Chapter 7

I woke up alone.

Again.

For one second, before thought finished assembling itself, my hand searched the bed beside me. It slid over wrinkled sheets, over a cold pillow, over the empty place where Riko had been. My fingers curled into the blanket.

Then I sighed.

Just a tired little breath that felt much older than I was.

“Oh,” I whispered to the ceiling. “This again.”

The room smelled like her. Cherry perfume, and underneath that, my own small apartment smells: old wood, clean laundry, cooling tea, city air from the window, and damp soil.

Damp soil.

My eyes snapped open properly.

Charlie.

I sat up too fast, then remembered I was completely naked and grabbed the blanket around myself with both hands. It had not. The room was empty except for me, the bed, the little kitchenette, the desk, the crooked lamp.

Then the apartment door opened.

I made a sound that was not dignified.

The blanket flew up to my chin. My tail, which had somehow escaped the sheets during the night, snapped around my waist. I twisted toward the door, horns nearly tangling in the pillow, and almost fell off the bed.

Riko stood in the doorway.

The door.

Like a person.

She was holding a potted plant.

It was Charlie.

Riko held the bigger brown pot in both hands, carefully, almost stiffly. The blue ribbon around the support stick was tied into a tiny bow. Charlie’s bent leaves trembled slightly from the hallway draft.

Riko’s eyes flicked from my face to the blanket clutched under my chin.

Her mouth opened.

Closed.

A tiny, exhausted smile pulled at one corner. “You’re covering yourself like I haven’t seen literally everything.”

My face caught fire. “You opened the door!”

“I have a key charm.”

“You made a key charm?”

“You were asleep.”

Her smile wobbled and almost vanished.

I stopped.

The humor had been there for one breath, but only one. Under it, Riko looked wrecked. Her flame bright hair was messy in a way that did not look playful. Her jacket hung crooked from one shoulder. Her porcelain skin still glowed faintly at the seams, but the light was duller than usual, pulsing in uneven little starts. Her eyes were amber when she looked at me, then cyan when they dropped to Charlie, then red for half a second before she blinked it away.

She had been crying.

Again.

Maybe all night.

She stepped inside and shut the door with her heel, never taking both hands off the pot.

“I went down after you fell asleep,” she said.

My fingers tightened on the blanket. “You did?”

“Mhm.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did.”

The answer was immediate. Too immediate. Like she had been arguing with someone else about it before I woke.

Riko carried Charlie to the window and set him down in the wider patch of morning light. She adjusted the pot. Then adjusted it again. Then turned it slightly so the bent stem leaned toward the support stick instead of away. She touched the blue ribbon with one fingertip.

“I bought the pot from a roof gardener three streets over,” she said. “He said moonvines like room, but not too much room, because if the roots feel lost they get dramatic.”

I swallowed.

“Charlie is dramatic?”

“He gets that from you.”

“I am not dramatic.”

Riko looked at me.

I looked at the blanket clutched up to my chin.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe a little.”

Her mouth twitched.

Then her eyes filled with light again.

The smile died.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

My chest hurt.

“I know.”

“I checked the roots. Some of them were still alive. I don’t know if he’ll make it, but the gardener said maybe. He said moonvines are stubborn if someone keeps them warm and doesn’t drown them.” Her voice cracked. “I almost drowned him. I kept wanting to water more because more felt like doing something, but that would be stupid, so I didn’t. I didn’t. I listened. I did it right.”

The last words came out small and desperate, like she needed me to say yes.

Like she needed me to tell her that doing one careful thing meant she was not the person who had done the terrible thing before it.

I looked at Charlie.

Then at Riko.

“You did it right,” I said.

Riko’s face crumpled.

She covered her mouth with one hand, turned away from me, and shook once like the words had hurt more than they helped.

I got out of bed without thinking.

The blanket nearly fell.

I grabbed it at the last second and wrapped it around my waist in a messy knot, because grief and emotional repair did not magically make me less naked. Then I crossed the apartment and stopped behind her.

Not touching yet.

“Riko?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“No.”

“I’m fine.”

“No.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“I know. You are lying.”

Her shoulders went still.

Then she laughed once, tiny and broken. “Look at you.”

“What?”

“Calling me a liar before breakfast.”

I swallowed. “Tiny brave.”

“Stupid brave.”

“Maybe.”

She turned then, and the tears slipped free. Døll tears glowed when they fell, tracing pale blue lines down her cheeks like pieces of moonlight leaking out of a cracked statue. She looked furious about them. Furious at the tears, at herself, at me for seeing them, at Charlie for being alive enough to matter, at everything.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t.” Her hands curled at her sides. “It’s not. I hate it. I hate that I can’t just have one feeling at a time like a normal person. I’m relieved because Charlie might live. I’m angry because I had to go buy a pot for a plant I threw out a window. I’m jealous because you looked at him before you looked at me. I’m happy because you’re here. I’m scared because you’re here. I want you to hug me, but I also want to tell you not to touch me so I can be mad.”

I stared at her.

Then, very carefully, I opened my arms.

Riko looked at them like they were a trap.

Then she stepped into me so hard I stumbled backward against the bed.

Her arms locked around my waist. Her face pressed into my bare chest. The blanket knot nearly gave up on civilization. I held it with one hand and held her with the other, which was not the most graceful hug in history, but it was what I had.

Riko sobbed against me.

This was ugly and shaking and full of little hiccuping breaths. She clutched at me like she was trying to climb inside my ribs and hide there from herself.

