it. He really does. But the truth is, it’s been 36 hours since the last robbery attempt, he hasn’t been chased across a rooftop in at least two days, and now you’re sitting across from him at a sunlit table in a tucked-away café where the chairs don’t match and the menus are handwritten in cursive chalk. (And you ordered pancakes. That alone feels like a sign from the universe.)

Phainon takes a sip of his burnt espresso, after pulling his mask up to let it rest on the bridge of his nose. He leans back in his chair, letting the sounds of the café fill the silence—coffee machines hissing, silverware clinking, someone arguing gently in French at the counter. It’s the kind of place that feels too warm for a conversation about conspiracy rings and illegal tech trade, which is probably why he chose it. Something about soft pancakes makes even the worst theories easier to digest.

You flip through a manila folder with highlighter streaks and dog-eared corners, diagrams of circuits, and what look like stolen security camera stills, all stacked and filed with precision. He’s seen you interrogate a guy in less than five words before. Watching you cut a pancake with that same level of intensity is kind of terrifying.

Also: kind of hot. But that’s not relevant.

“So,” he says, because the silence is beginning to grate at him, “have I won you over with my sparkling personality yet, or are you still planning to arrest me after this?”

You hum and reach for the syrup. “I can’t decide if you’re more irritating in daylight or when you’re dangling upside down on a fire escape at 2 a.m.”

Phainon takes a sip of espresso, squinting through the bitter taste. “Why not both?”

You glare at him.

“I’m trying to be helpful,” he says, quieter now. He leans in a little, lowering his voice in case someone’s listening. “I know I’m not the most traditional source, and I’m aware I’m breaking, like, a thousand chain-of-command rules just by talking to you, but I’ve been watching these people for weeks. And I’ve never seen anything like this. They’re too clean. Too prepared.”

You nod. He can tell you’ve already connected the dots. You’ve probably connected ten more he hasn’t even noticed yet. Your eyes are sharp, alert, focused in that laser-sight kind of way that makes his skin itch under the mask.

“I went by the Marmoreal site last night,” you say. “Didn’t go in, though—just circled. But there was movement in the back. A truck with no license plate.”

“Same model from the Fourth Street hit?”

“Couldn’t see,” you admit. “But the sound was the same. The engine was too quiet to be local, so it was clearly modified.”

Phainon exhales slowly. “So they’re still active.”

“Very.” You stab at a piece of pancake and glance up at him. “You sleep at all?”

“...No,” he mutters, sheepish. “But I took a power nap at a bus stop for twenty-seven minutes and dreamed I was being eaten by a vending machine, so that counts.”

“Healthy,” you deadpan.

He shrugs. “You’re one to talk. When was the last time you took a break that wasn’t… this?”

“I’m not the one with a possible concussion and jam on my mask.”

“I like jam,” Phainon says.

You shake your head, but he catches the faintest hint of amusement in your face, quickly hidden behind your coffee cup. He doesn’t say anything; just watches as you lean back in your chair, face finally relaxing into something that looks a little less like a detective building a case and a little more like a person enjoying a few minutes of peace.

That’s when it hits him: this is the first time he’s seen you still. Not mid-chase, not interrogating, not tearing through evidence. Just you, and pancakes, and a soft patch of sunlight warming your sleeve.

He’s in so much trouble.

You glance at him, then, like you can feel it. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly, fiddling with a sugar packet. “Just thinking.”

You narrow your eyes. “Dangerous.”

“Extremely.”

“Why’d you bring me here?”

He looks up. “What?”

“This café. It’s nice. Quiet. You could’ve picked anywhere.”

Phainon hesitates. He wants to say it’s because it’s his favourite. Because the coffee’s bad but the people are nice. Because the chairs don’t match and the chalkboard menus always misspell something. Because it feels safe. Because maybe, somewhere in the back of his idiotic brain, he wanted you to like it.

Instead, he shrugs and says, “Thought you’d appreciate the pancakes.”

You study him for a second longer. Then, finally, finally, you smile. “Don’t make a habit of being right, Spider-Man,” you say, spearing another bite.

It turns out that Phainon’s theory is, horrifically, right. 

One week. That’s all it takes.

Seven days of split patrols and encrypted texts, of cataloguing movement and double-checking routes, of scribbling half-mad notes in the margins of maps and losing sleep trying to figure out what the connection is. He’d hoped, stupidly, that the quiet meant progress. That maybe, maybe they’d spooked whoever was behind it. That maybe the worst thing waiting for him that week would be another broken web-shooter or a pigeon with a vendetta.

[22:41] Detective Brain: Battery storage facility. Crossfire. I’m okay.

You’re okay. That should be enough. It should settle the spike of cold panic in his chest, should anchor him where he stands, balancing on the lip of a lamppost on 39th Street. But he rereads it again. Then again.

His fingers tighten around the edge of the lamp. The city breathes below him, neon-drenched and unaware. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren howls. Closer, a car door slams and someone yells about a parking ticket.

Phainon jumps.

The wind is sharp against his skin as he swings, the air slapping his cheeks even through his mask. He’s faster than usual—more desperate than smooth. It’s a graceless sprint across rooftops, the kind that leaves him barely clearing ledges, boots skimming waterlogged gutters, lungs burning. He doesn’t know if you’re hurt. You said you’re okay, but “okay” is such a vague, terrible word when it comes from someone who faces dangerous situations for a living.

The warehouse by the docks comes into view fast, hulking and silent beneath the sodium lights. There’s a scorch mark across the landing bay door, the acrid scent of melted insulation still curling up into the air. Two squad cars are parked askew outside the chain link fence, but the cops are gone, or inside, or too distracted to notice the figure scrambling onto the roof with shaking hands.

Phainon crouches low and peers through the skylight.

You’re inside, standing near a bank of empty battery casings and shattered glass, a radio pressed to your shoulder. You’re not limping. No visible blood. His heart slows half a beat. He taps lightly on the glass. You look up fast, instinctive, already half-reaching for your weapon before you register him. Your eyes narrow, but only briefly. Then you jerk your chin towards the fire escape.

He meets you on the second floor, slipping in through a side window. You’re alone in the room, save for the mess of forensic markers, scorch marks, and the bitter ozone of post-explosion cleanup.

“I’m fine,” you say, even before he can speak.

“You’re not fine,” he snaps, more sharply than he means to. “You said crossfire. That’s not, like, a stubbed toe.”

“It wasn’t aimed at me.”

“That doesn’t help!”

He hears his own voice—too loud, too worried, echoing off concrete—and he turns away before you can see the guilt settling between his shoulders. He runs a hand over his head, dragging his glove against his scalp like he could rub the fear out through friction alone.

You step closer. Your boots crunch over a piece of broken casing. “Spider-Man—”

“What happened?” he cuts in. He needs to focus, needs to understand it before he spirals into full-blown panic. “Walk me through it.”

You sigh, but nod. “I was watching the south entrance. Nothing for over two hours. Then, just past ten, the sensors I set up on the west wall tripped. I saw three figures, all masked. One of them had a disruptor—fried the cameras before we could catch a clear face.”

“Lithium?”

“Gone,” you confirm. “They knew exactly where to go. They broke open the storage lock, took one unit, and left the others untouched.”

“Only one?”

“One. And Spider-Man—” your eyes meet his again, steady now, serious—“they weren’t just fast. They know how to fight. They looked trained for this kind of shit.”

He exhales through gritted teeth. “You think they’re building something.”

“I think they already have,” you say grimly. “And they’re just waiting for the right battery to turn it on.”

Phainon shifts his weight and finally asks the question that’s been sticking in his throat like a splinter. “Did they see you?”

“I—I don’t know. Maybe,” you say.

“Maybe?” His voice rises again.

“I lost one in the dark. I think they doubled back. I’m not sure.”

Phainon wants to scream. Or punch something. Or grab you and teleport you somewhere far away where no one has disruptors and no one bleeds on cold warehouse floors. But he can’t do any of that. He can only stand there, vibrating with a kind of fear he doesn’t have the vocabulary for.

“I should have been there,” he mutters.

“You were across the city.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

You step into his space, close enough that he can hear your breath. “Spider-Man. Stop. I’m not dead.”

“Yet,” he says.

“I’ve been trained for this,” you say. “I know how to handle myself.”

He doesn’t doubt that. Not even for a second. But he also knows what it feels like to arrive too late, to find a scene that’s already stained with the blood of his loved ones. He drags a hand down his face. “You need backup.”

“I’ve got it,” you say, your voice firm. “I’ve got you.”

It’s not meant to do what it does, but those words dig into him deeper than any bullet could. He stares at you for a beat too long, every possible response crashing into each other like waves in his skull.

Finally, he says, quietly, “Yeah. You do. Can I take you home?”

Phainon expects you to disagree. Instead, you let your shoulders slump with relief, and say, “Yes, please.”

The wind cuts sharp along the docks when he leads you out, the air heavy with the smell of brine, old smoke, and burnt copper. There’s a metallic haze still lingering over the scene, but you don’t flinch from it. You walk steadily beside him, chin up, even if your hand hovers just a little closer to your holster than usual. He doesn’t miss that.

The streets are quieter now. Most of the cops have cleared out. A few plainclothes agents hang back to assess the scene, but they barely glance up when he web-slings both of you onto the nearest rooftop—low enough to keep out of view, high enough to get some space from the mess below. You don’t complain. You never do. Even now, when your knees must ache from crouching in dark corners, when your head probably pounds from the tension of nearly being caught in open fire, you simply follow him, like it’s normal. Like you trust him.

Phainon keeps his hold light but steady around your waist, one hand braced just beneath your elbow. You’re warmer than he expects, heat leaking through your jacket into his gloves. Every time he moves—shoots a string of webs, pulls you forward, steadies your landing—he feels you adjust to match him. Fluid. Familiar. (He shouldn’t like that as much as he does.)

Your building’s only three blocks away, and you whisper the directions into his ear. Phainon doesn’t want to rush it. He doesn’t want to leave you alone, not yet—not while your jaw is still set a little too tight and the adrenaline hasn’t fully drained from your bones.

When he finally lands on your fire escape, he lets go reluctantly.

You ease away from him, brushing your hair back, your expression unreadable as always. “You don’t have to walk me all the way up.”

“I know,” he says, already crouched on the rail. “I just… wanted to be sure.”

“Thanks.”

He nods and tries to act casual. Tries not to stare too hard at the soft light spilling out of your apartment window, or the way your fingers fidget at your sides like you’re still half in the fight. He wants to ask if you’re okay again, wants to tell you that the word “crossfire” nearly gave him a heart attack. But you’re already halfway to the window, unlocking it and ducking through the frame.

“Spider-Man?” you say, just before you disappear inside.

“Yeah?”

“Do you, uh, want to come inside?”

He blinks. Of all the possibilities that had been ricocheting around in his head—“stay safe,” or “thanks for the ride,” or “you’re worrying too much”—this had not made the cut. Not even close.

It stalls him, mid-perch, one gloved hand gripping the rusted iron railing of the fire escape, the other resting loosely on his knee. The mask hides his face, but he’s pretty sure his surprise is obvious anyway, just in the way his breath catches or how still he suddenly goes.

Your silhouette is soft in the glow of your apartment’s light. You’ve already kicked off your boots inside the window, standing barefoot on the wooden floorboards, one hand holding the window open, the other resting lightly on the frame.

“I mean,” you say after a second, brows furrowed. “Only if you want to. You don’t have to or anything. You probably have rooftops to gallivant across and—”

“I want to,” he says quickly, too quickly. Then he clears his throat and tries again. “I mean—yeah. If you’re okay with it.”

Your mouth curves, not quite into a smile, but something close enough to make something twist behind his ribs. “You literally carried me three blocks through the air. I think we’re past the point of stranger danger.”

He huffs out a short laugh and swings one leg over the windowsill. It takes a bit of maneuvering to avoid smacking his knees against your desk, and he’s painfully aware of every scuff his boots leave behind on your floor. The space smells like laundry detergent and something warm—coffee grounds, maybe. Or cinnamon. The kind of smell that makes his shoulders start to relax before he even realises it.

Your apartment is small but lived-in. A stack of case files teeters on the kitchen table next to a mug. Your precinct jacket hangs over the back of the couch. There are photos pinned to the side of the fridge with mismatched magnets: city skylines, a blurry shot of you at what looks like a precinct holiday party, someone in a ridiculous Halloween costume posing like a superhero. Phainon feels something tug deep and stupid in his chest.

“Make yourself at home,” you say, heading into the kitchen and flipping on the kettle without needing to ask. “I’ve got tea or instant coffee. No milk, though. Sorry.”

He stays standing for a second longer, then slowly pulls off his gloves and tucks them into his belt. His mask stays on. He lifts the bottom edge just past his mouth, enough to breathe easier, but not enough to risk—well, anything else.

“Tea’s good,” he says.

You nod, moving with a kind of efficiency that reminds him again that you’re still running on fumes. There’s a scrape as you grab two mugs, the clink of metal as you stir one without sugar. You hand him the other without ceremony.

He takes it carefully, fingers brushing yours. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” you return, then gesture to the couch. “We can sit. If you’re staying a few minutes.”

He is. He knows he is. He follows you to the couch and lowers himself into the corner, stiff at first, like his body hasn’t caught up to the fact that he’s safe here. With you. There’s a blanket balled up on one side and an old remote wedged between the cushions. You move them without thinking and curl one leg beneath you, facing him.

“So,” you say. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Phainon frowns. “The break-in?”

“No,” you say, looking at him squarely. “You. You were… panicked tonight.”

Phainon goes still. It’s not immediate—not sharp like a flinch, but a quiet kind of freezing, like someone’s gently pulling the emergency brake in his chest. He doesn’t look away from you, but he doesn’t answer either. His tea cools between his fingers.

You shift forward a little, your voice low. “Look, I’m not asking because I’m nosy. Or because I want some dramatic unmasking moment sort of thing. I just…” You pause, exhale. “I got lucky tonight. That’s what it was. Luck. If I hadn’t ducked at the right second, if they’d come around the corner just a little faster—”

“But they didn’t,” he says quietly, cutting you off.

“That’s not the point.”

You’re sharper now, sitting straighter, your knee pressed to the cushion. Your eyes flash—not with anger, but fear, the kind you don’t let people see if you can help it. But he sees it. And worse, he knows it. He recognises it in the widening of your eyes, the way your fingers curl against your palm.

You swallow. “I’m scared, Spider-Man. I know you’re helping. I trust you. But this—this thing we’re chasing… if something happens to you—I won’t even know your name. I won’t know who to look for. Or if I should look at all. That’s not just reckless, that’s—cruel.”

He flinches at that. You notice.

“I just want to know who’s standing next to me,” you say. “That’s not so much to ask.”

“I can’t,” he says, before he’s even fully processed it. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.” Your voice isn’t raised, but there’s a new edge to it now, sharper than anger. Hurt, maybe. Disappointment. It slices straight through his armour. “You trust me with your life out there. Every night. You trust me not to shoot you in the back, or get in your way, or blow your cover. But you don’t trust me enough to know who you are?”

“It’s not about trust,” he says quickly, too defensively. “It’s—God, you think I don’t want to tell you? You think I don’t—don’t lie awake wondering what would happen if I did? I think about it all the time.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

He looks at you, then. You’re not angry. You’re scared. Scared of whatever’s coming next. Scared of losing control, of losing him.

“You don’t understand what that means,” he says. “If you know who I am—really know—it changes everything. You don’t get to walk away from that. You don’t get to un-know it if something happens. If someone finds out—”

“I’m a cop, Spider-Man. I’ve seen worse things than secret identities.”

“It’s not just mine,” he says. “It’s everyone around me. You knowing—you become a target.”

“I’m already a target.”

“Not like this,” he bites out. “If someone traces it back to you—if they think you matter to me—”

“I do matter to you.”

You suck in a breath like you didn’t mean to say it that way. But you don’t take it back. You sit there, across from him, eyes steady and hurting and unshakably honest. And all Phainon can think is: Shit.

“You do,” he says, barely audible. “Of course you do.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

He closes his eyes, and rubs a hand over the edge of his mask like he can somehow erase the pressure building behind his skull. “Because the second I do,” he says, “you stop being just a cop with good instincts and better aim. You become mine. And that makes you vulnerable in a way I don’t know how to protect you from.”

