Chapter Text
I spent my entire youth,
in rooms where even the wind forgot its way.
The days slipped by like a sorrowful melody,
and only when the music finally faded
did I begin to hear
the quiet thrum of my own heart.
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The city never sleeps.
It thrums with static, with echoes that refuse to die, as if the very idea of stopping has never occurred to it. At times it quiets for a handful of minutes, only to surge again, restless and unsatisfied. The city is made of engines growling through the streets, of stark white lights suspended high above, of crowds moving as though they have long accepted the habit of walking fast without ever asking where they are headed.
Sandrone has lived here long enough to understand that.
Her mornings begin the same way every day, with a sameness that borders on tedious. The alarm rings at exactly 5:30 a.m. Light seeps through the curtains in a washed out hue. She can no longer tell whether it is the pale dawn or the balcony’s artificial glow bleeding in.
The air in her small apartment smells faintly of dust and clothes left in quiet neglect. Even the coffee machine she once treasured has not been touched in weeks.
This kind of life is something Sandrone learned to make peace with early on.
She dresses in silence, buttoning up the white office blouse she has never cared for, slipping into low heeled pumps that sometimes catch her off guard if she is not careful.
She applies a thin layer of makeup, not bothering to conceal the shadows beneath her eyes. In the mirror, she looks wan, almost colorless, but that hardly matters anymore.
After forcing down a small breakfast, Sandrone checks her bag to make sure nothing has been forgotten. Once everything is accounted for, she knows she is ready.
By the time she steps outside, the city is fully awake. Car horns slice through the air as Sandrone folds herself into the rushing current of people. Advertising screens flicker without pause, promising grand futures payable in neat monthly installments. Everything looks the same as it did yesterday. Loud. Relentless. Dull.
She lets her gaze skim over it all and feels nothing.
Her office sits on the twenty eighth floor, high enough that the city below resembles a carefully assembled model set. From up here, the noise compresses into a steady hum, like machinery running behind a thick wall. There was a time she found that comforting. Proof that everything was moving as it should.
Not anymore.
Her desk is so immaculate it has become a running joke. Colleagues tease that she lines up her pens and rulers like a preprogrammed machine, always identical, always precise. She offers a polite smile each time.
She smiles when they call her reliable, efficient, indispensable.
But the smile never reaches her core.
It falters only slightly when they say she was born for this job.
The job, in the end, is nothing more than emails and paperwork.
Emails about deadlines that shift like sand. Emails about meetings that could have been a single paragraph. Paperwork that, if she is honest, grinds at her nerves until she feels quietly undone. Her fingers move across the keyboard with long polished habit.
Behind Sandrone’s flawless performance, no one knows what she truly wants.
Not even Sandrone herself.
Her mind drifts whenever her focus loosens, wandering to a place where there is no room for glass towers and suffocating stacks of documents.
Blueprints she no longer touches.
Machines she no longer repairs.
Ideas that do not belong here.
By noon, the coffee she bought in the morning has gone cold. By afternoon, a dull ache blooms behind her eyes from working without pause. When the workday officially ends, Sandrone does not bother to notice. She keeps going, continuing her tasks long after she is free to leave.
Near the end of the day, her manager stops by, leaning casually against the partition with his usual easygoing air.
“Not tired yet?” he asks, though the answer is written all over her.
“Same as always,” Sandrone replies, knowing he understands exactly what that means.
He laughs softly, offers a few routine words of concern about her condition, reminds her not to stay up too late, then moves on. Sandrone watches his reflection retreat along the glass walls, multiplied into identical copies by every polished surface. For one brief, uncharitable moment, she wonders if this is how people disappear. Not all at once, but gradually, until there is no original left.
That night, she stays late.
As usual.
Not because she loves the work, but because the thought of returning to an empty apartment feels heavier still. She waits until the office thins out, until the automatic lights dim and the city outside reclaims its nocturnal face.
From the bottom drawer of her desk, she retrieves a carefully folded piece of paper.
An old memory.
A familiar address.
Handwriting that stirs something tangled inside her, like threads knotted too tightly to undo.