“I love you,” she said.

My whole body went still.

She said it again immediately, faster. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you, Yuzu.”

Each one sounded different.

One sounded like an apology.

One sounded like a demand.

One sounded like a plea.

One sounded like she was trying to nail herself to the room so she could not vanish before morning again.

My throat closed.

“I love you too,” I whispered.

Riko shook harder.

“I love you too,” I said again, because the first one had not been enough for either of us. “I love you, Riko.”

Her hands dug into my back.

“Again,” she whispered.

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“Riko.”

Her whole body tensed at the pause.

I closed my eyes and kissed the top of her head.

“I love you,” I said, softer. “But I’m still sad about Charlie.”

She went limp with a tiny, wounded sound.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“And I’m glad you repotted him.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m glad you came back.”

That one made her look up.

Her eyes were wet and glowing and terrified.

“I came back,” she said.

“I see that.”

“I came through the door.”

“I also noticed that part.”

“I was going to knock,” she said. “But then I thought if I knocked you might not open. So I used the key charm.”

“You still made a key charm without asking.”

“I know.”

“That is concerning.”

“I know.”

I waited.

Riko stared at me, then looked away. “I should have asked.”

I breathed out slowly.

“Yes.”

Her fingers curled into my skin again, then loosened. She was trying. I could feel the trying in every part of her. Like she was holding herself on a leash from the inside, terrified of what would happen if she let go.

“I’ll ask next time,” she said.

My heart gave a painful little squeeze.

Next time.

That sounded like a future.

Dangerous word.

Wonderful word.

“Okay,” I said.

She nodded once, then abruptly wiped her glowing cheeks with the heel of her hand and looked at my blanket situation. “You should put clothes on.”

My face burned all over again. “Yes. That is a good idea.”

“I can watch.”

“No.”

“I have seen ”

“Riko.”

She smiled.

It was tiny.

It was real.

It almost made the room warmer.

I changed in the bathroom because I was a coward. When I came back out in soft home shorts and an oversized shirt, she had moved Charlie’s pot half an inch to the left and was now glaring at him.

“Stop leaning,” she told him.

“Do not bully the patient.”

“He started it.”

I looked at Charlie, bent and fragile in his new pot.

“He probably did not.”

Riko’s mouth trembled.

The joke hurt her because Charlie hurt her because I hurt because she had hurt me. I could see the loop start to form, awful and fast, her face folding inward as guilt came around for another bite.

So I stepped beside her and touched her hand.

She grabbed my fingers instantly.

Too tight.

Then loosened.

“Sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“For being sorry?”

“For loosening.”

She stared at our hands.

Then nodded.

Small things.

Maybe relationships were made of small things. Not just big confessions and big disasters and kisses that felt like falling off buildings. Maybe they were also made of loosening your grip when you noticed it hurt. Maybe they were made of saying I should have asked, even when every part of you wanted to turn shame into anger instead.

Maybe.

I did not know.

I was very new at this.

I had the day off.

That felt like a miracle and a trap.

I kept thinking I should do something important with it. Sleep more. Clean the apartment. Buy groceries. Check on patch supplies. Message Mara. Find a book about moonvine recovery.

Instead, Riko stayed.

That became the day.

The apartment was one room, which meant there were not many places to go. We sat on the bed. Then on the floor. Then by the window with Charlie. Then on the bed again. Riko tried to help me make tea and nearly overfilled the kettle because she was watching my face instead of the water line. I made toast with peach jam because the bread was getting stale and stale bread deserved one last chance at greatness. She ate one piece, then stole half of mine, then looked surprised when I gave her the other half.

“You’re supposed to fight me,” she said.

“You wanted it.”

“That is still not the point.”

“I know. But you were hungry.”

Riko looked down at the toast in her hand.

The jam glistened in the morning light.

“I hate when you do that,” she said.

“Feed you?”

“Make me feel like wanting something doesn’t make me bad.”

I did not know what to say to that.

So I said the only thing I had.

“I love you.”

Her eyes shut.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

Then, after a breath, she added, “I hate that it helps.”

“I like that it helps.”

“I know.”

“Is that bad?”

“Probably.”

“Both things can be true.”

Riko opened one eye. “Do not use your little bread wisdom on me.”

“It is not bread wisdom.”

“It smells like bread wisdom.”

“That might be the toast.”

She laughed.

Then started crying halfway through the laugh.

I put the plate down and held her until the crying passed. It took longer this time. She shook with her forehead pressed against my shoulder, one hand twisted in my shirt and the other gripping the edge of the blanket. I did not ask why. I wanted to. The question sat on my tongue so many times it almost became taste.

Where did you go?

Why do you always leave?

Who was the voice in the video?

Why do you look like someone died when nothing has happened?

What are you not telling me?

But the questions felt like knives today, and I did not trust myself to hold them safely. So I held her instead.

Riko whispered, “I love you,” into my shirt so many times that the words stopped sounding like words and started sounding like breathing.

I answered every time.

Maybe I should not have.

Maybe needing and loving were becoming tangled too tightly between us. Maybe two broken people saying I love you over and over was not the same as healing. Maybe it was just pressing hands over a wound and calling the warmth medicine.

But I needed it too.

That was the part I could not pretend away.

Every time she said it, something in me unclenched. Every time I said it back, she stayed a little more real. We were both holding the words like ropes in a flood, and neither of us knew whether they were tied to anything strong enough.