You shake your head, frustrated. “You don’t get to make that decision for me. I’m not asking for your social security number, or something. I’m asking to know who’s at my side when the bullets fly. When the lights go out. When it’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep because I think I saw someone watching my window. I need more than a voice behind a mask. I deserve more.”

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell you you’re wrong, because you’re not. But still, he stays silent.

You stare at him for a moment longer, and when it’s clear he won’t budge, you get up. The mug of tea still has steam spiralling out of it as you walk to the sink and set it down, the sound softer than your next words: “I think you should go.”

Phainon doesn’t try to stop you, or ask you to reconsider. He simply nods, and stands. There’s a strange heaviness in his limbs as he pulls the mask down over his face, tugs his gloves on with fingers that feel numb. He moves to the window but pauses with one foot already on the sill.

“I do trust you,” he says. “More than anyone.”

It’s not that you’re avoiding each other.

It’s that you’re both avoiding each other—which, in practice, amounts to the same thing.

Patrols become asynchronous: silent intel dumps in the encrypted folder, maps updated with colour-coded marks that speak more than either of you will via text. There are no more late-night debriefs on rooftops, no post-mission walks home, no casual banter about who has the worst taste in energy bars. When you text, it’s clipped, tactical. When he replies, it’s mechanical.

(‘West dock checkpoint cleared. No sign of activity.’

‘Copy. South alley tripwire still intact.’)

Phainon doesn’t know what hurts more: the silence, or the fact that it’s entirely his fault. Maybe he was right. Maybe the secret is safer kept. Maybe you are less of a target this way.

But God, it’s lonely.

There’s a rhythm to the city that used to make sense—pulse and swing, fire escapes and antenna towers, the rough percussion of tires against potholes. But now it all feels flat. The rooftops are colder. His landing sticks a little less clean. Even the pigeons don’t heckle him like they used to.

It’s been two weeks. Two long, aching weeks, until, at 3:37 a.m., Phainon receives a text from you, and it takes him less than a minute to reply. 

He doesn’t stop to think, or worry if this is a trap, or a joke, or worse—if you’re still mad at him. When he lands outside your apartment, the window’s already cracked open. Inside, the lights are on low, and there’s a corkboard spread across your living room wall now, half-covered in photos, schematics, lines of red string and sticky notes scrawled in tight, impatient handwriting he recognises from your field memos.

You don’t greet him. You just hand him a folder, your eyes dark with something between fear and exhaustion.

“Biotech division out of Theoros Labs,” you say. “It used to be focused on adaptive immunotherapy, but they lost funding three years ago and went dark. The shell company they reopened under is tied to a private security contractor out of Styxia. And guess what their latest research files are tagged under?”

Phainon’s already flipping through the pages. His gloved fingers still. His stomach drops.

ARACHNID-BASED ENHANCEMENT TRIALS – SUBJECT 33550336. MODEL NAME: FLAME REAVER.

He looks up. “They’re trying to replicate me.”

“Not just replicate,” you say, shaking your head. “Weaponise.”

Your voice is thin, dry, like it costs you something to even say it aloud.

“They’ve been pulling data from old surveillance—fight footage, patrol patterns, even the way you move. You know how we assumed they were looking for high-density batteries to power a device?” You tap one of the diagrams on the corkboard, the spine of it shaped like a human thorax with branching nodes along the shoulders. “Turns out it’s a synthetic neuromuscular system. And this—this lithium core—it’s the ignition switch.”

Phainon stares at the blueprint. It’s rough, unfinished, but horrifyingly clear: a bipedal unit, modelled after him. Spinal cord wiring where his web shooters would be. Photoreactive visor instead of eyes. Muscle clusters designed for explosive vertical leap. Neural sync modules buried in the wrists and calves.

A Spider-Man, stripped of the man.

“Why?” he says, voice hoarse. “Why build this?”

“I don’t know yet,” you admit. “But someone out there sees you as more than just a vigilante nuisance. They see you as a prototype. A formula. Something to replicate, mass-produce, and control.”

He sinks onto the edge of your couch, folder open in his lap. The diagram stares back at him, accusatory and unforgiving. It’s him. The curve of the stance, the wide-set shoulders, the way the unit’s balance favours its left side, just like he does when his knee’s aching. They didn’t just study him; they dissected him.

“How long have you known?” he asks quietly.

“A few days,” you say. “I wanted to be sure. Didn’t want to come to you with a hunch and nothing to back it up.”

“And you texted me anyway.”

You meet his gaze across the room. “Because it’s you, Spider-Man. Look, I know you think hiding your identity keeps people safe. But this? This proves it doesn’t. They’re coming for you whether or not I know your face. They already have your gait, your voice, your power levels. They’re not trying to figure out who you are anymore. They don’t care. They just want to turn you into something they can sell.”

He sets the folder down. His hands won’t stop shaking. “How… did you find out about all this?”

“Don’t get mad.”

When Phainon doesn’t say anything, you sigh and look away. 

“I visited the old R&D site. Alone.”

“Are you serious?” Phainon gestures so wildly that his web cartridge knocks against the back of your chair. He stands abruptly. The folder falls from his lap, papers scattering across your rug. “You went alone. To Theoros. To Styxia-backed labs that specialise in high-risk bioweapons. Without calling me.”

“I called you when I had proof—”

“You shouldn’t have gone in the first place!” he explodes. “What the hell were you thinking? Do you want to get dissected? Shot? Replaced with one of those—those things—”

“You weren’t talking to me!” you shout back. “What was I supposed to do? Wait until they raided another warehouse?”

“I was trying to protect you,” Phainon grits out. “And instead you threw yourself into a place that could’ve had armed personnel, pressure sensors, live prototypes—anything.”

You throw your arms out. “And what was the alternative? Sit on my hands while they build a weaponised version of you? Wait until there’s a second Spider-Man crawling up government buildings with a built-in kill switch? I don’t know how to sit still, Spider-Man. Not when I’m this scared.”

“You think I’m not scared? You think I haven’t been replaying every second of that night at the docks? That I haven’t imagined a dozen versions of how it could’ve gone wrong? You think I’m not scared every time I don’t hear from you for a few hours?”

“Then why didn’t you say any of that? Why did you shut me out?”

“Because if I said it out loud,” Phainon spits, pacing again, hands flying to his head, “then it would be real. It would be—you would be real. Not just someone chasing me on my patrol route. Not just someone who’s helping me out. You’d be a person I’d have to lose.”

You blink, thrown. “You think you’re going to lose me?”

“I know I could,” he says, almost like it hurts. “Because it’s already happened. Every time I get close—every single time—it ends the same way. Either they die, or I leave first. Because that’s the only choice I ever get.”

He doesn’t even hear how loud his voice has gotten, doesn’t notice how he’s gesturing wildly, storming back and forth across your living room.

“I can’t protect you from this. I can’t protect you from them. I can’t even protect myself. You want me to give you a name, but that’s the one thing I can’t do. Because once you have that, it’s over. You’ll look at me differently. Or worse—you’ll stop looking at me. And I can’t—God, I can’t stand that.

“Do you know what it’s like to see yourself turned into a blueprint? To see a file full of numbers and heat signatures and recorded footage and realise someone out there has broken you down into a fucking algorithm? That they don’t see a person—they see a weapon?

“I didn’t sign up for this shit! I didn’t even sign up to be Spider-Man. I just… was. And now they’ve taken that and turned it into something else. Something that walks like me and fights like me and could kill you without thinking. And the worst part is that if you’d died at that lab, I—no one would’ve even known. You’d just be another casualty they scrub from the records—and that would’ve been my fault.”

His voice has dropped to a whisper. His hands are trembling.

He doesn’t realise until you do—until your eyes go wide, and your breath catches like you’ve been sucker-punched.

His mask is gone, not pushed halfway up, or nudged for a sip of tea. Gone. Somewhere in the middle of that breakdown—while he was talking too fast and breathing too hard and tearing at his suit like it was suffocating him—he took it off.

His hair’s a mess, flattened by the fabric, and his face is flushed, mouth parted slightly as he sucks in breath after breath. There’s a bruise blooming along his cheekbone, and a cut healing just beneath his chin. He looks young, with silvery-white hair and bright blue eyes that are rimmed with the redness that comes with exhaustion and caffeine.

“...Oh,” Phainon says, stunned. “Shit.”

You blink, slowly, as though grounding yourself in reality again. “You took your mask off.”

He starts to lift a hand to cover his face, instinct kicking in too late. Gently, more carefully than anything else that’s passed between you tonight, you reach up and take the mask from his hand. Your fingers brush his knuckles, and he flinches, but he doesn’t pull away.

Phainon drops his hand and lets out a shallow breath. “I… didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to,” you echo. “Jesus.”

Phainon can’t say anything, so he simply stands there, feeling as naked as the day he first stepped onto a rooftop and dared to believe he could protect anyone. His heart pounds loud in his ears. He can feel it in his throat, his fingertips, his teeth.

“Can I— Will you tell me your name?” you whisper.

He wets his lips, and says, quietly, “Phainon.”

You nod, once, and say it back. “Phainon,” you repeat, like it’s a truth you’ll guard with your life. “Okay. I’m not afraid of you. And I’m not leaving. So either you let me help, because you asked me to, or I break into another lab and do it anyway. Your call.”

Phainon stares at you: you, with your voice barely holding steady; you, standing in your living room full of maps and stolen schematics and caffeine-fueled desperation; you, tired and stubborn and loyal enough to make him fall to his knees.

“Okay,” he says quietly.

You reach out, then, and Phainon thinks you’re handing his mask back to him, but instead, you wrap your arms tightly around his torso and pull him into you. 

He doesn’t move at first. You’re pressed to him, arms wrapped tight around his torso like you mean to hold the pieces of him together before they scatter to the wind. Your cheek rests just above his heart, right where it beats too loud and too fast, thudding like it’s trying to break free from his ribs. His hands hover uselessly in the air for a second, fingers twitching, stunned by the contact, by the way you came to him so easily, so willingly, after all of it.

He exhales. The air leaves his lungs like it’s been caged there for years. His shoulders drop an inch. His spine slackens just enough for him to bend down.

He lifts his arms slowly, like he’s learning how to move again. His fingers brush your back, light and unsure, but you don’t flinch. You don’t pull away. So he lets his palms flatten, one at the curve of your spine, the other curling loosely over your shoulder.

He breathes in.

God, it’s you. Soap and smoke and citrus shampoo. A hundred times he’s seen you crouched beside him on rooftops or hunched over a laptop, bathed in the blue glow of surveillance feeds. But this is different. This is you, pressed to him like you belong there, like the world outside can wait. 

His grip tightens, no longer tentative—arms looping fully around you now, hands grasping like he needs to keep you tethered, like if he lets go, you’ll disappear back into a nightmare or a lab or a headline with your name misspelled. His chin tips forward until his face rests in the hollow of your neck, and it’s instinct, not thought that guides him there. His breath stirs the hair at your temple. He swallows hard.

(It’s you. It’s you, and you’re warm and safe and alive in his arms.)

Phainon closes his eyes and pretends like everything else in the living room doesn’t exist—the weaponised duplicate in the file folder, the surveillance footage broken down to frames per second, the machine built in his image but stripped of everything human. He forgets about the mask you dropped, crumpled on the floor, and the voice in his head screaming that he’s made a mistake, that you’ll leave once the shock fades, that nothing good can come of this.

Instead, he listens to your heartbeat. He memorises the slope of your shoulders beneath his palms, the soft way your hand has fisted in the fabric of his suit like you’re afraid he might vanish, too.

It comes to him—terrible and quiet and so obvious it aches.

He could be in love with you.

Not the kind of love he can shove into the seams of his second life. Not the safe, arm’s-length affection that lives behind jokes and shared intel and the occasional brush of fingers across a coffee cup. No, this is the dangerous kind. The kind that makes you stupid. The kind that makes you soft. (The kind that makes you want.)

He wants a future he doesn’t dare picture. He wants to walk down the street with you in broad daylight. He wants to take off the suit and be Phainon, just Phainon, and know you’ll still look at him the same way.

(His hands tremble. You hold him tighter.)

It’s that simple. You don’t push. You don’t speak. You just breathe against his chest, steady and unwavering and constant, like you always are. Phainon presses his mouth to your hair. His eyes sting, but he doesn’t cry.

It’s five in the morning, and Phainon is walking down a cracked sidewalk beside you with his suit half-zipped, his mask stuffed into your hoodie pocket, and a buzzing under his skin that he’s trying really hard to ignore. You’re beside him, arms crossed against the early chill, leading the way like this—walking, together—is something you do all the time.

It’s not a date, he tells himself. It’s really not. 

But you mentioned waffles. And your voice had been tired but warm when you said it. And he hadn’t wanted to leave yet.

So here he is. Not skipping, because he’s got some dignity, but definitely walking with a little too much bounce for someone who found out he’s being reverse-engineered into a murder bot a little over an hour ago.

The city’s quieter than it ever gets during daylight, the kind of hush that only exists in the space between the last bar closing and the first train running. A low mist clings to the ground, curling around traffic lights and benches and empty newsstands. It’s eerie, maybe, but not unfriendly. Like the city’s holding its breath right along with him.

Phainon doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be feeling. Dread, maybe. Paranoia. Existential terror. But instead, all he feels is this weightless hum in his chest, the kind that makes you walk a little taller, swing your arms a little looser. The kind that makes you forget you’re still half in your gear and probably look completely insane.

You glance over at him as you cross the street, the corner of your mouth twitching like you’re trying not to smile. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Staring at me.”

Phainon stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk. “I’m not,” he says, too quickly.

“You are,” you say, not unkindly. “Like I’m going to vanish or something.”

Phainon rubs the back of his neck, grateful for the relative darkness. “Well. I mean. You did break into a lab by yourself, so I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Okay, fair,” you concede, nudging him lightly with your elbow. “Still. You’ve got that face on. The one that makes me feel like I’ve got, like, a mysterious smear of radioactive ink on my forehead.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You do have a face,” you say. “That’s the problem now, remember?”

Phainon huffs out a laugh and looks away, suddenly all too aware of the morning air on his skin, of the fact that he’s not wearing his mask, of how easy it is to joke with you. He’s not sure what scares him more: being turned into a weapon, or feeling like this.

You walk in comfortable silence for a block or two, hands tucked into your sleeves, your breath fogging slightly in the chill. The sky is bruising lavender and gold now, the edges of dawn beginning to soften everything.

Phainon chances a glance at you. You’re watching the sky change colour like it’s a magic trick only you know the secret to, your expression soft and unreadable. There’s a crease between your brows, faint, but it smooths a little when a breeze picks up and rustles your hair. You look tired, not just from the lack of sleep, but from the kind of exhaustion that sinks into a person when they’ve seen too much, done too much, but still can’t stop moving.

The diner sign glows into view at the end of the street—warm yellow and flickering red, letters half-burnt out so it reads INE R & GILL if you squint. There’s a figure leaning against the counter inside, wiping down the same spot with a rag that’s probably older than both of you, and the place smells faintly of grease and syrup.

You pause in front of the glass door, one hand on the handle. “This place okay?”

“It’s perfect,” Phainon says before he can stop himself.

You smile and push open the door. The bell on top jingles, and the waitress glances up from the far end of the counter. She gives you both a once-over, raises a tired brow at Phainon’s boots and long sleeves, and gestures to a booth without asking questions. That’s the nice thing about New Okhema City; nobody cares too much.

You slide into a booth with a contented sigh. Phainon sits across from you, knees knocking against the underside of the table. The vinyl squeaks under his weight, and the Formica is sticky, but he doesn’t care. His hands feel strangely clean without gloves. The menu sticks to his fingers when he flips it open.

You don’t even bother looking at yours. “Waffles, scrambled eggs, hash browns. Extra syrup.”

“That specific, huh?” Phainon says.

You shrug. “Gotta know your diner defaults.”

The waitress arrives with two glasses of water and a notepad. “You kids look like you’ve been up all night,” she says, though she can’t be more than a few years older than you and Phainon.

“We have,” you say sleepily, “but we cracked a supervillain conspiracy, so it was worth it.”

The waitress doesn’t blink. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” you say, and Phainon nods too, grateful. She leaves without another word.

Silence stretches between you again, but it’s easy now, filled with warmth. The sky outside shifts more boldly into gold and peach, casting long shadows against the window. Phainon leans back into the booth and lets himself exhale slowly, deeply.

Your foot brushes against his under the table. He freezes. You don’t move it.

