Yu drew in a slow breath and picked up his phone.

  The glass was cool against his fingertips, slick with the faint film of sweat he hadn’t realized had collected there. The dim room around him felt smaller than it had a few minutes ago, like the walls had edged closer while he wasn’t looking. Somewhere beyond the half-closed curtains, a car passed on wet pavement, its sound stretched and distant, like it belonged to another neighborhood, another life.

  On the screen, the familiar EWS icon glowed softly. Yu’s heartbeat thumped hard the moment his fingertip hovered above it. If it happens again… if I hear it again… He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t want to give it shape.

  “…Rize.” His voice came out quieter than he intended, almost breathless, as if saying her name required the same caution as stepping onto thin ice. The instant he spoke, the phone’s display brightened along the edges. Light didn’t simply increase—it bloomed, a pale shimmer spreading outward as though the screen had depth and the brightness was seeping up through layers.

  The air in front of the phone bent. Not like heat haze. Not like a trick of tired eyes. The space itself rippled, a thin sheet of reality peeling back with patient, silent inevitability. A rectangular frame—clean-lined, faintly luminous—opened in front of him as if the room had gained a window where no wall existed.

  Beyond it, another room materialized. Stone walls. Rough, uneven blocks stacked with old-world intention, their surface pitted by age. A single lantern hung near the corner, its flame steady and warm, casting a pool of amber light that softened the room’s shadows instead of driving them away. And in that light, sitting on the edge of a narrow bed, was a girl with crimson hair and calm eyes, her posture both weary and stubbornly upright.

  “…Yu.” Rize smiled at him.

  It wasn’t the bright kind of smile meant for an audience. It didn’t perform. It simply existed—small and real, like the first warmth in the chest after you’ve been cold for too long. The sight of it struck Yu with such immediate relief that his ribs ached, like he’d been holding his breath all day without knowing.

  Once, their connection had blinked out within seconds, snapping shut like a door slammed by an impatient hand. Now it held steady. The frame didn’t tremble. The image didn’t jitter. The invisible line stretched long and gentle between their worlds, steady enough that Yu could forget, for a moment, how impossible it was.

  His open textbook sat in front of him like an accusation he didn’t have the strength to answer. Yu closed it anyway. The cover met the pages with a soft, decisive sound. It was a small motion, but it felt like choosing something. Like acknowledging what mattered in the only way he could.

  His eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on her. No words were needed at first. They simply looked at each other, and the restless ache in Yu’s chest eased, melting into something quieter. He could still hear the low hum of the fan in his room. He could still feel the edge of his desk under his forearms. But those sensations stopped being anchors and started being background—unimportant details around the only thing that felt solid.

  In the inn behind Rize, evening light filtered through a small window, draping long amber shadows across the stone floor. Dust motes drifted lazily through the lantern glow. The room looked lived-in in a way Yu’s room didn’t—simple furniture, worn fabric, the kind of place that didn’t pretend to be luxurious, only safe.

  Rize shifted on the bed and reached toward her chest. The bandage there was wrapped neatly, but not tightly enough to hide its purpose. She unwound it slowly, careful, fingers moving with the practiced precision of someone who had rewrapped wounds more times than she could count. The fabric made a faint whispering sound as it slid free, and when it came away, she traced the healed skin beneath with her fingertips as if confirming the truth through touch.

  “…I can run again.” She inhaled deeply and exhaled softly. There was pride in her voice—small, restrained, but unmistakable. Like a candle flame that refused to go out.

  “Really? That’s… that’s amazing.” Yu said. He’s words came fast, relief making them clumsy. He leaned forward over his desk without thinking, elbows pressing into the wood, as if proximity could travel through the frame if he tried hard enough. His chest felt tight, but not from fear this time. It was the tightness of something that had been braced for bad news and was now trying to learn how to unclench.

  Rize watched him with a quiet, almost startled expression. The way he looked at her—so intent, so unguarded—made something inside her feel lighter. The ache she still carried in her body didn’t vanish, but it receded, pushed back by the simple fact that someone was looking at her like this. Not at her wounds, not at her usefulness, not at the sharpness of her blade. At her.

  “…I think tonight,” she said, her voice lowering as if she didn’t want to tempt fate, “I’ll finally sleep well.”

  “Then that’s all I need to hear.” Yu’s shoulders loosened. His hand curled into a small fist at the edge of the desk, a reflex he didn’t notice until Rize’s gaze dropped to it. The knuckles were pale. His grip wasn’t anger. It was restraint, like he was holding something back because he didn’t know where to put it.

  Rize swallowed. Why does he care this much? The question rose like a pebble thrown into still water, ripples spreading through her mind. Why does his voice shake when he says my name? Why does he look like this hurts him too?

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  She wanted to ask. She opened her mouth, but the words lodged in her throat, caught on a tightness she didn’t understand. Her chest rose and fell once, then again, and all that came out was a soft breath.

  Silence stretched between them. Not awkward. Not empty. It was dense, full of the unspoken things neither of them had learned how to place into language. Their eyes stayed locked, unblinking, as if looking away would break something fragile and newly formed.

  Yu’s gaze felt sharper than any sword Rize had faced. And yet impossibly gentle. It wasn’t the stare of someone assessing strength. It wasn’t the gaze of someone calculating. It was as if he could see the places inside her that no one else had ever bothered to look for.

  “…Rize,” Yu murmured, the name leaving him like a confession. “When we talk like this… you’re still strong, but… you’re also just… a normal girl.”

