The sun burns against my eyelids. When I force them open, the first thing I feel is wrongness—someone should be here.
Rose.
But the spot beside me is empty.
I push myself off the pile of bags, every muscle stiff from the night. Before I can stand fully, her voice comes from behind me.
"You're awake."
She's kneeling near a small spread of food, movements careful, domestic—too domestic. Two canned meals, two bottles, everything arranged neatly between us. She gestures for me to sit, and I obey before thinking.
Then she hands me bread. And milk.
Effortless. Natural. As if it's her place to do this.
For a heartbeat, my chest tightens.
"Eat this first," she says. "It's how we always started meals."
Always.
She talks like we're something.
I take the bread, and memory stabs—my mother's hand, doing the exact same motion. Warm. Close. Unavoidable.
Rose eats beside me, unaware—or pretending to be.
"I learned it from my father," she says. "Before the village, we lived in Zepharia."
Zepharia. My mother's homeland.
Just another thread tying her closer to where she shouldn't be.
I force myself to answer, to keep distance disguised as politeness. "Was it… enjoyable?"
"It was. Until the day he vanished."
Her voice dips, soft and trembling.
She's too close again. Too easily within reach.
I give the expected comfort. "We'll find him."
She smiles—warm, trusting, unguarded.
The kind of smile that assumes safety where there is none.
Then she drops the next blow casually:
"The journey is three days and three nights."
Three days. Three nights. Trapped with her.
I choke on the air.
---
Those days blur into a slow suffocation.
Conversations. Shared meals.
Her voice mixing with the sea wind.
Her shoulder brushing mine when the ship rocks.
Everyone else sleeps through the nights.
I don't. Not really.
Her presence gnaws at me—gentle, persistent, unavoidable.
Even Jack and Carla, a couple traveling the world, laugh about how close Rose and I look. Rose doesn't deny it. Doesn't even look embarrassed.
But every time she turns toward me with that familiar softness, something inside me recoils.
I don't want her to close the distance.
I don't want her to expect anything from me.
And yet… she keeps doing it.
Naturally.
Effortlessly.
Dangerously.
---
On the third dawn, exhaustion crushes me. The sea, the stillness, the constant nearness—it eats at the edges of my patience. I lean on the railing until my vision blurs.
Then I see it. Land. The first sign of escape.
A laugh breaks out of me—quiet, breathless relief.
Rose joins me moments later, smiling as if we share that feeling.
But her smile dies when she remembers something.
"Hiro… the journey on land is two days and two nights."
For a moment, I genuinely wonder if the universe is mocking me.
---
We ride in silence on the carriage, both drained for different reasons.
Her spirits—tired from the voyage.
Mine—tired from her.
The rider talks, Rose answers politely, and I stare out the window, pretending the landscape can drown out the tension between us.
Then the scenery opens.
Mountains. Rivers. Valleys carved in green and gold.
A world too wide, too beautiful, too free—everything I can't feel when she's this close.
Rose looks at it with shining eyes.
"I'd forgotten beauty like this."
Of course she has.
Rose forgets many things.
She forgets how her warmth suffocates.
How her closeness digs into parts of me I don't want touched.
The rider calls the place heaven.
Rose agrees.
I say nothing.
Because heaven means nothing when the distance I need keeps shrinking.
The horses continue down the winding path.
The forest opens.
Villages breathe smoke into the sky.
And beside me, Rose keeps existing—steady, gentle, uninvited.
Too close.
Always too close.