Chapter Text
Rain always made Chapter & Chord feel like it existed a little outside of time.
Not in the dramatic sense of storms and thunder, but in the quieter way rain softened the edges of everything it touched. The bookstore's tall windows blurred the outside world into watercolor streaks of gray and silver, while the steady rhythm of droplets against the glass replaced anything that might have been called silence.
Inside, the air was warmer. Older. It carried the layered scent of paper that had been read too many times to ever feel new again, mixed with polished wood shelves and the faint metallic sweetness of vinyl sleeves stacked carefully in the back corner of the store.
Chapter & Chord was not large, but it never felt empty.
Books filled most of it. Rows that leaned slightly under the weight of their own history, handwritten recommendation cards tucked into displays like quiet confessions. Somewhere near the middle aisle, a small ladder leaned against a shelf that had been reorganized more times than anyone could reasonably count.
And toward the back, where the light softened and the floorboards creaked a little differently, music lived.
Not loudly.
Just... present.
A record player rested on a wooden table beside a small listening station. A pair of worn headphones hung neatly from a hook, their padding softened from years of use by customers who wanted to know what a record felt like before they took it home.
Aeri was there more often than she was anywhere else in the store. Not because she preferred music over books. But because both required the same thing from her.
Attention.
She adjusted a stack of newly returned novels on the counter, aligning their spines with slow precision. The motion wasn't conscious anymore, it had become something like breathing. If one book leaned too far forward, she fixed it. If a shelf looked uneven, her hands corrected it before her thoughts caught up.
Order made things easier to understand. Even when the world itself didn't always stay ordered.
"Aeri."
There was no response at first.
Jimin watched from behind the counter with the kind of patience that didn't need to be asked for. She waited until Aeri naturally turned back toward the front of the store, her arms still full of books, before speaking again, slightly slower this time, making sure her friend could see her face clearly.
"Aeri," Jimin repeated gently, lifting a small cardboard box. "The new arrivals came in."
Aeri's eyes moved immediately to Jimin's lips before anything else, as if her attention always anchored itself there first.
"Oh," she said, her expression softening with recognition. "Sorry, I didn't see you."
"I know," Jimin replied easily, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, which to them, it was.
She stepped closer and placed the box on the counter.
"You'd think after three years I'd stop talking to your back."
Aeri gave a small, quiet smile as she set her books down. "You'd think after twenty-four years I'd have developed a second pair of eyes in the back of my head."
Jimin snorted softly.
"I'm still hoping that happens somehow."
There was no discomfort between them, no hesitation. Only a rhythm they had learned without ever naming it. Jimin never spoke while walking away. She never covered her mouth. She never raised her voice in a way that would make conversation feel like something separate from ease.
She simply met Aeri where she already was.
Aeri opened the box and began sorting through the new arrivals, though her attention drifted briefly toward the front door as the bell above it trembled.
Someone had entered.
"Welcome to Chapter & Chord." Jimin said instinctively.
Rain clung to the glass in uneven streaks, and through it stepped a girl with slightly damp dark brown hair and a mocha sweater that looked a size too comfortable, as if it belonged more to an afternoon indoors than a walk through weather like this.
She paused just inside the entrance.
Not lost.
Just deciding.
Her gaze moved slowly across the bookstore, lingering on shelves of novels before drifting almost instinctively toward the back section where the records were displayed.
Aeri noticed none of this directly. But she noticed the pause.
People who came in here either knew exactly what they wanted... or needed time to figure out what they were looking for.
The girl walked deeper into the store.
Yizhuo hadn't planned to stay long.
At least, that was what she told herself.
The record she was looking at now was not rare, not particularly expensive by most standards, and yet it still made her hesitate as she turned it in her hands. The track list alone felt like something she wanted to memorize, not just listen to.
Still, she sighed quietly.
"...Maybe next time," she murmured to herself, though her tone suggested she already knew how often "next time" turned into never.
She stepped slightly closer to the display, as if proximity alone might change the price printed on the sleeve.
Behind her, she wasn't fully aware that Aeri had shifted nearby, holding a small stack of records that had been returned earlier in the week.
Yizhuo turned her head slightly.
Not enough.
Her voice came out casually, directed more toward the space in front of her than toward any specific person.
"Excuse me," she said, still looking at the record. "Do you know if there's another copy of this?"
There was no response.
She frowned faintly. Maybe she hadn't been heard over the rain tapping against the windows.
She stepped half a pace closer, this time angling her body slightly more toward the aisle rather than the shelves, gaining the attention of the staff.
"I was wondering if you had another—"
"I think the hardcover edition is better."
The interruption came softly, but with complete certainty. Yizhuo blinked.
"...Hardcover?"
Aeri had turned fully toward her now, her attention already focused, already reading her expression before the words fully settled. There was a calmness in the way she spoke, as though she were responding to something already understood.
"The blue one," she added, nodding slightly toward a nearby display of a novel series Yizhuo had been standing in front of. "It feels more natural in translation. I liked that version more than the others."
For a moment, everything paused.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for Yizhuo's brain to catch up with the mismatch.
She slowly lowered her gaze to the object still in her hands. A vinyl record.
