Her eyes opened fully now. They didn’t look like hers—too sharp, too lucid.

"Not yet," she repeated, slower this time.

Deliberate. Like she wanted me to savor each syllable.

I staggered back, nearly tripping over the chair. My body felt too big for me, my limbs untrustworthy, my breath coming shallow and broken.

"You’re telling me you’re going to?" I whispered. "Or you already have?"

She stayed silent. The lamp flickered. My ledger sat open on the nightstand, mocking me with its presence.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to end my life if I could ever have done so.

I reeled back, heat flushing up my neck. "What the hell do you mean ’not yet’?!" My voice cracked, higher this time. "Are you planning to—what, seduce him? Sleep with him? Using my body?"

Selene yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand like a bored cat.

"You’re the one who draws him like that," she mumbled.

"You’re the one who keeps sending him pieces of yourself."

"That’s different!" I snapped. "That’s art! That’s—God, you’re insane."

I wanted to shake her awake, drag her fully into consciousness so she could feel every ounce of my fury. Instead, she just lay there, eyes half-lidded again, as if my words were the breeze.

I stood at the foot of the bed, fists clenched, trying to steady my breathing. Every nerve in my body buzzed like live wire.

Not yet.

The phrase looped in my skull like an echo. It was worse than if she’d said yes. It was worse than a confession. It was a promise.

And if she kept her promises...

My stomach twisted.

"Selene," I whispered, "you can’t. You can’t do this."

Her lashes fluttered, a shadow of a smile tugging at her mouth. "We’ll see," she said, so softly I almost missed it.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to end my life if I could ever have done so.

The words splintered the air.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" I lunged closer, fists clenching, as if proximity could strangle the ambiguity out of her. My heart was hammering, blood rushing too loud for thought. "Are you telling me you— what, you plan to? That you’re just waiting for the right moment?"

She didn’t answer. She just smiled. Or maybe she winced.

In that moment, I couldn’t tell. Her face blurred at the edges, as though the lamplight had soaked into her skin and was leaking out in soft, glowing patches.

"Stop it," I hissed. "Stop talking like that. Stop acting like— like you’re not you. Like you’re me. You’re not me!"

Her eyelids drooped. "But I was. Didn’t you feel it?"

My skin crawled.

"No—shut up—shut up! You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to—"

I tripped over my own words, caught between fury and a kind of nausea that made me want to claw my own throat open.

Had she touched him? Had she leaned across the desk in my body, smiled with my lips, and whispered things meant only for my pulse?

The thought made me dizzy.

"You didn’t. You couldn’t have. Tell me you didn’t,"

I demanded, my voice trembling harder than I wanted.

Selene let out a sleepy laugh — or maybe a sigh. "You’re asking me to lie, aren’t you?"

"No!" My scream cracked against the walls.

"I’m asking you to swear you didn’t do that! Not with him!"

Her eyes opened fully now. They didn’t look like hers. Not tired, not drunk. Awake. Too awake. A sharp clarity cut through them, as if someone else had borrowed her gaze.

"Not yet," she repeated, slower this time.

Deliberate. Like she wanted me to savor the shape of each syllable.

"But then... what if I did?"

I staggered back, nearly tripping over the chair. My body felt too big for me, my limbs untrustworthy, my breath coming shallow and broken. I wanted to scream again, but the sound caught, strangled by the weight of her words.

"Doesn’t that mean you’re going to?" My voice was almost a whisper now. Desperate.

"Doesn’t that mean it’s already decided or you actually have done it?"

Her silence was worse than confirmation.

The air thickened, humming with something I couldn’t name. The lamp flickered, just once. My ledger sat open on the nightstand, mocking me with its presence.

I wanted to look away. I couldn’t.

Selene leaned back slowly, her hair falling across her cheek.

She closed her eyes again, as if dismissing me, as if retreating back into sleep.

"Maybe you’ll thank me," she murmured, barely audible.

"Thank you?" My throat burned. "For what? For ruining me?"

Her lips curled, half-asleep, half-smug. "For finishing what you started." 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

I couldn’t breathe. My knees gave out, and I sank onto the floor beside the bed, trembling, my hands clawing at my scalp as though I could dig the confusion out of my skull.

This was a nightmare. A waking nightmare.

But then — a colder thought pierced through the fog: what if this wasn’t nightmare at all? What if it was real?

No — what if they actually did that?

The question hung in the room like a bad smell. I pressed my palms to my temples until stars burst behind my eyes. The ledger lay on the nightstand, innocent and obscene at once, pages fanned like a guilty fan.

My fingers itched to close it, to smother the ink, but my hands felt miles away — other people’s hands, maybe Selene’s, maybe someone else’s.

Then the room tilted.

Not physically — everything stayed where it should be — but sound thinned, color drained, and the lamp’s halo stretched into a long, hungry eye. A single page of the ledger shuddered and lifted as if a small wind breathed from between the covers. It flipped once, twice, and settled on an illustration I hadn’t drawn. The line work was wrong and right all at once: familiar angles, foreign intent.

"Stop it," I rasped, though I wasn’t sure who I ordered — Selene, the thing in her, the ink, myself.

Selene’s lips parted. For a second, only air moved. Then a voice, low and threaded with a timbre that had nothing to do with the woman beside me, filled the space. It wasn’t recorded; it wasn’t in my head. It was there, warm and near:

"You drew it first. Your fault."

My throat closed. The syllables untied a fist inside my chest.

"Renji..." I breathed, and the name tasted like glass.

Her eyes opened wide, too bright. They weren’t sleepy now; they were patient, like someone watching a puzzle solve itself. "Did you know? I invited him," she — or he — said. The sound came out as both hers and not hers.

"It was almost a job done. Piece-by-piece, similar to a puzzle."

I crawled backward until the wall found my spine. The ledger’s pages snapped shut with a dry, satisfying click that meant nothing. Outside, a siren phased through the neighborhood, ordinary and indifferent.

I curled into myself because there was nowhere else to go. The world had narrowed to pulse, ink, and a single, impossible promise.