The night was colder than usual.
Mika sat by her bedroom window, knees pulled to her chest, the city lights flickering faintly beyond the glass. The world outside looked peaceful like it didn't know how heavy silence could be.
Her apartment was quiet, too quiet. The kind of quiet that came after shouting.
In the hallway, a broken vase still lay near the shoe rack, its shards reflecting the dim light like tiny wounds.
Her father hadn't come home yet.
He was always late these days. Always smelling of smoke, of sake, of a kind of danger she couldn't describe. Once upon a time, he'd been gentle his hands rough but careful when they rested on her head, his laughter loud and warm.
But that man was gone now. Replaced by something colder, harder, shaped by debts and violence.
Mika didn't hate him. That was the problem.
She couldn't.
She just didn't understand him anymore.
Earlier that evening, before the shouting, he'd stood by the door, adjusting his black jacket the kind he always wore when "work" called.
"Don't wait up," he'd said.
"I never do," Mika had replied, her voice flat but trembling beneath the surface.
He'd stopped for a moment, hand on the door, eyes heavy. "You think I like this? You think I wanted any of it?"
She hadn't answered. Because every time she did, it only made things worse.
He'd left with a bitter exhale, and the door had shut like the closing of a cage.
Now, hours later, she sat staring at the reflection of her own face in the window pale, tired, eyes ringed with sleeplessness.
She wondered when she'd stopped feeling like herself. Maybe around the time she'd learned what "Yakuza" really meant. Maybe when she saw her father's men come to their house for the first time, their polite smiles failing to hide their guns.
Mika used to dream of becoming an artist.
She used to love colors, just like Yuto. She used to draw sunsets, oceans, flowers things that never shouted or hurt or bled.
But the last time she'd touched a paintbrush was the night her father came home bleeding.
She remembered the smell of iron, the sound of her mother crying, the way her father's hand trembling and slick with blood touched her cheek and whispered, "Stay quiet, Mika."
After that, she'd learned how to live quietly.
To stay small.
Invisible.
Now, at seventeen, she was good at disappearing.
She could walk through a hallway without being noticed.
She could sit in class without anyone remembering what she'd said.
Until that day on the bridge.
Until him.
Yuto.
The boy who saw everything in black and white, and yet somehow noticed her.
Not as a rumor. Not as a burden. Just… a person.
She closed her eyes and replayed that moment again the sound of his voice calling out, the feel of his hands pulling her back. The look in his eyes not scared, not angry, just alive.
And for the first time in years, she'd felt something stir like color brushing faintly against gray.
The sound of the front door jolted her from thought.
Footsteps. Slow. Heavy.
She rose quietly and peeked from her room.
Her father was there, leaning against the wall, his jacket torn. His knuckles were swollen. His tie hung loose like a noose.
He saw her watching. "Still awake?"
"I heard the door," she said softly.
He grunted, moving to the kitchen. She followed not because she wanted to, but because she was afraid not to.
"You shouldn't stay up late," he muttered, pouring himself a drink. "You've got school."
"I couldn't sleep."
He took a long sip, his hands shaking slightly. "It's better if you don't think too much about things, Mika. Sometimes, the world's just… ugly. You keep your head down, and it'll hurt less."
She hesitated. "Is that what you do?"
He looked at her then really looked. His eyes were tired, bloodshot, full of something she didn't have a word for.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "That's what I do."
He set the glass down and walked toward his room.
But before he turned away completely, he stopped again.
"Mika," he said, voice low, rough. "If anyone ever asks you about me about what I do just say you don't know. Understand?"
She nodded slowly.
"Good girl," he murmured.
Then he disappeared into his room, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.
Mika stood there for a long time, staring at the empty glass he'd left behind.
Then she took it, washed it, and placed it upside down on the counter.
Her hands trembled under the cold water.
She whispered to no one in particular,
"I'm tired of pretending not to see."
The next day, she walked to school under a pale sky. The city smelled faintly of rain again.
And when she reached the school gate, she saw Yuto waiting near the entrance sketchbook in hand, smile uncertain but warm.
Their eyes met.
And though the world was still gray, something in her chest flickered faint, fragile, but alive.
She didn't say anything. Neither did he.
They just walked together in silence.
But for the first time, the silence didn't feel empty.