By afternoon, we made lunch.

Or tried.

I had mushrooms, noodles, soft cheese, half an onion, and one tomato that had become personally committed to over ripeness. Riko sat on the counter while I cooked, swinging her legs even though there was barely enough room and her heel kept bumping the cabinet.

“You are in the food area,” I said.

“I’m supervising.”

“You are stealing mushrooms.”

“That is part of supervision.”

“You do not need to inspect them with your mouth.”

“How else would I know if they’re loyal?”

I looked at her.

She popped another mushroom into her mouth.

“Traitors,” she said.

I tried very hard not to smile and failed.

The meal came out surprisingly good. Noodles with mushrooms, tomato, onion, soft cheese melted into the sauce until it became creamy and warm and a little ridiculous. We ate from the same bowl again because I only had one proper bowl and because neither of us suggested using the little chipped soup mug as a second one. Riko leaned against my side while we ate on the bed, and for a while the room felt almost peaceful.

Almost.

Then her system panel pinged.

She flinched.

Not much.

Enough.

Her hand moved too fast, closing the panel before I could see anything. Her body went stiff against mine. The red in her eyes sharpened, then vanished behind amber.

I looked at the bowl.

Not at her.

Riko’s breathing changed.

“Ignore it,” she said.

“Okay.”

“You’re not going to ask?”

I shook my head.

Her shoulder pressed harder into mine. “Why not?”

“Because you sound scared.”

She went very quiet.

Then she set the bowl down on the floor, carefully, with both hands. “I’m not scared.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t believe me.”

I hesitated.

Then remembered brave was a thing I was apparently practicing now.

“No,” I said softly.

Riko stared at me.

For a second, I thought she would snap. The shape of it flashed over her face. Anger looking for a way out. Accusation loading like a crossbow. You don’t trust me. They did this. You think I’m bad. You think I’m lying.

Instead, her face collapsed.

She curled into herself and started crying again.

I pulled her in.

She let me.

“I did something,” she whispered.

My heart stopped.

“What?”

Her fingers dug into my shirt. “Something I had to do.”

I waited.

She did not explain.

The silence between us filled with all the things she was not saying.

I could feel them there. Huge and shadowed and breathing.

“Is it something that hurts you?” I asked.

Riko laughed into my chest, one sharp little broken sound. “Everything hurts me. That’s not useful.”

“That sounds very tiring.”

“It is.”

“Can I help?”

“No.”

The answer was too fast again.

Then she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

I stroked her hair carefully. “Okay.”

“You should hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“You should.”

“I don’t.”

“You keep saying that like you get to decide.”

“I think I do.”

That made her cry harder.

The rest of the afternoon moved around her storms.

Sometimes she was fine. Almost bright. She teased me about the apartment, about Charlie, about how my kettle. She sent me messages from two feet away again because she liked watching my face change when the panel pinged.

Riko: I love you.

I looked up.

She was sitting on the floor by the bed, chin on her knees, staring straight at me.

Yuzu: I love you too.

“Say it out loud,” she said.

“I love you.”

Her eyes glowed.

“I love you too,” she said.

Ten minutes later, she was crying because I moved the blanket off her legs and she thought I was getting up to leave.

I had been reaching for my tea.

I came back with the cup and sat beside her until she could breathe again.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you, Riko.”

Her face twisted.

Sometimes when I said her name, she looked happy.

Sometimes she looked like I had touched a bruise I could not see.

I did not understand that.

Not yet.

Evening came softly, filling the room with blue gray light and mana lamp glow from the street below. Charlie stood in his bigger pot, crooked but present. I checked the soil with one finger, because the roof gardener had told Riko not to overwater and apparently now I trusted a stranger I had never met with my plant’s life.

“Still damp,” I said.

Riko sat on the bed, wrapped in my blanket. “Good?”

“I think good.”

“He looks ugly.”

“Riko.”

“What? He does. He looks like a sad stick with trauma.”

I covered Charlie’s leaves as if he could hear.

Riko’s mouth trembled.

Then she whispered, “Sorry, Charlie.”

That made my chest hurt in a different way.

I turned off the lights and opened the system panel for a movie.

Riko crawled under the blanket before I finished choosing. She pulled me down beside her with a neediness that was almost aggressive, then immediately loosened her grip like she had remembered. I settled beside her carefully, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the blanket warm over both of us.

The movie projected onto the ceiling.

Something soft this time. A gentle romance about a mapmaker and a lighthouse keeper in a floating city where the stars changed positions every night. Riko said it sounded stupid. Five minutes later, she was fully invested and angry at the mapmaker for not noticing the lighthouse keeper was obviously in love with him.

“He drew her house three times,” she said. “Nobody draws someone’s house three times platonically.”

“That might be true.”

“It is absolutely true.”

“I have never drawn anyone’s house.”

“You bake at people emotionally.”

“That is different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Halfway through the movie, she started crying again.

No warning. No obvious trigger. One moment she was muttering that the mapmaker needed to kiss the lighthouse keeper before she threw my pillow at the ceiling, and the next she had gone silent beside me, eyes wide and wet, tears sliding glowing down her face.

I paused the movie.

She shook her head. “Don’t.”

I unpaused it.

Then held her under the blanket while the movie kept playing above us.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Riko.”

The mapmaker finally kissed the lighthouse keeper under a sky full of false stars.

