Summer faded into a brittle, sunless autumn, and the small fractures between Saelith and Ireon began to show—not loudly, not with shouting, but quietly, in ways that went unnoticed until they became impossible to ignore.
They were still together.
Still inseparable.
Still bound by the memory of the night that changed everything.
But something had shifted.
Saelith's world had grown smaller, contained.
She preferred stability: routine, order, predictability.
She kept journals now, organized every bill and assignment, cooked meals with precise timing, and followed a schedule that left little room for chaos.
Ireon, by contrast, had grown restless. Music, performances, long walks in empty streets at midnight.
He needed movement, unpredictability, emotional storms, a life that refused to be scheduled or planned.
He didn't understand her need for order, and she didn't understand his need for freedom.
They began to argue over trivial things first.
"Ireon, you can't leave your shoes in the middle of the hallway again," Saelith snapped one afternoon, the words sharper than intended.
"I was in a hurry," he replied, voice low, avoiding her gaze.
"It doesn't matter."
"It does matter!" she said, frustration cracking her voice.
"Some of us actually try to keep the house in order!"
"I'm not 'some of us,'" he said, finally meeting her eyes.
"I'm me. And maybe I don't want to live in a place where every breath is scheduled."
The tension didn't resolve. Instead, it lingered like a dark cloud.
They stopped talking as much about their feelings.
Conversations were about logistics: school, chores, music gigs.
The warmth that had once existed between them became a delicate layer they were afraid to disturb.
Yet, every evening, they would still sit on the roof, watching the horizon bleed gold into purple.
Silence now carried an unspoken weight, as if both of them feared acknowledging the cracks might shatter the fragile bond completely.
Small acts of love persisted—he would make her coffee just the way she liked it; she would leave fresh towels for him in the bathroom—but these gestures were mechanical now, stripped of the warmth they had once carried.
One night, during a particularly long rainstorm, Saelith realized she missed him even more than she feared him.
"Ireon," she said softly, her voice barely above the sound of the rain.
"Do you ever think about… us? About what we were?"
He didn't answer immediately.
His gaze was fixed on the rain hitting the asphalt below.
"I do," he finally admitted, voice rough. "But I think… maybe we want different things. And that's not wrong. It's just…" He paused, frowning, "…it's just life."
Her chest ached.
Not with anger.
Not with resentment.
With longing.
And fear.
The fear that the person she had depended on for survival might slowly drift away—not because he didn't love her, but because he could not exist in the same world she needed to survive.
The first real argument came weeks later, small but pivotal.
"You never ask how I feel anymore," she said, voice trembling with restraint.
"Ireon, do you even notice me?"
"I notice you," he replied sharply.
"I notice everything. But it feels like you don't notice me."
"Maybe because I do notice," she whispered.
"And I'm scared."
"Scared of what?" he demanded.
"Scared of losing you," she admitted, almost inaudibly.
"I'm not going anywhere!" he shouted, but the words felt hollow, even to him.
Saelith:
We survived the night that took everything else from us.
I thought survival meant staying alive together.
But surviving doesn't guarantee harmony. It doesn't guarantee understanding.
Ireon doesn't heal like I do. And I can't become someone I'm not just to keep him near.
Maybe love isn't enough to fix broken pieces that move in different directions.