He looks up, and your eyes meet his over the rim of your water glass. There’s something quiet there, soft around the edges—exhaustion, sure, but something else too. A kind of trust he’s not sure he deserves. (Still, it’s there.)

Phainon thinks about how this shouldn’t be possible. How the night started with fear and screaming and blueprints of his body, and somehow ended with this booth, this silence, this person across from him.

[18:04] Detective Brain: Spidey-lookalike broke into storage depot by Kephale Plaza. I’m already on scene. It’s not you, right?

[18:05] Detective Brain: Phainon. Please respond.

Phainon is already out the window by the time your second text comes through, barely bothering to latch it behind him. His fingers fumble for the web shooter at his wrist, and his heart is a fist hammering against his ribs. He almost misses the first jump—lands hard on the ledge and has to steady himself with a rough palm against brick.

He doesn’t even suit up properly. His gloves are half-fastened, the zipper of his suit stuck one-fourths of the way up his spine, but there’s no time to care. Phainon swings hard across the city’s mid-rises, momentum jerking through his shoulders, his aim slightly off with each launch. It doesn’t matter. He’ll take a bruised wrist if it gets him to Kephale Plaza thirty seconds faster.

Kephale Plaza is a glass-and-steel monstrosity, flanked by wide loading docks and a security perimeter that no longer seems to matter. Phainon can hear the distant thrum of police radios as he swings into the industrial district, following the echo of sirens. Squad cars line the street outside the storage depot, lights flashing in fractured red and blue across the cracked pavement. Officers are forming a perimeter, but there’s no crowd. They’re keeping it quiet.

He lands on the roof of an adjacent building, crouched low as his eyes sweep the scene. 

He finds you posted just outside the warehouse’s side entrance, pacing like you’re trying not to burst out of your own skin. Your bulletproof vest is cinched tight, and your standard issue sidearm is still holstered—but your fingers are twitching near it, like you’re weighing every possible outcome of the past ten minutes. Your hair’s tied back, but loose strands stick to your face from the sweat already clinging to your skin. He’s never seen you look so still and restless all at once.

He leaps down from the rooftop, landing in a crouch just behind a darkened patrol vehicle. No one sees him yet. He keeps to the shadows as he makes his war towards you.

The second you hear the shuffle of his boots, you whip around—and relax just as fast.

“Jesus,” you exhale, taking a step forward. “Okay. Okay, thank God. I wasn’t sure you’d even seen the message.”

“I left the second I did,” Phainon assures. “What’s the situation?”

Your lips tighten, and you turn, nodding for him to follow you a few paces away from the rest of the officers. Behind you, the front entrance to the warehouse stands yawning and dark, a single loading dock shutter half-raised.

“It showed up fifteen minutes ago,” you say, pulling out your phone and flicking to the security cam footage. You angle the screen towards him. “Took out the motion sensors, and walked in through a window on the north side. No sign of forced entry—it knew exactly where to go.”

The footage is grainy, flickering, but the figure is unmistakable.

It moves like him. Too much like him. In the footage, the figure slinks down the hallway with the same kind of gait Phainon sees in himself. Every footfall, every pause, every angle of entry—it’s like watching him pace through a mirror.

Only this version is sleeker, meaner. Its limbs are thicker with muscle plating, and its suit—if you could even call it that—is matte-black with streaks of purple circuitry flashing along the ribs and spine. There’s no emblem, no mask markings, just a blank, silver faceplate that reflects the ceiling lights like a shuttered camera lens. One blink and it’s gone, vanishing into the blind spots of the camera feed like it knows exactly where every pixel falls.

Phainon swears under his breath. “They built it,” he mutters. “That’s Flame Reaver.”

You glance up. “You sure?”

He nods. He’s gone through your stolen documents so many times that it feels like they’ve been branded into his skull. “Positive. Same proportions, same gait. But it’s not scanning the building. It’s buying time.”

“For what?”

Phainon doesn’t answer at first. He’s too focused on the still-looping footage. The moment the prototype slips out of view, he sees it—a flicker of something. It wasn’t raiding. It wasn’t looking for intel. It walked into that depot like it had a schedule to keep.

The realisation hits him like a slap to the sternum.

“Wait,” he says sharply. “Where’s your radio?”

You blink. “What?”

“Your radio,” he repeats, scanning your hip and vest and frowning when he sees the wire coiled but your earpiece missing. “You always keep it on.”

“I took it out for a second. There was interference on the line.”

“No.” Phainon turns, scanning the scene again with a new sharpness in his eyes. “No, that’s wrong. This—this whole thing—it’s not a distraction. This is the distraction.”

“What are you—”

His head whips around, eyes scanning the perimeter. You were just here, right beside him, one step behind. Your breath was fogging the air. You were talking.

Now you’re gone.

Phainon’s heart lurches.

“Where is she?” he hisses aloud, and suddenly he’s on the move—scrambling up onto the nearest shipping crate, trying to get height, trying to see. The precinct line’s holding firm around the building. There’s no breach. No one has come or gone.

Except you. Except whoever—or whatever—came for you.

He swings to the rooftop in seconds, breath tight in his lungs, wind clawing past his ears. His eyes sweep the blocks below in sharp, jerking passes—alley to alley, rooftop to ground, looking for anything that feels off.

On the north side, nestled between two disused factories and a rusted chain-link fence, an unmarked van idles in a narrow alley, almost hidden in the dip of a service road. Its brake lights pulse once, too soft to draw attention, but deliberate. A second later, the engine stutters and dies. The door clicks shut. Phainon stills.

From this height, the sounds of the city thin into a muffled hush: sirens echoing somewhere far behind him, police radios buzzing with disjointed chatter. But that alley, that van—it’s too smooth, too clean. There’s no urgency to it, no panic. Just the slow, mechanical precision of something following protocol.

A figure steps away from the van, heading down a side street without looking back. Their stride is steady. Familiar.

Phainon freezes.

It looks like you: the same jacket, same utility belt, even the soft sway of your hair against your collarbone. Your badge glints faintly under the streetlight—your badge. Not a replica.

Except it’s wrong. You’re not there.

You wouldn’t leave the perimeter without backup, wouldn’t ditch your squad without a word, or abandon the very scene that had triggered every instinct in your body just ten minutes ago. At least, not without telling him.

And whoever—or whatever—this is, it’s walking away like it knows the exact timing window it’s working with. Like it wants him to follow.

“They’re splitting us up,” Phainon breathes, the words ripping themselves from his throat. Suddenly, the air feels thinner, sharper. His lungs burn.

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think before launching himself off the rooftop with a grunt, webline snapping out, slicing through the fog-damp air. He swings low, barely clearing a lamppost, and lands in a crouch beside the van. He can smell petrol, faintly.

Phainon yanks the door open. It’s empty—no driver, or equipment. Just the sharp, sterile scent of plastic and ozone. It’s a burner vehicle, then. One they didn’t plan on keeping.

“Damn it,” Phainon curses under his breath. He spins on his heel, already moving—until he hears a faint crackle. The buzz of a police radio. Your police radio.

He follows the sound, weaving between crates and dumpsters until he skids to a stop at the mouth of the alley, and finds your comm unit on the ground. One of the earbuds still dangles loosely from the coil, blinking a faint blue every few seconds. The rest of the radio is scuffed; not broken, just discarded deliberately, placed just far enough from the van to suggest you followed something willingly—until it was too late.

A boot scuff mars the concrete nearby. There is another drag mark next to—a toe, maybe. Someone shifted. Or struggled. Phainon crouches low, brushing his fingers across the ground. His mind races through probabilities, scenarios. None of them are good.

It wasn’t just a prototype in the warehouse. That was the shell, a puppet to get the cops talking, to trigger an investigation. Something visible, something obvious. 

But this was the play: lure him in with the decoy, use it to lock the precinct’s attention, then send the real threat to steal what they really needed—you.

Phainon grits his teeth as he stares down at your radio. His mind flashes to the schematics you’d shown him on your wall. Neural mimicry, behavioural mirroring, photo-accurate masking. It wasn’t a bluff. They had footage, voice samples, enough to build a close-range approximation of him. They’d studied him down to the limp in his left knee.

Of course they had enough on you. You were the officer who was most often assigned with the task of tracking him down, after all.

He thinks of your laugh; the way you tilt your head when you’re about to argue; the furrow in your brows when you’re thinking too deeply. If they’ve copied that—you—down to the way your voice hitches when you say his name—

His stomach flips.

“They took her,” he says aloud, more to steady himself than anything else. “They took her.”

Phainon’s fingers twitch, curling tight into fists. His web shooters press firm against his wrists. His gloves are still half-fastened. He fixes them now, fastens every strap, zips his suit the rest of the way up roughly. The breath in his chest is shallow and burning, but his hands are steady. 

He swings back up to the rooftop, lands in a three-point crouch, and bolts across the ledge without a second thought. Every muscle in his body knows where he’s going: the old R&D site, the remnants of what used to be the government-sanctioned Theoros Labs.

It’s a twenty-minute drive through the industrial corridor to get there. He’ll make it in seven.

Every swing feels sharper now, each launch of webbing tighter, more exact. The buildings blur past him, and his breath comes in hard, rhythmic exhales. He can’t afford to be wrong. Can’t afford a detour. The further they pull you away, the less chance he has of reaching you before whatever they built decides it doesn’t need you alive.

Phainon lands on a rooftop, skids into a roll, fires another web and propels him back into the air. Hold on, he thinks. Please, just hold on.

The air near Theoros Labs smells like ozone and old metal.

Phainon lands hard on the broken rooftop of a utility shed just outside the main building. It’s darker here than it should be. The outer perimeter lights have all been shut off, either manually or by remote override. Only a few flickering emergency bulbs remain, casting a jaundiced glow over the facility’s skeletal frame. Ivy creeps up the cracked walls, half-swallowing faded corporate logos and biohazard signs. The chain-link fencing has been torn down in places and rusted through in others. 

It’s too quiet.

He moves carefully, sticking close to the shadows as he approaches the main entrance—what’s left of it. The glass doors have been forced open, one of them dangling from its hinges. Inside, the lobby lies still and cold, floor tiles coated in dust. But someone’s been through recently. Fresh boot prints disturb the grime, overlapping in frantic patterns. You were here. He follows your footprints past collapsed hallways and rusted biohazard doors. Most of the rooms are stripped—just empty labs and decaying workstations—but the deeper he gets, the cleaner it becomes. Dust thins. Wires appear. Lights flicker to life as he passes.

They’ve reactivated the lower level. Phainon descends a wide staircase lined with old safety tape. The sub-basement has power. Soft white fluorescents hum overhead. The floor is concrete, sealed and buffed, with clean drag marks across it. The walls are lined with black server towers, cords feeding into sealed doors.

Phainon stops mid-step; there’s a tingle in the back of his neck. Someone else is here, too. His muscles go taut, fingers curling half-ready near his web shooters.

“Ah, Mr. Spider-Man,” a voice drawls, drawing out the vowels. “Or should I say… Phainon?”

There’s a hiss behind one of the sealed doors to the left. A vent releases a thin ribbon of steam.

“Don’t be shy. You’ve already made it farther than most,” the voice says, and this time, it’s accompanied by footsteps echoing against the polished concrete, slow and confident. “I imagine you have questions. That’s good. I admire curiosity. It’s a very human trait.”

The man who steps into view is tall, lean, draped in a sleep lab coat far too pristine for a place like this. His shoulder-length hair is slicked back, and most of his face is covered by a visor. His ID badge is clipped to his chest, name and clearance codes etched in a crisp black print.

LYCURGUS – Division Lead, Neuroadaptive Intellitron Systems.

Lycurgus smiles like he’s greeting an old colleague. “This facility was never truly abandoned, you know. That was just a convenient myth. Theoros was… restructured. Privatised. Reoriented towards more ambitious pursuits.” He gestures to the space around him. “Welcome to our prototype cradle. Or, as we researchers like to call it, Stage Zero of Irontomb.”

Phainon’s voice is low, sharp. “Where is she?”

“Your detective, yes?” Lycurgus says. “She is safe. Unharmed, though mildly sedated. She’s being prepped for mapping. It’s better if she doesn’t wake up mid-scan—the sensory feedback can be unpleasant.”

Phainon steps forward. “You’re going to let her go. Now.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” Lycurgus tilts his head. “She’s far too important. As are you.”

He moves towards a glass-paneled observation window. Behind it, a dark chamber pulses with slow, blue strobe lighting. Machines hiss softly within. Something looms in the shadows—taller than a man, hunched forward, hooked into a loading rig like a sleeping animal.

“I know what you think we’re doing here,” Lycurgus continues. “Mass production. Automation. Violence. And, to be fair, yes—we are building weapons. But not just weapons. We’re building evolution.”

“You’re building copies,” Phainon corrects.

Lycurgus lets out a chuckle, quiet and indulgent. “Flame Reaver was a crude iteration. Incomplete, too reliant on mimicry. It served its purpose—chased its prey, gathered its data, misled your little precinct. But Irontomb… Irontomb will do more than chase. It will predict, integrate, override, think.”

He turns back to Phainon. The placid smile fades, replaced with something hungrier.

“We’ve spent years reverse-engineering your every decision. Every rooftop sprint. Every moment of hesitation. Every kill you didn’t make. We mapped your instincts, modeled your reflex latency, simulated the split-second calculations behind your webbing patterns. All of it.”

He taps the side of his own head. “But it wasn’t enough. Something was missing. Something the data couldn’t replicate.”

“You mean her.”

“Yes.” Lycurgus’ smile returns, tight and reverent. “Your control variable. Your compass. We needed to understand how a creature like you formed attachments, what altered your judgement. What humanised you.”

Phainon’s voice is a growl. “She’s not a variable.”

“She’s your pivot, Spider-Man. The reason your risk matrix fluctuates. The reason you pause before you strike. She made you less efficient, and, therefore, more valuable. Which is why we modeled her too. Her responses, her patterns, her tone modulation, her biometric data when she’s afraid. It’s poetic, really. We used her to finish the algorithm that began with you. The perfect balance of speed and restraint.”

The lights behind the glass pulse brighter. The figure in the chamber stirs. It’s not the Flame Reaver. It’s something else.

Its silhouette is bulkier than his, but it looks wrong. It has slender limbs with plated joints; a split mask—half red, half mirrored black; a narrow torso fitted with impact dispersal panels. Something that looks like a spine runs down its back, glowing faintly green. Phainon doesn’t recognise the material, but he can feel the heat rolling off it through the glass.

“It’s a neural sync model,” Lycurgus says, not even trying to hide his pride, “coded from your reflexes and her empathy thresholds. It’s capable of piloting independently or under network command. It doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t panic. And, most importantly, it doesn’t forget.”

Phainon’s heart hammers. His blood feels like it’s gone cold. “You’re trying to make a Spider-Man that doesn’t need a person inside.”

Lycurgus meets his eyes. “Exactly.”

The machine twitches, then steps forward. Its footfalls are silent. Too smooth.

“You two were only ever reference material,” Lycurgus intones. “And now that the template’s complete—well. All we need are the final scans.”

“Where is she? Where is she?” 

It’s all Phainon can do to stop himself from ripping Lycurgus’ throat out. The scientist merely adjusts the sleeve of his lab coat, as if the demand were a mild inconvenience.

“She’s nearby,” he says coolly. “Lower containment. Cell B-4, off the neural calibration wing. You won’t get far without triggering lockdown, of course. And even if you do—by the time you reach her, Irontomb will already be online.”

Behind the glass, the machine lifts its head. The sound it makes isn’t mechanical. It’s worse—soft, distorted, like the playback of a familiar voice through cracked speakers. It twitches once, then again, shoulders rolling into a combat stance eerily like his own.

Phainon doesn’t wait. He fires a webline directly at Lycurgus and yanks. The man stumbles, but Phainon slams him against the server wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Wires clatter. A tower crashes sideways.

Lycurgus laughs, even as Phainon pins him in place. “You think you’re here to save her,” he says, breathless, “but you’re too late. She’s already part of it.”

“I swear to God—” Phainon hisses, pressing the heel of his palm to Lycurgus’ throat. “I swear to God, if you touched her—”

“I didn’t have to,” the man croaks. “She volunteered. Not knowingly, of course. But those scans she took from our systems? They included a compressed tracer file. As soon as she opened them, our systems opened her. The sync began the moment she pieced it together. Everything she knows—tactical behaviour, voice modulation, interrogation strategy—it’s all feeding the AI as we speak.”