  Rize’s heart jumped. The lantern light behind her seemed to flare for a heartbeat, though Yu knew that was his own vision shifting, his body reacting to the sudden weight of what he’d said. Rize’s lips parted, and the reply that came out was small enough to almost vanish.

  “…No one’s ever said that to me,” she said, the words trembled. All her life, she had been measured in survival. In victories. In what she could endure. Strength was the only language people used around her, whether they praised her or feared her. Being “normal” had never been offered as an option.

  Heat crept across her cheeks. She looked away for a second, not because she wanted to, but because her face felt too exposed. Then her eyes lifted again, drawn back as if by gravity. Distance should have separated them—worlds apart, an impossible border between stone and modern drywall.

  Yet he felt close enough to touch. Close enough that Rize became suddenly aware of her own breathing. Of the way her shoulders rose. Of how carefully she had to hold herself still to keep her voice from shaking.

  The frame wrapped around them like a quiet room inside a quiet room, shutting out everything else. The inn’s distant noises faded. Yu’s fan hum became irrelevant. The border, the impossibility of it, thinned until it felt like a thing they had forgotten how to see. After a moment of hesitation, Rize steadied her breath.

  “Yu… if you came here… to this side… what would you teach me?” She didn’t look away this time, though her voice trembled faintly when she spoke. The question wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t playful. It wasn’t even fully serious in the way a tactical question would be. It was honest.

  Yu’s chest tightened. Heat rushed to his throat, and his mouth felt suddenly dry, as if his body had stolen all moisture to keep his heartbeat going. He swallowed once, then again, buying himself a fraction of time he didn’t really have.

  What am I supposed to say? What do I even have that matters in her world? The answer came anyway, clear and immediate, as if it had been waiting behind his ribs this whole time.

  “Everything.” Yu’s voice was soft, but there was no hesitation in the word itself. “…Everything I can show you.” He inhaled shakily, then forced the breath out, grounding himself. His eyes didn’t leave hers. “But maybe… before all that… we could start with something simple,” Yu said. “Like… walking side by side.”

  Rize’s eyes widened. For a moment, she forgot how to blink. The idea landed inside her like a gentle shock. Not training. Not fighting. Not survival. Something ordinary. Something that sounded almost absurd in her life.

  Her cheeks colored deeper, a flush spreading to the tips of her ears. Her gaze dropped abruptly to her lap, as if she could hide behind the simple line of her knees. Her lips trembled, trying to shape a response, but nothing formed.

  Yu’s heart ached at the sight. A memory flashed across his mind—warmth, the weight of her shoulder close to him, the sensation of existing beside someone instead of behind a screen. It was a memory that didn’t fully make sense, stitched together from moments he couldn’t explain and feelings he didn’t know how to categorize.

  Before he realized what he was doing, his hand lifted. It moved toward the frame. Toward the warmth he remembered. His fingertips hovered a hair’s breadth from the luminous border, close enough that the light painted pale stripes across his skin. He could almost convince himself he felt resistance there—like glass that wasn’t glass, a surface that might give if he pushed the right way.

  Then he stopped. His breath caught hard enough to sting. A sudden awareness crashed into him: the boundary. The impossibility. The risk of reaching too far into something he didn’t understand. His hand curled into a fist and retreated, drawing back to the safety of his own world as if he’d been burned.

  Rize saw everything. Her eyes lifted, and they shimmered faintly—not with tears, not exactly, but with something softer. Something that looked like understanding before language. She smiled. She didn’t press him. She didn’t tease him. She didn’t reach for the boundary either. Neither of them had the courage yet.

  But something hopeful bloomed quietly between them anyway—an invisible bud of future they couldn’t name, a promise neither dared speak aloud but both could feel taking root. For a long moment, they simply looked at one another. No words.

  Just breath and presence shared through a fragile window. Soft. Gentle. Unspoken. Outside that fragile space, the edge of the frame flickered.

  Zzt.

  A brief static ripple crawled along the border, like a fingertip brushing across the seam between their worlds. The light wavered—subtle enough that it could be mistaken for a tired eye twitch, quick enough to be forgotten if you weren’t looking directly at it.

  Yu didn’t notice. Rize didn’t notice. Their eyes were locked too deeply, their attention too narrowed to anything beyond each other. The disturbance faded quickly. The quiet returned, as if nothing had happened.

  But for the briefest moment, in the corner of the display, a faint gray silhouette appeared. Humanoid. Colorless. Watching. It stood like a smear of shadow against the lantern-lit stone, wrong in the way a reflection can be wrong when it doesn’t match the light source. It didn’t move. It didn’t breathe. It simply existed for a sliver of time, a presence that made the air feel colder even though neither of them felt it.

  Then it dissolved. As if it had never been there. Someone was observing. Neither Yu nor Rize knew.

  “…Good night. See you tomorrow.” Yu’s voice softened, and the words he chose were careful, as if he didn’t want to wake from something delicate.

  “Mm,” Rize nodded once. “…Good night Yu,” she replied, her voice quiet with lingering warmth.

  The frame closed. Light folded inward, the border shrinking with silent grace until the window was gone and Yu was left staring at the ordinary black of his phone screen. His own reflection hovered there—pale, blurred, eyes too wide—like a ghost trapped under glass. The room around him returned: the hum of the fan, the stale warmth of paper and electronics, the weight of the quiet. Yu let out a breath he didn’t remember holding.

  But in the darkness of the screen, in the pixel-thin world just behind the glass, a presence lingered. A gaze that did not leave.