There was a time when I barely left my room.
Days passed without meaning. Morning felt the same as night, and everything in between was just silence filled with thoughts I couldn't escape. I told myself I was trying to move on, but the truth was—I didn't know how.
So I hid.
I buried myself in stories that weren't mine. Manhwa, manga, light novels—anything that could take me somewhere else, even just for a while. I kept turning pages, hoping that maybe, somehow, I'd find a way to fix what I was feeling.
But every story ends.
And when it did, I was still there… in the same room, with the same emptiness.
A month went by like that.
Until one day, for no clear reason, I decided to step outside.
The air felt different. Not better—just unfamiliar, like something I hadn't touched in a long time. My feet carried me somewhere instinctively, to a place that once felt normal.
The basketball court near Keze's house.
It wasn't anything special. Just a half-court, worn out by time and use. But it was enough. Enough to remind me of who I was before everything became so heavy.
Keze was there, as expected.
We talked for a bit—random things, small conversations that didn't need meaning. For a moment, it felt… easy. Like I was slowly remembering how to exist outside my own head.
Then he told me to come inside.
I didn't think twice.
But the moment I stepped through the door, everything shifted.
She was there.
Sitting quietly, like she belonged to a different kind of world. Small in figure, with a soft wolf cut framing her face. She wore a black long-sleeve top and shorts, simple—but somehow, everything about her stood out.
The light caught her just enough.
Enough for me to notice.
Enough for me to stop.
I didn't realize I had paused until I couldn't move anymore. My eyes stayed on her longer than they should have, drawn by something I couldn't explain.
She's beautiful, I thought.
No—
too beautiful.
Not in a way that felt distant or unreachable, but in a way that made everything else feel quieter.
Then, as if she felt it, she looked up.
Our eyes met.
It was brief. Just a second.
But it lingered.
There was no smile, no words—just that silent moment where two strangers became aware of each other. And for reasons I didn't understand, it stayed with me longer than it should have.
I looked away first.
Trying to act normal, I leaned closer to Keze and asked, almost casually,
"Who's that?"
He followed my gaze and shrugged lightly.
"My cousin."
Then he added, like it was nothing—
"Her name's Kate. She's a lesbian."
The words hit softer than I expected… but they still landed.
I didn't even know her, yet something inside me sank. A quiet kind of disappointment I couldn't explain, like realizing something was already out of reach before I even had the chance to understand why I cared.
Still… I couldn't look away completely.
There was something about her.
Something that made me curious.
Something that made me stay aware of her presence, even when I tried not to.
We went back outside after that.
The sound of the basketball hitting the ground, the laughter, the usual noise—it all came back. I played, moved, talked like everything was normal.
But she stayed in my mind.
In between every pause.
In every quiet second.
By the time I got home, it was already late.
My room looked the same. Felt the same.
But as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, I realized something had changed.
Because for the first time in a long while…
my thoughts weren't about the pain I was trying to forget.
They were about her.
And no matter how much I tried—
I couldn't erase her from my mind.