“You fed off of us.” Phainon’s grip tightens. Lycurgus grunts.

“Yes,” the scientist says. “And you should be proud. Irontomb won’t just replicate your choices—it will refine them, strip away all the guilt, the softness. It will be cleaner. Smarter. Perfect.”

Something shudders behind the glass. The observation lights dim.

A low thrum starts up from behind the glass, like a heartbeat filtered through static. The strobe pulses once, then again, casting the chamber in a deep, electric violet. Inside, Irontomb lifts its hand with unsettling grace and slowly curls its fingers into a fist. The joints click into place with too much precision. A webline ejects—thin, metallic, laced with a crackle of electric current—and shoots into the rafters. It latches onto the ceiling brace, and just like that, the chamber is empty.

The reinforced door behind Phainon slams open with a hydraulic hiss. He whirls around. Lycurgus barely has time to flinch before Phainon’s hand closes around his collar and hurls him to the ground. The scientist crashes into the wall beside a rack of servers, skull cracking against plastic. A second later, the emergency klaxons explode to life, screaming overhead in jagged bursts.

CONTAINMENT BREACH. HALL A-7. PRIORITY UNIT ACTIVATED.

Red warning lights flare to life, pulsing in harsh rhythm. The sterile corridor floods with shadow and noise. Phainon bolts.

There’s no time to think—he fires a webline into the open mouth of the elevator shaft and dives. Wind roars past his ears. He drops three floors in seconds, catches himself on a rusted support beam, and slams down onto the concrete sublevel with a bone-jarring thud. His boots hit the ground hard enough to rattle the pipes overhead.

The lower corridors are not like the rest of the facility. There’s no dust, no decay. These halls are clean, too clean—like the world above was only a façade. Bright, artificial light hums from the ceiling. Every footstep echoes.

He sprints forward, ducking under support beams and sliding past corners. NEURAL CALIBRATION →, the wall tells him. He follows the signs, pulse thundering. Every flicker of motion at the edge of his vision makes him tense. Every blinking light feels like a red eye watching.

Phainon skids to a halt in front of a door labelled Cell B-4.

The door is solid, made of reinforced steel with a flat-panel biometric reader. There’s no handle, or keypad. Phainon swears. “Come on, come on—”

From the other side, something shifts. He hears a voice, muffled and strained. “...Phainon?”

He chokes on relief. “I’m here.”

You’re alive.

He scrambles to his web shooter, fingers flying over the dial. He adjusts the pressure valve, toggles it to maximum discharge, and fires at the scanner from point-blank range. The panel erupts in sparks. Circuits shriek. The door eases open, exhaling sterile, recycled air into the hallway.

You’re inside, strapped to a containment recliner, limbs limp but intact. Wires trail from your temples, your clavicle, your pulse points. A monitor nearby is still running diagnostics—waveforms still climbing and falling in time with your heart. Your eyes crack open, bleary, and your head lolls to the side.

“Hi,” you whisper, voice thin as gauze.

“Hi, yourself,” Phainon says, crossing the room with long strides. His voice breaks.

His hands go straight to the leads, fingers trembling as he tears them free. Adhesive snaps off skin. Electrodes clatter to the floor. He moves gently, cradling your jaw to keep your head upright as he removes the final lead from behind your ear.

He lifts you from the chair. Your body sags against his chest, legs folding beneath you. You groan softly as your feet try to hold your weight, but he doesn’t let them. He tightens his grip until you’re fully anchored against him. You smell like static and sedation. Like cold metal and something scorched.

“Irontomb,” you breath, half-slurred. “It’s awake. It… used me. Ran simulations. My voice. My—”

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know. We’re getting out of here.”

You lean heavier into him with every step he takes away from the chair. Your breathing is uneven, shallow. But Phainon can tell you’re coming back—your pulse steadying, your fingers twitching where they rest near his collar. He wants nothing more than to get you out, to break every wall between here and the surface, to make you forget this place ever existed.

But the walls hum. The lights tremble. He’s not fast enough. The reinforced door behind  him explodes inward.

Irontomb barrels through in a burst of silver and red. The strobe overhead flickers with the force of its entry, casting the scene in freeze-frame shadows. It doesn’t look like a machine as it charges. Phainon spins, turning his back to the blast to shield you. Debris pelts his shoulder as the room shakes. Irontomb stops, silent and still, in the doorway. Its mirrored mask splits slightly, revealing a narrow gleam of green light that pulses in rhythm with the lithium core humming somewhere deep inside it.

The voice it speaks with is your own.

“Phainon.”

The blood drains from his face.

You stir weakly in his arms. “That’s not—that’s not me—”

“I know,” he whispers.

It tilts its head, mimicking the motion exactly. “You hesitate at a 3.2% deviation rate when she’s within ten feet. Your aim skews left. Your heart rate spikes.”

Phainon doesn’t respond. He adjusts his grip around your waist, gently easing you towards the floor behind him.

“You always protect the variable, even when the variable is hunting you down,” Irontomb says. “That makes you predictable.”

Phainon doesn’t wait for it to move. He fires. A blast of webbing snaps towards the machine’s legs—but it dodges, not quickly or instinctively, but perfectly. It anticipates his angle, catches the web in midair with one mechanical hand, and yanks hard.

Phainon is ripped forward off his feet and slammed into the wall hard enough to fracture plaster. He recovers fast, flipping up and sticking to the ceiling. His shoulder throbs. The moment Irontomb lunges again, he launches, meeting it midair. They clash in a whirl of webbing, steel, and bone. Irontomb fights like it’s studied him for years—and it has. It parries his kicks, reads the tension in his arms before he swings. It knows where he’ll move before he does.

Every strike Phainon throws is met with a calculated block, every dodge answered with a counter-blow. The machine is faster. Stronger. But not desperate—and Phainon is desperate.

“The server room!” you shout, and Phainon sees you staggering up to your feet, still valiantly trying to fight whatever they injected into your bloodstream. “Take it to the server room! Follow me!”

Phainon doesn’t hesitate. He hears your voice—unsteady, but clear—and that’s all he needs. He spins midair, flips back onto the ceiling, and fires a pair of quick weblines towards Irontomb’s shoulders. They stick, just barely. The machine lunges to rip them off, but Phainon yanks hard, using the momentum to slam Irontomb face-first into the far wall with a screech of metal on metal. The moment the machine hits, Phainon’s already moving.

“Go!” you shout again, breath ragged. “Don’t fight it here—they control the lithium core from the server room!”

Phainon tears towards you, lands beside you, and sweeps an arm around your waist to stabilise you just as you start to buckle. Your skin’s cold with effort, sweat sheening your forehead, but your grip on his suit is firm. 

“Can you run?” he pants.

“Can you carry me?”

He grins through bloodied teeth. “Always.”

He hooks one arm under your legs and lifts you effortlessly, pivoting towards the corridor just as Irontomb peels itself from the wall. The lights in the hallway ahead flash red with the alarm, casting everything in pulses of warning. Phainon doesn’t look back. He runs.

You clutch at his shoulder as he barrels down the corridor, webbing the corners ahead of him to pivot faster. Irontomb’s footsteps are thunder behind you—precise, mechanical, relentless. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t pant. It just follows, its gait perfectly even as it absorbs every new piece of data from your movement, your trajectory, your speed.

“It’s learning again,” you murmur.

Phainon grits his teeth. “Tell me where to go.”

“Left!” you gasp, pointing weakly down the branching corridor as you cling to his shoulder. “The blueprints said the server room was by the freight lift, and I—I stole Lycurgus’ key card before he sedated me—”

Phainon veers sharply, feet sliding for purchase on the slick floor as he swings you into the left hallway. Behind him, Irontomb adjusts its trajectory instantly, recalibrating mid-chase, its movements eerily silent save for the low whir of its servos and the electric buzz of its core. Every footstep lands with surgical precision, not wasting an ounce of energy.

He finds the lift shaft up ahead, the gate already torn off its hinges—someone had passed through here in a hurry. Phainon doesn’t stop running. He fires a webline to the upper scaffolding and swings both of you through the open shaft.

The moment you’re both airborne, Irontomb enters the shaft behind you. You hear it climbing. It doesn’t need webbing. It’s fast, powerful, climbing straight up the walls like a spider. A cold burst of static prickles the back of your neck as you look over Phainon’s shoulder and see its split-face mask glowing faintly with that same green hum pulsing in time with your own heartbeat.

“Don’t look down,” Phainon mutters through clenched teeth.

“You mean don’t look up,” you reply, voice tight.

He doesn’t argue. Two more floors. That’s all you need.

Phainon angles towards the next level’s opening, yanks hard on the web, and swings both of you clean through it. You hit the ground hard, momentum rolling you both across the floor in a rough tumble. He absorbs most of the impact—shoulder first, then hip—but keeps you tucked in his arms the whole way.

The server room’s door looms ahead, sealed with thick glass and reinforced by a biometric panel.

“Can you override it?” he asks, already placing you down on your feet.

You stagger once, then nod. “I—I can try.”

Phainon presses a palm to your lower back, steadying you as you stumble towards the wall-mounted keypad. You swipe your stolen access card—Lycurgus’ clearance still hot in the system—and slam your hand against the override scanner. It flashes yellow, then green.

The second the server room door hisses open, Phainon knows it’s wrong. The air is too clean, too still, not like a hospital, but lifeless, like the room itself doesn’t care if he walks in or burns alive. Server towers stretch in columns across the floor, blinking. The lights aren’t just white, they’re clinical, buzzing just above his pain threshold. Everything smells like copper and static and scorched plastic.

At the far end, housed behind reinforced glass, is the core. It pulses, like a heartbeat, except it’s not alive. It’s lithium, it’s electricity, it’s something that was never supposed to breathe—but it is, somehow.

He doesn’t like it.

He crosses the threshold, half-dragging you with him. You’re a weight he doesn’t mind carrying—you’re grounding, real, a reminder that not everything in this godforsaken place is synthetic or made in a lab.

“I’ll buy us a minute,” he mutters.

You don’t respond. You’re already gone—mentally, physically—moving with purpose even though you can barely stay on your feet. He wants to help you, wants to make you sit down, but he doesn’t. You’ve always been like this: stubborn, focused, razor-sharp under pressure. He admires it even when it scares him.

He stations himself at the door, arms braced and knees bent. His ribs hurt. His head’s still ringing from the last slam against the wall. But adrenaline is louder than pain.

The wall explodes. He hears it before he sees it—the thrum of Irontomb’s feet, the deep thunk-thunk-thunk of heavy footsteps.

“Phainon,” it says again, in your voice. “You hesitate at a 3.2% deviation rate when she’s—”

“You said that already, dipshit,” Phainon snarls, hurling himself forward.

He slams into Irontomb. The impact jars through every vertebra in his spine, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t give it time to recalibrate. His shoulder clips its chest hard enough to knock them both off balance, and they go crashing through a row of server towers in a spray of sparks and shattering plex.

Irontomb hits the floor, skidding, its limbs flailing for a fraction of a second. Phainon’s already on it, knee to the chestplate, webbing its arm to the ceiling in a single fluid movement.

“You don’t get to use her voice,” he spits, voice hoarse, hands shaking as he fires again. Webs stick to its mask, its joints, anything he can reach. “You don’t get to be her.”

Irontomb doesn’t flinch. Its head tilts again, that creepy mimicry sparking rage like gasoline in his chest.

“She is a variable,” it says, still in your voice. “All decisions lead back to her. All risk converges.”

He grits his teeth. “Shut the fuck up.”

It wrenches its arm free from the ceiling and drives a knee into his ribs. Something cracks—he doesn’t have time to find out what. The air is knocked out of him, but he rolls, using the momentum to web-sling up to the overhead rigging.

He fires a line down, yanking hard. Metal groans, and a rack of exposed conduit tears free, crashing down onto Irontomb’s legs. The machine stumbles, crushed under the weight for a beat too long. Enough for Phainon to dive.

He hits it again, fists slamming into metal, fury blinding him. He doesn’t have a plan anymore, doesn’t need one. He just needs to keep it away from you. Even as he fights, he hears the beep of the console across the room, feels the glow of the core intensify.

You’re doing it. You’re actually doing it. Irontomb knows.

It shoves him back with unnatural strength. Phainon hits the wall hard enough to dent the steel. Before he can stand, it’s already halfway across the room, limbs unfurling, shoulder joints clicking, webline primed to fire—

“No,” Phainon croaks. He pushes himself up, panting, every inch of him burning, and fires. Web meets Irontomb’s leg. The pull is immediate. But instead of resisting, he yanks himself towards it—into it—slamming shoulder-first into the side of its neck just as it raises an arm to fire at you.

They crash to the floor, grappling, fists slamming into one another like machines. Except Phainon isn’t one. His body gives, bruises, bleeds. Irontomb’s doesn’t.

“Your biology is compromised,” it says. “You are inefficient, slower, in pain. The variable will not survive long without augmentation.”

“You’re not her,” he spits. “You don’t even sound like her.”

Out of the corner of his eye—through the haze of pain—he sees you rise to your feet, the console spitting warnings in every direction. Your hands hover over the control screen. One more step, one more command—

The core behind the glass begins to scream, not audibly, not to the ears, but inside his skull. Irontomb shudders beneath him. Its limbs jerk erratically, the green glow from its spine flickering. Sparks burst from the plates along its back.

You did it.

Phainon throws himself back just as Irontomb seizes violently, crashing to the floor, limbs twitching. Its mask fractures. Smoke pours from the base of its spine as the lithium core begins to destabilise.

He doesn’t exhale until the lights stop flickering. He’s already moving before the sound fades completely, his muscles sluggish, overworked, body bruised—but moving. His chest is burning. His lungs taste like copper and ozone. His ribs feel cracked. But none of it matters.

You’re still on your knees, hunched over the console, and for one horrifying second, you’re not moving.

“Hey.” He drops down beside you fast. “Hey—hey. You good? Talk to me.”

Your head lolls towards him, eyes glassy with exhaustion but alert. You nod and he catches your weight as you say sideways into his shoulder.

“I’m here,” you say, voice like sandpaper. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, you are.”

He pulls off his mask and folds one arm around your back and steadies you against him, his gloved hand cradling the back of your neck, just to prove you’re really here. Still warm. Still breathing. Your heart thuds weakly through your shirt when he presses his other hand to your chest, just fast enough to reassure him that the nightmare hasn’t reset.

You lean into him more fully, your head tucked under his jaw, like you’re afraid to look at the room behind you. Good. You shouldn’t have to. He’ll look for both of you.

The servers are smoking. Irontomb is a heap of metal now, sparking quietly beside the remains of a shattered cabinet. One of its hands is still twitching—reflex, probably. Not real. Not alive.

Still, Phainon keeps you close.

You shift, barely enough to get your mouth near his collarbone. “You okay?”

Phainon lets out something halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Gonna need twelve years of physical therapy. Minimum.”

Your breath catches on a tired laugh. It sounds like a miracle.

“You look like hell,” you murmur, slurring a little now, like the adrenaline’s finally wearing off.

“Yeah, well,” he mutters, pressing his forehead to yours. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

It’s three in the morning, and the sky is the colour of soot.

The city below doesn’t sleep so much as it holds its breath. The clamour of traffic has thinned to a distant hush, streetlamps stutter, and a single train rumbles across a bridge miles away. Sirens have long gone quiet. No engines scream. No horns beg for way. The night is still, but not gentle.

It’s a stillness born of aftermath—sharp-edged and hollow, as if the concrete itself remembers what happened.

Phainon hangs upside down from a rusting fire escape three storeys above your apartment window, legs hooked neatly over a bar that groans faintly under his weight. He’s perfectly still, suspended in gravity’s indifferent hold, his fingers hanging loose above the cracked sidewalk below.

This is how he thinks best lately: inverted, half a world away from the one that keeps asking him to play hero. The metal is cold through his suit. The air smells like dust.

He’s grown used to these late hours. He’s begun to need them.

After Lycurgus vanished off the grid, escaping into whatever black-market pipelines recycles men like him—scientists with messiah complexes and fingerprints scrubbed clean—Phainon finds his pulse only slows in those long hours between dawn and dusk.

He watches your window. It’s open again, just slightly. It always is now. He’s never asked you why.