Alain Guillotin’s script stares back at her, bold and slightly slanted. The paper has yellowed with time, proof that he wrote it long ago, when he still believed she would come one day. When “one day” had not yet turned into never.
Sandrone unfolds it slowly, as though rough handling might bruise it. This decision has hovered at the edge of her thoughts for years, waiting for a moment that felt appropriate.
Her gaze shifts to the mountain of documents on her desk, then to the picture she hung just to the left of her computer.
It used to be so bright, she thinks. If only I had decided sooner, then…
The thought trails off.
And suddenly, with a calm that surprises even her, Sandrone realizes she does not need a reason anymore.
Two weeks later, she submits her resignation.
Her colleagues are stunned. Her manager tries to persuade her with phrases like “a clear promotion track” and “long term stability.” Sandrone listens, nods, thanks him for his concern, and does not change her mind.
She sells what she does not need. Packs what she cannot leave behind. Cleans the apartment she has lived in for years one last time. It empties faster than she expects, as though it, too, has grown tired of holding her there.
On the morning she leaves, the city is strangely subdued. Rain glosses the streets, turning the lights into blurred streaks across the pavement. Wind slips through passing coats and collars. Sandrone pauses at the curb, her suitcase beside her, and looks back one final time.
It is time to say goodbye.
The train ride lasts nearly the entire day.
The tracks carry her away from glass towers and into fields that stretch without visible end. Buildings grow lower. Signals thin out. Her phone loses service somewhere between an unnamed station and a sweep of dense green forest, as if the world is gently severing its last thread to her.
At the entrance stands a large wooden sign suspended between two posts like a modest gate.
WELCOME TO NOD KRAI
The letters are carved deep into the wood. Sandrone notes, almost absently, that the left chain is beginning to fray. It could use fixing.
As if on cue, when she steps closer, the sign suddenly jerks loose with a sharp snap and slams against the right post. She startles despite herself.
“Well. That’s promising,” she mutters under her breath, releasing a quiet sigh before pulling her suitcase forward, leaving the damaged sign for someone else to deal with.
By the time she reaches the heart of town, evening has begun to settle.
Nod Krai feels smaller than she remembers.
Or perhaps it is only her memory that has blurred at the edges.
One main road branching into smaller streets. A handful of shops with signboards weathered by too many seasons. A café on the corner, its warm yellow light spilling gently into the falling dusk. Somewhere, a bell rings. Not loud, but clear enough to settle over the entire town.
No rushing crowds.
No car horns.
No one reminding her that something is overdue.
She inhales and catches the scent of cut grass and old wood, a combination that tightens her chest without warning. The air here is not muddled, not layered with exhaust and impatience. It is startlingly honest.
The old workshop stands near the center of town, tucked behind a row of storefronts. The building leans slightly, sturdy rather than fragile, its door marked with scratches that tell stories no one bothered to erase.
Sandrone unlocks it with a tarnished brass key, its serrated edge worn down by time. The door opens with a protesting creak.
Inside, dust veils every surface, softening the sharp edges of abandoned tools. Workbenches line the walls, cluttered with unfinished blueprints and jars of screws sorted according to Alain’s particular preferences. A window catches the last of the daylight, illuminating a crooked board hanging on the wall.
Sandrone stands at the threshold for a long while, her suitcase still slung at her side.
The silence wraps around her, but it does not suffocate. It waits.
She sets her things down, rolls up her sleeves, and reaches for the nearest switch. The light flickers once, twice, three times, then steadies, casting long shadows across the floor.
For the first time in years, her hands itch with the urge to build.
She remembers this place.
Outside, the town continues in its unhurried rhythm. Somewhere down the street, the café door opens. And somewhere within, a voice begins to sing.
Sandrone does not hear it. She does not yet know it exists.
But the night has already taken notice.
The first morning in the small town begins with a sound Sandrone has not truly heard in years.
Wind.
Not wind shredded by skyscrapers, nor the thin current trapped between rows of concrete. Real wind. It moves through the treetops, brushes across old wooden roofs, taps lightly at the window before slipping away again, as if teasing whatever it passes.
She wakes when the sun is already climbing.
Morning light filters through the thin curtains, scattering across the floor in uneven patches that resemble unfinished sketches. She lies still for a few seconds, eyes open while her thoughts lag behind. An unfamiliar room. A low ceiling. No shrill alarm. No blinking email notifications waiting on her phone.
No meetings.
It has been a long time since she slept this deeply. She likes this.
The realization makes her blink once, then let out a quiet, almost disbelieving laugh.
The small room she occupies sits directly above the old workshop her adoptive father left behind. Alain Guillotin used to call it the proudest place in town, a statement she once dismissed as unnecessary poetry. Now, standing at the window and looking out over the town’s gentle sprawl, she begins to understand what he meant.
She sits up, pushes her hair back, and crosses the room to open the window.
Morning air spills inside. Cool. Clean. It carries the faint scent of wood, the smell of bread toasting somewhere nearby, and freshly brewed coffee. Sandrone stands there for a few seconds longer, just to make sure she is not dreaming.
In the city, mornings were always a race. Alarm clocks, hurried coffee, crowded trains, glass towers reflecting her own exhausted face back at her until even she grew tired of seeing it.
Office work had never suited Sandrone.
Not because she lacked talent. On the contrary, she was too good at it. Good enough to be trapped in endless meetings, soulless spreadsheets, and polite conversations where every sentence felt like a screw tightened a turn too far.
She remembers sitting before the glow of her monitor, the electric haze pressing against her temples until her thoughts felt heavy as lead. Drafts returned to her with notes saying they were “not efficient enough,” though no one could ever explain what that meant. Leaving work long past dark, the city still roaring as if exhaustion were a foreign concept.
And then there was that morning. She had stared at a cup of coffee gone cold on her desk and wondered, plainly, what she was doing with her life.
The answer did not arrive at once.
But Alain Guillotin’s letter did.
If she had listened sooner, would things have been easier?
She pulls on a light jacket and heads downstairs. The old workshop rests quietly in the morning sun, its metal door slightly rusted, its walls stained with time. She lays her hand against the cool surface, and something familiar travels down her spine.
This. This is what she has been missing.
She pushes the door open. The scent of old machine oil, metal, wood, and dust mingles in the air. The space feels larger than she remembered. The old workbenches remain, a few tools still hanging neatly in place as if their owner had stepped out only yesterday.
Sandrone draws in a slow breath.
In the city, she always felt like a gear forced into the wrong mechanism. Here, among these silent machines, she has the strange sense of finally clicking into place.
A wind chime stirs as she steps outside again.
The small town is waking in layers. An elderly man waters the plants on his porch and nods at her as though they have known each other for years. A child pedals past on a bicycle, nearly colliding with a lamppost before bursting into laughter.
Everything moves at an unhurried pace. No one pushes. No one rushes.
She heads toward the town center, deciding that on her first day back she should reacquaint herself with the streets and storefronts. She lived here as a child, but that feels like a lifetime ago. Time reshapes places in quiet ways.
It does not take long for Sandrone to notice something unsettling.
The people here are… too friendly.
She is not used to being asked questions. Not used to curious glances that carry no edge. In the city, people learn not to hold eye contact. Here, a gaze feels like a greeting.
Of course. She is the newcomer. The townsfolk look at her with open interest, as though she has just arrived fresh out of a crate. Familiar greetings and casual inquiries spring up from nowhere, leaving her slightly stiff, unsure where to rest her hands.
She walks along the main street, small shops lining up one after another. A secondhand bookstore. A shoe repair stall.
And then she pauses.
A machine shop.
The sign reads: “Clink Clank Krumkake Craftshop.”
The name is almost laughably childish.
Still, she finds herself studying it longer than intended. Another mechanical workshop in a town this small. When she was young, Alain’s had been the only one.
Perhaps she will stop by one day. Introduce herself. Explore the possibility of collaboration. The thought sparks something unexpectedly bright in her chest. If they share similar interests, they could take on commissions together. Even design a project side by side.
Sandrone has never been fond of teamwork. But circumstances matter. Alain’s shop has gathered dust for too long, its reputation faded with the years. If she truly intends to rebuild her life here, she must think beyond sentiment. Partnering with this place could be practical. Profitable. Sensible.
She gives a small nod to herself, mentally shelving the plan for another day.
For now, what she needs is a proper morning coffee. After that, she will return and begin restoring the workshop.
One step at a time.
On the corner stands the café she noticed the moment she entered town. Wide glass windows drink in the sunlight. A wooden sign hangs neatly above the door. The design is simple, intimate, touched with a kind of old fashioned warmth.
Moon Café.
Sandrone slows.
A voice drifts out from within.
Not loud. Not performed for applause. It is soft, edged with the languid ease of morning, as if the singer has no intention of being heard beyond the walls. The melody slips through the glass, brushes the air, and dissolves, leaving behind something nameless.
Sandrone stands still longer than she should.
Through the window, she sees her.
A woman on the small platform near the counter. Eyes closed. Long black hair threaded with shades of rose violet falling to her waist, two loose sections resting over her chest. A simple dress. A microphone held lightly in hand as she sways to her own voice. There is no instrumental accompaniment, no piano, no guitar. Only that voice.
And it is enough.
Something about the way she stands there catches Sandrone without warning. She watches, unblinking, unaware of how long she has been rooted to the pavement.
Her chest tightens. A strange familiarity floods her, uninvited.
Then the woman looks up.
Their eyes meet.
The world narrows to a single point. Heat surges through Sandrone’s body like a live wire, stealing the air from her lungs. For a heartbeat, she forgets how to breathe.
The woman’s eyes are not merely violet. They are like fragments of night sky ground fine and set behind glass, where light does not sit still but shimmers faintly, as if the stars themselves are breathing. The color is not loud. It is deep. Quiet. So layered that one might forget they are looking at a person at all, and not into a lake holding the reflection of the moon.
The woman says nothing, yet something flickers in her gaze. A subtle shift. A ripple beneath still water.
She looks at Sandrone, and the corner of her lips curves ever so slightly, as if she has just stumbled upon something unexpectedly delightful.
In that instant, Sandrone knows she is in trouble.
Under those star threaded eyes, she feels transparent. Laid bare. Her chest tightens with a restless, unfamiliar sensation, like discovering an unforeseen variable in an equation she was certain she had already solved.
She turns away before her thoughts can catch up.
It is not retreat. Not quite. She simply needs a moment to reorder the pieces inside her head.
Perhaps, she thinks, this town will not unfold the way she anticipated.
And so Sandrone’s first morning in Nod Krai passes, marked not by machinery or memory, but by a pair of violet eyes that linger long after she walks away.
She spends the rest of the morning in the workshop.
The incident outside the café is carefully shelved, pushed to a corner of her mind she refuses to open just yet. Instead, Sandrone begins drafting a plan to make this place new again. Or at the very least, less abandoned than it looks now.
If the city once smothered her beneath unread emails and endless meetings, this place greets her with a thick coat of dust and screws scattered across the floor. A fair exchange, in its own way.
She rolls up her sleeves. The office blouse is gone, replaced with a simple shirt and black trousers fit for real movement, for work that demands more than typing.
First task: open every window.
The old hinges protest with sharp groans, stubborn from years of neglect, but they yield under her steady strength. Light floods in without mercy, exposing everything. Dust rises into the air like a swarm of gray fireflies.
Sandrone coughs softly, retrieves a mask from her pocket, and ties it over the lower half of her face, leaving only her eyes visible.
“All right,” she murmurs, as though addressing the room itself. “Let’s begin.”
She drags the wooden tables into the center of the workshop. Wipes down each surface. Each drawer. Every one she opens releases a forgotten fragment of the past. A metal ruler worn thin at the edge. A notebook filled with Alain’s meticulous handwriting. Mechanical sketches left incomplete, their lines sharp and precise, yet abandoned mid thought as if the idea had paused, waiting to be resumed.
She stills when she finds the designs.
Her fingers trace the familiar strokes of ink. She remembers afternoons spent at Alain’s side, listening to him explain the anatomy of machines with the reverence of someone telling fairy tales. He used to say, “Machines never lie. If something breaks, it means we overlooked a detail.”
Machines are easier than people. They obey parameters. They function within what they are given.
People are another matter entirely.
Perhaps that is why she and Alain understood each other so well, despite sharing no blood. Neither of them had much patience for what could not be measured.
She sets the notebook down and resumes her work.
Sound gradually fills the space. The scrape of a broom against the floor. The clatter of metal boxes colliding. The drag of chairs across concrete. Piece by piece, the workshop stirs from its long sleep.
Sweat dampens the fabric at her back. Strands of hair cling to her temples. Yet instead of the hollow fatigue she once carried home from the office, something else begins to take shape beneath her ribs.
Not exhaustion.
Momentum.
Sandrone feels her body fall into a different rhythm. More fluid. More honest.
She grips the edge of a tarp in the corner and pulls.
Dust erupts into the air. She coughs, stepping back half a pace. When it settles, the machine beneath reveals itself like an old beast roused from a long sleep. The metal surface is dulled, freckled with rust, but the structure remains intact.
She walks closer.
Her palm rests against the cold casing. Something flickers in her eyes. Not nostalgia. Not grief.
Interest.
This had been one of Alain’s unfinished works. She remembers him starting it when she was eight, hands steady, voice animated as he described what it would become.
Twenty years later, it still cannot move on its own.
“It’s salvageable,” she murmurs, fingers brushing along the metal frame.
In the city, things are replaced the moment they falter. Broken means discarded. Outdated means erased. There is no time for repair, only for upgrade. Here, among aging gears and patient dust, Sandrone feels permitted to take her time. Permitted to breathe something new into old steel.
She begins dismantling several components, arranging them neatly across the table. Her hands move with instinctive precision, as if the years spent behind a lifeless keyboard had never happened.
By midday, the workshop has shifted.
Less dust on the floor. Brighter windows. Tools reorganized and mounted in deliberate order. Not flawless, but alive.
Sandrone stands in the center of the room, hands braced on her hips, surveying the space.
Silence.
Not the strained quiet of an office where everyone performs busyness. This silence has depth. It allows a person to hear their own pulse.
Alain must have been waiting for this.
Her gaze drifts back to the machine in the corner.
If I had come back sooner, then…
The thought lingers, unfinished, like the blueprint still spread across her table.
“No.” Sandrone shook her head. There is no such thing as if in this life, she told herself.
At least I chose to come back. That should be enough.
She picked up the wrench from the table, ready to return to the half-dismantled machine when—
“Planning to turn this place into a secret laboratory?”
The voice came from behind her.
Sandrone startled, nearly dropping the wrench. She spun around.
In the middle of the workshop stood the woman she had met that morning, leaning casually against the edge of a table, hands clasped behind her back. Sunlight streamed in from behind, setting her hair aglow in a way that felt almost unfair. A small paper box rested in her hands.
Sandrone’s brow furrowed slightly.
“How did you get in?” she asked coolly.
The woman tilted her head, entirely unshaken by the frost in Sandrone’s tone. “The door was open.”
Light as air.
Sandrone glanced toward the large door, still slightly ajar. She didn’t remember leaving it that way.
Careless. Since when have I been careless?
The woman stepped closer, her gaze roaming openly around the workshop with unhidden curiosity.
“It looks different from before,” she observed. “You work fast.”
“I work efficiently,” Sandrone replied shortly.
A faint smile touched the woman’s lips as she set the paper box down on the nearest table.
“I brought you some pastries. A welcome to town.”
Sandrone regarded the box as though it were an untested device, liable to malfunction.
“I don’t need gifts.”
“I know.”
A small shrug. “It’s just a friendly way to greet someone new.”
A brief silence settled between them.
Sandrone disliked anything that strayed beyond her plans. Disliked variables that appeared without warning. And this woman, with that calm, unreadable smile, was a variable she could not quite calculate.
“Thank you,” she said at last, her caution still intact.
The woman nodded, her gaze drifting to the dismantled robot on the table.
“Are you trying to bring it back to life?”
“I’ll try.”
The woman studied her for a few seconds longer. It wasn’t scrutiny. Not exactly innocence either. It felt more like someone listening to a piece of music, savoring it before deciding what to think.
Why does she keep looking at me like that?
Before Sandrone could voice the question, the woman withdrew her gaze, glancing elsewhere as though nothing had happened.
“Good luck, Engineer,” she said softly. Sandrone still couldn’t understand how someone’s eyes could catch the light like that.
The woman turned and left, trailing the faint scent of coffee behind her, along with the unopened box of pastries.
Sandrone remained where she was, unmoving for a while longer.
She looked toward the doorway where sunlight still poured in, then down at the small paper box.
Weird. She could not explain why the woman had felt so familiar. And yet Sandrone was certain she had never met anyone like her before. At the very least, she had never encountered anyone with eyes that arresting.
A quiet suspicion began to bloom in her mind. Repairing that old machine might prove far simpler than dealing with a peculiar woman who seemed to enjoy staring far too long.
Sandrone exhaled slowly.
The old workshop had begun to fall back into its proper rhythm.
Her heart, however, had not.
The door shifted faintly as the woman left.
Silence returned, though not quite whole.
Sandrone studied the box of pastries for a few seconds more before deciding to leave it untouched on the table. She turned back to the robot, wrench in hand, her mind already reconstructing its internal schematics from memory.
She had just removed another component when—
BANG.
The workshop door flew open again.
Sandrone swore under her breath. What was wrong with that door today? Had it taken a personal vow to sabotage her peace?
She had no time to voice the thought.
Something metallic shot inside like a bullet that had lost its sense of direction.
Before she could react, a small vehicle, no bigger than a puppy, rolled into the center of the workshop. It looked like it had been assembled during a creative crisis. Its body was patched together from mismatched sheets of metal, its wheels slightly misaligned, loose wires dangling overhead alongside a crooked antenna bent at an unfortunate angle.
And it was accelerating.
“What the—”
The vehicle rammed straight into a rack of tools. Screwdrivers, hammers, pliers cascaded down in a metallic downpour. It jerked sideways, collided with the workbench, then continued racing in frantic circles, its engine howling as though offended by its own existence.
Sandrone stepped aside just as it nearly crashed into her leg.
“Stop!” a voice shouted from outside.
A pink-haired girl rushed in, breathless. She wore an oversized white coat over a lime-green dress, clutching a controller that looked only marginally more reliable than the vehicle itself.
“What in the world is happening?” Sandrone demanded.
This morning had already delivered an absurdly beautiful woman and now this mechanical catastrophe. The day felt determined to unravel at the seams.
“Sorry! It’s just a little… out of control!”
“A little?” Sandrone echoed, ducking again as the vehicle zipped past, dragging a coil of wire that tangled around a chair leg.
Aino pressed frantically at the controller. “Stop! Stop! I programmed an automatic shutdown!”
The vehicle responded by speeding up.
It slammed directly into the half-dismantled robot.
Sandrone froze for half a second.
No.
The vehicle rebounded from the impact, but the collision was forceful enough to knock several components from the table onto the floor. The robot itself remained intact, fortunately. The parts that had fallen, however, were no less important.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sandrone heard a very small sound.
The sound of patience being pulled taut, thread by thread.
“Hey, kid,” Sandrone said, her voice so flat it bordered on dangerous. “Turn it off. Now.”
“I’m trying!”
The little vehicle let out a high, shrill whine, pivoted sharply, and bolted toward the glass cabinet.
If it shattered that—
Sandrone did not allow the thought to finish.
She stepped forward, calculating its trajectory in a heartbeat. As it looped around again, she seized a metal bar from the floor and waited for the precise moment.
The vehicle charged.
Sandrone shifted her stance, lowered her center of gravity, and—
CRACK.
The metal bar came down hard against its frame.
A sharp electrical pop snapped through the air. Sparks spat outward. The vehicle staggered in two uneven circles like a drunk reconsidering its life choices, then collapsed onto the floor, its wheels spinning slowly in mechanical despair.
Silence.
Only the girl’s breathing. Only Sandrone’s pulse.
Aino stared at the faintly smoking heap of metal, then at Sandrone.
“…You just smashed my life’s work.”
“It just trashed my workshop and attempted to murder my machine.”
The girl opened her mouth, closed it again, then sighed with theatrical gravity. “I only wanted to test a new propulsion system.”
“In my workshop.”
“Well… the door was open?”
That answer sounded irritatingly familiar.
Sandrone closed her eyes for a few seconds.
Did no one in this town understand the concept of knocking?
She crouched down and flipped the vehicle over. The frame was warped. The central control unit cracked clean through. But the internal design… was not entirely hopeless.
She paused.
The welds were inexperienced, yes, but the idea itself had merit. A dual-wheel stabilization system for cornering. A makeshift transmission assembled from salvaged parts.
The girl was staring at her.
“So?” Aino asked, her voice smaller now, stripped of its earlier frenzy.
Sandrone remained silent a beat longer than politeness required.
“The concept is good,” she said at last. “The execution is disastrous.”
The girl lit up as if someone had flipped a switch.
“Really?! I knew it! I just need to tweak it a little!”
“And add brakes,” Sandrone replied dryly. “It doesn’t have brakes.”
“…Right.” Aino gave an awkward laugh. “Minor detail.”
“A catastrophic one.”
Another pause. This time, it held no sharp edges.
The girl rubbed her cheek. “I’m sorry for… turning your workshop upside down.”
Sandrone glanced around. The tool rack leaned slightly. A few bolts had rolled across the floor. The robot, mercifully, remained unharmed.
She exhaled.
“Next time,” she said, “test it in an open field.”
Aino nodded vigorously. “I’ll fix it. And I’ll install brakes. Promise.”
Sandrone straightened, tossing the metal bar aside without ceremony.
This town truly was a gathering of unpredictable variables.
A café owner who looked at people as though she were trying to see past bone and into whatever lay beneath.
A mechanically gifted girl whose inventions seemed to possess a death wish.
And her, who had asked for nothing more than a quiet life, now standing amid bent metal with a pulse that still refused to settle.
Aino scooped up the remains of her vehicle, preparing a tactical retreat.
“Anyway,” she said, backing toward the door, “welcome to town!”
“I saw you yesterday. You just moved here, right? If you ever need anything, come by my workshop. It’s right in the town center.”
“Actually, it’s the only place that sells machinery around here, so you’ll spot it easily.” She glanced toward the machine in the corner of Sandrone’s workshop. “Though… maybe not the only one anymore,” she amended with cheerful certainty.
“Just call me Aino! See you around!”
The door closed. The girl vanished with it.
Silence returned.
Sandrone surveyed the workshop once more.
She had assumed the most difficult part would be restoring old, rusted machines.
Perhaps she had underestimated the… liveliness of this place.
She bent down to pick up a stray bolt near her feet.
“At least,” she muttered, “machines obey logic.”
People, on the other hand, crashed into her life like vehicles without brakes.
Afternoons at the café always began with a soft melody and the bright chime of the doorbell.
Columbina stood behind the counter, polishing a glass as she hummed an old tune under her breath. Sunlight slanted through the tall windows, spilling across the floor in long, languid ribbons of gold. The customers had yet to gather. This small town moved at an unhurried pace, and her café was part of its breathing.
Lauma arrived first, violet-blue hair cascading down her back, a bouquet of blood-red roses cradled in her arms.
“Good afternoon, Columbina.” She offered a smile reserved exclusively for her friend. Columbina returned it with a small nod, her humming uninterrupted.
“There’s someone new in town,” Lauma said as she placed the bouquet on the empty chair beside her. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
Columbina did not look up, though her humming ceased. “At old Alain’s shop?”
Lauma paused. “You already know?”
A soft murmur of acknowledgment.
It was unusual. Columbina rarely concerned herself with idle chatter. For something like this to catch her attention, it had to be more than trivial.
Before Lauma could press further, the bell chimed again. Nefer entered, carrying with her the cool scent of the outdoors and a few stray leaves clinging stubbornly to her sleeve.
“You’ve already gone to see her, haven’t you?” Nefer asked bluntly, pulling out a chair. She had clearly overheard enough.
Columbina placed the final glass onto its shelf and at last lifted her gaze. There was a faint gleam in her eyes, the sort that appears when someone stumbles upon a delightful secret and debates whether to share it.
“Hello, Nefer,” she said instead of answering.
Nefer inclined her head, sitting properly now, waiting.
A brief pause. Then, “I have.”
Lauma and Nefer exchanged a look.
“Well?” Lauma asked. “People are saying she looks like a doll. Beautiful, but far too cold. Hard to approach.”
Columbina rested her chin on her hand, considering her words with care.
“She isn’t hard to approach,” she said at last. “She’s simply trying to keep her distance.”
Nefer laughed. “Is there a difference?”
“There is,” Columbina replied gently. “Someone truly unapproachable wouldn’t leave her workshop door open all morning, just to let the sunlight in.”
Lauma frowned. “You were standing there observing her?”
Columbina did not deny it. She stirred a spoon idly in her tea, though she owned a café instead of a tea house. The soft clink of metal against porcelain punctuated the air.
She had known at first glance.
Though the hair had grown longer. Though those eyes were now sharper, shuttered tight against the world. Though the figure before her no longer resembled the girl who once ran hand in hand with her through the flower fields beyond town.
It was still Sandrone.
The Sandrone she knew.
The girl who used to sit beside her on the old wooden steps, listening to her quiet songs. The girl who had once taken apart Columbina’s music box just to see what lay inside, only to reassemble it flawlessly, as if she had never touched it at all.
The girl who had left her behind.
No goodbye.
On her birthday of all days.
Columbina had once believed that time and distance would sand those memories down to something softer, something survivable. But this morning, when that gaze pierced through the café window and found her, every memory returned with startling clarity, sharp enough to steal the breath from her lungs.
“You’re smiling,” Nefer pointed out.
Columbina touched her lips. She was.
“That engineer…” Lauma hesitated. “Is she someone special?”
Columbina tilted her head, her eyes distant, deep as a lake that refused to show its bottom.
“Just someone who used to belong to my past,” she said quietly.
Nefer arched a brow. “What kind of someone?”
Columbina looked out the window. Beyond the row of buildings, the roof of Alain’s old workshop was still visible. Afternoon light rested on it gently, gilding it in honeyed gold.
“The kind you keep hoping will come back.”
Lauma fell silent for a few seconds before smiling. “So what are you going to do?”
Columbina turned the silver ring on her finger slowly.
“Nothing.”
Her friends gave her identical looks of disbelief.
Columbina laughed, the sound light as wind skimming across water.
“At least, not for now,” she amended.
She knew Sandrone disliked being pushed. Disliked noise. If she had returned seeking quiet, Columbina would not be the one to shatter it.
She would only interfere a little. Just a little.
She remembered clearly the way Sandrone used to concentrate while repairing a machine, as if the rest of the world could crumble unnoticed. She remembered the way those eyes would brighten when a complicated problem finally yielded.
This morning, seeing Sandrone standing in that old workshop, dust-covered yet resolute, Columbina understood.
She hadn’t changed.
She was only pretending she no longer belonged here.
“You look like someone who’s found something she lost a long time ago,” Nefer observed.
Columbina took a sip of tea, sweetness blooming across her tongue.
“Perhaps,” she replied.
Outside, the town continued along its familiar rhythm. Wind moved through the trees. Children’s laughter rang from the corner of the street. And inside an old workshop, an engineer was busy waking sleeping gears.
Columbina was not in a hurry.
This town had one undeniable virtue: everything unfolded slowly.
And if Sandrone believed she could return, repair a few machines, and quietly pass her days unnoticed, then she had forgotten one small detail.
Columbina was very patient.
She had waited once before.
She could wait again.
Only this time, she would not be waiting passively.