Riko clutched my shirt so tightly her fingers trembled.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said.

“Then stay.”

Her whole body went still.

“I can’t.”

The words were barely audible.

I looked down at her.

Her face was turned toward the ceiling, but I did not think she was seeing the movie anymore.

“Why?” I asked.

Her throat worked.

The light at her seams pulsed wrong again.

“I don’t know how,” she said.

That was not an answer.

It was also the truest thing she had said all day.

So I did not push.

I just kissed her forehead and said, “Stay until you can’t, then.”

She made a sound like that hurt.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The words became too many. Too frequent. Too desperate. We both knew it, maybe. Or maybe only some wiser future version of me would know it later. Tonight, I only knew that every time the silence opened, one of us threw love into it before something worse could crawl out.

Eventually, the movie ended.

Neither of us moved.

The credits rolled across the ceiling in soft gold letters. The blanket was warm. Riko’s head rested on my chest. My arm had gone slightly numb under her shoulders, but I did not move it because she was calm for the first time in an hour.

Charlie stood in the window.

Alive, maybe.

Trying, definitely.

Riko’s voice came very quietly in the dark.

“Do you think broken things know when they’re being fixed?”

I looked toward Charlie.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think they can tell the difference between being fixed and being held together?”

My throat tightened.

“I don’t know that either.”

She nodded against my chest.

“Okay.”

I stroked her hair.

Her fingers found mine under the blanket and held on.

Not too tight.

“I love you,” I whispered first this time.

Riko’s breath hitched.

Then she answered, small and raw and terrified.

“I love you too.”

The next morning, Riko was still there.

That was the first miracle.

I woke slowly, not because the room was quiet, but because it was not. There was a soft clatter from the kitchenette, a muttered curse, the kettle shaped like a fat bird whistling in a strangled little voice, and Riko whispering, “Shut up, shut up, you judgmental poultry machine,” like the kettle had personally wronged her. For a few seconds, I lay completely still under the blanket, eyes open to the slanted ceiling, afraid that if I moved too quickly the sound would vanish and I would find the room cold again.

But it did not vanish.

Riko was still there.

The mattress beside me was warm where she had been. Her jacket hung over the back of my chair. Her boots were near the door, one upright and one collapsed. Her bat leaned against the wall beside my umbrella. Two pairs of her panties sat on the laundry basket, not hidden, not folded, not pretending to be anything other than evidence. Charlie stood by the window in his new pot, crooked but alive, the blue ribbon at his support stick catching the morning light. The apartment smelled like tea, and the faint green dampness of fresh soil.

I sat up very carefully.

Riko looked over from the kitchenette.

She froze.

One hand held my only spoon. The other held a jar of peach jam. Her hair was a mess around her face, flame bright and tangled, and she wore one of my shirts even though it hung oddly on her synthetic body, too soft and too domestic over her glowing seams. Her eyes flickered amber, then cyan, then red for one nervous flash before settling somewhere warm.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You slept late.”

I glanced at the system clock. “It’s seven fifteen.”

“Late.”

“For a day off?”

She looked down at the spoon. “I made tea.”

I stared at the kettle, then at the jam, then at the empty plate on the counter.

“And jam?”

“I was checking if it was still good.”

“With a spoon?”

“It needed testing.”

“That is not how jam expires.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I work in a bakery.”

Her mouth twitched.

Then she looked away too quickly, as if the almost smile had betrayed too much. “I didn’t know where you keep cups.”

“They’re above the sink.”

“I found them.”

“Then why didn’t you use one?”

Riko looked at the cup sitting beside the kettle.

Then back at me.

“I did.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “Good.”

“Good,” she repeated, quieter.

It was such a small thing. A cup. Tea. Her standing in my kitchenette like she belonged there and did not know whether that was allowed. But my chest hurt with it. The kind of hurt that came when something you wanted very badly arrived gently enough to make you scared of touching it.

I got out of bed and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.

Riko watched me approach like I might tell her to leave.

I did not.

I reached past her, took the cup, and sipped.

It was too strong. Also somehow too sweet. There was probably enough honey in it to glue a small creature to a wall.

“It’s good,” I said.

Riko narrowed her eyes. “Liar.”

“It is emotionally good.”

“That means bad.”

“It means thank you.”

Her expression flickered.

Then she leaned forward and pressed her forehead against my shoulder, hard and sudden.

I almost dropped the tea.

“I love you,” she muttered into the blanket.

My throat tightened.

“I love you too.”

She exhaled like she had been holding her breath since before I woke.

That was the second miracle.

The day after that, she was still there too.

And the day after that.

And somehow the day after that.

At first, I did not trust it. Not because I did not trust her. I did trust her. Mostly. In the way a person trusted a candle flame because it was warm and beautiful and also absolutely capable of burning down a curtain if someone looked away too long. But I did not trust the shape of the pattern. Riko staying felt like stepping onto a bridge I had seen collapse before and finding it solid under my foot. Every morning, some part of me braced for cold sheets and a note and a silence. Every morning, there was something else instead.

Riko asleep halfway across me, one arm thrown over my chest and one knee hooked around my leg like she was preventing escape through brute force.

Riko at the window, glaring at Charlie and then very carefully checking his soil with one fingertip because she thought I was still asleep.

Riko sitting on the floor surrounded by my cookbooks, having opened one about bread science and immediately declared yeast “needy little fungus people.”

