Archive of Our Own

Jo was perfectly fine on his own. He repeated it to himself every morning while adjusting the volume on his headphones until the outside world drowned beneath white noise and spacey synthesizers. His classmates could run around, yell, live their teenage sitcom like they were trapped in a low-budget movie. He had more important things to do: theories to read, universes to dissect, playlists to match with literary genres.

That particular day, he walked into the classroom wearing an expression that was 30% sleep, 60% passive-aggressive disdain, and 10% coffee. Under his arm he carried a book that looked like it had survived a nuclear war: the fifth and final installment of Chronicles of Kheron. And he was angry. Not the explosive kind of anger, but that existential, disappointed, bitter kind—like a badly written series finale.

He dropped into his seat. Took out the book. Looked at it. Put it back in his backpack as if he wanted to punish it. Took it out again. Opened it to the last page, just in case some cosmic alignment had changed the ending overnight. Spoiler: it hadn’t. It was still a narrative slap in the face tinted with artistic pretension.

Jo stared out at the classroom without really seeing it. The history teacher scribbled something illegible on the board, and someone in the back row was arguing about whether the aliens on some reality show were real or just actors in prosthetics. He didn’t care. The only thing he cared about was the intellectual rage burning in his chest, begging to be shared with someone. Someone who would understand that Cai didn’t deserve that fate, that timeline 7 was a mistake, that Arien had been betrayed by the script.

But there was no one. No one who had read all five books. No one to scream with. No one who understood the heartbreak of loving a universe and watching it crumble in a single final sentence.

And just when he thought his day couldn’t get worse…

“Jo! Jooooooo!! Jojojo!”

Harua. Of course.

Unlike Jo, Harua had no concept of silence. He was a midday sun, a constant noise, a playlist on shuffle with every genre mixed at max volume. And for some unknown reason, he was obsessed with Jo.

“Did I make you laugh with the ‘Jojojo’? Admit it. I’ve got plenty more material.”

Jo looked at him over the edge of his headphones. Didn’t answer. Not because he had nothing to say, but because he’d learned silence was his best weapon against Harua’s attempts at socialization.

“Well, anyway, I came to tell you something important.” Harua plopped down into the empty chair beside him without asking. “I dreamed about you last night. We were on a spaceship. You were the captain. I was… your lover. Dramatic, right?”

Jo slowly lowered the volume on his headphones.

“Please don’t exist.”

Harua smiled like Jo had just confessed his love.

“Too late.”

“And… you had an eyepatch,” he added, as if that detail made the dream more respectable. “It looked good on you. You were like… intimidating but sexy. Like a space dictator I want to hug.”

Jo sighed. He knew giving him any opening would only make Harua continue. But he also couldn’t fully ignore the mental image. Jo with an eyepatch. Harua clinging to his leg as they fled down a slick metal hallway. It was ridiculous. Unbearably ridiculous. And for some reason, not entirely unpleasant.

He turned the volume back up. Harua pulled out his notebook and began doodling. Probably a comic of the two of them in space. Or a love letter disguised as a grocery list. Or both.

And Jo, with his heartbeat slightly faster than he’d admit, went back to focusing on his anger about the book. Though it no longer felt quite as pure as before.

Jo couldn’t remember the last time a book had left him so… betrayed. So emotionally violated. There was no elegant metaphor for the level of hatred he felt toward the ending of The Silence of the Gods. He had started the saga hoping to find a hidden gem, something only a chosen few knew about, and ended with an existential crisis bigger than Arien’s in timeline 4.

The ending was philosophical. Cryptic. Poetically pretentious and confusing. And he hated it. Hated it so much he’d considered writing his own ending and mailing it to the author with a letter that simply said, “This is how it’s done.”

After school, in his room, he sat in front of his computer, eyes wide, searching forums, subreddits, obscure communities hidden in forgotten servers. Something. Someone. Any human being who had read all five books and had an opinion. A theory. A meme. A single sigh of empathy.

Nothing.

All he found were reviews of the first two books. “Promising start, though somewhat confusing.” CONFUSING!? THAT WAS PART OF THE MAGIC. The cross references, the fragments written in symbolic language, the nonlinear narrative structures… Jo wanted to scream.

He spent hours scrolling, opening tabs like he was building a conspiracy board of theories and disappointment. The clock hit 3:07 a.m. and he still hadn’t blinked properly.

He plopped onto his bed and pulled the blanket up to his nose.

“I’m alone in the universe,” he mumbled dramatically. “And not in the good way.”

Then, like a lightning strike straight into his frontal lobe, the idea appeared.

It wasn’t a bright epiphany. More like a sneaky, Machiavellian vibe that slithered into his mind with the voice of a documentary narrator: “In the next two months, Jo will conduct a social experiment disguised as emotional blackmail.”

Because really… who had been willing to do anything for him lately? Who was annoyingly persistent and irritatingly in love?

Jo opened the class chat, found Harua’s name, and typed:

Jo: if you love me as much as you say
Jo: you’re gonna have to read something

He stared at the screen with a half-smile. He knew Harua would bite.

Because Harua was everything Jo wasn’t: impulsive, emotional, chaotic.

And if anyone could survive the Kheronverse out of love… it was him.

Harua didn’t enter places. Harua appeared. Like a badly rendered special effect, like a video game spawn sound nobody asked for. Suddenly he was there, shining like a neon sign, smiling like tomorrow didn’t exist, and talking as if silence were a federal crime.

That Wednesday, people saw him slide down the hallway with improvised choreography, backpack on one shoulder, scarf blowing behind him, dancing to a song only he could hear. A few students turned to look. Some laughed. Others wondered if he was okay. Jo… sighed. Loudly. From the soul.

“Jo! Jo, wait, you texted me last night!”

Jo tried to sneak toward his locker, but Harua had locked onto him. He positioned himself in front of Jo like they were in a school musical and the next step was a song about unrequited love.

“Is that how you greet the guy who loves you unconditionally?” he asked with a dangerous smile.

“That’s how I greet the guy who doesn’t understand the difference between a message and an invitation,” Jo replied, opening his locker.

“But you meant it, right? It wasn’t an accidental text. You didn’t mean to send that to, I don’t know, your cat.”

Jo stared at him. Dramatic pause.

“My cat doesn’t have a phone.”

Harua made an I-knew-it face and clapped softly, like he was at an opera.

“Then I accept your literary challenge! I’ll read whatever it is. What’s it about? Is it romantic? Sad? Will it make me cry? Because if it makes me cry, that’s bonus points. I love crying over fictional characters.”

Jo pulled the first volume of Chronicles of Kheron from his backpack and placed it in Harua’s hands.

“You have to read all five. In order. Without skipping anything. Then we talk.”

Harua flipped through the book as if examining an alien artifact.

“Does this have a glossary?”

“You’ll need it.”