Aeri followed her line of sight. And in that brief, quiet moment, understanding clicked into place for both of them at exactly the same time.
"Oh."
Aeri's expression shifted first. Not into embarrassment exactly, but into a quiet, resigned amusement that suggested this was not the first time reality had taken a slight detour around her.
"I thought you were asking about the novel," she admitted, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Yizhuo let out a short laugh before she could stop herself, not because anything was funny in a harsh way, but because the sincerity of it caught her off guard.
"I was very confidently not talking about a novel," she said, shaking her head slightly as if trying to reset her own thoughts.
"I should've noticed," Aeri replied. "I'm sorry."
There was a brief silence again, but this one felt different. Less like interruption and more like recognition. Yizhuo finally looked up properly, meeting Aeri's face this time rather than the objects around her.
"I'm Yizhuo," she said after a beat, as if the introduction had been waiting for the right moment to appear.
"Aeri," she replied simply.
And for a reason neither of them would have been able to explain yet, neither of them immediately moved away.
The rain continued outside, steady and unbothered, as if it had all the time in the world. Aeri shifted the items in her hands slightly, as if she were only now remembering she had been holding it at all.
For a moment, her attention lingered on Yizhuo's expression. The faint confusion still lingering there, softened now by amusement rather than frustration. It was the kind of expression people wore when something unexpected turned out to be harmless. She adjusted her grip and offered a small, almost apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry," Aeri said gently, her voice steady but warm. "You were asking about the record, right?"
Yizhuo blinked, then gave a quick nod, as if relieved the conversation had finally re-entered the correct track.
"Yeah," she confirmed. "I was wondering if you had another copy of that album. Or if it's just that one."
Aeri glanced toward the display behind them, already mentally mapping the inventory without needing to look for long. Her brows knit slightly in thought, the way they always did when she was searching through memory instead of sight.
"We usually only keep one in store at a time," she answered after a brief pause. "It's not one of the faster moving ones, so restocks are... irregular."
She hesitated for half a second, then added, almost as an afterthought, "But I can check the back for you if you'd like. Sometimes returns get misplaced in the wrong crate."
It wasn't an obligation in her tone. It wasn't a sales pitch either. It sounded more like something she would do simply because the question existed.
Yizhuo seemed to consider that for a moment, her fingers lightly tightening around the edge of the record sleeve. There was something thoughtful in the way she looked at Aeri now, though she didn't yet know what she was looking at.
"Oh," she said finally. "If it's not too much trouble, that'd be great."
"It's not," Aeri replied immediately, almost before Yizhuo had finished speaking. Then, as if realizing how quickly she had answered, she softened her tone slightly. "I'll take a look after I finish organizing these."
Yizhuo smiled in response, a small, easy curve of her lips that didn't demand anything more than what was already happening between them.
"Okay," she said. "Thank you."
There was a brief pause again. One that neither of them seemed in a hurry to fill.
It wasn't awkward... just unfamiliar in the way new conversations often are, when neither person has yet decided what rhythm they're supposed to follow.
Eventually, Yizhuo shifted the record slightly in her hands as if remembering where she had been before all of this.
"I should probably keep looking around," she added, glancing toward the deeper aisles of the store. "I came in for a few things anyway."
Aeri nodded once.
"Books or music?" she asked, the question coming out lightly, almost conversationally, though her eyes briefly flicked toward the record again as if she already suspected the answer.
"Music," Yizhuo admitted without hesitation. Something about that made Aeri's expression soften in a way she didn't fully register herself.
"Then you'll find more in the back," she said, tilting her head slightly toward the record section. "We don't have a huge selection, but most of it is... chosen carefully."
Yizhuo hummed in acknowledgment.
"I'll take a look," she said. And then, after a beat that felt natural rather than deliberate, she added jokingly, "If I get lost, I'll just blame the store layout."
Aeri let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh if it had been any louder.
"You wouldn't be the first," she said.
That earned another small smile from Yizhuo before she finally stepped away, disappearing deeper into the store where shelves of vinyl waited in uneven stacks of color and nostalgia.
Aeri watched her go for only a moment longer than necessary. Not long enough to mean anything. Just long enough to notice that she had stared. Then she returned to the counter, lowering her gaze back to the stack of books waiting to be shelved, though her movements were slightly slower than before.
Yizhuo, meanwhile, found her way back to the record section almost immediately. The same display she had stood in front of before now felt different somehow. She placed the record back on the shelf for the moment, letting her fingers hover briefly over the other albums nearby. Her eyes drifted across titles she didn't recognize, artists she didn't yet know how to place in memory.
Still, she found herself lingering. Not because she had to but because it suddenly didn't feel like a place she needed to leave quickly.
Somewhere behind her, the rain continued tapping against the windows in steady rhythm, as if marking time for something neither of them had named yet. And somewhere deeper in the store, Aeri turned another book upright without thinking, aligning its spine perfectly with the others, just as she always did.
But this time, her attention didn't return to the task quite as easily as before. Aeri had only meant to step away for a moment.