Riko leaving for three hours without explanation and returning with a bag of laundry clips, two cheap mugs, a throw blanket that was absolutely too expensive, and a little ceramic frog because she said my shelf “looked lonely.”

Day by day, she became part of the apartment before either of us said the word.

Her jacket stopped leaving the chair. Her bat got its own spot by the door. A second toothbrush appeared in the chipped cup beside mine, bright red with little star stickers along the handle. Her shampoo sat in my tiny bathroom, smelling like cherries and rainwater and making my whole shower feel like a place where she might suddenly exist. Her clothes mixed with mine in the laundry basket, though mixed was generous because her clothes were mostly very small, very bright, and somehow everywhere at once. Our panties had their own cloth box now because the original box had overflowed, and I had given up pretending that was a normal household issue.

My apartment was still one room.

It was not built for two people.

It was not really built for one person who owned more than three pans and an emotional support plant. With Riko there, the space became a puzzle. If I opened the dresser drawer too far, it hit the bed. If she left her boots in front of the door, I tripped over them. If I needed to cook while she sat on the counter, which she insisted was “supervising,” I had to reach around her knees to get the salt. If I wanted to fold laundry, I had to move her bat, her jacket, the ceramic frog, and sometimes Riko herself because she liked lying on warm laundry like a cat.

It should have been annoying.

It was annoying.

It was also wonderful.

“We need more shelves,” I said one night while trying to stack my cookbooks around her folded clothes.

Riko, lying upside down on the bed with her legs against the wall, turned her head toward me. “We need a bigger room.”

My hands paused around a book on vegetarian stews.

The words hung there.

A bigger room.

Not your room.

Not my room.

Not even this room.

A bigger one.

I looked at her.

She looked back, eyes amber and very still.

Then she shrugged too fast. “Or don’t. Whatever.”

I swallowed. “A bigger apartment would be nice.”

Riko’s eyes brightened.

Then dimmed like she had gotten scared of her own hope.

“Maybe,” she said.

“Maybe,” I agreed.

After that, the idea kept appearing in small places.

When I bumped my horn on the shelf above the bed, Riko said, “New apartment gets taller walls.”

When she tried to sleep beside me and kicked the laundry basket over, I said, “New apartment gets enough floor for both your legs and my poor laundry.”

When Charlie’s new pot needed more window space, Riko said, “New apartment gets the plant his own kingdom.”

“He is a humble plant,” I said.

“He is a landlord now.”

“He pays no rent.”

“Neither do I.”

She froze after saying it.

The room went quiet.

I looked up from the noodles I was stirring.

Riko’s face had gone blank in that awful way it did when too many feelings hit at once and her systems decided expression was dangerous.

“You can,” I said carefully.

Her eyes flicked to me.

“Live here,” I clarified, because my heart had started running and apparently planned to leave me behind. “I mean, you already kind of do. And I like it. So if you want to call it that, we can. Or we don’t have to call it anything. Or we can call it temporary. Or not temporary. Or ”

“Yuzu.”

I stopped.

Riko stared at me for one long second.

Then she crossed the apartment in three steps and kissed me so hard my back hit the counter.

“I love you,” she said against my mouth.

“I love you too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I’m not leaving.”

The words came out fierce.

Too fierce.

Like she was threatening the universe, not reassuring me.

I held her face in both hands and touched my forehead to hers. “Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“You don’t.”

I breathed in.

Cherry perfume. Hot noodles. Rain on her jacket. Charlie’s damp soil near the window.

“I want to,” I said.

Riko closed her eyes.

For that night, it was enough.

But the fear did not leave her.

That was the thing I started noticing once the joy of her being there stopped filling every corner of my head. Riko stayed, yes. She slept in my bed and stole my shirts and reorganized my shelf in ways that made no sense. She kissed me while I cooked. She sat cross legged on the floor and watched movies with her chin on my knee. She waited for me by the window sometimes, staring out at the city like she expected someone to come climbing through the air after her.

She stayed.

But she was always braced.

A sound in the hallway made her eyes go red. A knock from a neighbor asking about a package made her hand snap toward her bat. A system ping she did not show me could ruin an entire hour. Sometimes she would be laughing one second and silent the next, shoulders tight, fingers digging into her own arms hard enough that the synthetic skin bled around her nails. Sometimes I woke in the night to find her sitting upright, watching the door.

“Riko?” I would whisper.

She would look at me like she had forgotten where she was.

Then she would crawl back under the blanket and cling.

“I love you,” she would say.

“I love you too.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you, Riko.”

Some nights that helped.

Some nights it only made her cry quieter.

I used my sick days without really deciding to.

The first one was because she woke shaking after a nightmare she would not explain, and when I tried to get ready for work, she went so still and empty that I called in before I understood I had done it. The second was because she had a system message in the morning that made her vomit blue white coolant into my sink, then laugh and say she was fine while her hands trembled too hard to hold a cup. The third was because we had stayed up all night talking, not about the thing she would not tell me, but around it, circling the shadow like children afraid of a locked basement door.

The fourth was because she asked.

Not kindly.

Not cruelly.

Just desperately.

“Don’t go today.”

I stood by the door with my apron folded in my bag, patch amber on my arm, hair still damp from the shower.

“I have work.”

“Call out.”

“I can’t keep calling out.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Riko.”

Her face hardened immediately. “Fine. Go.”

The cold came so fast I flinched.

Then her face cracked because she saw me flinch.

“I didn’t mean ”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Maybe not.”

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know!”

