It happened on a Tuesday.
Heian remembered because the light had been just right—slanting through the blinds, casting ribs of shadow across her bare back. She sat with her knees to her chest, smudged in half-dried pigment, her skin marked with yesterday's symbols.
It should have been like every other morning.
But she was crying.
Not the silent, poetic weeping she usually did. No. This was real—raw, hiccupped sobs, like something inside her had finally cracked through the thin ice of composure.
He didn't ask.
He just approached, placed a robe gently over her shoulders, and sat beside her on the floor.
She flinched.
"Don't be kind," she whispered. "Please. I'll fall apart."
"Then fall," he said, "I'll collect the pieces."
She turned to him, mascara smudged down her cheeks like battle paint.
"You were never supposed to say things like that."
"I didn't mean to," he admitted. "It just came out."
"You ruin everything when you're gentle."
She shoved the robe off, suddenly furious. Furious at herself. At him. At this unspoken thing tightening around their throats like a ribbon made of guilt.
"This was supposed to be art," she snapped. "Not intimacy. Not this... tender ruin."
He looked at her, eyes storm-dark.
"So you'd rather I fuck you like a canvas than hold you like a person?"
"Yes," she said. "Because I can survive cruelty. But kindness? Kindness makes me believe in things that leave me empty."
Silence. Then—
"I think I'm falling in love with you," Heian said.
That was the break.
The fracture.
Not in her body. Not on her skin. But in the rules—the sacred, twisted rules they built this temple on.
And once it cracked, everything else began to bleed.
She kissed him then.
Not like the others. Not like before.
This kiss didn't want to devour.
It wanted to stay.
And that terrified them both more than any blade ever could.
——