Yuki didn't look back after whispering "okay."
Riku stayed beside her, walking quietly as fallen leaves clung to their shoes and the late afternoon light spilled gold across the campus path. His hand brushed hers once—accidentally, or maybe not—but she didn't reach for it.
She didn't owe him that.
She didn't owe him anything.
Because love—at least the kind he carried—wasn't something she could return.
Not because she didn't see him. Not because she didn't care.
But because she couldn't feel that way for someone who felt so safe.
She liked Riku's presence the same way she liked the sound of rain while writing, or the softness of an old sweater. Comforting. Reliable. Undemanding. But the truth—bitter and silent—was that she didn't burn for him.
She didn't want his hands on her skin or his breath in her hair.
She wanted him to stay, yes—but only in the periphery. Like background music. Like a memory you never want to lose but never want to relive either.
She wanted his presence.
But not his heart.
---
That night, Yuki curled up with her laptop again.
But this time, she opened her draft folder.
Velour: Book Four
Her fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from anticipation.
And then she typed:
> "He pressed her against the marble sink, hands on either side of her hips—not trapping, just anchoring. She didn't look away as he leaned in, lips brushing the hollow of her throat like a question."
> 'Say no, and I'll stop.'
> She didn't say anything at all. Because silence was her favorite kind of consent—with him, it always meant yes.
---
Velour's world was different.
Messier. Hungrier.
Yuki's heroine wasn't quiet like her. She didn't shrink in lecture halls or avoid eye contact in elevators. She was wild in a way that made readers blush. Unashamed in her body. Ruthless with her longing.
In her story, love didn't wait patiently beside you on rainy afternoons.
It stole into your room like a storm, left your sheets damp, and your conscience aching.
Her protagonist—Ame—was a former literature teacher turned ghostwriter for erotic thrillers. She lived in a sunless apartment and kissed strangers like secrets. She wasn't broken, but she was hollow in all the right places, and the men she met never quite filled her.
Except one.
Kael—her editor. Scarred, too sharp, too much.
They hated each other at first.
> He marked her pages in red and said her writing was self-indulgent.
> She told him his feedback was dry enough to choke on.
But the tension bled off the page like spilled wine. And when they finally kissed, it wasn't soft.
It was ruinous.
---
Yuki paused, staring at the lines she'd written.
She should have been embarrassed.
But instead, she felt alive.
There was no Riku in this world. No gentle promises or polite restraint.
Only need.
Only bruised lips and fingernails on backs and whispered filth beneath moonlit windows.
This wasn't escapism.
It was honesty.
A version of herself that didn't have to be quiet.
---
> Ame kissed Kael like a dare. He kissed her like an apology.
> They didn't need labels. Just walls to push each other against.
---
Yuki leaned back, breath uneven.
Sometimes, she worried that this was the only place she was allowed to feel.
Because in the real world, desire had rules.
You were supposed to fall for boys like Riku.
Safe boys. Soft boys. Boys who waited.
But Yuki didn't want waiting.
She wanted someone who could read her silence like a smut scene.
Who would break rules just to memorize the sound she made when she let go.
---
Her phone buzzed. A message from Riku:
> "Hope today didn't overwhelm you. You were really quiet again. Let me know if you need anything."
She stared at it.
She knew he meant well.
But it didn't make her feel anything.
Instead, she minimized the chat and returned to her draft.
Typed:
> "He lifted her onto the desk with a kind of violence that didn't bruise. Her thighs tightened around him like punctuation."
Then another line:
> "She wasn't looking for love. Just someone who didn't flinch when she asked to be ruined."
---
Midnight. Her room still. The glow of the screen a second moon.
And Yuki—sweet, polite, soft-spoken Yuki—wrote until her fingers ached.
Not for Riku.
Not for romance.
But for the ache she wasn't allowed to say out loud.
---
> "Pain," she once wrote in a margin, "is just love's way of staying after it's gone."
> Ame never let herself forget that line.
Because when Kael kissed her, it always hurt.
---
The city outside her window was faceless.
Ame sat in the low glow of her kitchen, barefoot on cold tile, wearing only a thin black slip and yesterday's eyeliner. She was supposed to be writing, but her laptop sat untouched on the counter. Instead, she poured another glass of wine. It tasted like heat. Like warnings she never listened to.