The official line is a “biochemical systems breach.” It’s what the public got. But the real reports—classified, sealed, redacted in wide black strokes—told a different story. Theoros Labs didn’t just go rogue; they were funded, sponsored, protected. There was infrastructure behind Irontomb, names buried in layers of clearance, strings running all the way up into the gut of the government. Someone had authorised the prototypes. Someone had approved neural mapping. Someone had known what they were doing.

You’ve testified three times already. You come home each time stiff-backed and silent, eyes rimmed in exhaustion, your voice quieter than usual like you’re still somewhere inside the sterile halls of the oversight committee. You never tell him the details, but you don’t have to. He’s seen the files. He’s seen it in person. He knows what Irontomb made of your voice, how it pitched your laugh, how it whispered his name. He knows what it did to you.

You both have nightmares now.

Sometimes it’s Irontomb itself, eyes burning green behind a mirrored face, moving too perfectly to be real. Sometimes, it’s worse: it’s you, only not. It’s him, only cold. Versions of yourselves that weren’t forged in kindness or fear, but in numbers and algorithms, in prediction models and nerve signal scans. He wakes choking, palms clenched, sweat cold on his back.

That’s when he comes to you, climbing through the window, silent and unmasked. You never greet him. You just shift in bed, roll slightly toward the wall, and make room beneath the blanket without opening your eyes. Some nights he lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. Others, he faces you. Sometimes your fingers find each other under the sheets and tangle in that uncertain, half-asleep way that makes the silence easier to bear.

Phainon stares at your open window, at the way the curtain ghosts inward on the faintest breeze. The world looks soft from up here, but his world is down there, just beyond the windowsill.

He drops from the fire escape without a sound.

The thud of his landing on the balcony is soft. His boots press against the worn stone for half a second before he steps toward your window, one gloved hand brushing the glass as he ducks inside.

Your apartment is dim, lit only by the sleepy spill of orange streetlight filtering through the curtains. The air is warmer here, touched with the faint smell of cinnamon and coffee roast, and the remnants of detergent in your sheets.

You’re curled up under the blanket, spine facing him, shoulders rising and falling in that slow rhythm he’s memorised. He doesn’t know if you’re asleep or pretending. It doesn’t matter. You always know when he’s here. You always leave the window cracked just enough.

He toes off his boots quietly, then strips off the top half of his suit, the fabric sticking to sweat-damp skin. His body aches with something deeper than bruises, like fatigue. But it fades the moment he lowers himself into the mattress behind you.

(He’s in love with you, he’s pretty sure.)

“Do you want to date me?”

The question startles Phainon so much he almost drops the wire he’s threading back into place, and nearly slides off the metal railing altogether. He catches himself with a clatter, boots locking tighter to the beam, arms splayed for balance.

“...Sorry, what?” he calls down.

You’re standing several feet below him, arms crossed, watching him with an unreadable expression—equal parts brave and vulnerable. You don’t repeat the question. You just lift your chin a little, eyes steady.

Phainon blinks at you from his upside-down perch, hair hanging towards the concrete, the city stretching behind him. He’s in his suit, sleeves rolled up, mask bunched around his neck, grease on one knuckle, a thin wire looped loosely around his fingers. The early evening air is warm, golden light pooling along the skyline.

“You—you mean date-date?” he asks dumbly, like there’s another kind.

You nod once, not smiling. “Yeah. Date-date.”

Phainon stares at you, the wire still slack in his fingers. The sunlight’s catching on the edge of your cheekbone, painting it gold. You look so certain, so calm, like you haven’t just thrown his entire nervous system into a tailspin. 

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then he scrubs a hand over his face, smearing a bit of grease across his jawline. “Okay. That’s—just to be clear, you’re asking me if I want to date you. Like, go on dates, hold hands, maybe make out a little? Eat food together that isn’t waffles at five in the morning?”

“You make it sound so romantic,” you say dryly.

“I’m hanging upside down in my Spider-Man suit with wire cutters in my hand,” he says, voice rising an octave. “You kind of caught me off-guard.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You want me to come back when you’re right-side up?”

Phainon laughs, but it’s strained, caught somewhere between breathless and disbelieving. He shifts slightly on the bar. “No,” he says. “No, don’t—don’t go. I just…” His fingers curl loosely around the railing. “You really mean it? Like, seriously?”

You shrug, but your voice softens. “Why would I joke about that?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, have you met me?”

You walk a step closer, now standing directly beneath him. “Yes. That’s kind of the point.”

Phainon stares at you, still upside down, still blinking like he hasn’t quite caught up with reality. His breath stutters, shallow through parted lips. The last of the sun has dipped below the horizon, and now the city is painted in deepening blue, rooftops etched in sharp lines against a sky the colour of cobalt ash.

You, however, are still golden; still lit from the inside out, like the question didn’t cost you anything, like you didn’t just tip the entire balance of his world in six words flat.

He swallows hard.

“I want to,” he says. “I want to date you.”

You nod, just once. But the tremble in your exhale betrays you. “Okay.”

You shift a little closer to where he’s hanging. The wind tousles your hair. You squint at him.

“Can I kiss you now?” you ask.

Phainon opens his mouth. No sound comes out.

His brain is screaming, Yes, God, yes, obviously, what do you think I’ve been dreaming about every night for the last year? But what actually escapes his mouth is an undignified, “I mean—yeah. If you want.”

You smile, small but warm, and step forward until you’re close enough that he can see the flecks of light in your irises. His pulse pounds at the base of his throat.

“Hold still,” you say.

And Phainon—Spider-Man, night-patroller, rooftop-skulker, awkward wreck of a man in love—holds so, so still.

You reach up, slowly. Your hand is warm as it cups the curve of his cheek. He flinches a little, not because of the touch, but because of how gentle it is. He’s not used to being touched like that. Your thumb brushes the edge of his jaw, dragging across the grease-stained skin. He forgets how to breathe.

Then, you lean in and kiss him.

It’s awkward, at first. The angle’s all wrong. You have to stand on your toes, and he has to tilt just right, his body swaying slightly with the breeze, but none of it matters—not when your lips touch his, not when the world goes so achingly, impossibly quiet. It’s soft, firmer than he expects, and yet not rushed. You kiss him like you’ve wanted to for a long time, like you’ve thought about it, like the moment had already existed somewhere in your mind long before you asked the question.

Phainon melts. He doesn’t move for the first few seconds; just hangs there, lips barely parted, letting you take the lead because he’s terrified that if he so much as breathes, you’ll disappear. But then something in him sparks—an ancient, quiet want—and he kisses you back.

He moves slowly, deliberately, meeting you where you are. His lips are dry and chapped from hours in the wind, but he’s warm beneath them, and his breath hitches in that small, helpless way that always happens around you. He tightens his grip on the bar, as though holding himself in place is the only way to keep from falling for real.

Eventually, you pull away.

His eyes open slowly, lashes low over dark, dazed pupils. His lips are parted, red and kiss-bruised.

“That was…” He clears his throat. “Wow.”

You smile, head tilting. “Still want to date me?”

“I want to marry you,” he blurts, then immediately flushes crimson. “I mean—hypothetically. Not now. Obviously not now. I’m hanging upside down. I’ve got wire cutters in my pocket. But you get the idea.”

You laugh, and he grins. 

“Come down, you idiot,” you say, still smiling. “Before your brain floods and I have to explain to emergency services that Spider-Man died because he let his blood rush to his head.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mutters, already adjusting his grip. With a practiced motion, he swings backward once, then forward, and flips cleanly down onto the concrete beside you in a crouch, landing with a thud and a soft grunt. He straightens slowly, rubbing at the back of his head.

When he looks up again, you’re already walking towards him. You grab the front of his suit, tug gently—and then kiss him again, properly this time. He melts into it, hands hovering at your hips. You take the initiative again, stepping closer, your fingers sliding up his chest to cup his face as your mouth slants against his. The second kiss is deeper, more certain, less careful.

When you pull away, you don’t go far. You rest your forehead against his, both of you breathing hard. His hands settle around your waist now, not hesitant anymore, not unsure.

“You’re sure about this?” he whispers.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

He kisses you again, because he can, because he wants to. Because there’s no machine looming over his shoulder, no countdown, no artificial voice running simulations on how to hurt you best.

There’s only this: you, and him, and the golden hour dimming into twilight. Phainon lets you pull him back into the world right-side up.

Phainon thinks he’s a pretty good boyfriend.

Okay, maybe not, like, great. He has a running tab of things he’s fumbled: texts left on read for six hours because he was halfway across the city chasing someone with rocket boots, half-finished promises to pick up groceries, laundry that’s been folded but never quite put away. Date nights sometimes fall through. Movie plans get postponed. He loses track of time a lot.

But he always comes home. He always makes you laugh, even when you pretend to be annoyed with him. He never forgets the dates that matter, and never lets you go to sleep without hearing that he loves you, mumbled or whispered or scrawled on a Post-It if he’s back late. He’s trying. God, he’s trying.

And right now, looking at you—messy-haired, breathless, flushed and sprawled across the mattress like you belong there, like you belong with him—he thinks maybe he’s doing alright.

Phainon kisses down your ribs, trailing his mouth across your stomach. You shift beneath him, a little restless, a little expectant. He likes that—you trusting him enough to be open like this. It still hits him sometimes, like an aftershock, that you let him touch you like this. That you want him to.

He exhales slowly as he nudges lower, one arm curled under your thigh. His lips brush the inside of your hip, the softness of your skin, and he feels you shiver. Gently, he moves lower, and flicks his tongue over your clit.

You gasp, hand threading into his hair, and he smiles against you, slow and lazy and a little smug. He likes knowing he can do this to you. Likes knowing exactly how your breath hitches when he moves just right. He doesn’t rush. He never does with you. Every motion is measured, learned, almost reverent. He listens—to the catch in your throat, the flex of your fingers, the little half-sigh you try to swallow and can’t.

His grip on your hips tightens as you shift, as your thighs close around his shoulders, and he groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating softly between you.

“Phainon,” you whisper, voice thready. He loves the way you say his name. He hums again in response, and the way you respond to that—your spine arching, your mouth letting loose a litany of moans—makes him want to give you more.

When he finally slides two fingers into you, careful and deep, you let out a sound that makes him smile. Phainon exhales against your thigh, the sound shaky with restraint. Your muscles flutter around him, every inch of you wound tight. He watches you fall apart in increments—your fingers twisting in the sheets, your jaw slack with pleasure, your chest heaving.

“Right there?” he murmurs, half-teasing but wholly focused.

You nod, or maybe you don’t—you’re too far gone to speak, but your body answers for you: the way your hips shift, the way your leg curls around his shoulder, the soft whimper that escapes your lips. He presses in again, just a little firmer, curling his fingers the way he knows you like.

His mouth trails slow kisses along the inside of your thigh, tongue flicking over sensitive skin. He never rushes. He never wants to. Not with you.

“Phainon,” you breathe again. “Oh, fuck—”

He presses his mouth back to your folds, his fingers still working inside you with the same care. He’s mapping you like he’s been doing since the beginning—like every sigh is a star to chart by, every moan a signal flare. He’s learned to read you in a language no one else gets to learn.

You’re shaking now, your whole body strung tight as wire beneath his mouth. Your nails bite into his shoulder and you don’t even seem to notice—don’t seem to care—because you’re so close, teetering at the edge of your orgasm, sharp and sweet and inevitable.

A few more strokes and sucks and licks have you coming for him—arching, gasping, crying out his name. When the aftershocks start to fade, he eases off, kisses the softest parts of your skin as you tremble under him. His fingers slip from you gently. He brushes a hand over your thigh, up your hip, until he’s sliding over you again, kissing a slow trail back up your ribs and chest until he’s beside you.

Your eyes are closed, lips parted, still catching your breath. He watches you—eyes half-lidded, lashes damp, chest rising and falling—and then you blink up at him, a smile tugging at your lips like you’re not quite sure how to speak yet. Your skin is still warm, flushed in a way that makes Phainon want to memorise every inch of you all over again.

He brushes his knuckles over your cheek in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to say. “Still in there?”

You blink once, then smile with that crooked little grin he loves. “Ask me again in five minutes.”

He huffs a soft laugh and shifts to lie beside you, propping himself up on one elbow. His hand trails lazily over your stomach, fingers smoothing across the soft skin just above your hipbone, drawing idle shapes.

“Not bad for a guy who forgot to buy milk this morning, right?” he says.

You laugh and shove his shoulder. “Phainon!”

“I mean, I might’ve failed you on the breakfast front, but I like to think I made up for it in… other areas.”

You scoff, but it’s half a laugh, and the sound curls like a ribbon in Phainon’s chest. He watches the way your face softens when you’re amused—how your eyes crinkle at the corners, how your mouth fights not to smile wider.

“That’s debatable,” you say, rolling to face him fully.

“Oh, come on,” he says. “You sounded pretty convinced a few minutes ago.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.” Phainon grins, and leans forward to bump his forehead against yours.

He feels like his heart’s trying to claw its way out of his chest, not in the life-threatening, nine-storeys-up, villain-hurling-him-off-a-building kind of way, but the kind where it’s just him and you, tangled in sheets, skin flushed. The kind of moment that makes his brain go a little fuzzy and his chest go tight, because he’s pretty sure this isn’t just a good day—it’s the day. The one people write songs and poems and stupid rom-coms about.

(You’re right there, inches from him, breathing the same air, and all he can think is: I hope I never forget this.)

He tries to play it cool, like he’s not falling apart from something as small as the curve of your smile, the way your fingers brush along his jaw like you’re trying to memorise him right back. But it’s a losing battle. He’s smiling too hard, the stupid kind that tugs at his cheeks. 

“You’re staring,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says, without even pretending otherwise. “I know.”

His hand is still on your waist, the tips of his fingers tracing small, slow patterns into your skin. He wants to tell you a thousand things—about how he’s never felt safer than he does when he’s beside you, about how it doesn’t matter if the world ends tomorrow so long as he got to know what your laugh sounded like when it was just for him. But the words get stuck somewhere behind his teeth.

You roll your eyes at him like you always do when you’re trying not to smile. “What are you thinking?” you ask.

Phainon opens his mouth to say something clever. He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “That I like you.”

“Yeah?” you say teasingly. “I had no clue.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I think this isn’t real. Like I’m gonna wake up in some busted rooftop vent or in the middle of a car chase, and all this’ll just be some nice dream I had when my brain was low on oxygen.”

“It’s real,” you whisper. “Do you want me to kiss you like real people do? Because I will. Don’t test me.”

(Phainon kisses you first, just to prove he’s real enough to do it.)

In the background of the tavern, the band's lead singer sang a song about unrequited love. How ironic. Mydei thought, as he took a huge chug of his beer. If he was going to have to play the role of an unlicensed therapist then he'd need a drink. 

Mydei caught the bartender’s attention from across the tavern. “Another beer please.” After a brief pause, he added “Preferably several more.”

“I just..” Slamming his mug down on the wooden table, Phainon let out a defeated sigh. “What am I doing wrong?” He asked, genuinely perplexed.

“I wish I knew so we can put an end to my misery.”

Phainon’s lower lip jutted out into a pout. The ladies out in town might have taken pity on him. But Mydei couldn't be bothered. Especially not when Phainon simply refused to take his advice. “Just tell her! Say those magic words. How hard can it be?”

“Well.. Actions speak louder than words!” 

“Yeah? And how's that working out for you?”

“Its….” 

The memories flooded back into Phainon's alcohol induced mind. 

A month ago

The orphanage yard buzzed with cheerful noise beneath the warm afternoon sun. Children ran across the grass in chaotic little groups, enjoying the simple freedom of childhood. 

Somewhere nearby, someone screamed triumphantly about winning a game of tag. Mydei winced as his ears began ringing. He was starting to regret coming. 

“Remind me again,” Mydei deadpanned as two boys climbed all over him, one currently dangling from his arm like it was a monkey bar, “exactly why did I agree to this?”

Beside him, Phainon sat on the grass, nimble fingers braiding a little girl's hair into French braids, all while she played with her dolls on his lap.

“Moral support.” he answered immediately. Mydei stared at him flatly. “You’re volunteering at an orphanage. What part of this requires moral support?”

Silence was his only answer. Mydei followed Phainon's line of sight instinctively and immediately understood the reason for the lack of response.

There you were.

You were all smiles as you chased several children through the grass. 

A little girl suddenly grabbed onto your skirt. “Big sister!” Her muddy little handprints stained the fabric instantly but you didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

Instead, you bent down to her eye level with that same gentle smile that always left Phainon feeling all warm and tingly on the inside.

“Yes, my dear?”

