Erza turned her head.
Ahead of her, tucked between a laundromat and a pawn shop, stood a small bakery. The sign above the door was hand-painted, faded by sun and rain, the letters soft and worn as if they had been there for decades. The Morning Loaf. Through the glass window, the afternoon light slanted across racks of bread cooling on wire shelves, golden crusts, flour-dusted tops, the kind of bread that promised warmth and comfort and something close to home.
The bakery was empty.
Of course it was empty, it was afternoon, the hour when bakeries grew quiet, when the morning rush had long faded and the evening crowd had not yet arrived. But the smell lingering in the air was unmistakable.
Fresh bread.
Warm.
Yeasty.
The kind of smell that made strangers feel like they had come home.