“Is this sci-fi? Because if it’s like those movies where everyone wears rubber suits and kisses for no reason…”

Jo looked at him with an expression that could have frozen the sun’s core.

“Lies! I love sci-fi! I love the… space stuff. And… the silences… of the gods. The title speaks to me. It says: Harua, you’re about to embark on an emotional journey.”

Jo slammed his locker shut. Walked away without another word.

Harua followed.

“And what do I get if I read all of it? Huh? A kiss? A date? A smile, at least?”

Jo, without turning his head, replied:

“You get the privilege of discussing with me why the ending is an abomination.”

And Harua, clutching the book to his chest, yelled like he had won the lottery:

“THAT’S MORE THAN I COULD EVER DREAM OF!”

Half the hallway looked. Jo didn’t.

But he smiled. Just a little.

Book 1: The Specter Rebellion

Harua sat on his bed with the book open on his lap, wearing an expression somewhere between existential confusion and aesthetic awe. The first five pages had hit him with terminology that felt ripped straight from a doctoral thesis on emotional quantum physics. Inverse spectrogenesis? Astral neocorridors? What was a chronodimensional fabric and why had someone hand-embroidered it?

“Who starts a book with a sentence in an invented language and doesn’t translate it?” he groaned, staring at the ceiling as if waiting for answers from some literary god.

Jo, at home, could practically picture him suffering and felt a tiny spark of satisfaction. But also something like concern. Very buried, of course. Tiny. The size of a misplaced comma.

The next day, Harua showed up with the book full of colorful sticky notes, scraps of paper in the margins, and a frog sticker that said “HELP.” He sat next to Jo as if they were partners in a secret school project.

“Jo. What’s a Reality Veil?” he asked without any preamble.

Jo took the book from him with resignation, flipped to the page in question, grabbed a marker, and wrote a note in the margin: A perceptive illusion generated by Specters to hide energy nodes. Better explained in chapter 7.

“And why do the Specters want to hide the nodes?”

Jo raised an eyebrow. Evaluated him. Answered: “Did you read Syla’s manifesto?”

“The what of who?”

He sighed so deeply he nearly summoned a storm. But he pulled out a post-it and wrote: Chapter 4, page 113. It’s important. Read it carefully.

From there, a rhythm formed.

Harua read a bit every day. And asked questions. A lot. Too many.
Jo answered with notes, margin diagrams, and eventually, affectionate sarcasm.

Harua was trying. And Jo, to his own surprise, was too.

Neither said it out loud, but they started meeting during recess. One with questions, the other with answers. Sometimes they argued. Sometimes they laughed. Once, without thinking, Jo said “I’ll explain it to you tomorrow.”

Harua almost fainted.

The Kheronverse was pulling them in. And Jo wasn’t as mad about it as he pretended.

Jo had sworn he wasn’t going to do this. He wouldn’t fall into the trap. He wasn’t a private tutor nor a walking book club. But Harua showed up every day with more questions than an open ending, and Jo… answered. Because no one—no one—was going to misinterpret Cai’s emotional development in chapter 9 if he could prevent it.

Harua didn’t even ask if he could sit with him anymore. He just collapsed beside him with the book in one hand and a bag of gummies in the other, as if this were his office.

“Do you think the Specters are good?” he asked one day while chewing a red gummy. “Like… metaphorically good? Because literally they’re killing people, but there’s also something sad about how they’re portrayed.”

Jo blinked.
“Did you just make an empathetic reading of the antagonists?”

“Does that mean you like me more now?”

“It means I won’t shoot myself if you keep reading.”

And just like that, without planning it, recess got structure.

Harua moved forward a couple chapters, made mental notes of his doubts, then descended on Jo like a word tornado. Jo—who swore he didn’t have patience for anyone—answered with almost academic seriousness.

At one point, Jo even printed a map of the Nine Planes and stuck it inside Harua’s binder. Because “I’m tired of you confusing Tharaxis with Thalassia. They’re different. I’ve told you eighty times.”

Harua looked at him as if Jo had just given him an engagement ring.

“Thanks for believing in me.”

Jo grunted. But that night, thinking about that sentence, he smiled. Just a little. Nothing fatal.

And the next day, when Harua got stuck on a symbolic conversation between Syla and a dead god, it was Jo who said:

“Come on, give me the book. I’ll explain it.”

As if it were normal.
As if he didn’t care.
As if he wasn’t slowly, quietly, starting to feel… accompanied.

It all started with a false alarm. Literally.

In the middle of physics class, a sharp buzzing cut through the routine and the lights began flickering as if the Kheronian ship were breaking apart. Students glanced around—some excited, others terrified. The teacher raised his hands like he could stop a stampede.

“It’s probably a test,” he muttered. “Or a technical error.”

But to Jo, the timing was suspiciously convenient.

Because exactly when Harua turned toward him to say something about Syla and her supposed connection to the lost gods, a part of Jo’s brain that usually lived in permanent emotional airplane mode… switched on.

Harua had an ink smudge on his cheek. He’d scribbled theories all over his folder cover in letters that looked like galactic explosions. His eyes sparkled like he truly believed every word coming out of his mouth.

And Jo, in a split-second that gave him vertigo, thought: “he’s so pretty…”

He had to reboot himself.

He blinked. Adjusted his earbuds. Decided he definitely had not thought that. Must’ve been an academically induced hallucination.

“Jo, do you think Cai always knew he was going to die? Like, what if that scene in chapter 12 was foreshadowing? Because it shattered me.”

Jo didn’t answer right away. Because his heart was doing something weird. Like a beep. Like the alarm. But more… internal.

“I don’t know,” he said, voice lower than usual. “But if it was foreshadowing, it was subtle. I like how you picked up on it.”

Harua smiled. That smile shaped like early spring sunlight. And Jo had to look away.

They evacuated the classroom as a precaution. In the hallway, amid shoves and theories about a fire drill, Harua stayed close. Very close.

Jo didn’t complain.

In fact, when someone tripped and bumped into him, it was Harua who caught him by the elbow to steady him.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said softly, releasing him quickly, as if not wanting to overstep.

And that was… strange. Because he didn’t say it as a joke. It wasn’t theatrical. It was honest. Sincere. Painfully gentle.

Jo stared at him half a second longer than normal.

He didn’t say anything. He had no words.
But that night, when he went back to reread his notes on the saga, he found a margin comment he didn’t remember writing:

Cai also had someone who wouldn’t stop talking. And it changed his life.

The school library wasn’t very popular. In fact, it worked more as a hideout for people who couldn’t tolerate the chaos of recess than as a place for actual studying. But Jo liked it. Silence was law there, and the walls were lined with books that asked no questions and didn’t expect him to smile.

Harua arrived ten minutes late—as always—with his backpack open, hair a mess, and the second volume of Chronicles of Kheron filled with bookmarks like a minefield of confusion.

“I’m ready to suffer,” he panted, letting the book flop onto the table. “This part of Arien’s memoirs has my brain turned into soup. Who’s narrating here? Her? The dead god? The talking tree?”