I stood there, one hand on the strap of my work bag, my chest hurting, my brain doing calculations I hated. Rent. Bakery schedule. Head baker’s patience. Mara covering me again. Riko on the bed, arms wrapped around herself, eyes glowing red with fear she refused to call fear.

I called out.

That was the fourth sick day.

The fifth was because after the fourth, it became harder to leave.

Then I ran out.

The morning I had to go back, Riko sat on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest, wearing my oversized Hearthbell shirt and nothing else. Her hair fell around her face in flame colored tangles. Charlie stood in the window behind her, looking more stable than either of us.

“I have to go,” I said for the third time.

“I heard you.”

“I’ll be back after closing.”

“I heard you.”

“I can message on breaks.”

“You always say that like breaks are enough.”

“They are not enough,” I said softly. “But they are what I have.”

Her eyes flicked to me.

I walked back to the bed and knelt in front of her. “I love you.”

Her mouth twisted. “Don’t use that like a leash.”

The words hit.

I sat back.

Riko went pale. “I didn’t ”

“You kind of did.”

She covered her face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I waited until she lowered her hands.

“I love you,” I said again, slower. “Not to make you stop feeling bad. Not to make you let me go. Just because it is true.”

Her eyes filled.

“I hate when you’re nice,” she said.

“I am not always nice.”

“You are.”

“I forgot my patch once and lied all day.”

“You told me.”

“Later.”

“You still told me.”

“I put too much honey in tea.”

“That was a crime.”

“I have eaten emergency frosting for dinner.”

“You what?”

“That is not the point.”

She laughed.

Tiny.

Watery.

Real.

I touched her knee. “I have to work because I like my job and we need crowns and also because Mara will come drag me out by my horns if I miss another shift.”

“I’ll bite her.”

“Please do not bite Mara.”

“She started it.”

“She did not.”

“She exists between me and you leaving.”

“That is a very broad definition of starting it.”

Riko looked away.

I leaned in and kissed her cheek.

“Be here when I get back?” I asked.

Her expression snapped toward me, offended and wounded at the same time. “Where else would I be?”

I did not answer.

Her face softened badly.

“I’ll be here,” she said.

I went to work with that sentence held in both hands inside my chest.

Hearthbell did not yell at me when I arrived.

That was somehow worse.

The head baker looked at me for three long seconds, grunted, and pointed to the back. “Apron. Dough table. We’re behind.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mara waited until I tied my apron before she cornered me by the proofing racks.

“You used all your sick days,” she said.

“I know.”

“You cannot keep doing this.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I looked down at my hands. They were clean. Gloved. Ready to work. Good bakery hands.

“I think so.”

Mara sighed through her nose. Not angry. Worried. That was becoming one of my least favorite expressions because it meant people had seen enough of me to know there was a problem.

“How is she?” Mara asked.

My first instinct was to say fine.

The word climbed up my throat by habit.

Then stopped.

“She’s scared all the time,” I said quietly.

Mara’s expression changed.

“She is trying,” I added quickly. “She really is. She’s staying. She repotted Charlie. She made tea. She says sorry sometimes before she turns it into something sharp. That’s progress.”

“Yuzu.”

“I know.”

“What do you know?”

“That progress can still hurt.”

Mara’s face softened.

I hated that too.

“She moved in,” I said.

Mara blinked. “Did she?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Well, there was no formal declaration. But there is a toothbrush and three jackets and a bat by my umbrella, so legally I think the apartment has surrendered.”

Mara pressed her mouth into a line.

“You can laugh,” I said.

She laughed once, then sighed. “Do you want her moved in?”

“Yes.”

The answer came too fast for even me to doubt it.

Mara studied me. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. Then the question is not whether you love her. I know you love her. Anyone within six blocks of your face knows you love her. The question is whether the way you are living is sustainable.”

“Sustainable like bread starter?”

“Sure.”

“That helps.”

“Good. If you keep feeding a starter at the wrong times, it either dies or takes over your kitchen.”

I stared at her.

Mara stared back.

“That metaphor got away from me,” she admitted.

“No, I think it worked.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

I worked the dough table after that because dough did not ask hard questions. Dough accepted pressure and time and warmth. Dough had rules. Not simple rules, but fair ones. If it was too dry, add water. Too sticky, dust flour. Too cold, wait. Too rushed, it tore. I liked dough because dough did not say one thing and mean five others. It became what your hands taught it to become, unless your hands were stupid, and then it punished you by sticking to the counter.

My panel pinged at 8:17.

Riko: You there?

I looked at the dough.

Then at the clock.

Then at Mara, who was pretending not to watch me.

Yuzu: At work. Dough table.

Riko: I know you’re at work.

Riko: Are you there there?

I swallowed.

Yuzu: Yes. I’m here.

Riko: Say you love me.

I closed my eyes.

Mara said softly, “What?”

I shook my head.

Yuzu: I love you.

Riko: Better.

I breathed in through my nose.

Yuzu: I love you, Riko.

Riko: Good.

Ten minutes later:

Riko: What are you doing now?

Yuzu: Still dough.

Riko: Dough gets more attention than me.

Yuzu: Dough pays rent indirectly.

Riko: I hate dough.

Yuzu: Dough has done nothing wrong.

Riko: It exists between me and you.

I stared at that one for a long time.

Then wrote:

Yuzu: I will message on break. I need both hands.

The dots appeared.

Stopped.

Appeared.