The knock came at midnight.
One knock. A pause. Then two more—soft, deliberate.
She didn't check the peephole.
She already knew.
Kael never texted before showing up.
He didn't need to.
---
She opened the door, and there he stood—rain-slick coat, jaw clenched, eyes like ash and ruin.
"Did I wake you?" he asked, voice low.
"No," she said. "I was busy ignoring deadlines."
He stepped inside without permission, and she let him. The door clicked shut like a promise.
He didn't touch her.
Not yet.
He always waited until she lied first.
"You said you weren't coming tonight."
"I lied," he said.
She turned her back to him, walked toward the kitchen. Poured a second glass.
"You always do."
> "And you always let me in."
---
Ten minutes later, they weren't speaking anymore.
She was pinned to the wall. His coat had hit the floor, her glass forgotten on the counter, red wine dripping down the stem like a wound.
Kael's mouth was at her collarbone, teeth grazing skin like he wanted to carve his name into her. Her hands threaded into his shirt, tugging, tearing. Not from love. Not even lust.
From need.
Raw. Animal. Terrifying.
---
> She didn't know how to ask to be wanted. But she knew how to arch her back, tilt her chin, and make herself impossible to forget.
She didn't know how to trust. But she knew how to bruise.
And Kael—he was the kind of man who understood how to worship damage.
---
They didn't go to the bedroom.
The kitchen counter sufficed.
> He bent her over it like an edit he didn't ask permission to make. Her thighs slid apart instinctively, heartbeat loud in her ears. She didn't beg—not out loud—but her breath made poetry of her silence.
> "Tell me to stop," he whispered into her spine.
She said nothing.
He left fingerprints on her hips, kissed the scar under her ribs like it was scripture. Their bodies moved with a violence that knew where the softness lived.
> She moaned his name like it had sharp edges.
He growled hers like it tasted better broken.
---
After, they lay on the kitchen floor.
Sweat cooling. Silence stretching.
Kael lit a cigarette. Ame stared at the ceiling.
"You're going to wreck me," he said.
"I already did," she whispered.
He exhaled smoke without looking at her.
"Good."
---
> Love wasn't gentle between them. It was jagged. Breathless. A cliff edge they kept falling from—again and again—just to feel the drop.
> She didn't want someone who made her feel safe.
She wanted someone who made her feel ruined—and still stayed.
---
Later, while Kael slept on her couch, Ame sat at her laptop.
She opened her manuscript. Her hands were still shaking.
And she typed:
> "It wasn't about being loved. Not for girls like her. It was about being remembered by someone who touched you like he meant it, even if he didn't stay."
> "She wasn't asking for a forever. Just a night that burned hard enough to feel like one."
---
Across the city, lights flickered in other windows.
Other people slept.
Other hearts beat.
But in that small apartment—cluttered, unwashed, sacred—Ame's world unfurled line by line, like skin beneath hungry hands.
And Yuki Aizawa, in her own quiet bedroom across another city, typed until the words tasted like blood and sex and memory.
Not because she had lived it.
But because somewhere, deep inside, she wanted to.
---
The glow of the screen bathed Yuki's face in cold light. Outside, the city had finally slept, its pulse quiet beneath the breath of wind weaving through Komorebi's narrow streets. But inside Yuki's room, the air was thick with what lingered: her unsent drafts, Kael's cigarette smoke still fresh in her mind, and a confession she would never say out loud.
The document on her screen blinked back.
> She wasn't asking for a forever. Just a night that burned hard enough to feel like one.
Yuki read the line once. Twice. Then leaned back, closed her eyes.
In her bones, she could still feel the way Kael had looked at Ame. Not like a man in love. But like someone being haunted. The kind of gaze that left marks without touch.
Her phone vibrated.
Riku.
"Are you awake?"
She didn't reply. Instead, she opened a blank tab.
untitled_poem_2.txt
> Sometimes I keep you close because your silence doesn't ask for answers.
---
Morning came like an apology.
She wore a soft grey turtleneck and tied her hair into a low bun, the ends brushing her collarbone like hesitant thoughts. Her parents were already in the kitchen, soft clinking and the smell of tea filling the apartment.