Your fingers carefully adjusted the crooked butterfly clip nestled in the little girl’s hair.

“For you!” she chirped proudly, holding up several badly arranged wildflowers. Your entire expression softened. “These are lovely.”

An angel. You were an absolute angel. If he stared long enough, he swore he could almost see a halo glowing above your head.

Beside him, Mydei sighed quietly.

“She’s beautiful,” Phainon murmured before he could stop himself.

The little girl in his lap perked up, her wide brown eyes darting between Phainon and you curiously. Then, taking a deep breath, she shouted at the very top of her tiny lungs. “BIG SISTER! THERE’S A MAN HERE WHO THINKS YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL!”

The entire yard fell silent.

“M-me?” you squeaked. Your startled gaze landed directly on Phainon. Beside him, Mydei nearly choked trying to suppress his laughter.

Meanwhile, Phainon had gone completely red.

“You’re always so encouraging,” you said shyly, your cheeks turning the same shade of red. “Most people aren’t usually that kind with their words.”

Only for you.

“…Encouraging,” Phainon echoed weakly.

Completely oblivious to his suffering, you smiled brightly at him. “Yeah!”

Mydei pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright,” he muttered while grabbing Phainon by the back of his collar. “We’re leaving before you embarrass yourself any further.”

“I wasn’t embarrassing myself,” Phainon protested weakly while being dragged away. Mydei glanced back at him. “You confessed in front of thirty children.”

“…That’s fair.”

A week ago

“Repeat it again.” Arms crossed over his chest, Mydei looked every bit like the serious immortal warrior that he was. “What should you say when you meet her?”

“I bought these specifically for you.” Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. “Because you mentioned liking them before and I - ”

“Phainon?”

This was it. Mydei was certain of it. This was the moment that his friend would succeed, so that he could stop being a wingman and carry on with his life.

“For you because you like it.”

A brown paper bag was shoved into your hands. Even closed, you could smell the freshly baked pastries within it. And not just any pastries, but the ones from a little bakery across town that often sold out within minutes.

“You remembered?” You beamed, your face lighting up with joy. “Your memory is amazing!”

Phainon’s expression softened immediately at your smile.

“Well,” he said quietly, “things about the people important to me tend to stay on my mind.”

Beside him, Mydei nodded approvingly. Sure he had botched it with his flimsy opening but he had recovered well. Surely this time you'd get the hint. 

“Ah. You truly are a member of the Chrysos Heirs for a reason.” You mused, impressed. “I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday.”

Phainon stopped functioning entirely.

Mydei needed a drink.

A few days ago

“Oof”

“Oh. Phainon? I-I'm so sorry”

Phainon looked down to see you - mascara smudged, eyes red and nose runny. You looked absolutely devastated. Phainon felt his heart ache at the sight of you. He reached out, hand hovering in mid air, before it settled gently on your head. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The both of you ended up at that tavern. Phainon listened patiently as you spilled your heart out about the disastrous date. “My date said I talk too much. That I eat too much…” You sniffled. “Maybe I really am not that likeable..”

THUD.

Phainon slams his drink down with so much force, half of it spills across the table. Your eyes widened. 

“He doesn’t deserve your tears.” His voice came out sharper than intended.

Phainon inhaled slowly before continuing quieter this time. “You deserve someone who treats you properly.” His gaze lifted toward yours. “Someone who loves you exactly as you are.”

Your expression softened and for a moment hope surged through him.

“You’re right,” you said brightly, wiping away your tears with the back of your sleeve. “I should find someone like that.”

Phainon’s heartbeat quickened, anticipation building inside of him.

“Someone like you” 

Phainon held his breath.

“You’re so kind and emotionally mature,” you continued earnestly. “Any girl would be lucky to date someone like you.”

Phainon stared at you in complete silence. He wanted to scream. To shout. To pull his hair out.

Instead, he forced a stiff smile onto his face.

“Right.. Someone like me”

As the flashbacks ended, Phainon's shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Well its… Not working out” 

“Exactly!” Mydei slamed his mug down in frustration. The loud commotion drew a few curious glances their way. 

“Well I can't exactly just walk up to y/n and tell her that I love her!” 

Mydei's gaze focused over Phainon's shoulder, at the figure that was slowly approaching their table. His lips twitched slightly. 

“And confess that I've been in love with her for months! How creepy is that?”

“Phainon?”

Mydei snorted, grabbed his mug, and gave his friend a clap on the shoulder. “Good luck.” Phainon sat frozen at the table. Eyes wide. Mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Very much like a goldfish.

“I don't think that it's creepy”

Phainon wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or the warm tavern lighting. But your cheeks were dusted with the prettiest shade of red. He prayed that this wasn't a drunken hallucination. 

“I think that it's really romantic” 

The rest, as they say, was history. Or so Mydei thought, as he found himself seated across Phainon in the same tavern once again. Between them sat a velvet box that was far too small for the outrageously large diamond that Phainon had somehow chosen.

“She just doesn't get it. I've been trying so hard to propose!”

Burying his face in his hands, Mydei groaned. 

SPRING

The rain makes the decision for you.

One moment you are walking, and the next the sky opens without warning the way it does in early spring. You duck into the nearest door and find yourself inside a tea shop that is small and warm and smells like roasted wood and something faintly floral, and you think, This is fine. I’ll wait it out.

The place is nearly full. You find the last empty seat by a window—a table for two, modest, and a little worn at the edges. You sit, and you set your bag down. Outside, the rain sheets down the glass in long, uneven stripes, and the street empties quickly, everyone scattering for cover.

A man is sitting across the room when you notice him, and you think that notice is perhaps too strong a word. He is simply there—the way the rain is there, the way the low hum of other people’s conversations is there. A presence that does not demand anything of you. He has something in front of him that he hasn’t touched. He is looking out at the rain.

You look back out at the rain, too.

For a short while, you are two people looking at the same thing from across a room, and the world continues on without remarking upon it.

The rain eventually slows, and then it stops. The street outside begins to reappear. You gather your things without hurry.

Somewhere in the process of leaving, your paths converge with the man near the door, that small, thoughtless choreography of strangers in a narrow space—a half-step adjustment, a slight turn of the shoulder—the kind of thing the body does without consulting the mind.

You don’t look at his face. He doesn’t look at yours.

The door opens and you step through it. The air outside is cool and clean and smells like wet concrete and the very beginning of something you couldn’t name, and you breathe it in without knowing why.

You think about what you’ll have for dinner.

You think about whether the rain will come back.

You do not think about the tea shop, or the window, or the figure sitting quietly across the room.

You don’t think about anything else at all.

SUMMER

The second time you meet him, the heat is unbearable.

Summer settles over the city like a held breath. The sun burns, cicadas sing from somewhere unseen, and the pavement radiates warmth through the soles of your shoes. By noon, the world feels slow and molten.

You stop at a convenience store mostly for the air conditioning.

The bell above the door chimes as you step inside. Cold air brushes your skin, carrying the scent of chilled drinks and sweet bread and freezer burn. You stand there at the entrance for a moment longer than necessary, letting your body cool.

Eventually, you move toward the refrigerators in the back and reach for the last bottle of lemon soda at the exact same time as someone else. Your fingers brush first.

“Sorry,” you say automatically, pulling your hand back.

“It’s alright.”

You look up at the stranger.

It’s him. The man from the tea shop. For a moment, neither of you say anything.

Up close, he looks softer than you remember. Summer light spills through the windows and catches against the edges of him—gold at the shoulders, gold in his hair, and gold in his eyes as he looks at you.

Recognition arrives slowly. “You were at the tea shop,” he says.

“You remember that?” I did. “That was so long ago.”

“You were soaking when you came in.”

Something about the answer makes you smile. He smiles too, small and easy.

“You can take it,” he says, gesturing toward the drink.

You shake your head. “It’s okay. You reached for it first.”

“And you touched it first.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“Then maybe we should settle it another way.” There’s something playful in his voice now.

You tilt your head. “And how do you suggest we do that?”

He considers the bottle thoughtfully before opening the refrigerator again and pulling out a second drink entirely. “This one tastes terrible,” he says. “You should try it.”

You stare at him for a second before laughing.

You end up sitting outside the store together beneath the shade offered by the awning. The heat presses against the city in waves, but neither of you seem to be in any hurry to leave.

The terrible drink is, in fact, terrible.

“It’s awful,” you tell him after the first sip.

He laughs instantly. “I warned you.”

“You said I should try it. That implies some level of recommendation.”

“A bad recommendation. I said it tastes terrible.”

“But that didn’t stop you from buying it.”

He shrugs. “I was curious.”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “You make poor decisions out of curiosity?”

“Constantly.”

You laugh again, and this time it comes much easier.

You learn his name then. Phainon. Easy on the tongue and it settles strangely gently inside you, like something already familiar.

After that, seeing him becomes easy.

You run into each other at bookstores and train stations and food stalls tucked into side streets. Once beneath the glaring white sun of afternoon, once beneath the glow of evening. Sometimes planned, sometimes not. Eventually, you stop pretending coincidence has anything to do with it.

Summer stretches.

You learn the shape of his laughter before you learn the shape of his hands. You learn he likes peach flavored things despite insisting they’re too sweet. You learn he reads the plot of a movie first online so he can prepare himself if something unexpected were to come. You learn he reads the last page of books first, too. And you learn he walks more slowly when he is tired but never says aloud.

The days grow longer with him. Or maybe they just simply begin to matter more.

One evening, the two of you sit by the river with a melting popsicle staining your fingers yellow and purple. The sky above the water burns gold, then amber, then something softer and bluer.

“You know,” Phainon says suddenly, “I think summer suits you.”

“Because I’m sweating to death?”

He laughs, shaking his head. “No.”

“Then why?”

Phainon looks at you for a second before glancing away again. “I think it’s because summer was when I got to see you again.”

The breeze shifts gently through the summer heat. Somewhere nearby, music spills from an open door, distant but warm.

You look at him then. At the way the streetlamp’s light catches against his skin. At the way he leans back on his hands beside you. At the quiet certainty of him. And something inside you blooms like the way flowers do in summer—softly, inevitably, and beneath the steady warmth of the sun him.

AUTUMN

By autumn, loving him feels inevitable—the same way leaves surrender to the wind once the season changes.

The air turns crisp. Summer withdraws in pieces—the fading hum of cicadas, the shortening evenings, the heat lifting at last. Trees begin to bronze at the edges. Gold starts gathering everywhere.

You start bringing a jacket every time you go out. Phainon forgets his constantly.

“You’ll freeze to death one day,” you tell him.

“You’re being dramatic!”

“I’m not? You’re cold right now.”

“I’m managing.”

“You’re literally shivering, Phainon.”

“I’m excited.”

You stare at him for a moment, unamused, before sighing and tugging your scarf free from around your neck. “Here.”

The smile on his face turns upside down. “You’ll get cold.”

“I’ll survive.”

For once, he doesn’t argue. He takes the scarf and wraps it around his neck gently. The gesture should mean nothing—it’s only fabric—and yet your heartbeat stumbles strangely afterward.

Autumn becomes a season of almosts.

Almost touching him when you walk side by side. Almost reaching for his hand. Almost saying something that would change everything. Instead, you continue like this—circling closer and closer around something neither of you name aloud.

You spend evenings inside cafes fogged with warmth and the scent of cinnamon. You wander through parks buried in amber leaves. You share roasted sweet potatoes from paper bags while cold wind slips through the streets.

Sometimes you catch him looking at you when he thinks you’re not paying attention. Sometimes you let him.

One afternoon, the two of you miss your train on purpose.

Phainon glances at the closing doors and says, “That’s unfortunate.”

You look at the nearly empty platform and answer, “Really unfortunate.”

Then the two of you sit on a bench for the next half hour talking about nothing at all while dry leaves scrape across the concrete in restless little spirals.

You think, I could stay here forever, and the thought frightens you slightly. Not because it’s unpleasant, but because it feels true.

The sun sets earlier now. Evenings arrive before you’re ready for them.

One night, the two of you walk home beneath orange trees beneath the lampposts. Wind drifts through the branches overhead and leaves fall around you.

Phainon catches one absentmindedly before it reaches the ground. You watch him turn it over between his fingers.

“What?” he asks, noticing your stare.

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“No, I’m not.” You look away before he can say anything more.

The streets are quieter than usual. The cold has driven most people indoors. Your footsteps echo softly against the pavement. Then, Phainon says your name.

When you turn toward him, there’s something unreadable in his expression.

The wind moves gently between you. A leaf lands against the shoulder of his coat.

“I’m really glad I met you again that summer day,” he says.

The city feels very far away all at once.

“I’m happy I met you, too,” you answer.

Phainon smiles faintly, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Neither of you speak for a while after that. You continue walking side by side, close enough for your sleeves to brush every few steps. Close enough that it almost happens. Close enough that it will soon.

WINTER

The first snow arrives quietly.

You wake before dawn to a world gone pale. And for a moment, you don’t understand what feels different.

The city outside your window is usually restless even in the early hours—distant traffic, footsteps, voices carried upward through the streets—but this morning, everything sounds softened somehow. Then you look outside and see it.

Snow.

Without thinking, you reach for your phone. Before you can even type something out, a message appears.

Phainon: Look outside

You stare at it for a second before laughing quietly to yourself. Then—

Phainon: Meet me outside!

By the time you arrive, snow has begun gathering properly along the sidewalks.

Your breath fogs in front of you as you walk. The cold bites at your cheek and fingertips despite the gloves, but beneath it all is something bright and restless inside you that makes it difficult to feel the winter fully.

Phainon is already at the spot.

He stands beneath a streetlamp near the river, hands tucked into the pocket of his coat while snow drifts around him. When he notices you approaching, he smiles.

And there it is again—that feeling you’ve carried since summer. That blooming warm beneath your ribs as though some part of you has always been walking toward him.

“You’re late,” he says lightly once you reach him.

“You’ve been here for three minutes.”

“Five,” he corrects.

“That’s still not long enough to complain.”

“But it’s cold out here. I suffered tremendously.”

“You wanted to meet outside.”

He laughs and you shake your head at him.

You notice snow gathering in his hair. Without thinking, you reach up to brush it away.

The motion stills both of you.

Your hand lingers for a moment longer near his face before you pull your hand back slowly. Neither of you say anything about what just happened.

Phainon stares at you unlike the easy glances of summer or the lingering almosts of autumn. The look on his face is different—it feels like standing at the edge of something neither of you can return from.

“I used to hate winter,” he says all of a sudden.

You blink at him. “Why?”

“It always felt…” He ponders over the word. “Empty.”

“And now?”

You hold his gaze, and he smiles.

“Now it feels like this.”

Around you, snow falls soundlessly through the dark. Your heart beats so loudly you’re certain he must hear it.

Then Phainon laughs under his breath, small and disbelieving, like he just lost an argument with himself. “I think,” he says, “I’ve been in love with you for a while now.”

The world stills. Not literally—the snow continues falling, the river continues moving, and somewhere far away, a train passes through the city—but all of it fades beneath the simple, devastating truth of those words. You look at him and you realize there was never going to be anyone else.

Spring brought him to you.

Summer let you bloom beside him.

Autumn taught you how to fall.

And winter lets you land.

“I think I’m in love with you, too,” you whisper.

The confession settles between you softly and warmly, as though it has been waiting for this moment all along. And for a moment, neither of you seem to know what to do with the enormity of it. At least not until Phainon steps closer.

His gloved hands rise to your face, fingertips brushing cold against your cheek, and you lean into the touch before you can think better of it. You feel the nervousness he’s trying to hide.

“You’re nervous,” you murmur.

When he smiles, it’s wobbly. And when he speaks, his voice wavers, “And I’m trying to kiss you.”

Your smile breaks helplessly and when he finally kisses you, it feels like the first fall of snow touching earth. And when you kiss him back, the whole world seems to quiet around you.

The snow continues to fall and winter settles gently over the city. And in the middle of it, with Phainon’s hands warm against your face and his heartbeat close enough to become familiar, you think—

So this is what it feels like to arrive.

© 2026 kominigiru.

SPRING

The rain makes the decision for you.

One moment you are walking, and the next the sky opens without warning the way it does in early spring. You duck into the nearest door and find yourself inside a tea shop that is small and warm and smells like roasted wood and something faintly floral, and you think, This is fine. I’ll wait it out.