Stopped.

Riko: Fine.

Then nothing.

My stomach twisted, but I put both hands into the dough anyway.

That felt brave.

Terrible, but brave.

By noon, she was outside the bakery window.

I saw her reflection first in the display glass, bright hair and blue jacket and bat over one shoulder, standing among the passing crowd like a lit match had decided to become a person. My heart jumped so hard I almost put a lemon tart into a rye bag.

Riko waved.

Mara looked toward the window.

“Oh,” she said.

The head baker looked up from shaping loaves.

Riko pressed both hands to the glass and smiled at me like she had not just appeared in the middle of my workday without warning.

A customer turned, saw her, and stepped sideways.

Riko noticed.

Her smile sharpened.

My blood went cold.

I hurried to the front and opened the door before she could decide whether stepping sideways was a punishable offense.

“Hi,” I said, breathless.

“Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

“You didn’t answer for twenty three minutes.”

“I had dough on my hands.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

She looked past me into the bakery. Her eyes flicked over the customers, the cases, Mara, the head baker, the warm trays behind the counter. Then back to me.

“I wanted to see where you are when you’re not with me.”

There were at least three things inside that sentence.

One sweet.

One sad.

One dangerous.

I chose the sweet one because I was very tired.

“This is Hearthbell,” I said. “You’ve been here before.”

“Not while you were trying to not be mine.”

My face heated. “I am not trying to not be yours.”

“Good.”

“Riko.”

“What?”

“I’m working.”

“I know.”

“You can’t just stand in the doorway with a bat and scare customers.”

She looked offended. “I am not scaring customers.”

Behind her, an older man carrying a basket of rolls gave her bat a nervous look and walked faster.

Riko’s mouth tightened.

I touched her hand before she could turn.

Her attention snapped back to me instantly.

“I’m happy to see you,” I said.

The tension in her face faltered.

“I am,” I repeated. “But I need to keep my job.”

Her eyes shifted amber.

She looked smaller for one second.

Then she leaned in and whispered, “Say you love me.”

“Here?”

“Say it.”

My face burned. A woman inside the bakery pretended very hard to examine croissants.

I lowered my voice. “I love you.”

“Better.”

“I love you, Riko.”

Her shoulders dropped like invisible strings had been cut.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“I’ll buy something.”

“You don’t have to buy something.”

“I’m a customer now. That means I can stay.”

“That is not exactly ”

She slipped past me into the bakery.

Mara’s eyebrows rose.

The head baker closed his eyes for one long second like a man praying to the god of ovens for patience.

Riko went directly to the display case and pointed at the cinnamon rolls. “Best one.”

I took the tongs.

Then hesitated.

Because of course I knew which one was best.

Riko watched me know it.

Her eyes lit.

I placed the best roll into a paper sleeve and tucked it closed.

“Three crowns,” I said.

Riko leaned over the counter. “Do I get a boyfriend discount?”

My soul left my body.

Mara coughed into her hand behind me.

The head baker muttered, “Absolutely not.”

Riko’s grin widened.

“No discount,” I said quickly. “Bakery integrity.”

“Tragic.”

“Very.”

She paid.

Then she sat at the tiny customer table by the window and ate the roll slowly while watching me work.

It should have been comforting.

It was comforting.

It was also impossible.

Every time I smiled at a customer, I felt her attention sharpen. Every time someone said my name, her eyes flicked toward them. When a young man complimented the lemon buns and asked if I had made them, Riko’s spoon bent in her hand.

I saw it.

Mara saw it.

The customer did not.

Lucky customer.

On my break, I sat with her at the window table.

“You can’t do that,” I said softly.

Riko licked glaze from her thumb. “Do what?”

“Bend spoons because someone complimented pastries.”

“He was flirting.”

“He was asking about lemon buns.”

“Same thing.”

“It is not.”

“He looked at your mouth.”

“My mouth was talking about icing.”

“Exactly.”

I rubbed my face. “Riko.”

Her expression changed at the tone.

Too fast.

The sharpness dropped, leaving hurt underneath. “You don’t want me here.”

“I do want you here.”

“No, you want the easy version of me here. The quiet one who waits at home and doesn’t bother your nice normal bakery.”

“That is not fair.”

“Fair is boring.”

“Riko.”

She looked away.

I reached across the little table and touched her fingers.

She did not pull away.

“I want you in my life,” I said. “But work has rules. Not because I love work more than you. Because I need work. I like work. And if I lose it, I lose something important.”

Her eyes stayed on the table.

“What if work hates me?”

“Work does not hate you.”

“Mara hates me.”

“Mara does not hate you.”

“She watches me like I’m a knife near a baby.”

I paused.

Riko looked up.

“Don’t pause there,” she said.

“I am searching for kind wording.”

“Bad sign.”

“Mara worries.”

Riko’s face hardened. “About you.”

“Yes.”

“Because of me.”

“Yes.”

She pulled her hand back.

My chest hurt.

“Riko ”

“No. Fine. Good. Everyone worries. Everyone gets to worry. Poor Yuzu and his scary Døll girlfriend who climbs through windows and throws plants and ruins his job.”

“That is not what I said.”

“It’s what they mean.”

“It’s not what I mean.”

Her eyes flashed red. “Then what do you mean?”

I swallowed.

The bakery noise moved around us. Customers. Oven timers. Mara pretending not to listen from the counter. The little bell over the door. Outside, New Avalon kept being beautiful and loud like nothing fragile was happening at a window table.