The back storage room was small. Narrow shelves of unsorted returns, half-labeled crates, and records stacked in uneven piles that never seemed to stay organized for long. It wasn't unusual for customers to request something that had already been misplaced somewhere between "recent arrivals" and "we'll sort this later."
She checked anyway.
Carefully...
Quietly...
But after a few minutes of searching, her fingers paused on an empty gap between two crates that should have held the album Yizhuo had been holding earlier.
Nothing.
Aeri exhaled softly through her nose, more thoughtful than disappointed, and closed the crate again with a gentle push. When she returned to the main floor, the rain had not changed. It still pressed itself against the windows in long, sliding threads of gray. The bookstore still smelled like paper and wood and something faintly nostalgic she could never fully name.
Yizhuo was still near the record section, though she had shifted slightly, now browsing more idly than before. The earlier urgency had faded from her posture, replaced with a kind of relaxed curiosity, as if she had already accepted she might not find what she came for.
Aeri approached slowly, not wanting to interrupt whatever quiet moment that was settling there.
"I checked the back," she said once Yizhuo noticed her, her tone calm but apologetic in the way it always became when she had to deliver disappointing answers. "I'm sorry. There isn't another copy."
Yizhuo blinked, then gave a small, understanding nod.
"Oh," she said softly. "That's okay. Thanks for checking."
Aeri hesitated for a fraction of a second, then added, "If it comes back in stock, I can keep an eye out for you."
It wasn't a formal promise. Just something simple. Something she offered without thinking too much about whether it mattered. Yizhuo's expression warmed slightly at that.
"Thank you," she said, and there was something genuinely appreciative in her voice that made the words feel heavier than they were.
For a moment, it seemed like that would be the end of it. A natural, polite exit. Yizhuo shifted her weight, preparing to leave, fingers brushing lightly against the strap of her bag as she turned slightly toward the entrance. But before she could take a step away... Aeri spoke again.
"Would it be okay... if I recommended a book for you?"
The question came out gently, almost carefully, as if she were testing whether it belonged in the conversation at all.
Yizhuo stopped and looked back.
There was a brief hesitation in her expression. Not because she disliked the idea, but because she had not expected it. Her gaze drifted instinctively toward the shelves, then back to Aeri, who was waiting with a calm, patient kind of attention that didn't feel pressuring, only sincere.
Yizhuo wasn't really a reader. At least, not in the way people who worked in bookstores probably expected her to be. But the way Aeri was looking at her made it difficult to say no without feeling like she was refusing something softer than just a suggestion.
"...Sure," she said after a moment, her voice mild but honest. "I can try."
Aeri nodded once, as if that was all she needed. Without much ceremony, she stepped toward one of the shelves close to the exit, scanning briefly before sliding a book out with practiced familiarity. It was worn at the edges, clearly not new, as if it had been read and returned many times over. She held it out toward Yizhuo.
"This one," she said. "It's not too complicated. But it's... quiet."
Yizhuo took it carefully, turning it in her hands. The cover was simple. No loud design. No dramatic title trying too hard to be remembered. It felt... calming.
Like the store itself.
"I think I can handle a quiet story," Yizhuo said lightly, and there was a faint smile in her tone as she said it. Aeri's lips curved slightly in response, small and restrained, but real.
"That's usually the best place to start," she replied as she pressed the rental sticker onto the book.
Yizhuo glanced once more at the shelves behind her, then back at Aeri.
"I'll give it a try."
She adjusted her bag strap again, now holding both the book and the small disappointment of the missing record, though neither of them seemed particularly important anymore.
"I'll see you around," she added, almost casually.
Aeri nodded.
"Yeah," she said softly. "I hope so."
It was simple. Not weighted with meaning either of them were aware of yet. Just an answer that lingered a little longer than necessary after Yizhuo turned and finally left the store, the bell above the door ringing softly as she stepped back into the rain.
For a moment after she was gone, Aeri stayed where she was. Her gaze remained on the doorway, though the glass had already begun to blur the outside world into shifting gray again.
She didn't move immediately. Not because she was thinking anything specific. Just because the store felt slightly different than it had a few minutes ago.
Behind the counter, Jimin raised an eyebrow as she watched the whole exchange unfold with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had seen this kind of thing before... just never with Aeri involved.
"Well," she said once Aeri finally walked back toward her usual spot. "That was smooth."
Aeri blinked once, as if processing the comment.
"I just recommended a book."
Jimin smiled knowingly, watching her friend get back to work.
"Mm-hm."
Aeri didn't respond to that.
Instead, she reached for the next stack of books, aligning them carefully as she always did, though her movements were slightly slower than before. Not distracted...
Just... aware.
Jimin leaned slightly on the counter, watching her. She taps Aeri's shoulder to get her attention.
"She was pretty," she added casually. Aeri paused for half a second.
Then, without looking up, she said simply, "Yeah. She seemed nice."
And that was all.
But as the bell above the door settled back into stillness, and the rain continued its steady rhythm outside, Aeri found herself glancing toward the entrance again.
just once...
as if she expected, without reason, that the day might decide to repeat itself.
——— a/n
Feel free to comment when parts of the story make you feel. I love reading comments and it encourages me to keep going!
Thanks for the read. Onto the next chapter you go!