(Kira's POV)
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I sat down on a plush armchair in the living room, the fabric warm beneath me, like it had soaked in the lives of those who lived here. I placed my hands on my knees, but they wouldn't stop fidgeting. My fingers twisted together. Untwisted. Rested. Twitched again.
The photos were watching me. I could feel their gaze.
And the silence returned—deep, weighty, crawling under my skin. It wasn't a comfortable silence. It was the kind that lingers in old houses after something major had happened. Or before something worse does.
I lowered the grocery bags carefully to the polished wooden floor, propping them up with the edge of my boot as if keeping them upright might somehow delay the inevitable collapse of this whole strange, surreal moment. The weight of what I was doing—not just delivering groceries, but pretending, lying, dodging—settled heavily in my chest.