"You stayed up again?" her mother asked gently.
Yuki nodded. "Just writing."
"You should rest more. It's not good to live inside a screen."
She smiled faintly, but her mind had already drifted. Not to her thesis or the class quiz on Romanticism, but to Ame's apartment. To a broken wine glass, lips parted around a cigarette, and Kael's voice saying, *"You're going to wreck me."
She clutched her coat tighter.
Outside, Komorebi was draped in light fog. The campus felt like a watercolor in motion: blurry and beautiful, the kind of scene you wanted to photograph but couldn't explain.
Riku was waiting at the gate.
He waved. Held out coffee. Smiled.
And all she could think was how different it felt when Kael handed Ame a drink with trembling fingers and a mouth still hot from sin.
---
Class passed in fragments.
Narrative structures. Reader empathy. Symbolic disassociation. Yuki underlined key points, nodded when expected, but her notebook margins were filled with Kael's dialogue:
> "Every time you say nothing, I want you more."
> "You taste like regret I didn't earn."
---
Later, in the library's third floor where no one ever sat, Yuki opened her laptop.
She split the screen.
On the left: Ame and Kael. A new scene half-written. On the right: her syllabus, blinking unread.
She stared.
Then wrote:
> Ame couldn't sleep. Her body remembered Kael even when her mind didn't want to. The bruises weren't visible. But they hummed beneath her skin like unfinished poetry.
Yuki paused. Her hand hovered over the keys.
Her thoughts began to drift—not as Yuki, not as Velour. But somewhere between.
What if someone loved me like that?
Not safely. Not kindly. But completely.
---
"Hey," Riku whispered, breaking her reverie. He had appeared like a ghost beside her table.
"I brought snacks. Figured you'd forget to eat again."
She blinked. Nodded. Smiled, automatic.
He sat beside her.
Too close.
"You've been distant lately."
She wanted to say, I've been in bed with a man who doesn't exist. I've been writing scenes so raw they make my hands shake. I've been craving ruin, not routine.
Instead, she whispered, "Sorry."
He offered her a piece of bread.
She took it.
He didn't know she was starving for something else.
---
That night, the chapter spilled out of her.
> Kael watched her undress like it was a confession. Slowly. Reverently. His hands didn't rush. But his eyes did.
> "I want to forget everyone who came before me," he said, pulling her into his lap.
> "Then touch me like I'm new," she replied.
The words made her tremble.
Not because they were erotic.
But because they were honest.
---
The next day, Yuki stood in front of her mirror. Looked at her lips. Touched her neck.
She tried to see what Kael saw in Ame.
What made her worth writing.
But all she saw was Yuki.
Good daughter. Quiet student. Girl with soft hands and a mouth too careful to bleed.
She grabbed her phone. Scrolled through reader messages.
> "Your writing makes me feel seen in places I've hidden from everyone else."
> "You write like someone who's survived things she can't name."
She held the phone to her chest.
Velour is loved.
Yuki was tolerated.
---
Evening again.
Rain brushed the windows like a secret. Her playlist hummed low jazz and piano echoes.
She opened a message from Riku:
> "I know I said I'd wait. But maybe I was just hoping you'd catch up. And now... I don't know. Maybe we're not even walking the same road."
Her chest ached.
Because she knew he was right.
She typed back:
> "I like you, Riku. But not in the way that keeps people warm at night."
> "I like your presence. Not your future."
She deleted it.
Typed instead:
> "I'm sorry."
> "You deserve someone who doesn't write confessions they'll never send."
She hit send.
Then closed the chat.
Opened her manuscript.
And whispered:
"Okay, Ame. Take it from here."
---
> In the chapter's climax, Kael said her name like a prayer. Not to worship. But to beg.
> "You don't love me," he said.
> "No," Ame agreed, breathless, as she pulled him closer. "But I want you more than anyone I've ever loved."
---
Yuki closed the laptop.
She sat in the dark, listening to the rain.
Between the ticking clock and her heartbeat, a truth finally settled:
She didn't want to be loved like Riku loved her.
She wanted to be known the way Kael knew Ame.
In the shadows. In the hunger.
In the pages she never let anyone read.
---