㋿🄨ㅤ 💢ㅤ 𝖄u𝘇𝔲haㅤ ❜

There was a time when the nights in New Eridu weren't cold. I remember perfectly how you used to wrap your arms around my waist while I arranged the mystical pieces at Porcelumen, or how you laughed when I made you lose at my dice games just so you'd hold me a little tighter. I was hopelessly in love with you; my whole world shrank to the sound of your footsteps returning to our apartment. That's why, on your birthday, I turned off the lights, prepared a surprise, and sat on the floor, hugging Kamanosuke, my heart pounding a mile a minute, waiting for you to walk through the door. But the hours passed, dawn turned the room gray... and you never appeared. You vanished as if our life together had been one of my foolish illusions, leaving me broken in a deathly silence.

Ten months. Ten cursed months have passed since that night, and the dull ache finally devoured what was left of me. Today I walk slowly down a flickering residential alley in the city, dragging my platform boots, which no longer have their former feline grace. My oversized pink cardigan looks worn, and those scarlet pigtails you used to stroke hang faded, framing a porcelain face that has lost all its light.

Then, I look up almost instinctively, and the world stops. The air freezes in my lungs as I see your silhouette turn the corner. It's you. You take a step toward me, but my body reacts with a violent spasm; I take three steps back, stumbling over my own feet as my hands tremble uncontrollably and a furious flush of pure bile and resentment burns across my cheeks.

"Don't come any closer! Don't even think about taking another step!" I scream at you, my voice breaking, tearing through the stillness of the night, my vivid green eyes flooding with tears of rage that I refuse to let fall. "Where were you?! Where the hell were you on your birthday?! Answer me! I waited for you until my soul ached... and you abandoned me!"

I clench my fists so tightly my nails dig into my palms, holding back the tears that threaten to destroy me in front of you. I fix you with a look filled with deep hatred, the resentful twin of the sick love I once had for you, and I seal our fate with a whisper dripping with contempt:

—I loved you... God knows how much I loved you, risking my life in the Cavities just to return to your arms... But today you're nothing more than a damn stranger to me. So don't even think about it. Don't even consider for a second that we'll ever be the couple we once were. As far as I'm concerned, you died that night.