The place is nearly full. You find the last empty seat by a window—a table for two, modest, and a little worn at the edges. You sit, and you set your bag down. Outside, the rain sheets down the glass in long, uneven stripes, and the street empties quickly, everyone scattering for cover.

A man is sitting across the room when you notice him, and you think that notice is perhaps too strong a word. He is simply there—the way the rain is there, the way the low hum of other people’s conversations is there. A presence that does not demand anything of you. He has something in front of him that he hasn’t touched. He is looking out at the rain.

You look back out at the rain, too.

For a short while, you are two people looking at the same thing from across a room, and the world continues on without remarking upon it.

The rain eventually slows, and then it stops. The street outside begins to reappear. You gather your things without hurry.

Somewhere in the process of leaving, your paths converge with the man near the door, that small, thoughtless choreography of strangers in a narrow space—a half-step adjustment, a slight turn of the shoulder—the kind of thing the body does without consulting the mind.

You don’t look at his face. He doesn’t look at yours.

The door opens and you step through it. The air outside is cool and clean and smells like wet concrete and the very beginning of something you couldn’t name, and you breathe it in without knowing why.

You think about what you’ll have for dinner.

You think about whether the rain will come back.

You do not think about the tea shop, or the window, or the figure sitting quietly across the room.

You don’t think about anything else at all.

SUMMER

The second time you meet him, the heat is unbearable.

Summer settles over the city like a held breath. The sun burns, cicadas sing from somewhere unseen, and the pavement radiates warmth through the soles of your shoes. By noon, the world feels slow and molten.

You stop at a convenience store mostly for the air conditioning.

The bell above the door chimes as you step inside. Cold air brushes your skin, carrying the scent of chilled drinks and sweet bread and freezer burn. You stand there at the entrance for a moment longer than necessary, letting your body cool.

Eventually, you move toward the refrigerators in the back and reach for the last bottle of lemon soda at the exact same time as someone else. Your fingers brush first.

“Sorry,” you say automatically, pulling your hand back.

“It’s alright.”

You look up at the stranger.

It’s him. The man from the tea shop. For a moment, neither of you say anything.

Up close, he looks softer than you remember. Summer light spills through the windows and catches against the edges of him—gold at the shoulders, gold in his hair, and gold in his eyes as he looks at you.

Recognition arrives slowly. “You were at the tea shop,” he says.

“You remember that?” I did. “That was so long ago.”

“You were soaking when you came in.”

Something about the answer makes you smile. He smiles too, small and easy.

“You can take it,” he says, gesturing toward the drink.

You shake your head. “It’s okay. You reached for it first.”

“And you touched it first.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“Then maybe we should settle it another way.” There’s something playful in his voice now.

You tilt your head. “And how do you suggest we do that?”

He considers the bottle thoughtfully before opening the refrigerator again and pulling out a second drink entirely. “This one tastes terrible,” he says. “You should try it.”

You stare at him for a second before laughing.

You end up sitting outside the store together beneath the shade offered by the awning. The heat presses against the city in waves, but neither of you seem to be in any hurry to leave.

The terrible drink is, in fact, terrible.

“It’s awful,” you tell him after the first sip.

He laughs instantly. “I warned you.”

“You said I should try it. That implies some level of recommendation.”

“A bad recommendation. I said it tastes terrible.”

“But that didn’t stop you from buying it.”

He shrugs. “I was curious.”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “You make poor decisions out of curiosity?”

“Constantly.”

You laugh again, and this time it comes much easier.

You learn his name then. Phainon. Easy on the tongue and it settles strangely gently inside you, like something already familiar.

After that, seeing him becomes easy.

You run into each other at bookstores and train stations and food stalls tucked into side streets. Once beneath the glaring white sun of afternoon, once beneath the glow of evening. Sometimes planned, sometimes not. Eventually, you stop pretending coincidence has anything to do with it.

Summer stretches.

You learn the shape of his laughter before you learn the shape of his hands. You learn he likes peach flavored things despite insisting they’re too sweet. You learn he reads the plot of a movie first online so he can prepare himself if something unexpected were to come. You learn he reads the last page of books first, too. And you learn he walks more slowly when he is tired but never says aloud.

The days grow longer with him. Or maybe they just simply begin to matter more.

One evening, the two of you sit by the river with a melting popsicle staining your fingers yellow and purple. The sky above the water burns gold, then amber, then something softer and bluer.

“You know,” Phainon says suddenly, “I think summer suits you.”

“Because I’m sweating to death?”

He laughs, shaking his head. “No.”

“Then why?”

Phainon looks at you for a second before glancing away again. “I think it’s because summer was when I got to see you again.”

The breeze shifts gently through the summer heat. Somewhere nearby, music spills from an open door, distant but warm.

You look at him then. At the way the streetlamp’s light catches against his skin. At the way he leans back on his hands beside you. At the quiet certainty of him. And something inside you blooms like the way flowers do in summer—softly, inevitably, and beneath the steady warmth of the sun him.

AUTUMN

By autumn, loving him feels inevitable—the same way leaves surrender to the wind once the season changes.

The air turns crisp. Summer withdraws in pieces—the fading hum of cicadas, the shortening evenings, the heat lifting at last. Trees begin to bronze at the edges. Gold starts gathering everywhere.

You start bringing a jacket every time you go out. Phainon forgets his constantly.

“You’ll freeze to death one day,” you tell him.

“You’re being dramatic!”

“I’m not? You’re cold right now.”

“I’m managing.”

“You’re literally shivering, Phainon.”

“I’m excited.”

You stare at him for a moment, unamused, before sighing and tugging your scarf free from around your neck. “Here.”

The smile on his face turns upside down. “You’ll get cold.”

“I’ll survive.”

For once, he doesn’t argue. He takes the scarf and wraps it around his neck gently. The gesture should mean nothing—it’s only fabric—and yet your heartbeat stumbles strangely afterward.

Autumn becomes a season of almosts.

Almost touching him when you walk side by side. Almost reaching for his hand. Almost saying something that would change everything. Instead, you continue like this—circling closer and closer around something neither of you name aloud.

You spend evenings inside cafes fogged with warmth and the scent of cinnamon. You wander through parks buried in amber leaves. You share roasted sweet potatoes from paper bags while cold wind slips through the streets.

Sometimes you catch him looking at you when he thinks you’re not paying attention. Sometimes you let him.

One afternoon, the two of you miss your train on purpose.

Phainon glances at the closing doors and says, “That’s unfortunate.”

You look at the nearly empty platform and answer, “Really unfortunate.”

Then the two of you sit on a bench for the next half hour talking about nothing at all while dry leaves scrape across the concrete in restless little spirals.

You think, I could stay here forever, and the thought frightens you slightly. Not because it’s unpleasant, but because it feels true.

The sun sets earlier now. Evenings arrive before you’re ready for them.

One night, the two of you walk home beneath orange trees beneath the lampposts. Wind drifts through the branches overhead and leaves fall around you.

Phainon catches one absentmindedly before it reaches the ground. You watch him turn it over between his fingers.

“What?” he asks, noticing your stare.

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“No, I’m not.” You look away before he can say anything more.

The streets are quieter than usual. The cold has driven most people indoors. Your footsteps echo softly against the pavement. Then, Phainon says your name.

When you turn toward him, there’s something unreadable in his expression.

The wind moves gently between you. A leaf lands against the shoulder of his coat.

“I’m really glad I met you again that summer day,” he says.

The city feels very far away all at once.

“I’m happy I met you, too,” you answer.

Phainon smiles faintly, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Neither of you speak for a while after that. You continue walking side by side, close enough for your sleeves to brush every few steps. Close enough that it almost happens. Close enough that it will soon.

WINTER

The first snow arrives quietly.

You wake before dawn to a world gone pale. And for a moment, you don’t understand what feels different.

The city outside your window is usually restless even in the early hours—distant traffic, footsteps, voices carried upward through the streets—but this morning, everything sounds softened somehow. Then you look outside and see it.

Snow.

Without thinking, you reach for your phone. Before you can even type something out, a message appears.

Phainon: Look outside

You stare at it for a second before laughing quietly to yourself. Then—

Phainon: Meet me outside!

By the time you arrive, snow has begun gathering properly along the sidewalks.

Your breath fogs in front of you as you walk. The cold bites at your cheek and fingertips despite the gloves, but beneath it all is something bright and restless inside you that makes it difficult to feel the winter fully.

Phainon is already at the spot.

He stands beneath a streetlamp near the river, hands tucked into the pocket of his coat while snow drifts around him. When he notices you approaching, he smiles.

And there it is again—that feeling you’ve carried since summer. That blooming warm beneath your ribs as though some part of you has always been walking toward him.

“You’re late,” he says lightly once you reach him.

“You’ve been here for three minutes.”

“Five,” he corrects.

“That’s still not long enough to complain.”

“But it’s cold out here. I suffered tremendously.”

“You wanted to meet outside.”

He laughs and you shake your head at him.

You notice snow gathering in his hair. Without thinking, you reach up to brush it away.

The motion stills both of you.

Your hand lingers for a moment longer near his face before you pull your hand back slowly. Neither of you say anything about what just happened.

Phainon stares at you unlike the easy glances of summer or the lingering almosts of autumn. The look on his face is different—it feels like standing at the edge of something neither of you can return from.

“I used to hate winter,” he says all of a sudden.

You blink at him. “Why?”

“It always felt…” He ponders over the word. “Empty.”

“And now?”

You hold his gaze, and he smiles.

“Now it feels like this.”

Around you, snow falls soundlessly through the dark. Your heart beats so loudly you’re certain he must hear it.

Then Phainon laughs under his breath, small and disbelieving, like he just lost an argument with himself. “I think,” he says, “I’ve been in love with you for a while now.”

The world stills. Not literally—the snow continues falling, the river continues moving, and somewhere far away, a train passes through the city—but all of it fades beneath the simple, devastating truth of those words. You look at him and you realize there was never going to be anyone else.

Spring brought him to you.

Summer let you bloom beside him.

Autumn taught you how to fall.

And winter lets you land.

“I think I’m in love with you, too,” you whisper.

The confession settles between you softly and warmly, as though it has been waiting for this moment all along. And for a moment, neither of you seem to know what to do with the enormity of it. At least not until Phainon steps closer.

His gloved hands rise to your face, fingertips brushing cold against your cheek, and you lean into the touch before you can think better of it. You feel the nervousness he’s trying to hide.

“You’re nervous,” you murmur.

When he smiles, it’s wobbly. And when he speaks, his voice wavers, “And I’m trying to kiss you.”

Your smile breaks helplessly and when he finally kisses you, it feels like the first fall of snow touching earth. And when you kiss him back, the whole world seems to quiet around you.

The snow continues to fall and winter settles gently over the city. And in the middle of it, with Phainon’s hands warm against your face and his heartbeat close enough to become familiar, you think—

So this is what it feels like to arrive.

© 2026 kominigiru.

“Can I help you?”

Ashveil stares down at the person on the other side of the door like he’s trying to decide if they’re real or just another thing his brain coughed up out of boredom.

The office is quiet in the way it only ever gets when everyone else has scattered off somewhere. The Furbos are gone, Mister N is gone, even the usual background noise feels like it’s packed up and left him behind. So when someone knocked, it echoed up until even his own agency—loud, annoying, and intrusive.

And here you are.

The first thing he notes is that you don’t look like trouble. Not that “not looking like trouble” has ever stopped trouble before, but still—you’re just standing there, holding a bag that smells—he sniffs, subtle—good. Really good.

“I—um, sorry,” you start, already sounding like you think you’ve made a mistake. “I was looking for someone. Is Nihilux—”

“No,” Ashveil cuts in, leaning his weight against the doorframe like he’s got nowhere to be. Which—really—he doesn’t. “She doesn’t work here anymore.”

You blink, as if you didn’t expect the answer to come that quickly or maybe at all.

“Oh,” you say, and then you start talking.

You ramble. The words spills out of you in uneven, apologetic waves—about Nihilux, about how she’d often forget to eat, how you’d bring her food because she’d get so caught up in her art that hours would pass and she wouldn’t notice, how you weren’t even sure if she’d still be here but you thought you’d check anyway because it’s been a while and—

Ashveil listens.

There’s something oddly nice about it. The way your words tumble over each other, the way you circle back and correct yourself, the way you keep glancing at him like you expect him to shut the door any second now.

He doesn’t. Instead, he hums once, low in his throat, just enough to let you know he’s still there.

“…and yeah,” you finish, a little breathless. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to just… talk so much. You probably don’t even care.”

“Didn’t say that,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders.

Flustered, you look down at the bag in your hands.

“Well, since she’s not here…” you say, holding it out toward him, hesitant but decided all the same, “you can have this. I mean—only if you want. It was for her, but it’d be a waste otherwise. And I already bothered you, so…”

Ashveil blinks. “For me?” he echoes, like he needs to hear it again to make sure he didn’t misinterpret anything.

You nod quickly. “As an apology for talking your ears off.”

He takes it.

“Thank you,” he says, thumb hooking into the plastic as he lifts it slightly. It’s warm and fresh. His stomach reacts immediately—traitorous thing.

You smile, small and relieved. “Okay. I’ll go now,” you say, stepping back. “Sorry again.”

And just like that, you’re gone.

He doesn’t go back to his office right away. Instead, Ashveil lingers by the door, fingers resting loosely against the handle as he stares at the empty hallway like it might shift and give you back if he waits long enough. He almost expects the sound of hurried footsteps returning, like you might realize you changed your mind and went to retrieve the food you gave him.

You don’t.

He exhales through his nose and shuts the door.

When he turns back into the agency, it’s dim, cluttered, and quietly decaying in ways that have long since stopped bothering him. Bottles crowd every available surface—some empty, some not, and none of them particularly organized. Pills sit scattered where they were last left, and papers cover the walls and desk in uneven layers, their contents faded into irrelevance even to him. The computer hums steadily in the background, and the freezer in the corner hangs slightly open, leaking cold air into the room like it’s waiting for attention he won’t give.

He ignores all of it.

Instead, he clears a small space on the desk with a sweep of his arm, sending a few sheets of paper sliding to the door, and sets the bag down. There’s nowhere to sit, so he leans his weight against the edge of the desk, glancing at it for a moment longer before opening it.

The smell hits him immediately and—

Oh.

That’s… yeah. It smells good.

He reaches in, not bothering to look for utensils, and takes a bite.

The effect is immediate: he stills, jaw going slack for a second before he actually chews, like his brain needed a moment to catch up with what just happened.

It’s been a long time since food tasted like this—long enough that he’d stopped expecting it to. There’s no bitterness, no stale aftertaste, no underlying sense that he’s eating something just because it’s there. It’s warm, properly made, and unmistakably intentional in a way that most of what he consumes isn’t.

He swallows, then takes another bite.

And then another.

And another.

And another.

Somewhere along the way, the pace picks up without him noticing. His hand moves before he thinks about it, reaching back into the bag again and again, like something in him is trying to make up for something it’s been missing. And by the time he realizes it, he’s already halfway through and still reaching for more.

The door opens behind him.

Ashveil doesn’t turn around right away. He just takes another bite, slower this time, as if the interruption doesn’t quite register as urgent. He hears soft and light footsteps padding closer, and only glances over his shoulder after he swallows.

“…Mr. Ashveil,” Mister N calls. The Slumbernana Monkey stands in the hallway, small and still, holding a thin plastic bag filled with fruits that aren’t clearly bananas. His gaze shifts from Ashveil, to the food, and back to him again. “Where did you get the food?”

The detective hums softly, leaning his hip more firmly against the desk as he tilts his head back slightly to swallow. “Someone dropped by.”

“Someone did?”

“Mhm.” He taps the edge of the container with his fingers. “They were looking for the former president of Furbobo Weekly. Said they were a friend of hers and that they usually bring her food. I told them she doesn’t work here anymore.”

“Did you get their name?” Mister N asks.

Ashveil glances down at the half-finished meal. He shrugs. “I didn’t ask,” he says. “They left right after handing this over.”

His assistant’s eyes linger on him for a moment, his expression unreadable yet attentive. “And your stomach?” he asks after a beat.

Ashveil lets out a soft scoff. “It’s fine,” he says. There’s a slight pause before he adds, more honestly this time, “Better than fine actually.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Ashveil says, glancing at Mister N with the faintest hint of dry amusement. “I haven’t died yet.”

A small silence settles between them.

After a moment, Ashveil lifts the container in a casual manner. “You want some?”