“I mean,” I said carefully, “that I love you, and I need us to learn how to not hurt everything around that.”

Riko stared at me.

For a second, I thought she would leave.

She looked toward the door. Her fingers flexed. Her mouth opened around something sharp.

Then she closed it.

Her eyes filled instead.

“I don’t know how,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“I hate that answer.”

“I know.”

“If you keep saying I know, I will bite you.”

“Maybe later.”

She blinked.

Then laughed.

Then cried.

I had no idea what to do, so I held her hand at the bakery window while she wiped glowing tears with the back of her wrist and pretended she was not crying. Mara turned the little sign on the table to Reserved, which was not subtle but was kind. The head baker brought out a cup of tea and set it beside Riko without saying anything. Riko stared at it like it might be poison.

“It’s tea,” I said.

“I know what tea is.”

“It means you are not being thrown out.”

Her eyes flicked toward the head baker.

He was already walking away.

Riko picked up the cup with both hands.

Her voice went very quiet.

“I don’t want to ruin this for you.”

My throat tightened.

“Then don’t.”

She looked at me sharply.

I held her gaze even though my heart was trying to hide behind my ribs.

“Try,” I said. “With me.”

Riko’s fingers tightened around the cup.

“I’m trying all the time,” she whispered.

“I know.”

After that, Riko still came by sometimes.

Not every day.

Almost every day.

Some days she only stood outside the window and sent me messages.

Riko: I’m watching you be bread cute.

Yuzu: That sentence is illegal.

Riko: You are illegal.

Yuzu: I am licensed bakery staff.

Riko: My licensed bakery staff.

Some days she came in and bought one pastry, then sat quietly and behaved so carefully it almost hurt to see. Her hands would stay folded in her lap. Her bat would lean against the table. Her eyes would track anyone who spoke to me too warmly, but she would not move. I started saving her the best cinnamon roll when I could. Not always. Sometimes a customer bought it first, and the first time that happened she looked so betrayed I thought she might challenge a grandmother to combat. But she did not. She only stared at me until I found her the second best roll and whispered, “This one has more glaze.”

“Liar,” she whispered back.

“Yes.”

She ate it anyway.

Work became harder.

Home became better.

Then harder.

Then better again.

That was the rhythm now. Riko waiting by the door when I came home, sometimes bright and hungry for every detail of my day, sometimes curled on the bed under a blanket with only her red hair visible, sometimes angry that I was late even when I was not late, sometimes proud because I had corrected a rude customer, sometimes furious because someone had smiled at me in a way she decided was wrong. I learned to put my bag down before hugging her because if I hugged her with the bag still on, she said it felt like I was already planning to leave again. I learned to message when I got on the train, when I got off the train, and when I reached the bakery. I learned that forgetting one message could turn a whole evening cold.

I also learned that she liked making lists with me.

Apartment lists.

New apartment must have:

More than one room.

A real kitchen.

A window big enough for Charlie.

Space for bat.

Space for bread experiments.

Space for Riko to be mad without standing directly in the cooking area.

Possibly two bowls.

“Two bowls is bourgeois excess,” Riko said one night, lying on my floor while I wrote.

“I want to eat soup at the same time as my girlfriend without negotiating custody of the spoon.”

“Coward.”

“Soup coward, yes.”

She smiled at the ceiling.

Then said, so softly I almost missed it, “Girlfriend.”

I stopped writing.

She did not look at me.

I set the pencil down and lay on the floor beside her.

“Girlfriend,” I said.

Her hand found mine.

“Boyfriend,” she said back, like she was testing whether the word would explode.

It did not.

The ceiling stayed intact.

Charlie did not perish.

The city did not collapse.

Riko turned her head toward me, eyes shining amber in the dim light.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know.”

“I’m scared all the time.”

My chest tightened.

“I know.”

“I keep thinking something is going to happen.”

“What?”

She stared at the ceiling again.

Her fingers gripped mine too tightly.

This time I squeezed back, and she loosened before I had to ask.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

I knew it was a lie.

Not the kind of lie that was meant to trick me.

The kind that was meant to keep the world from ending for one more hour.

I rolled onto my side and looked at her.

“Riko.”

She shut her eyes.

“I’m here,” I said.

“That’s the problem.”

I did not understand.

Not fully.

But I knew enough to hear the pain under it.

So I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

She turned into me immediately, arms around my neck, face hidden against my shoulder.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you, Riko.”

The apartment was too small. Work was too hard. Riko was too scared. I was too new at being loved to know when love became being used as a bandage over wounds that needed stitches. We were talking about a bigger apartment like space could solve things. Maybe it could help. Maybe it could not.

But when I came home the next evening and found her waiting by the window with Charlie between her hands, carefully turning him toward the last stripe of sunset, my whole heart lifted anyway.

“You’re home,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You’re late.”

“Three minutes.”

“Three minutes is a betrayal.”

“I missed the elevator because Mrs. Dalloway’s ferret familiar escaped again.”

“Excuses.”

“It was wearing a tiny hat.”

Riko narrowed her eyes. “Show me next time.”

“I will try to document the criminal.”

She stepped toward me.

Then stopped herself.

Waiting.

So I crossed the room first and hugged her.

She melted into me.

“I love you,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes.

“I love you too.”

Behind us, Charlie leaned crookedly toward the window, alive and stubborn and not fixed yet, but growing anyway.