Jo raised an eyebrow and slid over a diagram he’d made at home. A drawing of Arien’s mental planes with arrows, colors, and in one corner, a tiny doodle of Harua screaming “WHAT?!”

“You’re a genius, Jo. A genius who pretends to be difficult but secretly wants me to hug him for doing this.”

“Touch me and I’ll make you canon with Syla, and you won’t survive that drama,” Jo muttered without looking at him.

Harua laughed, quietly. Then he sat down, opened the book… and focused.

Twenty whole minutes passed without him speaking. He was frowning, reading in a low voice, moving his lips. Jo kept watching him from the corner of his eye. He liked this version of Harua. Serious, concentrated. Vulnerable, but no less bright for it.

He leaned in to point at a passage.

“This part is an emotional echo,” he whispered. “It’s written from Arien’s subconscious, but reinterpreted by the dead god. It’s not literal. It’s symbolic.”

Harua turned to him, eyes big and shining.

“You’re like… my Google, but with opinions.”

Jo laughed without meaning to. So soft he surprised even himself. Harua noticed too—he looked at Jo like he’d just unlocked a secret achievement.

“Was that a laugh? A real one?”

Jo lowered his head, bangs falling over his eyes.

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late. I’m storing it in my memory to replay every time I feel lonely.”

Jo handed him a handwritten note with the definition of “emotional echo.” Harua accepted it like it was an autograph. They fell into silence again, working together.

And it was there, in that split second pause when they both reached for a marker and their hands brushed—barely, innocently, stupidly cliché—that Jo felt a different alarm go off.

But it wasn’t a fire drill. Or the school bell.

It was the one that said: this is becoming real.

“I’m doomed,” Harua declared, dropping his forehead onto the desk with the force of a Greek tragedy.

“Is that because of the book or something else?” Jo asked, not looking up from the Kheronverse notebook he was filling with new annotations.

“Math! Midterm! Tomorrow!” Harua wailed into the wood, mixing dramatic groans with even more dramatic despair.

Jo paused. Looked at him with that mix of “I feel bad for you” and “you’re a mess,” which in his language was the closest thing to “do you want me to help you?”

“Did you study anything?”

“Only if counting the days until I’m arrested for academic incompetence counts.”

Jo sighed. Closed the notebook. Met his eyes.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“My place. To study.”

Harua blinked as if Jo had told him he’d won an all-inclusive cruise to planet Kheron.

“You’re inviting me to your house? Voluntarily? To study? Is this a dream? Am I in a coma?”

Jo grabbed his backpack without answering.

“I am dreaming! Help me not fail and then let’s get married in a parallel dimension where school doesn’t exist!”

Jo’s room was… surprisingly cozy. Harua had expected more chaos. More darkness. But everything was neatly arranged, with shelves full of books, sci-fi posters, and a lamp shaped like a floating planet.

They sat on the floor, surrounded by notes, markers, and a calculator that Harua looked at like a personal enemy.

Jo took teaching seriously. He drew diagrams, explained formulas with surgical patience, and pointed out mistakes without mocking him. Harua, meanwhile, needed breaks every twenty minutes to process, make terrible jokes, and flop backwards dramatically.

“Jo… if my academic future didn’t depend on this, I’d say I’m starting to like you even more than before.”

Jo didn’t look up.

“You have to divide by X, not multiply.”

Harua smiled.

After an hour, they’d managed to solve a full page of exercises.

“And if I pass… will you let me hug you?”

“If you pass, I’ll let you not make jokes for a whole day.”

“Oof… that’s harder.”

But they laughed. They looked at each other. And for the first time, the presence of the other wasn’t a project. It was a moment.

Jo caught himself watching Harua’s hands as he wrote. Clumsy but determined. And for some dumb reason, he thought he’d like those hands to touch him. Just a little.

He said nothing. But when Harua yawned, Jo handed him a blanket without thinking. Harua looked at him like he’d been given a kiss.

“Are you… taking care of me?” he asked softly.

Jo, without lifting his gaze, answered:

“I’m taking care of my dignity. I don’t want you saying you failed because of me.”

“Still… thanks. Really.”

Silence. Warm. Comfortable.

Harua rested his head on the edge of the mattress, close to Jo.

Jo pretended not to notice.

But that night, when he corrected the notes alone, he drew a little smiley face on one of Harua’s exercises.

He’d never admit it.

But he drew it smiling.

They were sitting on the back steps of the schoolyard, right after the last class. Harua was eating chocolate cookies like they’d saved his life. Jo just watched the sky, wondering whether the clouds looked more like ships or interstellar creatures.

“Jo,” Harua said, mouth half full. “Did you know there are people who settle for liking someone just because they think they’re cute or interesting?”

Jo turned his head slightly. Part curiosity. Part because Harua’s voice sounded different. Less packed with jokes. Rawer.

“But that’s not it,” Harua continued. “I mean, yeah. You’re cute. Even though I know you’re gonna glare at me for saying it. And yeah, you’re interesting. Super interesting. Like ‘my brain explodes when you talk about the Kheronverse even if I don’t understand everything’ interesting. But that’s not what I like most about you.”

Jo looked at him. Harua wasn’t even looking back—his eyes were on the horizon as he chewed slowly. His profile looked calmer than usual.

“What I like most is how I feel when I’m with you. It’s weird. I feel… less noisy. But not in a bad way. More like I’m tuned to the right frequency. Like I don’t have to fill the air all the time.”

Jo said nothing. But not because he didn’t know what to say. There was something in his throat—a strange pressure—he wasn’t ready to let out.

Harua chuckled softly.

“Maybe it sounds super cheesy, right? But I swear I’m not saying it to impress you. It’s just… true.”

Jo looked away. Felt he needed to say something, and what came out was:

“You’re not as unbearable when you’re like this.”

Harua squinted at him. Then smiled.

“Was that your Jo-mode way of saying ‘I feel good with you too’? Or do I still need to decode that level of sarcasm?”

Jo shook his head, barely.

“You don’t know everything.”

“No. But I like learning.”

And they stayed like that. For a while.
The sun was setting. Harua stopped eating.
Jo stopped analyzing the clouds.
And in that silence… neither of them needed to fill it with words.

The next day, at the school entrance, Harua appeared running with his arms raised like he’d just won an emotional marathon.

“I PASSED! JO, I PASSED! MATHEMATICAL MIRACLE! MATHEMAGIC!”

Jo, who had been drinking water in peace as if he didn’t care about anything, paused for a millisecond. Very controlled. Almost imperceptible. But Harua noticed.

“And it was all thanks to you, you antisocial teacher! If you want me to make you an altar, just tell me which incense you’d use.”

Jo kept drinking.

“How much did you get?”

“An eight. AN EIGHT! Do you know what that means for someone who got a two last month? I am basically reborn! I reincarnated into a functional human being!”

Jo lowered the bottle. Something at the corner of his lips curved. Very faintly. But real.

“I guess you’re not a completely lost cause.”

“WAS THAT A COMPLIMENT?! Somebody write it down, please! This is historic!”

“And now that you passed… are you going to stop bothering me?”

Harua went silent. Then smiled.

“Obviously not.”

And Jo, even though he rolled his eyes, didn’t stop smiling the entire walk to class.

Harua was changing. Well—not changing changing—but something in his vibe had shifted. He was still himself, of course: loud, eccentric, the personification of a glitter emoji. But now, every once in a while, Jo found him during breaks… reading. With actual concentration.
And not just that: he also talked about what he read. Passionately.

“No, but seriously,” he said one day, interrupting Jo’s lunch, “there’s no way Orion is just a symbol of Arien’s past. I think it’s a psychic projection of the colony’s collective trauma.”

Jo blinked. He was mid-sandwich and suddenly had to process the most interesting theory he'd heard since… well, since one he’d come up with himself, but still.

“Psychic projection?”

Harua shrugged while munching on his sandwich like he hadn’t just dropped an intellectual nuke.

“Yeah. I mean, if the residual energy of the war is stored inside Orion’s crystals, doesn’t it make sense that the planet itself started responding emotionally? Like a post-traumatic intelligence. Kinda… symbiotic.”

Jo looked at him like he had just discovered a superpower.

“That’s… not bad. Actually… it makes a lot of sense.”

Harua straightened up. Puffed out his chest.

“Was that an intellectual compliment? Am I dreaming again? Are you gonna tell me you also want to hug me?”

“No, but I am giving you a purple highlighter so you can write that theory down before you forget.”

Harua received it with reverence.

That day, they didn’t talk about exams or homework.
Only about Orion, about Arien and Syla’s relationship, about the “emotional echoes” Jo had mentioned chapters ago and which Harua now quoted like sacred doctrine.
They debated the role of the talking trees, the morality of time-traveling without consent, and the eternal dilemma:
Is it worth saving the universe if you have to lose yourself in the process?

Jo listened. Attentive. Fascinated.
Because Harua wasn’t just reading—he was understanding. And not only that: he was turning it into something of his own. Into ideas. Into passion.

And in the middle of one of those impossible theories that mixed quantum mechanics with human emotions, Jo thought something that froze him:

I love the way he thinks.

And with that, without meaning to, he fell just a little bit more.

Book 2: Echoes of Orion

That day, the rain had ruined any normal break plans, forcing the entire student body to scatter through the hallways like wet NPCs with no quest markers.
Jo found a quiet corner near the library, where the sound of rain hitting the windows competed with the instrumental soundtrack playing softly through his headphones.

Harua showed up like always—but not like always. He was quieter, with book 2 under his arm and none of his classic emotional-tornado entrance.

“Are you alone?” he asked, as if that needed confirmation.

Jo raised an eyebrow. Looked around. Lifted the book he was reading. Looked back at Harua.

“How observant of you.”

Harua gave a small smile and plopped down beside him. In silence.

Jo glanced sideways at him. That was unusual.

“Did the Echoes of Orion eat your tongue?”

“No. I just… don’t want to talk about Kheron today.”

Jo closed his book. More out of reflex than decision. He turned slightly towards him.

“Did something happen?”

Harua stared at the raindrops running down the window, as if they were easier to understand than his own thoughts.

“Have you ever felt like you have to be a bunch of versions of yourself at the same time?” he asked softly.

Jo didn’t answer right away. He knew that question didn’t need an immediate reply—just space.

“At home… I have to be the one with good grades, the one who doesn’t get distracted, the one who’s going to become something important. My mom keeps repeating that I can’t waste time. That I need to stay focused. That there’s no room for distractions.”

“And am I a distraction?”

“You’re… something that makes me feel different. Like I don’t have to try so hard to be perfect. Like being me is okay.”

Jo swallowed. That pressure in his chest—the one he’d been feeling for several chapters—grew heavier. More real.

“I didn’t know you felt all that.”

“I hide it well. I’m an expert at making jokes at the exact right moment so no one notices I’m a mess inside.”

Jo lowered his gaze. He felt a bit stupid for thinking Harua was only light and noise. That he had no shadows. That he wasn’t hiding anything.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said. Not because he felt he had to—because he meant it.

Harua looked at him. Smiled, but with a soft crack in it.

“Thanks for listening.”

Silence returned. But it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a soft silence. One that said you’re not alone without needing words.

Jo opened his book again.
Harua leaned closer.
And even though they didn’t speak, the most important chapter of the day wasn’t in Echoes of Orion.

It was in them.

Jo arrived to class with the same ritual as always: headphones in full ignore-everything mode, a shirt with a phrase in a fictional alien language, and volume two of Chronicles of Kheron ready to reread a key passage that still didn’t click. He was mentally drafting new theories when suddenly…

“I finished chapter 15 last night!” said Harua, appearing out of nowhere with his “I just discovered I have feelings through reading” energy.

Jo stopped. Blinked. His theory froze. His soul froze.
Chapter 15?
Without him guiding?

“You read more… on your own?”

“Yep. No post-its. No threats. No bribes. Pure free will. I even missed a Twitch notification! That never happens.”

Jo looked at him like he’d just said he applied to NASA and was leaving for space in December.

“Did you like it?”

“I LOVED it! The chapter with the trial between Orion’s heirs blew my mind. The dialogue! The tension! Jo, why didn’t you tell me Syla had a secret twin sister?!”

Jo felt something stupid rise up his neck. Not anger. Not jealousy. It was…

Fear?

Fear that Harua wouldn’t need him anymore to understand the book. To get excited. To share something that had started as an excuse to get closer to him.

“Jo, you’re making that face,” Harua said, half joking, half worried.

“What face?”

“The ‘what if the book replaces me’ face. Relax. I’m not falling in love with Syla.”

Jo exhaled slowly. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.

“That’s not it.”

“Then?”

Jo shrugged.

“I just thought… you were enjoying it because of me.”

Harua laughed softly. Not mocking—warm.

“I started liking it because of you. But now I like it for me. And that’s your fault too.”

Jo looked at him.

Harua continued:

“And no, I’m not replacing you with a book. Because even though the Kheronverse has action, drama, and galactic wars… you have furrowed brows, subtle sarcasm, and that way you look at me when you don’t know what to do with what you feel. Spoiler: you win.”

Jo bit the inside of his cheek. Not to stop himself from smiling—but to stop himself from smiling too much.

Harua pulled out his copy of the book and held it like a trophy.

“Now if you’ll excuse me… I have a theory about the temporal fissures and bloodlines in chapter 16 that’s going to make you want to hug me.”

Jo lowered his gaze.

“I already want to.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Show me the theory.”

And he did.

And yeah. It was a good theory.

But Jo was a little too busy thinking about how strange and beautiful it was to watch something grow—something that had started as a whim… and was now starting to feel like the beginning of something real.

Hell had a name, wore tight jeans, had a charming smile, and a natural talent for being liked by literally everyone: his name was Jun.

Jun was Jo’s older brother. Model student, casual athlete, life-of-the-party energy. The kind of person who could trip over a dog and somehow have the dog wagging its tail at him afterward.

Jo spotted him before he even entered the building: he was coming down the visitors’ hallway, greeting former teachers, cracking inside jokes with staff members Jo barely looked at. And worst of all… he was walking straight toward him.

“Jo!” Jun greeted him like he hadn’t seen him since some ancient family reunion (he had literally seen him last week). “You look taller—are you taller? Or am I shrinking?”

Jo didn’t respond. “Mmm” and a “don’t do this in public” look were enough.
Jun didn’t catch the hint. Or ignored it on purpose.

“Are these your friends?” he asked, looking at the classmates Jo wasn’t talking to.

And then he saw him—Harua, who appeared like he’d been summoned by a radar that detected chaos and dramatics.

“Hi! You’re the famous brother? I’m Harua, Jo’s number one fan. Well, technically I’m also his only fan, but that makes it more special.”

Jo wanted to melt and disappear between the tiles.

Jun laughed, delighted. Of course he liked Harua.

“Nice to meet you, Harua. Are you always this energetic?”

“Only when things get tense. Did you know Jo is brilliant, sarcastic, and can memorize five parallel timelines without blinking?”

Jun blinked, surprised. Jo, meanwhile, felt a mix of discomfort and… gratitude he didn’t know what to do with.

“I didn’t know. Though I’m not surprised. Jo was always… very in his own world.”

Very in his own world.
That phrase. He’d heard it since forever. From teachers, parents, even from himself.
But when it came from Jun, it sounded different. It sounded like “weird.” Like “incomplete.”

And just when Jo was about to cut him off with a “yeah okay, bye,” Harua stepped forward.

“It’s true. Jo lives in his own world. But you know what? It’s one of the most interesting worlds I’ve ever known. And he’s letting me visit it. So don’t underestimate him just because he doesn’t work like you.”

Jun raised his hands, like saying “okay, okay.”

“You’re right. I didn’t mean to offend. I’m just… glad Jo has someone who values him this much.”

Harua gave him a dangerous smile.

“He has someone who sees him.”

Jo said nothing. But inside, his emotional operating system had crashed and rebooted ten times.
Had Harua just defended him? With a line worthy of an indie movie?
In front of Jun?

When Jun finally left, Jo was still processing.

“You okay?” Harua asked, calmer now. “Sorry if I went too far.”

Jo shook his head.

“No. You were… perfect.”

Harua smiled like he’d just won an Oscar.

“That’s what you get for having a loyal fan.”

Jo sighed.

“Thanks.”

“Always.”

And as they walked back to class, Jo thought that maybe—just maybe—no matter how perfect Jun had always been… he had something better.

He had Harua.

Book 3: Kheron’s Last Ones

Jo watched Harua read. Lately, he did it more than he cared to admit.

He didn’t just look—he observed: the way Harua frowned when something didn’t make sense, how he bit the corner of his thumb while turning pages, the silly little smile that escaped him whenever a character said something sarcastic (usually Arien or Syla).

Harua was on book 3. Chapter 23. Jo knew because he’d highlighted the entire thing when he first read it.
It was the chapter where Syla decides to disappear to save the alternate reality where Arien still exists.
It was devastating. Moving. Perfect.

And Harua was living it.

Jo felt a twist in his stomach. A strange tightness. A discomfort that didn’t come from what Harua was reading, but from what came after.

“What happens when you finish the last book?” he blurted out.

Harua looked up from the edge of the desk, marking his page with a folded card.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Just… thinking. You’re going to finish the saga. And after that there’s no more Kheron. And… I don’t know. I guess this ends too.”

“This?”

“The thing where you read. And I tolerate you. That was the deal, right? You read. I put up with you. And that’s it.”

Harua tilted his head. He had that serious look he only pulled out once in a while—the one that said I’m seeing more than you’re saying.

“You don’t want me to finish the books?”

Jo looked down.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“Why?”

“Because if you finish them… I won’t have any excuses to keep you close.”

The silence that followed was heavy. But not uncomfortable.
It was the kind of silence that falls when something honest is said, even if it hurts. Even if it scares you.

Harua scooted a bit closer.

“Jo… I’m not with you because of the books. I got into that universe because you were there. And if the saga ends… well, we’ll invent another.”

Jo looked up slowly.

“We’ll invent?”

“Yeah. We can give it spaceships, or magic, or impossible history exams… But the important thing isn’t the setting. The important thing is that I still want to share stories with you.”

Jo stayed quiet a moment. Then murmured:

“What scares me isn’t the book ending. It’s this… this thing we have while you read.”

Harua smiled softly.

“This doesn’t end on the last page. Actually… I think that’s when another chapter starts.”

And for the first time in a long time, Jo felt like maybe endings… weren’t always bad.

Kheron’s Last Ones was a journey.
Jo already knew. That book did not forgive. It was the type of installment that broke your heart a little in every chapter and then asked you to thank it.
And now Harua was reading it. Living it. Suffering it. In real time.

“WHY DID NO ONE TELL CAI?!” Harua yelled one afternoon, sprawled on Jo’s bed, the book face-down and his hands on his head. “They LITERALLY had time! They had a SHIP! A VOICE MESSAGE, AT LEAST!”

Jo, sitting on the floor cross-legged, hid a mischievous smile behind book four.

“I told you not to get attached to anyone in this book.”

“That is NOT enough of a warning! That’s like saying ‘hey, it might rain’ when a tsunami is coming!”

“Drama queen,” Jo muttered. But he never stopped looking at him with tenderness.

Their reading sessions weren’t structured anymore. Sometimes Harua read ahead and sent Jo unhinged voice notes (“tell me he doesn’t die, tell me he doesn’t die”), sometimes he read out loud with ridiculous voices.
And sometimes—like that afternoon—they just needed to scream theories like their lives depended on it.

“For me, the attack on Elysia was staged! The High Council NEVER existed!! Everything we know comes from manipulated records!”

Jo squinted at him.

“Are you saying the historians of the fifth post-Rift century… lied?”

Harua jumped to his feet.

“I SAID IT AND I STAND BY IT!!”

Jo stood too. The two of them face to face like conspiracy theorists trapped in their own sci-fi show.

“And Naer’s memoirs?! Were those a lie too, Harua?!”

“Maybe they were undercover fiction to justify temporal genocide!”

“YOU’RE A CANON HERETIC!”

“AND YOU’RE A BLIND FANBOY!”

And then… silence.
And then… laughter.
And in the middle of the laughter… a hug.

Not planned. Not discussed. It just… happened.
Jo stepped forward. Harua too. And suddenly they were there, laughing, foreheads resting on each other’s shoulders, arms wrapped around them like the universe (real or invented) needed a moment to recalibrate.

Jo tensed first. A millisecond. And then… he let go.
Harua smelled like mint, fluorescent marker, and something Jo was starting to associate with home.

Harua didn’t say anything. He just held him for a while. And when they pulled apart, they did it slowly. Almost like it hurt a little to stop touching.

“Sorry, I got carried away,” Harua murmured, softly. But his eyes were shining.

Jo shook his head. Also softly.

“Don’t apologize.”

After that, they didn’t say much else. They just lay back down on the floor, surrounded by books, theories, and emotions.
Like that hug had unlocked a new phase. A new chapter.

And yeah, Kheron’s Last Ones was intense.

But not as intense as they were.

The school organized a trip to the planetarium because, according to the Natural Sciences teacher, “the best way to learn is to look up with an open heart.”

No one really understood what she meant, but the bus still filled with teenagers carrying cookies, backpacks with speakers, and extremely low expectations.

Jo almost didn’t go. Planetarium meant group. Noise. Interaction.
But Harua convinced him with his best argument:

“There’s going to be an Orion projection. Literally, the sky from your books. You cannot miss that.”

So there he was. Sitting in a cushioned seat, under a giant dome that suddenly went entirely dark—immersing the group in the softest darkness in the world.

“Shhh,” Harua whispered. “You’re about to see a star being born.”

Jo swallowed.

He wasn’t sure if Harua meant the screen… or something else.

The projection began. Constellations dancing in slow motion. Nebulae floating like painted strokes. Voices narrating the universe’s history with deep dramatic tones.

Jo, however, couldn’t focus.
He could feel Harua beside him. Very close. Elbow to elbow. Knee to knee. Breathing almost synced.

And then, out of nowhere… a hand.

Harua’s. Gently resting on top of his.

Not intertwined. Not intrusive. Just… there.
As if saying “I’m here,” without speaking.

Jo didn’t move.
He didn’t pull his hand away.
He didn’t say anything.

He just let it stay.

“That thing you’re seeing…” Harua whispered, pointing at an image of an expanding supernova. “It’s billions of years old. But we’re seeing it now.”

Jo nodded. Without looking at him. Eyes fixed on the explosion of colors. Chest full of another one.

“Stars don’t die,” Jo murmured, not knowing why he said it. “They just transform.”

“Like us,” Harua said.

And that was it. The hand. The stars. The comfortable silence.
And Jo, with a new certainty orbiting inside him like a planet:
Maybe… love.
In his own way.
At his own pace.
But with an intensity even Chronicles of Kheron couldn’t put into words.

Harua showed up to class without his light.

And that was strange.

Strange because Harua was light. Always.
Even on cloudy Mondays. Even when he was tired. Even when Jo was in one of his more hermit-like moods.
But that day… no.

No smile.
No jokes.
No sandwich wrapped in sticker-covered paper.

He just sat down, rested his head on his crossed arms, and didn’t say anything.

Jo watched him. Discreetly, from his corner.

He waited for a “Jo, I dreamed you adopted me in a space colony” or a “today I feel like Arien after chapter 21,” but nothing came.

And that… worried him.

After the second break, Jo couldn’t take it anymore.

He approached. Sat next to him.
Pulled out his pencil case, rummaged around… and slid a post-it toward him.

On it, written in his tiny, squared handwriting:

“Emotional alien abduction or horrible day on a human level?”

Harua looked at the paper.
He blinked. Didn’t smile. But he didn’t push it away either.
He took the same highlighter he always used to mark books and wrote underneath:

“Horrible day. Human level. Very human level.”

Jo stayed silent. Thought about it.

He wasn’t good with comforting words. Never had been.
If someone cried, he looked for the emergency exit.

But Harua wasn’t crying.
He was just… there. Quiet. Still. Dimmed.

He did the only thing he could think of.

He pulled out his copy of Kheron’s Last Ones, opened it to a random page, and set it in front of him.
He pointed at a violet-underlined line:

“Even when the stars give off no light, they’re still there. Waiting to shine again.”

Harua read it.
This time, he did smile. Just barely. Barely.
But he smiled.

They didn’t say anything.
Jo pulled out his pencil and started doodling in his notebook. Harua watched him from the corner of his eye.
After a while, he rested his head on Jo’s shoulder.

Jo froze. Just for a second.
Then he relaxed and let him stay there.

He didn’t need to talk.
Just be.

And for the first time, Jo understood that sometimes comforting someone wasn’t about saying something clever or planning a scene worthy of a novel…
It was simply staying still.
Holding space.
Offering a shared story as a bridge.

Book 4: Fractured Genesis

If Kheron’s Last Ones had been a punch to the heart, Fractured Genesis was a puzzle for the soul.

It was the strangest book in the whole saga. Fragmented. Poetic. At times it read as if it had been written by an interdimensional philosopher with insomnia and a sad playlist.

Metaphors about free will, technological dehumanization, identity as construction… and a new character who was clearly an allegory for death (but also for love… maybe… maybe).

Jo loved that book. It was his favorite. The hardest. The densest. The most beautiful.
And Harua was devouring it.

“Don’t ask me to hate Theon,” Harua said one afternoon, defiant.
“Just because he made choices you wouldn’t.”

“Theon destroyed a planet.”

“Theon sacrificed a planet to save four timelines! It’s a matter of scale.”

“IT’S A MATTER OF ETHICS!”

“And ethics change when reality is collapsing!”

They were in the library, sitting across from each other, whisper-yelling, pencils flying like weapons of debate.
Jo pointed at paragraphs. Harua countered with underlines. The air between them vibrated with moral electricity.

And in the middle of a pause, Jo looked at him. Really looked. The furrowed brows, the animated hands, the absolute passion in his voice.
Harua was… brilliant. Infuriating. Magnetic.

“What?” Harua asked, noticing his stare.

Jo blinked.
“Nothing. It’s just… I’ve never seen anyone defend an interdimensional genocidal maniac with this much enthusiasm.”

Harua smiled.
But he didn’t laugh.

That smile was different. Slow. As if he, too, was seeing something in Jo. Something he wasn’t ready to say. Something he maybe already knew.

“I never thought I’d fall in love with a book,” he murmured, lowering his gaze to the pages. “But it happens. And then you don’t know how to get out.”

Jo felt something weird.
Not on his skin—in his stomach.
Then warmth in his face. In his chest.
An internal alarm blaring: FEELING DETECTED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

“Which one are you talking about?” he asked, quietly. Just in case the answer was too much.

Harua looked up.
“I don’t know. I’m reading two at the same time.”

And there they stayed. One looking at the book. The other looking at the other.
The silence grew dense.
Not awkward. Not empty.
Full.

Full of unsaid things, contained wants, all the confessions they weren’t ready to make.

The tension wasn’t just romantic anymore. It was gravitational.

And while the chapter ended, Fractured Genesis lay open on the table.
But the real lines that mattered were being written between them.

Everything started with an innocent message.

Harua: “Hey, wanna go to that bookstore with the ridiculous sci-fi couches? Someone told me there’s a book with a synopsis so bad it loops around and becomes art.”

Jo, who usually ignored social invitations, replied in under two minutes.

Jo: “What time?”

Technically, what followed was a spontaneous academic outing. But they both knew what they were doing.
The bookstore was neutral ground, sure. A temple of knowledge, yeah. But mostly, it was the perfect disguise for being together without calling it being together.

They walked in like it didn’t matter.
But it mattered.

Harua went ahead, wearing a scarf he didn’t need, waving his hands as he mocked the ridiculous titles he found (“Do Androids Also Cry? Jo WHO approves these names, WHO”).
Jo followed, not talking much, but with a hidden smile that was becoming dangerously automatic.

They settled in a corner with stacks of books they clearly were not going to buy, reading random lines and sharing looks that said this is a date and we both know it.

Later, as the natural consequence of every perfect moment, they ended up at a neighborhood ice-cream shop, squeezed into an uncomfortable bench, each with a cone.

Jo ordered dark chocolate.
Harua ordered strawberry and mint. A combo that made no sense but that he defended with thesis-level arguments.

“It’s like sweet chaos,” Harua explained. “Strawberry on the outside. Mint on the inside. Refreshing but sentimental.”

“Are you talking about yourself or your ice cream?”

“Both, probably.”

Jo let out a small laugh. He loved when Harua analyzed himself like he was a character.

And in the quiet that followed, as the sunset reflected off the parked cars, Harua stretched out his hand.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing rehearsed. Just… placed his hand over Jo’s.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Jo went still.
One beat. Two.
And he didn’t pull away.

He didn’t just not pull away—he squeezed back. Lightly. Almost imperceptibly. But enough for Harua to feel it.

They didn’t say anything.
They didn’t need to.

The universe didn’t explode.
Reality didn’t collapse.
But something in Jo did.

It wasn’t a date.
But yes. It was.

A day passed with no message.
Then two.
And by the third, Jo started feeling like a side character with no script. Like Harua had closed the book without telling him.

It’s not like they were glued together all the time. But ever since they started the saga, not a day passed without sharing something: an absurd theory, an underlined quote, a pixelated photo of a pizza-shaped spaceship.
Now—nothing.

Jo didn’t write first.
He didn’t want to seem desperate. Or annoying. Or… affected.

But by day four, his phone screen was just a mirror showing one thing: emptiness.

He tried to focus on other things. Failed.
He tried rereading a chapter of Fractured Genesis. Couldn’t.
Every line reminded him of Harua. His theories. His gestures. His excited voice saying, “Jo? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

The worst part was knowing they hadn’t fought. That Harua hadn’t pulled away because of him. And still… Jo felt like he had messed something up.

By the end of day five, worry turned into something bigger. Something real.
And Jo did the unthinkable: he texted first.

Jo:
Are you okay?

It took time.
Minutes.
Hours.
Until finally:

Harua:
Sorry. I’m drowning in exams. And my parents are on my back. I’m… overwhelmed.

Jo read that message a thousand times.
Then another came immediately after:

Harua:
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you. I just can’t even think. But I miss you. A lot.

Jo felt something tighten in his chest. Not sadness.
Relief.

With fingers shaking more than usual, he wrote:

Jo:
I get it. I’ll wait. I’m saving spoilers for your favorite ice cream.

Pause.

Harua:
Was that an attempt at comfort?

Jo:
No. It was a sweet threat. Come back before it melts.

Harua:
I promise I’ll come back.

Jo closed the chat, set his phone aside…
And for the first time in five days, breathed in peace.

The storm wasn’t over.
But now he knew he wasn’t crossing it alone.

Eight days passed since the last “sweet spoiler.”

Eight.

Jo stopped counting after the sixth because it was starting to feel obsessive.
He resigned himself to waiting. Waiting Harua-style. Which was like waiting for a supernova: it took time, but when it appeared, it lit everything up.

And that day, he appeared.

Jo was in the library, as usual, with an open book he wasn’t reading. He’d been staring at the same sentence for the fourth time (“the ship’s core trembled with a silent promise”) when he heard a voice he knew too well.

“Did the core tremble because you missed it, or because it was thinking about me?”

Jo looked up. And there he was.

Harua.
With a backpack warped by notes, a jacket covered in fuzz, and two eye bags that deserved UNESCO heritage status.
But also—with that smile that said, “I’m back. Did you miss me even if you won’t admit it?”

Jo stared. And for a moment, he didn’t know what to do.
Say hi? Lightly hit him with the book? Cry? Hug him and never let go?

He chose the most Jo option available:

“Your face looks like a collapsing universe.”

“Thanks. It’s the face of someone who passed two midterms and survived three family dinners about ‘performance and expectations.’ Basically, a horror saga.”

Jo made space on the chair beside him. Said nothing else.

Harua sat. Dropped into the seat like his body had been waiting for it more than any nap.
And they stayed like that. In silence. Jo flipping pages. Harua staring at the ceiling like it was a star map.

Until, softly, Harua murmured:

“I missed you every day.”

Jo turned. Looked at him. For real.
And he saw him. Beyond the joke. Beyond the confident voice. He saw him.

He placed a hand on Harua’s leg. No words.
Like that time at the planetarium, but reversed.

And Harua… closed his eyes.
Breathed in deep.
And rested his head on Jo’s shoulder. No permission. No apology.

Jo didn’t move.

That was the thing about Harua. He came back messy, exhausted, half-broken…
But he always came back.

And Jo, who wasn’t the same as before, started to suspect that his own heart was coming back too.
To him.

Book 5: The Silence of the Gods

The last book was there.
Thick. Dark. Almost symbolic.

The Silence of the Gods. The end of everything. The grand conclusion that promised answers… and, according to Jo, ended up slapping his expectations across the face.

But Harua… he was ready.

“I'm about to start,” he said one afternoon, without any solemnity but with that spark in his eyes he always had before diving into a new story.

Jo stared at him like he was about to throw himself off a cliff.

“You know it’s a disaster, right?”

“You said it so many times I’m surprised I’m reading it anyway.”

“You can still save yourself. There are better fanfics. Way better.”

“Nah. If I’m going to suffer, I wanna suffer officially.”

Days passed. And Harua read it.

As always: with sticky notes marking pages, Voice messages crying, blurry pictures of pages with comments like “THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING.”

But then he reached the end.

And he didn’t cry.
He didn’t scream.
He just went… quiet.

Like the gods, basically.

“So?” Jo asked the moment he saw him show up with the book under his arm.

Harua set it on the table.
Looked at him.

“I liked it.”

Silence.

Jo blinked. Twice.

“What.”

“I. Liked. The. Ending,” he repeated, slower this time, like he didn’t want to leave room for misinterpretation.

“No. No, no, no. You’re processing it wrong. You’ve got reader Stockholm syndrome. They brainwashed you. It’s like defending an exam that was graded wrong.”

The scream echoed through the entire library.

Well—“scream.” It was more like a furious whisper with a trembling voice and wide, panicked eyes.
But emotionally, it was a scream.

“HOW CAN YOU LIKE THAT ENDING?”

Harua didn’t even flinch. He was standing across the table with his arms crossed, wearing the face of someone who prepped the entire semester for this debate.

“I already told you. It makes sense. It’s well constructed.”

Jo shot out of his chair. Walked in a little circle. Sat back down. Stood up again.

“No! It doesn’t make sense! What kind of ending is ‘everything was an illusion of free will created by an emotionally deprived AI who just wanted to be understood’?! That’s not hope, Harua, that’s cosmic gaslighting!”

“Jo…”

“And the thing with Naer!! They left him floating in the mirror dimension with his arc unfinished! He spent five books fighting his shadow and he ends up being his shadow?! THAT’S NOT A CLOSURE, THAT’S A BADLY EDITED POEM!!”

Harua sighed, calm.

“Jo. Listen.”

And then he sat down. And started explaining.

“The ending isn’t about solving everything. It’s about accepting that some things don’t get solved. That there are gods who stay silent because if they spoke, they’d ruin what you learned along the way. That the answer isn’t in them—it’s in you. In what you did with the questions. In how you grew. In who you shared it all with.”

Jo crossed his arms. Contained fury. But listening.

“Yeah, it’s a weird ending. Yeah, it’s ambiguous. But to me… it’s fair. The whole point of the saga is that the universe doesn’t revolve around perfect heroes or easy answers. It’s about messing up. About loving at the wrong time. About looking for meaning in places where there is none. And still choosing to stay.”

Jo frowned.

“And that seems satisfying to you?”

“It seems human.” —Harua lowered his voice, softer— “And I think that’s the point. The gods go silent, sure. But we keep talking. Creating. Dreaming. We cling to stories that don’t explain everything… because sometimes, we just need someone to be there to read them with us.”

Jo looked down.
Swallowed.

Harua wasn’t defending an ending. He was talking about them. About what they had shared. About how that saga—broken, imperfect, maddening—had brought them closer than anything else.

His eyes softened.

Because Harua spoke with so much passion, so much clarity… that for a moment, the visceral hatred Jo had for that ending… wavered.

“So… you think it doesn’t matter if the universe collapses as long as someone watched it happen with you?”

“Exactly. And you know what?” —Harua leaned in a bit— “I watched this universe with you. And that’s why I liked it so much.”

Jo swallowed.

Because he understood two things at once:

Harua had really read it. Not just for him.
He had lived it.

The ending… maybe wasn’t that horrible.

Or, better said… the ending hurt, yes. But it also made sense.

Because the journey had been worth it.

“You’re unbearable,” he muttered, looking down. “Did you know that?”

“Yes. And you’re a closeted romantic. Did you know that?”

Jo didn’t answer.

He just picked up the book, closed it slowly…
And placed his hand over Harua’s.

End of the saga.
Beginning of something else.

In the library. In the hallways. In each other’s world.

They didn’t need excuses anymore. They weren’t tied together by an assigned task.

But something still kept them close.

A will. A habit. An affection.

Jo spoke first.

“I made a list.”

He handed him a grid paper sheet, written in his neat, obsessive handwriting.

Five titles. All different genres. Each underlined in a different color.

At the bottom, a note:

“You can pick one. But if you want to read all of them with me, I won’t complain.”

Harua read it slowly. Smiled like he’d just found a secret.

“Are you proposing a new saga?”

“I’m proposing we keep… reading. Whatever. But with you.”

Harua didn’t say anything. He just reached into his backpack, rummaged around, and handed Jo a folded piece of paper.

Jo opened it.

It was a list.
Of songs.

Titles, artists, and next to each one, a comment:

“Listen to it at night, when you can’t sleep.”

“This one’s sad, but I thought of you when I heard it.”

“I don’t know why, but this sounds like us. Check the chorus.”

“This song makes me feel like when you laugh quietly.”

Jo read everything in silence.

Then looked up.

Harua was watching him with a mix of pride and nerves.

“It’s what I do,” Harua said. “When I like someone. I give them music.”
And then added quickly:
“You don’t have to like all of them. Some are weird.”

Jo folded the list carefully. Put it in the pocket over his chest. Close to his heart.

And answered:

“Some of my readings are weird too. But you still stuck with me.”

“I’d follow you to a fan club of existentialist androids if you asked.”

“And I’d go to a sad indie pop festival in the middle of nowhere.”

They both laughed.

And in that moment, without sparkles or special effects, they both knew they had just said “I love you.”

Each list was a map.
And they were drawing it together.

Epilogue: Galactic Kiss

The saga had ended weeks ago, but Jo couldn’t let it go completely.

He was writing.

Fanfic.

With a different ending. One that did it justice. One that fixed everything the author had destroyed with his ambiguous philosophy and love of cosmic silence.

Harua knew. Because every now and then, Jo would look at him and mutter, “what if Naer did make it out of the mirror dimension?” or “I think I can give Theon a decent redemption without destroying two planets,” and then go back to typing like he was rewriting fate itself.

One afternoon, in Jo’s house, he printed it.

Not all of it. Just the ending. He left it on the table with a sticky note that said:

“Beta version. Don’t judge until line 37.”

Harua took it to read. Came back half an hour later.

“It’s great.”

“Don’t be polite. You’re terrible at debating ethics, don’t start being nice now.”

“No, really. It’s very good. Except for one thing.”

Jo raised an eyebrow.

“What thing?”

Harua pointed at a line:

“Naer took Aeth’s hand and together they crossed the portal, without looking back.”

“Don’t you think… something’s missing?” Harua asked.

“Like what? More emotional description?”

“Like… this.”

And without warning, with no argument other than his own heart, Harua kissed him.

It was quick. Clumsy. Tasting like nerves and all the times they hadn’t dared.

But it was real. Very real.

Jo froze. Literally.

“Was that… narratively correct?” he murmured, unmoving.

Harua laughed against his mouth.

“Structurally, it’s debatable. Some people prefer a kiss after the narrative climax, not during character development.”

“But emotionally…”

“Emotionally, it was inevitable.”

Jo looked at him. Kissed him again. This time more certain, longer—like he finally knew the ending he wanted to write.

They pulled apart, foreheads pressed together.

“And now what?” Jo asked.

Harua smiled.

“Now we keep reading things together. And writing. And arguing about whether couples should kiss in chapter 25 or in the epilogue.”

Jo chuckled. Softly, like always.

And said:

“With you… every chapter feels like the beginning."