Mister N’s gaze lingers on the container, as if weighing the offer more seriously than expected. Then he gives a small, polite shake of his head.

“No,” he says. “You should finish it yourself.”

Ashveil studies him for a second, searching for any sign of hesitation or hidden interest, but finds none. Mister N simply steps further into the room and places the thin bag of fruit on top of the slightly open freezer.

“Suit yourself,” Ashveil mutters.

He shrugs it off easily and turns his attention back on the food. If anything, Mister N’s refusal seems to settle something in him—permission, maybe, to keep going without restraint.

So he does.

He digs in again. Bite after bite, steady and unthinking, until the world narrows down to taste and warmth and the simple act of eating. The room fades into the background—the clutter, the dim lighting, the hum of machinery—all of it blurring at the edges compared to what’s right in front of him.

Across the room, Mister N remains.

By the time the container is nearly empty, his pace finally begins to slow. He leans back slightly, exhaling through his nose as he looks down at what little remains.

He just stares at it briefly. Then, almost absently, he finishes the last bite. Ashveil rolls his shoulder, shifting his weight as he sets the empty container aside.

It’s not often that something lingers like this. Not just the taste—though that too—but the feeling of it. The care behind it. The fact that it hadn’t even been meant for him at all, and yet…

His gaze drifts, unfocused, toward the door.

You hadn’t stayed long. Had barely given him time to ask anything, really. No name, no details—just a bag of food and a hurried apology before disappearing down the hall like you were never there to begin with.

And still—

He wonders if he’ll get to see you again.

The thought comes easier than expected, settling somewhere in the back of his mind as he glances once more at the now-empty container and, briefly, to the side—at the bag of fruit resting untouched atop the freezer.

If he does…

Well—he’d have to say thank you. Properly, this time.

Since that day, Ashveil hasn’t seen you again. Not that he was looking—at least not in a way he’d willingly admit.

Days pass the same way they always do. Work comes and goes in irregular bursts, and the agency remains just as cluttered, just as dim, just as stagnant as ever. If anything changed, it’s subtle enough that he doesn’t bother naming it.

Still, every now and then, the memory resurfaces. A passing thought while he’s staring at nothing in particular. The faint recollection of warmth that doesn’t come from anything in the room. The taste of something that had no right being as good as it was.

It’s annoying, honestly, because it lingers.

It’s not enough to distract him—not enough to derail anything—but enough that, on occasion, he catches himself thinking that if did happen to run into you again, he’d say something. Just a quick acknowledgment, maybe. A simple thank you; tell you the food was good.

That’s all.

Which is probably why he wasn’t expecting for it to actually happen.

“Fresh air,” Mister N had said earlier. “It would be beneficial for your health.”

Ashveil had stared at him for a long while, unimpressed. Eventually, he left anyway.

Now he’s outside, one hand tucked into his pocket while the other rests loosely around the handle of his cane. His shoulders are slightly hunched, his stride unhurried, the cane more of an extension of habit than necessity as he walks with no real destination in mind.

The air feels different out here—less stale, less suffocating—but he wouldn’t go as far as to call it refreshing.

He follows the sidewalk without thinking too hard about it. People move around him in a steady flow—faces he doesn’t know, lives he doesn’t care about, all carrying on with a sense of purpose he doesn’t share.

And then, he slows.

And there you are.

Standing at the edge of the street, waiting for the stoplight to change. Grocery bags hang from both of your arms, the thin plastic stretched taut from the weight of whatever it is you bought. You shift slightly where you stand, attention fixed on the traffic passing by as you wait for your turn to cross.

Ashveil comes to stop a few steps behind you. For a moment, he just looks—like he’s confirming something.

You’re real. Not a trick of memory, not something his brain conjured out of boredom—you’re actually here, in the same space, close enough that if he wanted to, he could just walk up and—

…

He exhales softly through his nose. Right.

This is it then. The chance.

He straightens just a little, before finally closing the distance between you.

“Hello.” The word comes out casual, low, just enough to catch your attention without startling you. Your head turns at the sound of his voice.

Ashveil hadn’t really expected much—at most, a polite glance, maybe the brief confusion of someone trying to place a stranger. Instead, recognition settles in almost immediately, and he sees it happen. The slight widening of your eyes, the way your expression brightens like something just clicked into place—and then you’re looking at him properly.

It catches him off guard.

For a moment, he just stands there, his grip on the cane adjusting ever so slightly as the moment lands in a way he hadn’t prepared for. There’s a flicker of something in his chest—light and unexpected—and he can’t quite pin it down before it settles somewhere deeper.

Flattering, he realizes. Weirdly so.

He hadn’t thought he left much of an impression. Your interaction had been brief, barely anything worth remember on your end—or at least that’s what he assumed. People don’t usually hold onto things like that. And yet here you are, looking at him like you’re genuinely glad to have recognized him.

It does something to his stomach, an unfamiliar flutter that makes him shift.

He frowns faintly to himself, already dismissing it. Probably just hunger. It makes sense—you did give him food, after all. It’s only natural to associate you with that.

“Hello!” you greet him, voice warm despite the noise of the traffic. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

For the first time since he met you, Ashveil smiles. “Thank you for the food last time,” he says. “That was the first time in a while that I’ve had such good food.”

There’s a flicker of surprise across your face before it melts into something else, something almost shy, and then you laugh—light, a little flustered, like you don’t quite know what to do with the compliment. “I’m glad you enjoyed my cooking!”

Ashveil watches the way you react, the way your grip shifts on the plastic bags hanging from your arms, and his gaze briefly drops to them. The thin handles dig int your fingers slightly where the weight pulls down, and you adjust them again without really thinking about it. He frowns just a little.

He lifts a hand, pointing at the bags. “Do you need help carrying those around?”

You shake your head almost immediately. “Oh, there’s no need! I can handle just fine!”

There’s no hesitation in your voice, no sign that you’re struggling in a way you’d admit, but Ashveil doesn’t look convinced.

“I insist,” he replies. “Here—let me.”

Before you can properly protest, he steps out and reaches out, sliding the bags off your arms in one smooth motion with his free hand—the other still occupied with his cane. The shift in weight is immediate, the pressure gone before you can brace against it.

“Wait—” you start, a little startled, your hands hovering awkwardly. “You don’t really have to. I mean— I don’t want to trouble you.”

Ashveil adjusts his grip on the bags, barely sparing them a glance as he settles them comfortably at his side.

“You’re not troubling me,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “If anything, you can think of this as payment for the food last time.”

“But you don’t need to anything to return the favor,” you insist, brows knitting slightly as you look at him. “I gave it to you because I wanted to, not because I expected anything back.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m choosing to do it.”

You open your mouth like you’re about to protest again, but the words don’t quite come out this time. “…okay,” you relent, reluctant. “If you’re really sure.”

“I am.”

The stoplight changes from green to red, the steady stream of cars slowing to a halt, and once the moment it’s safe, the crowd begins to move, carrying you and Ashveil along with it as you step off the curb and into the crosswalk.

For a while, the two of you walk quietly, your pace naturally adjusting to match his, but it doesn’t take long before the silence gives way to something easier.

Ashveil glances at you. “Your friend,” he starts, casual. “Did you find out where she might’ve moved?”

There’s a small shift in your expression—something brighter. “I did, actually,” you say. “She apparently forgot to tell me about it. I’ve started bringing her food again like before, so… she’s eating properly now.”

Ashveil hums. “Good,” he says. “I’m glad you found her.”

You smile at that, and the conversation continues from there without much effort. He asks what you do, and when you tell him you’re a chef, he isn’t surprised.

“That explains a lot,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

You laugh lightly. When you turn the question back on him, he doesn’t hesitate.

“I’m a detective,” he says.

“Oh.” You blink, clearly intrigued. “Really?”

“Mhm.”

The details that follow are sparse, but it’s enough to keep the conversation going—small exchanges, bits of curiosity traded back and forth. By the time you reach your apartment building, it almost feels the walk passed quicker than it should have.

You lead him upstairs, the familiar surroundings closing in as your unlock the door and step inside, holding it open for him as he follows you in. The space is modest but lived-in.

“Just set them down in the kitchen counter, please,” you say.

Ashveil nods once and does exactly that, placing the bags down with care.

For a second, he just stands there. Then, as if remembering himself, he shifts his weight back, hand adjusting around the handle of his cane.

“I’ll take my leave now,” he starts, already turning slightly toward the door. “Thanks for—”

“Wait!”

He pauses, turning around.

You hesitate only briefly before continuing, fingers fidgeting together for a moment as you glance at him. “Would you… like to stay for lunch?”

Ashveil smiles. “You’re very kind,” he says. “But are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother.”

You shake your head immediately.

“Oh, no, not at all!” you insist, words tumbling out before you can slow them down. “I really don’t mind, I promise! I actually like cooking for other people more than just for myself, and it’s not like I had anything else planned anyway, and you did help me carry all of those groceries—which you really didn’t have to, by the way—and you said you liked my food last time, so— so it’s kind of like I’m just, um, returning the favor? I think?”

He considers your words quietly, gaze lingering in a way that suggests he’s weighing more than just the offer itself.

“Alright,” he says, and your face brightens almost instantly, the shift in your expression so quick and genuine that it’s hard to miss.

“Really? Okay— great!” you say, already turning toward the kitchen with renewed energy. “You can just make yourself at home! I’ll, um— I’ll start on the food.”

Ashveil nods. He doesn’t wander far. Instead of taking a seat somewhere in the living room, he steps over the kitchen island and settles there, positioning himself just off to the side where he won’t be in your way.

From there, he watches.

You move about your kitchen, pulling ingredients from bags and cabinets and the refrigerator, setting things down with a familiarity that suggests you’ve done this a thousand times over.

You’re meticulous, he thinks. Your hands move with certainty as you wash, peel, and cut—your knife gliding through ingredients with practiced ease as if it already knows where it’s meant to go before it gets there. Nothing is rushed, but nothing is wasted either.

And you look comfortable—like this space was made specifically for you or maybe the other way around.

Ashveil admires it. The passion, the ease, the care you put into something as simple—but also not simple at all—as making a meal. It’s different from anything he’s used to, and he finds himself drawn to it in a way that doesn’t feel forced.

At one point, you lift a wooden spatula from the pan, bringing it up to your lips to taste. Your shifts almost immediately after—your eyes light up and a pleased smile forms like you’ve just confirmed something you were hoping for.

Ashveil watches that too.

And he assumes that’s all it is—that you’ll go back to cooking, or maybe take another taste for good measure. So when you repeat the motion, lifting the spatula again, he thinks nothing of it. At least not until you turn and extend it toward him.

He blinks, momentarily caught off guard, his gaze shifting from the spatula to your face, where you’re looking at him expectantly.

“…you want me to have a taste?” he asks, almost dumbly. You nod.

There’s a brief pause before he leans forward slightly, accepting the offer without further question.

The moment it hits his tongue, everything else falls away.

The flavor is immediate and overwhelming in the best possible way, rich and layered and warm in a way that feels almost surreal—like his senses weren’t prepared for something like this and are now scrambling to catch up.

It’s not just good. It’s— it’s—

Ashveil stills.

For a second, he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t even fully process that fact that he’s already swallowed, because his mind is too busy trying to reconcile how something so simple can taste like this.

If there’s such a thing as paradise—he thinks distantly—then this must be it. Because wow.

“What do you think?” you ask, eyes bright with anticipation. “Do you like it?”

Like it? The thought echoes in his mind, almost incredulous. Like isn’t even enough of a word—not even close, not something that could possibly hold the weight of what he just tasted—because it feels like trying to contain something vast inside something far too small.

He loves it.

It’s almost absurd, really—how something can taste this good, how you’ve managed to take what he already thought was the best meal he’d had in years and somehow surpass it. The first time he tasted your cooking, it had already felt like a rare exception, a one-time thing he wasn’t expecting to experience again. And yet here you are, proving him wrong in the span of a single taste.

“I do,” he finally says, though even that feels like an understatement. There’s a brief pause before he exhales softly, something almost like disbelief slipping through.

“It’s…” he starts, then stops, brows furrowing slightly as if he’s searching for the right word and finding none that quite fit. “…better than the last one.”

Which, considering everything, says more than it should.

“Is that even possible…?” he mutters, more to himself than you.

You fluster almost immediately under the weight of his attention, the way his gaze lingers making you take a small step back, a shy laugh slipping past your lips.

“I’m so happy you like this one as well!” you say, a little breathless, a little embarrassed, but unmistakably pleased. “I can’t wait to finish cooking so you enjoy it in its full glory!”

Before Ashveil can respond, you’ve already turned back to the stove, slipping right back into your rhythm like nothing happened—like his reaction didn’t settle somewhere warm and lasting beneath your ribs.

His gaze drifts briefly to the pan, then back at you.

Me too, he muses.

He can’t wait to eat.

Ashveil doesn’t realize how much he’s eaten until there’s barely anything left.

The plate in front of him is nearly empty, reduced to scattered remnants that wouldn’t even qualify as a proper serving anymore. He leans back slightly, gaze lingering on what’s left.

…Right. He could finish it. Easily.

The thought comes without hesitation because there’s no doubt about it—if he wanted to, he could clear the plate in seconds. There’s no fullness weighing him down in any way, no real resistance from his body that would stop him. If anything, there’s still that lingering pull, that subtle urge to keep going, to chase the taste just a little longer. But—

His eyes flick up briefly, landing on you. You’re still eating, slower than he had been. He looks back at his plate.

He’s already had three servings. That’s… more than enough. Without much ceremony, he sets his utensil down and nudges the plate just a fraction away from himself. That’s where it ends.

He knows he wants more. He also knows he doesn’t need it. And—more importantly—he doesn’t want to look greedy.

The thought is faintly amusing, enough that the corner of his mouth twitches just slightly. It’s not something he usually concerns himself with—appearances, impressions, any of that—but here, now, sitting across from you with the aftertaste of something genuinely good still lingering on his tongue… It matters. A little.

Besides, you should eat too.

Eventually, the plates are cleared, the conversation—whatever remains of it—settles into something softer until it naturally reaches its end. Ashveil rises not long after, adjusting his grip on his cane as he prepares to leave.

“Thank you for the meal,” he says, voice low but genuine. “It was very good.”

That feels insufficient. It is insufficient. But for now, it’ll have to do.

He turns toward the door, already expecting that to be the end of it—the natural conclusion to something that, realistically, shouldn’t have extended this far to begin with.

“Wait—”

He pauses mid-step. There’s a brief beat before he turns back, brows lifting ever so slightly in quiet question.

You hesitate, just for a second, before speaking. “Do you want to take some food home?”

Ashveil blinks. “…home?” he echoes, like the concept needs a moment to settle.

You nod, already moving toward the kitchen. “There’s still plenty left,” you explain, voice a little quicker now, like you’re trying to justify it before he can refuse. “And you said you liked it, so I figured—”

“You don’t have to do that.”

You pause, glancing back at him.

“I’ve already had more than enough,” he continues. “Three servings is—” he huffs lightly, almost amused under his breath, “—generous, to say the least.”

“That’s fine,” you insist. “I made a lot on purpose.”

There’s no hesitation in your expression, no polite obligation dressed up as generosity—just something straightforward and sincere, offered without expectation. It makes refusing feel unnecessarily difficult

“…still,” he starts, though there’s less conviction behind it now, “I don’t want to impose.”

“You’re not.”

You’ve already started packing the food before he can argue further, moving with that same easy decisiveness he’d noticed earlier, like this outcome had been decided the moment the thought crossed your mind.

“…alright,” he relents.

By the time you return, handing him the neatly packed container, he takes it without further protest, his fingers brushing briefly against yours in the exchange.

“…thank you,” he says.

You walk him to the door after that.

He adjusts the container in his hand, already calculating how long it’ll last, how best to portion it, how Mister N will probably—

“You can come back whenever, you know.”

Ashveil pauses.

“I don’t mind cooking for you.”

He stills, before turning his head slightly, just enough to look at you.

You don’t seem to think much of it. To you, it’s probably just a polite offer—something said out of kindness, out of habit, out of the same easy generosity that led you to hand him food in the first place. But to him, it doesn’t land lightly.

Come back whenever.

Ashveil’s grip tightens around the container in his hand. He could brush it off. Treat it like nothing. Let it pass the same way most things do. That would be the easier option.

Except—

“…I’ll take you up on that offer.”

© 2026 kominigiru.

end note: ashveil when he tasted mc’s cooking for the first time: