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At twenty-three, people spoke to you like your life had already started—like the hardest parts were behind you, like the shape of you was finished, sealed, ready to be presented to the world.
Twenty-three was an age that sounded young when you said it out loud, but felt older when you lived inside it. Old enough for expectations to stop being suggestions. Old enough for relatives to ask questions that weren’t really questions—Where are you interning? When are you taking your licensing exams? What hospital are you aiming for? Old enough for friends to start talking in timelines instead of dreams. Old enough for your own reflection to look back at you with a strange kind of demand.
Because by then, you were supposed to have proof.
Proof that you hadn’t wasted your teen years. Proof that your sacrifices had converted into something visible. A scholarship, a recommendation letter, a lab placement, a clinical rotation that mattered. Proof that the late nights and caffeine and quiet panic were not just… suffering for the sake of suffering.
People didn’t always say it harshly. Sometimes they said it with smiles. Sometimes with pride. Sometimes with love.
But it still felt like pressure.
The timeline was clean on paper: enter university at eighteen, endure the years that hollowed you into discipline, finish the program, sit for the exams, secure the placement, become dependable. The world loved orderly stories. The world liked people who followed the correct sequence and produced the correct results.
And if you were in pharmacy—if you were in that long, demanding six-year track—then the phrase final year carried a particular weight. It wasn’t just a year.
It was a ledge.
The year your lecturers stopped treating you like a student and started watching you like a future professional. The year clinical rotations became less about learning and more about whether you could survive. The year your calendar filled with exams, interviews, practice tests, and the quiet terror of realizing the world would not wait for you to feel ready.
By twenty-three, your life could look “impressive” from the outside.
A good university. A heavy workload. A clean GPA. Volunteering. Certificates. A LinkedIn profile polished until it didn’t look like your real face anymore—until even you didn’t recognize yourself.
But inside, it was still mostly fear and momentum.
You learned quickly that achievement didn’t always feel like victory. Sometimes it felt like not drowning. Sometimes it felt like reaching the surface for one breath and immediately being pulled back under by the next deadline.
And because you were busy building a future that could feed you, shelter you, and keep you safe—because you were busy trying to become a person who could handle life without help—you didn’t have the luxury of romantic distractions.
At least, that’s what you told yourself.
Because there were always more urgent things to want.
You wanted your name on a list that mattered. You wanted a supervisor who didn’t look through you like you were replaceable. You wanted the kind of internship that didn’t just “look good,” but turned into a door that stayed open. You wanted your bank account to stop feeling like a fragile secret. You wanted a future that didn’t depend on luck.
And love—love didn’t look like any of those things.
Love was a soft thing. A time-consuming thing. A risk. A variable you couldn’t calculate. A storm that could ruin the careful structure you’d worked so hard to build.
You watched friends start to pair up like it was a natural season. Some were happy. Some were lonely in relationships they didn’t know how to leave. Some were chasing the comfort of being chosen because adulthood was frightening—and being alone made it louder.
People talked about romance like it was a rite of passage, like it was proof you were living properly. But you had seen enough to know it could also be proof of how easily a person could lose themselves. The way someone could start bending their plans around another heartbeat. The way priorities shifted without permission. The way you could wake up one day and realize your life was no longer arranged around your own needs.
And you couldn’t afford that.
Not when your days were already packed tight with obligations, not when your mind was constantly counting forward—weeks, exams, applications, interviews. Not when your definition of peace was as simple as making it to the next milestone without breaking.
So you kept your world narrow on purpose. You made your ambitions look like armor.
When people asked about dating, you laughed and changed the subject.
When people teased you for being too serious, you let them.
When people tried to set you up, you declined—politely at first, then more firmly as the years passed.
You answered texts late. You didn’t linger after class. You didn’t let anyone become a habit. You were friendly, but never inviting. Warm, but never open. You kept your heart like a locked room—not because you thought you were above love, but because you knew how expensive it could be.
The truth was, it wasn’t that you didn’t believe in it.
It was that you believed in consequences.
So you did what many people did at twenty-three: you pretended you didn’t want it.
Or maybe you genuinely didn’t.
Some days, it was hard to tell the difference—between not wanting something, and simply not having space for it.
Because at twenty-three, the truth was simple.
You didn’t want butterflies.
You wanted stability.
And Kurosaki Karin clung to one quiet truth above everything else—
Butterflies were temporary.
Stability was what kept you standing.
For her, that pressure wasn’t abstract. It lived in her calendar. In her hands. In the way she measured her life in deadlines instead of desires.
It started in a place where romance couldn’t survive for long: fluorescent lights, stainless steel benches, and the sharp, sterile scent of ethanol that clung to her sleeves, stubborn as guilt, even after she went home.
Karin stood at her station in the pharmacy lab with her goggles on, hair tied back, gloved hands steady around a pipette. The world in front of her was measured in milliliters and margins of error—clear numbers, clean outcomes, rules that didn’t change their mind halfway through. On the bench, labeled vials lined up like tiny promises. Her notebook was open, filled with tight handwriting and underlined steps, a ritual of precision she trusted more than any human intention.
Behind her, someone was humming.
Not softly. Not politely.
The kind of hum that implied the person doing it had zero shame about occupying space.
“Karin,” Athena sang, dragging out the syllables as if they were a ribbon she could tie into a bow. “Kaaa-rin.”
Karin didn’t look up. She adjusted the pipette, tapped the tip once like she was warning the universe not to test her patience, then dispensed the liquid with a calm that had been trained into her over six years.
“Athena,” she said, voice flat, “if you contaminate my sample, I will bury you in the autoclave.”
“I’m not touching anything,” Athena replied immediately, hands up in surrender as she leaned against the adjacent bench—too close, as usual. She had her own goggles pushed up on her head like a crown, lab coat half-buttoned, cheeks bright with the kind of excitement Karin didn’t have the energy to manufacture.
Karin finally glanced sideways.
Athena was smiling in a way that made trouble look harmless.
“That’s a dangerous smile,” Karin said.
Athena pressed a hand to her chest like she’d been wounded. “Excuse you. This is a loving smile.”
“This is the smile you had when you convinced me to join that volunteer committee and I ended up doing everyone’s paperwork.”
Athena blinked innocently. “You were amazing at it.”
Karin returned her attention to the bench. “What do you want.”
Athena leaned closer, lowering her voice like they were planning a heist instead of finishing an experiment. “Blind date night.”
Karin paused so hard her pipette hand froze mid-air.
Then she continued like she hadn’t heard, as if ignoring it would erase it from existence. “No.”
“Don’t answer so fast,” Athena protested. “You didn’t even hear the details.”
“I heard enough.”
“It’s not a pub!” Athena said quickly, like she’d been waiting for Karin to snap back. “It’s not some gross place with drunk men and sticky floors. It’s… a club, technically, but the kind that hosts mixers and student nights. You won’t be stuck shouting over bass.”
Karin’s eyes narrowed. “A club is still a club.”
“It’s controlled,” Athena insisted. “It’s for students like us who are dying.”
Karin snorted. “We are dying. That’s why I’m not wasting oxygen on strangers.”
Athena groaned, dragging a stool closer and sitting sideways, chin propped on her palm. She studied Karin the way people studied puzzles. “You always say you don’t have time. But you’ve been saying that since first year.”
Karin didn’t respond. She capped a vial, labeled it neatly, and moved to the next step without looking at her.
Athena’s voice softened—not dramatically, just enough to slip through Karin’s defenses.
“I’ve been stuck to you since first year,” Athena said quietly. “You know that, right? Like… I’m not letting you go.”
Karin’s throat tightened, annoyed at how easily Athena could make something sound like affection instead of manipulation.
“You’re dramatic,” Karin muttered.
“I’m serious,” Athena insisted. “You’re always carrying everything like it’s just you versus the world. And I get it—your goals matter. Your future matters. But you’re allowed to have one night where you’re not thinking about internships, grad requirements, and your CGPA.”
Karin’s lips pressed together. She set the pipette down with deliberate care. “One night turns into distraction.”
Athena tilted her head. “Not if you don’t let it.”
Karin stared at the clear liquid in the vial like it held the answer. “I don’t want butterflies.”
“I know,” Athena said. “Then don’t look for butterflies.”
Karin shot her a look.
Athena smiled again, gentler this time. “Look at it like… practice. Conversation. Networking. Learning how to exist outside survival mode for an hour.”
Karin let out a small, humorless breath. “Networking? In a club?”
“It’s not like you’re handing out business cards,” Athena shot back. “It’s just… talking. Eye contact. Small talk without your brain trying to optimize everything. You know—basic human maintenance.”
Karin’s eyes narrowed. “I can do small talk.”
Athena lifted a brow. “You can survive small talk. That’s not the same thing.”
Karin’s gaze flicked down to her notebook, to the list of steps she could control—the measured doses, the exact timings, the neat certainty of a procedure that never changed its mind halfway through. She wanted to argue, to say love was a storm, to say romance was for people with spare bandwidth.
But the lab was quiet. The kind of quiet that made her own thoughts louder.
Athena watched her with that stubborn loyalty that had followed Karin through every semester—late nights, top scores that still didn’t feel like enough, groupmates who leaned on her competence like it was free labor, panic attacks in the bathroom she never spoke about, silent lunches when words felt too heavy. Athena had stayed. She always stayed.
“You don’t even have to stay the whole time,” Athena added, quick and bright again, like she sensed Karin cracking. “Just show up. Let us dress you up a bit. Sit through a few rotations. If you hate it, we’ll leave. I’ll even buy you ramen after.”
Karin stared at her friend.
“…Ramen?” she repeated, as if that was the most suspicious part.
Athena nodded solemnly. “The good kind.”
Karin exhaled, long and slow, the kind of sigh that sounded like surrender even when you hated surrendering. She turned back to her bench, lifted her pipette again, and whispered like it cost her something:
“Fine. One night.”
Athena’s face lit up like she’d just won a scholarship. “YES.”
Karin immediately added, “And if I regret it, I’m blaming you forever.”
Athena leaned in and bumped her shoulder lightly—careful, because they were in a lab, because Karin was still working, because Athena knew the rules even when she broke them. “I can live with that. At least you’ll be alive enough to blame me.”
Karin didn’t answer.
But her hands stayed steady.
Her goggles stayed on.
And in the reflection of the clear lab glass, for just a second, her expression looked less like armor—and more like someone allowing the world to touch her life by one inch.
It should’ve ended there. A reluctant yes. A single concession to friendship. Nothing more.
But Athena treated it like a mission.
By the time the day of the event arrived, Karin found herself standing in Sae’s apartment with two girls circling her like stylists around a mannequin, her own clothes rejected and folded away as if they belonged to a different person entirely. Athena tugged a hanger from the rack with the kind of confidence that implied she’d been planning this since first year.
“You’re not wearing that,” Athena declared, plucking Karin’s usual oversized hoodie from her hands like it was a crime scene exhibit.
“It’s clean,” Karin argued.
“It’s a sleeping bag,” Sae corrected, laughing as she pushed Karin gently toward the mirror. “Turn around.”
Karin turned, because she had somehow lost control of her life.
They didn’t dress her in anything dramatic—no glitter, no loud colors, no tightness that felt like a costume. Just something simple that actually fit her, that made her look… intentional. A soft black top that sat nicely on her shoulders. A skirt that didn’t swallow her legs. A jacket that made her look like she belonged somewhere other than a lab.
Athena fixed the collar with quick, precise hands, then stepped back and squinted like an artist.
“You have good structure,” Athena muttered, approving. “You just keep hiding it.”
Karin rolled her eyes. “I’m not hiding. I’m busy.”
“You’re hiding,” Athena said again, then reached for a lipstick tube like it was a weapon.
Karin stiffened. “No.”
Athena’s eyes widened in mock offense. “It’s not a crime. It’s… enhancement.”
“I don’t wear lipstick,” Karin said flatly.
“You don’t wear lipstick,” Athena echoed, amused, “because you’ve convinced yourself that anything soft is a distraction.”
Sae held Karin’s shoulders, steadying her in front of the mirror like she was about to take a passport photo. “Just let her try. If you hate it, you can wipe it off.”
Karin’s gaze met her own in the glass—hair brushed, face bare, expression already preparing to resist.
Athena uncapped the lipstick and held it up beside Karin’s cheek. “This shade. Trust me.”
Karin’s mouth tightened. “Why this one.”
“Because it matches you,” Athena said simply. “Not your outfit. You. Your skin tone. The warmth under it. It’ll make you look alive instead of… academically exhausted.”
Karin made a face. “Rude.”
“Accurate,” Sae teased.
Athena leaned in, careful, and for all her dramatic personality, her hands were surprisingly gentle. She applied the color with patient precision, not too heavy, not too bright—just enough that when she pulled back, Karin’s own reflection looked like a version of herself that had slept eight hours and wasn’t arguing with an Excel sheet.
Karin blinked once, thrown off by the subtle difference.
Athena’s grin softened. “See? It’s not even loud. It’s just… you. But clearer.”
Karin stared at her mouth like it belonged to someone else. “I look weird.”
“You look expensive,” Sae corrected. “In a good way.”
Karin sighed as if surrendering would hurt her pride. “You’re both insane.”
Athena hooked her arm through Karin’s and tugged her away from the mirror before she could retreat into self-consciousness. “Come on. If we’re going to traumatize you with a social event, we’re doing it properly.”
And Karin—still pretending she wasn’t amused, still pretending she hadn’t been moved by the way they handled her with care—let them. Let Athena fuss over her hair. Let Sae spritz a perfume that smelled clean and soft instead of sweet. Let them laugh when Karin stood too stiffly, like she was wearing someone else’s life.
She told herself she was only doing this for one reason.
Ramen.
Not romance. Not fate. Not curiosity.
Ramen.
Karin still didn’t even know why she agreed—maybe because Athena had said the words the good kind with terrifying sincerity—until she was already in the backseat of Sae’s car, shoulder-to-shoulder with Athena, her bag clutched like a shield and her mind still halfway trapped in a spreadsheet she hadn’t finished.
Outside the window, the city slid past in clean lines of glass and neon, the kind of night that looked expensive from a distance. Inside, her phone screen glowed with the cruel certainty of deadlines—graduation requirements, internship applications, the quiet, constant pressure of needing to become someone reliable before the world decided she was disposable.
Love was… not on the list.
Not on the list the way “graduate on time” was on the list, or “get an internship that turns into a job,” or “build a life that was steady enough to stand on its own—steady enough that she wouldn’t have to lean on her family again.” Love felt like a luxury people talked about when their basic survival had already been handled. Love felt like something you could break without consequences—until it became a consequence, until it got in the way, until it made you soft in places you couldn’t afford to be soft.
“I swear,” Athena said, leaning forward between the seats like a prosecutor, “you’re going to talk to at least three people.”
Karin kept her eyes on the passing lights. “I didn’t agree to anything.”
“You did,” Sae sang from the driver’s seat. “You nodded. Twice.”
“I nodded because my neck was tired,” Karin muttered.
Athena gasped like she’d been personally betrayed. “You are impossible. You never go out, you never let anyone set you up, you never even look at anyone. If someone flirted with you, you’d probably ask them what their GPA is.”
“That would be useful information,” Karin said flatly.
Sae laughed. “Okay, okay. It’s not that kind of place. Just show up, be polite, and let Athena have her little experiment.”
“Classy,” Karin repeated, unimpressed, as if the word could magically lower her cortisol levels.
Athena patted her thigh. “We agreed to treat this like networking, remember?”
“Networking with strangers who think they’re on a romantic scavenger hunt,” Karin said.
Athena’s grin widened. “Exactly.”
Karin wanted to argue, but the truth was she’d been cornered the way only friends could corner you—soft voices, bright eyes, too many “you’ve been stressed lately” comments, and the final weapon: “Just try. For us.”
She didn’t know why that worked. Maybe because she was tired of being the difficult one. Maybe because she was tired of being the girl who always said no and then complained about feeling lonely in quiet moments she pretended didn’t exist. Maybe because the way her friends pushed—loud, stubborn, affectionate—felt achingly familiar, like Yuzu in a different body, like the same kind of love that didn’t ask permission before it dragged you back toward the living.
So she let them dress her up in something simple but sharp—black skirt, fitted top, hair brushed until it looked like she had a life outside laboratories and lecture halls. She let them pull her out into a night that smelled like perfume and possibility, even if she refused to call it that out loud.
The ride there was short enough to be cruel. Karin spent most of it with her bag hugged to her chest, staring out at the passing lights while silently attempting to negotiate with the universe—Please let there be traffic. Please let the GPS reroute. Please let us miss the turn. At one point, she even closed her eyes and tried to will the car into circling the same block forever, like sheer stubbornness could delay reality. It didn’t. A few minutes later, Sae parked, and suddenly they were standing in front of the place—Athena bright and victorious, Karin looking like she’d just arrived at her own sentencing.
The club was tucked into a building that looked almost boring from the outside—no aggressive signs, no thumping bass leaking through the walls, just a small illuminated logo and a doorman who checked names like he was guarding something delicate.
Inside, it wasn’t what Karin expected.
It wasn’t a dark, sticky place with desperate people leaning over neon drinks. It was open and warm, all honey-toned wood and soft blue accent lights, the ceiling high enough to breathe. There was music, yes, but it wasn’t drowning anyone—something low and polished that let conversations exist without forcing people to shout. Plants climbed quietly along one wall like someone cared about the atmosphere more than they cared about profit.
And the bar—the bar—felt adult in the way it refused to shout for attention.
Sleek machines sat gleaming under soft light. Glass jars of coffee beans lined one shelf like exhibits. Syrups were arranged with obsessive neatness. But above and behind that, there was no pretending it was innocent: rows of spirits in clean bottles—whiskey and gin and rum catching the light like amber and smoke; a few wines cradled in a temperature-controlled rack; bitters, liqueurs, and elegant glassware hanging upside down like quiet promises. It wasn’t messy. It wasn’t loud. Everything looked curated to the point of obsession—like even chaos would need a reservation.
A club that wanted to be respectable.
Or at least wanted to look like it.
“Aren’t you glad?” Sae whispered in Karin’s ear, as if she’d personally curated the place.
Karin gave a noncommittal hum. Her eyes had already started scanning—entrances, exits, the density of the crowd, the placement of tables. A habit. A defense. She wasn’t here to fall in love. She was here to survive an evening, go home, and collect the ramen she’d been promised like compensation for emotional damages.
They were guided toward a section reserved for the event, cordoned off with subtle signage and a sense of manufactured intimacy. Small tables waited in neat rows—two chairs each, a printed card with a number placed like a verdict at the center. Karin paused long enough to stare at hers, genuinely wondering how her friends even found things like this. Did Athena have a secret subscription? Was there a student mailing list for socially brave people? Was there an underground network where extroverts traded locations of romantic disasters?
A facilitator appeared with a headset and a smile too practiced to be real, her voice bright in that way that made everything sound harmless. She explained the rules like she’d done it a hundred times: rotate every seven minutes, keep it light, no contact details until the end unless both parties agreed.
Seven minutes per stranger.
Karin’s soul tried to exit her body quietly.
Athena squeezed her shoulder, warm and steady. “It’s fine. Worst case, you leave early and we’ll say you had… diarrhea.”
“I’m not lying about diarrhea,” Karin hissed.
Sae snorted. “Then say you had a family emergency.”
Karin’s mouth tightened. She didn’t want to be the person who ran. She also didn’t want to be the person who stayed and pretended it was fun. Both options felt humiliating in different ways—one too cowardly, the other too fake.
She was still weighing which version of herself she could tolerate when the chair across from her scraped softly against the floor.
Karin blinked, still half a second behind, because she hadn’t even realized the event had started. There hadn’t been a dramatic announcement, no countdown, no moment where the room collectively held its breath. It simply… began, like a trap closing politely.
A man sat down as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He looked like the kind of boy who had rehearsed how to smile in a mirror—hair too perfect, shirt ironed too flat, confidence polished until it gleamed. Even his watch looked expensive in a way that wanted to be noticed, catching the light like a quiet advertisement.
He extended his hand without hesitation, as if the gesture itself carried the assumption that she would meet it properly. That she would respond the way girls were supposed to respond.
“Tanaka,” he said, voice smooth. “Nice to meet you.”
Karin took his hand out of reflex, her grip brief and firm, already pulling back before he could decide what it meant.
“Kurosaki,” she said.
“So,” Tanaka leaned back, eyes skimming her like he was flipping through a catalog, “what do you like to do for fun?”
Karin’s brain offered a list of the last three things she’d done for “fun”: slept, cleaned her room, reorganized her internship application folder. She almost said the last one out loud out of pure spite—fun was a luxury and she had receipts—but her face stayed blank, the same calm pokerface she wore in presentations and practical exams.
“I train,” she said. “And I study.”
Tanaka blinked. “Train, like… gym?”
Karin’s mouth twitched, barely. Not a smile—more like a warning. “Interview training.”
It sounded ridiculous when you said it out loud, but it was also true. Mock questions. Case scenarios. Timing her answers until she could deliver them without shaking. Practicing the kind of confidence recruiters demanded as payment for opportunity.
Tanaka stared as if she’d just told him she did cardio for corporate approval.
“Oh.” The way he said it made it sound like a strange hobby, like she’d confessed to collecting insects. “That’s… intense.”
“It’s just discipline,” Karin replied, then immediately regretted answering honestly. Discipline was not sexy. Discipline was not flirtatious. Discipline was what you built when you didn’t have the privilege of falling apart.
Tanaka laughed awkwardly, as if trying to soften the moment into something cute. “Right. Uh. So are you close with your family?”
Karin’s patience thinned. Her gaze drifted past his shoulder to the facilitator’s timer—bright digits counting down like a lifeline.
Seven minutes couldn’t end fast enough. Karin couldn’t stop thinking about what else she could’ve done with that time—answered two internship emails, revised one interview script, reorganized her calendar, maybe even squeezed in a quick review of her notes. Seven minutes wasn’t nothing. Seven minutes was useful. Not… this.
Tanaka kept talking anyway—about his business major, about his father’s company, about his plans to travel “after graduation” because he’d “earned it,” said with the effortless confidence of someone who had never questioned whether the world would still catch him if he let go. Money lingered in his sentences like perfume. Privilege dressed up as personality.
Karin nodded in the correct places, her eyes slightly unfocused, the way she did during lectures that didn’t matter—present enough to be polite, absent enough to protect herself.
Seven minutes later, the bell chimed. Tanaka looked mildly offended, like time shouldn’t be allowed to take her away from him.
“It was nice meeting you,” he said, a little too firmly, as if he expected her to agree.
“It was nice,” Karin lied, because that was what polite people did.
The next guy was worse.
He slid into the chair like he’d been waiting for his turn with her—like the space across from her existed purely for his entertainment. His eyes swept over her—slow, shameless, taking inventory. Not the quick glance of curiosity. The kind that lingered too long, that made her skin tighten under her own clothes.
“Wow,” he said, like he couldn’t help himself. “You’re… really pretty.”
Karin didn’t react. She gave him the same expression she gave malfunctioning equipment: calm, unimpressed, waiting for it to stop.
He grinned, mistaking her silence for shyness. “You ever thought about… I don’t know. Modelling? You’ve got that vibe.”
Her gaze sharpened by a fraction. Not flattered—just tired.
“I’ve thought about graduating,” she said, voice flat. “With a license. In science.”
He laughed as if she’d made a joke for him. “Are you always this serious?”
Karin’s eyes didn’t move. “Are you always this loud?”
That made his smile falter for half a second—then he tried to recover by leaning into charm, like charm could fix discomfort.
“I’m just saying,” he continued quickly, “girls like you? You’re intimidating. Especially, you know… smart girls. Women in science and all that.” He chuckled, like the words were cute, like the stereotype was a compliment.
Karin stared at him.
Not glaring. Not dramatic. Just… a steady, unblinking look that made the air between them go thin. The kind of stare that didn’t fight—it evaluated. The kind of silence that forced someone to hear themselves.
His laugh died. He shifted in his seat, suddenly aware of his own voice, his own hands, his own performance. Sweat gathered at his hairline like guilt.
Seven minutes couldn’t pass fast enough.
The bell chimed. Karin rose before he did.
The third one was polite but painfully bland—the kind of conversation that left no residue in your mind, like chewing something with no flavor. The fourth talked about crypto like it was religion, eyes lit with zeal, as if numbers could save souls. The fifth asked if she believed in soulmates, like the universe had a matchmaking department and someone somewhere was behind on paperwork.
By the sixth rotation, Karin could feel her own spirit trying to leave her body in protest.
And the worst part wasn’t even that they were terrible.
It was that everyone seemed to think this was normal—this ritual of small talk and assessment, this parade of strangers asking for access to parts of you they hadn’t earned.
Karin inhaled slowly, held it, exhaled.
Seven minutes. Seven minutes. Seven minutes.
She could have rewritten her entire future with all the time she was wasting on these conversations.
She didn’t hate the men, exactly. She just hated the assumption that this was supposed to matter. That any of this was supposed to awaken something in her. She sat through it like a required module—smiling, nodding, answering enough to not be rude, counting down each seven minutes like it was a prison sentence.
Somewhere behind her, Athena’s laughter rose again—too loud, too bright, the kind that said she was actually having fun. Athena was built for this: collecting stories, collecting faces, turning awkwardness into entertainment. And Sae—Sae looked almost serene, leaning forward with easy interest, asking questions like she was sampling personalities the way she sampled desserts. They weren’t pretending. They were alive in it.
Karin watched them for a moment and felt something cold settle under her ribs.
Maybe she was the strange one.
Karin wondered if she was broken.
Or maybe she was simply… tired.
Tired of pretending romance was a necessary milestone. Tired of hearing people talk like love was a requirement for adulthood, like it was a stamp you needed on your life before anyone would take you seriously. She had watched enough heartbreak up close to know love didn’t always save you. Sometimes it simply made the fall worse.
And sometimes—this part embarrassed her to admit, even to herself—she couldn’t even explain why she felt this way so strongly. It wasn’t as if she was the one who had been shattered by some great romance. It wasn’t as if she carried a dramatic breakup like a scar. Nothing “happened” to her.
So why did her chest tighten every time someone tried to push her into it?
Maybe because she’d seen how easily people lost themselves. Maybe because she’d grown up watching women shrink their dreams to fit into someone else’s comfort. Maybe because she’d learned early that stability was earned, not given—and anything that threatened it felt like danger, even if it arrived wearing a smile.
Maybe it was simpler than that.
Maybe she just didn’t have the space.
So when the bell chimed again, she didn’t sit back down.
She rose instead, smoothing her skirt out of habit—a small gesture of composure, like buttoning a coat before stepping into cold air—and walked away from the rotation section with the quiet determination of someone who had finally reached her limit. Behind her, the next man hovered at the edge of the table with a polite, uncertain smile, halfway through pulling out the chair. He blinked when he realized she wasn’t coming back, his expression shifting into mild confusion… then disappointment, as if he’d been promised a turn and the promise had been revoked without warning.
Karin didn’t look back. She didn’t slow down, didn’t hesitate, didn’t offer an apology to make it easier for anyone else to digest. She simply let the bell, the chatter, the whole performance dissolve behind her as she kept walking.
No dramatic exit. No explanation. Just movement—clean, controlled, and final.
She threaded through the room, past couples leaning close as if the night was already making decisions for them, past tables glowing with small candles that softened everyone’s faces into something more forgiving. She slipped by a group of girls taking selfies like the evening existed for their camera, laughter popping bright against the music. No one stopped her. In a place designed for polite strangers, disappearing was easy.
At the bar, the lighting shifted—cooler, cleaner. The air changed too: citrus peel and crushed ice, the crisp sting of alcohol rising first, then something darker and sweet from the bottles behind glass. It felt like stepping into a different layer of the same world—less performance, more control.
The bar wasn’t crowded. Most of the event had been contained in its reserved section, tables booked and managed like a timetable—so the main counter remained strangely open, almost untouched, waiting.
Karin slid onto a stool and exhaled slowly through her nose, like she was letting pressure bleed out from somewhere under her ribs. She set her phone face-down on the counter like a boundary.
A line in the sand.
A quiet way of telling the night: I’m done.
She let the words sit in her head like a door closing.
Then, from her left, a voice—calm, unhurried—cut through the soft clink of ice and glass, as if it had been drawn out by the sigh she hadn’t meant to make so loud.
“Long night?”
Karin lifted her head.
She hadn’t even noticed anyone behind the counter until that moment—until the voice anchored itself in the space like it belonged there.
The bartender—whatever he was—stood with an apron tied neatly at his waist, sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He looked professional in the quiet, practiced way of someone who knew how to be polite to customers without turning it into flirtation. No overconfident grin. No hungry scanning. Just attention—calm and contained.
His hair caught the light and turned almost silver for a second, but Karin could tell what it really was: white. Not dyed-white. Not “light.” White like snow under a winter sky—too clean to be casual, too striking to be common. And his eyes… his eyes were an unsettling shade of winter blue, cold and clear, the kind of color that made you think of ice before you thought of warmth. It didn’t match the usual softness she expected from faces around her. It didn’t even look typical—like his features had been sharpened by a different season.
His expression was composed in a way that didn’t feel rehearsed. It felt natural. Like calm belonged to him, like noise simply didn’t reach whatever part of him the rest of the room was trying so hard to impress.
His face was sharp without trying to be—precise, not harsh. And the way he looked at her wasn’t invasive. It was simply attentive, like he was actually seeing her without trying to take something from her in return.
Karin blinked once, caught off guard by the fact that she didn’t immediately want to look away.
Because he was… beautiful.
It made her brain stutter for half a second, as if it couldn’t file the sight of him under anything familiar.
How could a man look like that and still stand here, quietly wiping down a counter, like it meant nothing?
“Something like that,” she said.
He nodded as if that answer was enough—no push, no attempt to pry. “Are you here for the event?”
Karin’s eyes flicked toward the rotation area, where the facilitator was gently urging people back to their seats, guiding strangers into new pairings like pieces on a board. “Unfortunately.”
Another small nod. “Did it go well?”
It wasn’t the usual teasing tone. It wasn’t flirtation. It was almost clinical—as if he was gathering data, testing a hypothesis in real time: Outcome? Success rate? Human behavior?
Karin let out a quiet laugh—more air than sound. “Define ‘well.’”
The corner of his mouth moved, barely. Not a smile. More like an acknowledgment that she’d said something accurate.
He turned slightly back to his work, hands moving with that same calm precision. He picked up a glass—not rushed, not showy—and held it up to the light as if he were checking for flaws no one else would notice. His thumb traced the rim once, thoughtful. Then he polished it with a cloth in slow, careful circles, the motion unhurried, almost meditative—like even this, even something so small, deserved to be done properly. Only then did he look back at her.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
Karin frowned. “I wasn’t looking for anything.”
That, finally, earned her something like a real expression from him—his brows lifting by the smallest fraction, as if she’d just said something genuinely unexpected.
“Then why did you join?” he asked—quietly, but with a thread of genuine curiosity, like he actually wanted the answer and wasn’t just filling silence.
“Because,” Karin said slowly, then stopped, because the truth sounded childish even in her own head.
Because her friends guilted her. Because she didn’t want to disappoint them. Because she was tired of being the one who always said no. Because it was easier to say yes once than to keep defending her no over and over until it started to feel like a flaw in her personality.
She shrugged instead, choosing the safest version of the truth. “Because people think it’s abnormal to be single and not care.”
The bartender’s gaze held hers for a beat longer than necessary. Not intense—just steady, like he wasn’t judging her, wasn’t amused, wasn’t trying to fix her. Just listening.
“It isn’t abnormal,” he said simply.
The way he said it—flat, certain—made something inside Karin loosen, like a knot she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying.
She stared at him for a second, and then looked away first, irritated with herself for how quickly the relief showed up.
“Can I get something strong?” she asked, turning her gaze to the menu board behind him even though she didn’t care what it said.
He didn’t immediately reach for a bottle the way most bartenders would. Instead, he asked, “Do you want it strong, or do you want it to feel like it’s strong?”
Karin paused. That question landed differently than she expected—like he was quietly separating craving from capability.
“…Strong,” she said, because she didn’t have the energy for clever.
He didn’t move yet. He just studied her for a beat—calm, unreadable—then asked, practical as a pharmacist taking a history.
“Do you actually drink,” he said, “or are you trying to survive your night?”
Karin’s mouth tightened. “I drink. Sometimes.” The answer sounded less confident out loud than it did in her head. Like she was suddenly aware she didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what “sometimes” meant in percentages.
His gaze flicked to her hands—empty, steady—then back to her face. “Any preferences?” he asked. “Sweet, sour, bitter. And tell me if you hate whiskey. People lie about that.”
“I don’t… hate it,” Karin said, which was as close to certainty as she could manage.
“And price?” he added, like it mattered just as much as taste—like he wasn’t going to trap her into something expensive just because she’d asked for “strong.”
Karin blinked. She hadn’t expected that. “Not… insane.”
A small nod, filed away. “Alright.” He paused, considering her the way he’d inspected the glass earlier, like he was looking for the simplest solution that wouldn’t backfire. “You want strong, clean, and not sweet. Something that won’t punish you if you’re not in the mood to pretend you know cocktails.”
Karin’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Is that a lecture?”
“No,” he said, unbothered. “It’s a recommendation.”
He reached for a bottle of whiskey and a lemon without flair, no performance—just quiet competence. A shaker appeared in his hands like it had always been there. He measured, squeezed citrus with a practiced grip, and the scent cut clean through the air. Ice followed—bright, crisp, satisfying—hitting metal like punctuation.
Karin watched him without intending to.
There was something about his focus that felt… familiar. The kind of concentration that didn’t need attention. The kind she recognized from late nights in the lab, from people who lived inside discipline because it was safer than living inside emotion.
He worked like someone who didn’t waste movement. Like someone who didn’t waste words either.
And somehow—without her permission—Karin found herself listening to the sound of the ice, watching the controlled rhythm of his hands, and feeling her own breathing settle into something steadier.
He slid the drink toward her. Amber. Clean. A twist of peel on the rim.
Karin took a sip.
It burned in a way that made her eyes water slightly, the warmth spreading downward like a slow flame. She swallowed, then exhaled.
“Good,” she admitted.
He didn’t look pleased. He just looked like he’d done his job correctly. “Drink slowly.”
Karin almost rolled her eyes. “Are you my father?”
His gaze sharpened a fraction. “No.”
Something about the bluntness of that made her laugh again, this time more real.
He went back to wiping the counter, but he stayed close enough that the conversation didn’t feel like it had ended—polishing the same section twice with that obsessive neatness, like it calmed him.
Karin stared into her glass, watching the ice turn slightly cloudy at the edges. Then, as if it was safer to talk about him than about herself, she asked, “Are you… good with alcohol?” The phrasing came out awkward, like she didn’t know the right term. “Like—do you drink? Or are you just good at making people drink?”
His hands didn’t stop moving. “I know what people ask for,” he said simply. “That’s my job.”
“That’s not an answer,” Karin murmured, but there was no bite in it.
A beat. Then he added, almost dry, “I’m fine.”
Fine sounded like a careful word. The kind people used when they didn’t want to offer details.
Karin hummed, accepting it anyway, and took another smaller sip—less brave this time, more deliberate.
She wasn’t sure why her throat felt less tight here. Maybe because the event had felt like performance—smiling for strangers, making yourself sound interesting, pretending you wanted to be chosen. Out there, every question was an evaluation. Every laugh felt like currency.
Here, at the bar, she didn’t have to be chosen.
She could just exist.
“You left early,” he observed—matter-of-fact, like he was returning the conversation to her because it was safer ground than talking about himself.
Karin looked up. “Is that against the rules?”
“It’s against the purpose,” he replied.
Karin made a face. “The purpose is overrated.”
For the first time, he actually smiled—just a little, and only for a second, like a crack in ice that immediately froze over again.
“What’s your purpose, then?” he asked.
Karin blinked. The alcohol warmed her chest, loosened the grip of her usual restraint just enough that words rose before she could filter them.
“Graduation,” she said. “Internship. A job. Money. Stability.” The list came out clean, rehearsed—like she’d said it to herself a hundred times in the dark. Then her voice softened, almost against her will. “Maybe… a quiet life someday where I’m not counting everything.”
She realized she was gripping her glass too tightly and forced her fingers to relax, as if loosening her hand could keep her from revealing too much.
But she hadn’t lied.
That was what she wanted—genuinely. Not romance. Not fireworks. Not someone to rescue her from her own life.
Just a life that didn’t require constant bracing.
He listened without interrupting, which was rare. Most people, when you admitted you cared about money and stability, either judged you for it or tried to soften it into a joke—like ambition needed to be disguised to be palatable.
He didn’t do either.
“That’s practical,” he said.
“It’s necessary,” Karin replied, and the way she said it made it sound like a fact, not a confession.
His eyes held hers again, that steady winter gaze. “People confuse necessity with coldness.”
Karin’s breath caught—not because it was romantic, but because it was accurate. Because she’d spent so much of her life being called too serious by people who didn’t understand what it took to stay upright.
She took another sip.
The burn made her blink, and in that blink she felt something shift—like the night had been loud and useless until this quiet corner. Like the world had been demanding things from her all evening, and here—strangely—no one was demanding anything at all.
“What about you?” she asked before she could stop herself.
His expression didn’t change. “What about me?”
“Your purpose,” Karin said. “You sound like you have one.”
For a moment, he didn’t answer. He turned back to his work instead, giving himself the smallest pause. He reached for a cup, checked the espresso machine out of habit—one glance, one adjustment, a precise twist of a dial—like he didn’t like being rushed into answers the way other people didn’t like being rushed into silence.
Only after that did he look up again, calm as ever, as if deciding whether she’d earned the truth.
Then he said, “To get through the end of the year.”
Karin stared at him, caught somewhere between disbelief and curiosity. “That’s it?”
“It’s enough.”
He didn’t dress it up. Didn’t add ambition to make it prettier. Didn’t pretend there was a grander mission hiding underneath. He said it like someone who understood that survival could be a full-time goal.
Something in his voice made her believe him.
Karin leaned her elbow on the counter, the warmth of the drink spreading into her limbs, loosening the tightness in her shoulders by degrees. “You talk like an old man.”
His eyes flicked over her face, quick and measured, as if assessing whether she meant it as an insult—or whether it was just her clumsy way of trying to connect.
“I don’t talk unnecessarily,” he said.
Karin snorted. “That’s a fancy way to say you’re quiet.”
He didn’t deny it. He only held her gaze—steady, unbothered—like silence was one of the few things he trusted.
Instead, he asked, “Are you always like this?”
Karin narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”
“Defensive,” he said—so blunt it almost made her choke.
She stared at him. “I’m not—”
The words died on her tongue, because the truth was sitting right there between them. She had been defensive. She’d walked into that event armed. Every answer sharpened. Every smile measured. Every laugh rationed like she couldn’t afford to spend too much of it.
The alcohol didn’t make her careless. It just made it harder to keep lying to herself.
“…Maybe,” she admitted reluctantly.
He nodded once, as if that confirmed something he’d already suspected.
Then, almost like an afterthought—like he was returning to the original data point—he asked, “Did any of them make you want to stay?”
Karin’s gaze drifted back toward the rotation area. She watched it for a second like it was happening behind glass: a guy laughing too loudly, leaning in as if volume could replace personality; a girl twirling her hair, performing interest with practiced ease; a pair of strangers smiling at each other like they were grateful the script was working.
Karin’s mouth twisted. “No.”
He hummed softly—neither approval nor disappointment, just acknowledgment. “Then leaving wasn’t failure.”
Karin looked back at him. “You talk like you’re used to watching people fail.” Her eyes narrowed a fraction, not unkind, just wary. “What are you—some kind of psychologist? Or do you just… observe and judge for fun?”
His hands stilled on the glass.
For one beat, the air tightened—thin as a held breath.
Then he said, carefully, “I’m used to watching people force themselves into things they don’t want.”
Karin didn’t know why that sentence felt like a hand on her shoulder. Not grabbing. Not pushing. Just steadying—like someone acknowledging a truth she’d been carrying alone.
She swallowed, the alcohol heat rising into her cheeks. “And you’re here…” Her gaze flicked toward the event section again, where laughter rolled like background noise. “…watching all of this.”
“I work here,” he said.
Karin’s eyes dropped to his apron again, to the neatness of it, the way it sat like a uniform—clean lines, no wrinkles, like he respected rules even when no one asked him to.
“Do you enjoy it?” she asked.
A pause—small, but deliberate.
Then, “It pays,” he said.
For some reason, that made her smile.
“Practical,” Karin echoed.
His gaze sharpened, as if he recognized his own words thrown back at him.
“Yes,” he said.
Another sip. Another slow breath.
Karin felt her shoulders lower, the tension she carried like a second spine easing by small degrees. She wasn’t used to talking like this—not with strangers, and not without a goal attached. No performance. No strategy. No outcome she needed to control.
She should have been cautious. She should have kept her guard up.
But there was something about him that didn’t feel like a threat.
He wasn’t trying to charm her. He wasn’t trying to win her. He wasn’t trying to pull a smile out of her like it was a prize he could claim.
And Karin realized—quietly, almost embarrassingly—that she couldn’t read his intentions at all. He hadn’t hinted. He hadn’t tested the water. He hadn’t leaned in with that familiar hunger men carried when they thought a girl owed them softness.
He was simply… there. Steady. Present. A person who could disagree with her without turning it into a battle—who could question her without demanding she explain herself until she bled.
Like a quiet wall you could lean against when you were tired of holding yourself up.
Karin traced the edge of her glass with her thumb, watching the condensation gather and slide, and when she spoke her voice came out lower than she meant it to—small, almost, as if she didn’t want the question to take up too much space.
“You don’t think I’m weird?”
He stared at her like the question itself was strange. “No.”
Karin let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief.
From the rotation area, the bell chimed again. Someone called out, laughing. Chairs scraped. The event continued without her, seamless—as if her absence didn’t matter.
And it didn’t.
Here, at the bar, Karin felt like she had stepped out of a role she never wanted to play, and for the first time that night, she wasn’t being measured. She wasn’t being assessed. She wasn’t being asked to make herself smaller or brighter or sweeter.
She could just sit there, drink in hand, and exist as herself—unchosen, unperformed, and strangely… safe.
The bartender’s eyes flicked briefly toward the reserved section where the event continued—bells chiming, chairs scraping, laughter rising and falling like waves—then returned to her with the same quiet focus.
“Are you going back?” he asked.
Karin let out a soft, humorless sound. “No.”
He accepted that without comment, as if he’d expected it.
Then, after a beat, he said, “Your friends will look for you.”
Karin groaned and tipped her head back slightly, as if the ceiling might offer mercy. “They’ll accuse you of kidnapping me.”
He regarded her for a moment, calm as ever. “Then I should prepare a statement.”
Karin laughed again—warm, surprised, real. The sound startled her in its honesty, like it had slipped out before she could clamp down on it.
“You’re funny,” she said—then immediately regretted it, because it sounded like flirting, and she wasn’t. She wasn’t trying to do that. Not tonight. Not with him. The words had just… slipped out, honest in a way she hadn’t planned.
His expression remained calm, but there was a faint shift—like he’d filed that away as information.
“I’m not,” he said.
“You are,” Karin insisted, eyes narrowing with quiet certainty. “In an… accidental way.”
He considered that, as if weighing the logic of it. Then he said, “That’s acceptable.”
Karin’s smile lingered, softer at the edges. She took another sip—slower this time—letting the warmth settle instead of rush, as if she could drink herself into calm and keep it there.
A silence formed between them—not awkward, not empty. The kind of silence that felt like mutual permission to breathe.
Karin wasn’t used to that.
She glanced at him again. Under the lights, his hair looked almost silver. His eyes were clearer up close, not soft, but not cruel either. His face was composed, but not arrogant.
He looked like someone who carried responsibility quietly.
It made her curious in a way she didn’t want to admit.
“What’s your name?” she asked, like it didn’t matter. Like she wasn’t already filing him away in the back of her mind.
He paused—just long enough for her to understand that he heard the question, and just long enough to prove he didn’t hand pieces of himself to strangers for free. His gaze didn’t harden. It simply… closed, polite and controlled.
“You can call me what you want,” he said.
Karin blinked. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s an answer,” he corrected, calm. “Just not the one you want.”
A laugh escaped her—quiet, surprised. “Wow. You’re difficult.”
He didn’t deny it. If anything, the faintest shift in his expression suggested he was used to being called that.
Karin set her glass down carefully. “Fine.” She tilted her head, stubborn in a way that felt almost childish. “Then I’m not telling you mine either.”
His eyes flicked to her—steady, assessing—then to the glass, then back again, like he was marking time.
“Alright,” he said.
The silence returned, still not awkward. Still strangely gentle.
But Karin could feel it now—an invisible line drawn between them. Not distance.
A boundary.
And for some reason, she didn’t want to cross it by force. She just… wanted to know what it would take for him to open it willingly.
So she didn’t ask again.
She let the question die where it stood and took another careful sip instead, eyes lowered to the glass like it was safer to focus on ice than on the strange pull of curiosity.
A server slipped up to the counter a moment later and murmured an order—quick, practiced, half-swallowed by the music. The bartender answered with a brief nod and turned, all quiet economy. Karin watched without meaning to.
He moved the way disciplined people moved: no wasted gestures, no frantic searching. He measured with a jigger, precise and steady, poured cleanly, then reached for citrus and bitters like they were part of a routine his body knew better than his mouth did. Ice clicked softly into the shaker. His hands did the rest—controlled, unshowy, efficient—until the drink was finished and the glassware was aligned with obsessive neatness. He set everything onto a tray with the same careful placement he’d given her drink, as if balance mattered even in something as small as a delivery.
The server took the tray and disappeared back into the room.
The warmth in her chest was steady now—less sharp, less desperate.
“You don’t give your name to customers,” Karin said, keeping her tone light, like she was teasing when she was really testing the edge of the line.
“I don’t give my name to strangers,” he corrected.
Karin’s mouth twitched. “Customers aren’t strangers?”
“They are,” he said. “Just… temporary.”
That word landed—temporary—and Karin didn’t know why it made her stomach tighten. She covered it by rolling her eyes slightly.
“Right,” she muttered. “So this is just… professional kindness.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t deny it either. “It’s my job.”
Karin stared at him for a second, annoyed at how calm he stayed, annoyed at how her own feelings refused to organize themselves. “You’re very good at not letting people in.”
His gaze held hers, steady and quiet. “It’s efficient.”
Karin huffed a laugh. “Of course you’d call it efficient.”
A beat passed. Not tense. Not warm. Just honest.
Then he added, softer—not gentler, just less rigid, like he was offering a small concession without breaking his rule. “If you come back another time, I’ll consider it.”
Karin blinked. “Consider what?”
“Telling you,” he said.
It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t an invitation.
It was a boundary—with a door in it.
And Karin, to her own surprise, didn’t feel offended. She felt… steadied. Like she finally understood the rules of him.
So she nodded once, as if accepting terms she hadn’t planned to negotiate tonight.
“Fine,” she said. “Then I’ll consider coming back.”
A beat.
“Maybe.”
His eyes flicked to her again—just once, quick, almost unreadable—like he’d caught something in her tone he hadn’t expected.
And then, quietly, he returned to polishing the counter, letting the distance sit between them the way both of them seemed to prefer: clean, controlled, and oddly safe.
Athena’s voice suddenly cut through the air—bright enough to slice clean through the calm.
“Karin… there you are!”
Karin closed her eyes for half a second, bracing as if the sound itself could physically drag her back into the night she’d escaped.
Athena appeared at her side a moment later, cheeks flushed from laughing too much, eyes shining like this had all been a fun little adventure. She slid an arm around Karin’s shoulders without asking, giving her a quick squeeze—half hug, half claim—like Karin couldn’t be trusted not to disappear again.
Sae followed close behind, looking relieved and amused in equal measure, the kind of expression that said I knew you’d run but I’m glad you’re fine.
“We thought you got abducted by a billionaire,” Sae teased, then nodded toward Karin’s glass with a grin. “Or you ran away to drink alone, apparently.”
Karin straightened instinctively, her defensive armor sliding back into place like a reflex. “I needed air.”
Athena’s gaze slid past Karin—caught, inevitably, on the quiet bartender with the white hair—and then snapped back to Karin with surgical speed. Her grin sharpened into something dangerous.
“Oh?”
Karin shot her a warning look that said don’t start.
Athena, of course, started.
The bartender—still composed, still unbothered—didn’t look uncomfortable. He didn’t brighten for them. He didn’t retreat either. He simply gave a single nod in greeting, polite in the way professionals were polite, like he wasn’t interested in impressing anyone and didn’t need their approval.
Athena leaned in toward Karin’s ear and whispered—far too loudly for it to count as a whisper, really—“He’s pretty.”
Heat climbed Karin’s face fast, traitorous. “Stop.”
Sae laughed, delighted by the contrast—Athena sparkling, Karin bristling. “We’re leaving soon anyway. The final round is ending.”
Karin’s gaze dropped to her glass—half empty, ice melting, the citrus peel softening at the rim.
Then it lifted again, against her will, to the man behind the counter.
She told herself it didn’t matter. That this was just a moment. A brief, convenient pocket of calm in a night she hadn’t wanted. A conversation with a stranger she would never see again.
But something in her didn’t believe that lie.
Athena and Sae were already talking over each other—laughing, replaying the night in bright fragments, arguing about which guy had been the funniest disaster—as if this whole thing had been a harmless story to collect. Karin let their voices wash over her while she lifted her hand slightly toward the counter.
“Can I get the bill?” she asked.
He nodded once and reached beneath the counter with quiet efficiency. A small machine appeared. A printed slip followed. No fuss. No lingering.
Karin tapped her card against the reader, the transaction chirping softly as it approved. Simple. Clean. Done—just the way she liked things.
Behind her, Athena was still talking. “—and then he said he invests in crypto like it’s a religion, I swear—”
Sae laughed. “At least yours didn’t ask if you believe in soulmates—”
Karin kept her focus on the counter as if staying composed was the only way not to feel whatever was happening in her chest.
He tore the receipt neatly, then paused.
Not long. Just a beat—small enough that most people wouldn’t notice, but Karin did, because she noticed things that mattered.
He reached for a pen, flipped the slip over, and scribbled something on the back in quick, precise strokes. No dramatic flourish. Just handwriting—clean and controlled—then he slid it toward her with the same calm precision he’d used to make her drink.
His gaze lifted to hers.
“See you again.”
A beat.
“Karin.”
Karin froze—just for a fraction of a second.
Because he hadn’t asked her name.
Because she hadn’t offered it.
And then she realized, all at once, exactly when he’d learned it—Athena’s voice cutting through the air, calling her like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Karin stared down at the slip.
On the back, beneath the printed logo, was a single line:
If you come back, order the same. I’ll remember.
No number. No flirtatious emoji. No dramatic invitation.
Just that.
Karin’s throat tightened in a way she didn’t understand—like something small inside her had been acknowledged, and her body didn’t know what to do with the feeling except hold it too carefully.
She curled her fingers around the receipt as if it might dissolve if she didn’t.
Athena nudged her. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” Karin said too fast, folding the slip and sliding it into her bag like it was contraband—like if it stayed in sight for too long, someone would name what it meant before she was ready.
The bartender’s gaze met hers briefly—steady, unreadable, winter-calm. Under the lights, his eyes looked almost impossibly clear, that icy shade catching like glass when it moved. Karin hated how her attention snagged on it. Hated how quickly she noticed the exact shape of his pupils, the stillness of them, the way he could look at her without taking.
Then he looked away first, returning to his work as if the moment hadn’t happened at all.
But in that brief exchange, something settled in Karin’s bones with a strange, unwelcome certainty.
This wasn’t the last time.
Not because the universe was romantic. Not because fate was kind. She didn’t believe in any of that.
Because her mind—stubborn, analytical, built to chase resolution—had already filed him away like an unfinished equation. A variable she hadn’t planned for. Quiet. Unresolved. And now that she’d noticed it, she wouldn’t be able to un-notice it.
Karin slid off the stool, the scrape soft against the floor. She adjusted her bag strap, trying to reassemble the version of herself that had walked into this place believing love was irrelevant—believing she could move through life untouched as long as she kept her focus sharp enough.
She stepped back into the noise where Athena and Sae were waiting, laughter bright, energy spilling everywhere.
And still—against her better judgment—her fingers brushed the edge of the folded receipt in her bag, just once, as if checking it was real.
As if checking that he was.
She glanced back at him before she could stop herself.
He was already moving—wiping the counter, preparing the next order, slipping back into the rhythm of work like he hadn’t just said something that made her chest feel oddly lighter. Like he hadn’t left a small, deliberate mark on her night.
But as she turned to follow her friends, she caught the smallest thing—his eyes lifting toward her again, just once.
Not a smile. Not a wave.
Just that quiet, steady acknowledgment, like confirmation.
Like he really would remember.
Outside, the night air hit her face—cool and sharp, sobering in a way the drink hadn’t managed to be. Athena chattered about who she liked best, words spilling bright and fast as if the night had given her new energy. Sae teased Karin about vanishing at the bar, smug with the satisfaction of having been right about her.
Karin walked between them, nodding at the right moments, making the correct sounds at the correct time.
But her mind wasn’t fully there.
It was still inside—under soft blue lights—with an amber drink warming her throat and a quiet bartender saying her name like it mattered.
Sae’s car was parked a few streets away, and they headed toward it in a loose triangle, their heels clicking against the pavement. Athena bumped Karin’s shoulder affectionately; Sae kept laughing, keys twirling around one finger.
Karin kept walking.
And yet, as they reached the car and Sae unlocked the doors, Karin’s fingers slipped into her bag without thinking.
She found the folded receipt.
She pressed it between her thumb and forefinger, feeling the paper’s thin edge—proof of a moment that didn’t fit into her plans, didn’t belong in her schedule, didn’t come with an outcome she could control.
Then she tucked it away again, deeper this time, as if hiding it would stop it from blooming into something else.
But the night had already planted it.
And Karin—who had walked into a blind date certain she didn’t believe in any of this—couldn’t stop thinking about white hair under dim light, winter-blue eyes, and the quiet promise in his handwriting:
I’ll remember.
By morning, the spell had thinned.
Daylight had a way of making last night feel smaller—less cinematic, more explainable. The alcohol was gone, leaving behind the familiar sharpness of her thoughts and the ache of reality. Karin stood in her room with her hair messy and her skin clean of makeup, staring at the neat pile of notes on her desk like they were an anchor.
And still, her mind kept slipping—back into soft blue light, back into the clean burn of whiskey, back into a voice that had said her name like it wasn’t just a label.
She replayed it in fragments the way her brain replayed mistakes after an exam.
The questions he’d asked. The calm way he listened. The way her own mouth had loosened, words spilling out without the usual filter. The laugh—her laugh—warm and real, like she’d forgotten she could sound like that.
Karin’s stomach tightened.
What was I doing?
Had she been flirting?
Had she looked like one of those girls she judged quietly—too open, too soft, too quick to attach meaning to a moment?
She pressed her palm to her forehead, annoyed at herself, annoyed at the way her chest did that small, stupid thing when she remembered his eyes.
No.
No. She refused.
She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have the space. She wasn’t that kind of girl. She didn’t do moments. She did plans. She did schedules. She did outcomes.
It was just stress, she told herself, and the sentence sounded better the second time.
Peer pressure. A weird night. A stranger doing his job.
The receipt—the folded proof—sat somewhere in her bag like a problem waiting to be solved. Karin didn’t take it out. She didn’t need to see it to remember what it said.
Of course he wrote that. He worked there. He wanted customers to come back. Maybe it was even about tips. Maybe he wrote things like that all the time—neat little lines that made people feel special so they’d return, order again, spend again.
Marketing.
Customer retention.
Nothing personal.
She had said too much because she’d been tired. Because she’d been warmed by whiskey. Because silence had made her reckless in a way she didn’t recognize.
Nothing more.
Love still wasn’t on the list.
She didn’t wake up transformed. She didn’t suddenly want romance. She didn’t start believing in fate.
She just stood there in the honest light of morning, clinging to logic like it could keep her safe—like if she explained the feeling correctly, it would disappear.
So she did what she always did.
She filed the night away in the part of her mind where inconvenient memories lived—alongside the moments that didn’t make sense, the feelings that didn’t have names.
Then she focused.
Graduation. Internship applications. Interview prep. Practical requirements. The next milestone. The next thing she could control.
She graduated on the Dean’s List, exactly as she’d planned—clean GPA, clean record, clean story. A life that looked orderly from the outside, the kind the world approved of.
Convocation day arrived bright and relentless, the sky too clear for nerves. Karin stood in her gown with the hood sitting perfectly on her shoulders, cap pinned into place, hair tamed into something presentable. Cameras flashed everywhere—parents crying, friends shouting, names called out over loudspeakers like blessings.
When she stepped out into the crowd afterward, her family was already there.
Yuzu reached her first, practically vibrating with excitement, arms wrapping around her like Karin was something precious. “You did it,” she breathed, voice thick with pride, like she’d been holding her breath for years.
Ichigo was a step behind—trying to look casual and failing. He shoved a bouquet at her with the awkward seriousness of someone who didn’t know how to say I’m proud of you without feeling embarrassed about it. “Congrats,” he muttered, eyes turned away like it didn’t matter.
It mattered.
And Isshin—her father—stood there with that wide, aching smile that made something in Karin’s chest soften. He looked at her like she was proof the world could still be kind sometimes. Like every late night and every sacrifice had been worth it.
“Well done,” he said, voice low with pride.
Karin held the flowers, held her family’s warmth, held the moment like it might slip away if she didn’t grip it tight enough. For a second, the pressure eased. For a second, she felt what she’d been chasing all along: not romance, not fireworks—just the quiet steadiness of having made it to the place she promised herself she would reach.
And then life moved immediately, the way it always did.
Her hospital placement came fast—white corridors, antiseptic air, the steady beep of machines somewhere behind closed doors. On her first day, she wore her ID lanyard like a new kind of weight, her hair pulled back tight, her hands washed until her skin felt too clean. The pharmacy department smelled like paper, chemicals, and warmed plastic from sealed packaging. Orders came in constant streams. Labels printed in sharp black fonts. Medication charts stacked up. People spoke in abbreviations and urgency, and Karin learned quickly that mistakes here didn’t cost marks—they cost trust, time, sometimes lives.
It was exhausting.
It was satisfying.
It was real.
She came home with her feet aching, her brain buzzing, her schedule packed so tightly it felt like armor. Every day was a checklist. Every night was preparation for the next.
And she didn’t go back to that club.
Not once.
Not because she was afraid of him—she didn’t even let herself name it as that. She simply refused to turn one strange night into a habit, refused to romanticize a moment that had happened under alcohol and mood lighting. Love wasn’t important. Love wasn’t a priority. And she wasn’t going to entertain the ridiculous idea that she liked a man she didn’t even know.
So she stayed away.
And she moved forward—cleanly, deliberately—into the life she had built with her own hands.
Weeks turned into months, and her life changed in quiet, practical ways. She bought a new bag—something sturdier, more “adult,” something that fit her hospital ID, her notebooks, her schedule. The old one—the one she’d carried that night—got shoved into the back of her closet without ceremony, buried behind folded clothes and forgotten tote bags like it belonged to a version of herself she didn’t have time to be anymore.
Time did what time always did.
Months turned into a full year. The ink on that folded receipt faded in the dark, the paper softening at the creases where it had once been clutched too tightly. Sometimes, when Karin was looking for something else—an old charger, a spare pen, an extra ID holder—her fingers would brush against it by accident.
And a strange pinch would tighten in her chest before she could stop it.
She would shove it away again, irritated with her own body for remembering faster than her mind wanted to. As if the gesture could erase the feeling. As if hiding paper could undo a night.
I’ll remember.
The world moved on.
So did she.
She forgot about him. About that night. About soft blue light and winter-blue eyes and the quiet promise in ink.
Or at least she thought she did.
Until seven years later—under a completely different circumstance, in a completely different place—Karin looked up and met the same winter-blue eyes across a room that had nothing to do with a bar, and nothing to do with alcohol.
For a heartbeat, everything else blurred.
Voices became background static. Light turned thin and unreal. Even her own body seemed to pause—as if some old part of her had recognized him before her mind could catch up.
It didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have happened. People didn’t just reappear like that, not after years, not after a single night that was supposed to dissolve into nothing.
And yet there he was.
White hair catching the overhead light like a cruel memory. A face she hadn’t tried to remember and still couldn’t forget. That same quiet, controlled stillness—like the world could rush and spill around him and he would remain untouched.
Karin’s throat went tight.
Not because she wanted him.
Not because she believed in fate.
But because she suddenly understood, with a clarity that felt almost insulting, that she had never truly erased that night. She had only buried it. Packed it away under milestones and schedules and sensible decisions, convinced that time would do the forgetting for her.
It hadn’t.
Her fingers curled at her side, nails pressing into her palm—an old habit, grounding.
This time there was no whiskey to blame. No mood lighting. No convenient explanation.
Just daylight-bright reality, and a pair of eyes that turned the air cold the moment they found her.
And somewhere, deep and quiet, the universe seemed to tilt—just slightly—like it had been waiting for this crossing of paths again.
Not romance.
Not kindness.
Just the strange insistence of two lives brushing against each other twice.