The rain did not simply fall—it pelted, thick and merciless, a punishing downpour that turned the streets of Wellenberg into glassy ribbons of reflected lantern-light. Every surface shimmered with wet cold, and every alleyway breathed a faint mist.
Inside the rattling automobile, Mr. Grayson blinked blearily at the shimmering road ahead. He could feel his pulse beating sluggishly in his ears.
Droop… droop…
His eyelids were practically folding over themselves. He rubbed his forehead, smearing rainwater and sweat alike.
The engine sputtered. A loose belt slapped with every rotation of the wheels. The crates in the back wobbled dangerously with every jerk of the steering.
But Grayson only chuckled under his breath, the alcohol crawling warmly through his blood.
"Keep it together… keep it together," he muttered to himself, almost singing. His words slurred into the storm.
He pressed the pedal again—too hard.
PRESS.
The old vehicle lunged forward as though startled awake. Tires skidded on slick stone. The headlamps shook violently and flickered.
"W-Whoa—!"
DART!
He swung around a corner too sharply. The back of the car fishtailed, the wooden fastenings creaking—
Then—
CLUNK—CLUNK—CRRRRK—
The crates snapped free.
In one chaotic breath, everything flew.
Barrels rolled. Boxes shattered. A sharp, shrill sound—MEOW!—brief and terrified—cut the air before being drowned out by—
CRASH!
Grayson slammed both feet on the brake, the vehicle groaning as it jerked to a stop. His body lurched forward, his forehead almost meeting the wheel.
"Tumble… tumble…" he whispered, dizzy.
"Good Lord—th-that scared me… I nearly fell right in…"
He stumbled out into the rain, boots splashing in the cold puddles. His breath puffed warm against the night.
The mess lay scattered: planks, barrels, broken shards of wood. And there—something small, motionless.
A small black shape.
"Ugh… what is—?"
He stepped closer. The rain plastered his soaked cap to his forehead.
"A cat?"
The words came with a mix of annoyance and disgust.
"Just hidin' from the rain, huh?"
He nudged it.
NUDGE.
…NUDGE.
The body rolled limply. Its neck bent at an unnatural angle.
Grayson's drunkenness evaporated at once. A cold spike drove straight through his spine.
"Something's… wrong with the neck. D-did it snap during the crash…? Ugh."
He grimaced and exhaled sharply, more irritated than remorseful.
But then—
Another shape.
A tiny, barely-there bundle of fur, tucked under a broken crate.
Grayson crouched, lifted the splintered wood, and squinted.
"A kitten…?"
He narrowed his eyes, leaning closer.
It didn't move.
"It ain't movin' either… Guess it was crushed."
He grumbled bitterly, almost offended by the inconvenience.
"ARGH! Bloody pests!"
The self-pity flooded in quickly—warm, choking, ugly.
Why tonight? Why in the rain? Why while he was already soaked, already tired, already halfway drunk and on an errand he didn't even want?
His frustration lashed out before thought could restrain him.
He raised his boot.
And with a violent, explosive motion—
KICK!
The limp body of the adult cat flew over the stone wall nearby, disappearing into the wet darkness without so much as a sound.
Grayson spat onto the ground.
"Rotten luck," he muttered. "DAMN pests."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, breathing hard. The rain blurred everything, turning the world into dripping streaks.
He didn't notice—
Not really—
that the kitten's tiny chest gave the faintest, shallowest rise.
Barely a breath.
Barely life.
A thin, trembling paw twitched once.
Then went still again.
The storm swallowed the moment whole.
The night pressed on.
The cold rain continued to PITTER, needling through my clothes, tapping insistently against my skin as though trying to urge me awake from the horror that had just unfolded. I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe properly. The man walked away with his shoulders hunched, muttering about "pests" and "luck," as if lives—small lives, fragile lives—were nothing more than an inconvenience on a wet street.
I watched the black shape disappear over the wall, that sickening WHISH, and something inside me twisted.
The rain was already washing the blood and grime from the cobblestones, but it couldn't wash away the feeling lodged in my throat.
A steady hand closed around my arm.
Warm. Anchoring.
A quiet reminder that I wasn't alone, even though the world suddenly felt cold in a way only cruel things can make it.
My breath shook. The crushed kitten under the debris, its tiny, broken form… it shouldn't have affected me so deeply. And yet—it pierced something old inside me, something soft and unguarded. Maybe it was the rain. Perhaps memories born in gentle spring showers always come rushing back when the sky cries like this.
And just like that, the present blurred around the edges.
Flashback
I remembered another rain—
not harsh, not cold—
but the soft drizzle of spring, like a veil of silver threads shimmering over the Royal Gardens.
"The Royal Flower Show."
The thought formed like a whisper on my tongue, pulling a wistful ache from beneath my ribs. Even now, in this grim place, I could almost hear my younger self gasp with excitement.
Every spring, without fail, my family would go. It was a ritual older than me—something my grandmother called "our welcome to the season." And for me, as a child, it was everything.
The anticipation made every day feel bright.
I would count down from a week before, marking each morning with a small drawing in my diary: a flower, a cookie, a tiny skirt—whatever I was obsessing over at the time.
I'd spread out my clothes across the bed in a messy rainbow. I remember holding up the white puffed-sleeve blouse against my small frame, turning this way and that in the mirror. The blue ribbon looked like a ribbon of sky. The glittering ombré skirt swirled like a soft cascade of water. And always—always—I carried my fluffy brown cat toy. Its stitched smile never faded, and the cheerful orange bow was crooked from how often I hugged it.
And my grandmother…
Oh, the hours in her kitchen.
We would lean over the counter with matching aprons, our fingers dusted in flour as we shaped cookies into stars and flowers. She'd always say, "For your friends, Serena. A small kindness is never small." And I believed her with all my heart.
I'd arrange the cookies into little paper bags, tie them with string, and tuck them into my very own picnic basket. The smell of sugar and vanilla would cling to my hair long after.
Flags the color of candy fluttered above the gardens. Flowers spilled across the grounds like oceans of color—pinks, lilacs, golds. My world had been warm, gentle, overflowing with goodness.
But now…
I stared down at the crushed crates, the scattered debris, the tiny broken body beneath it all. And for the first time in a long while, it felt as though that childhood—those small kindnesses—belonged to someone else entirely.
The man's careless cruelty settled into my bones like cold water.
The contrast was unbearable.
A kitten.
So small. So easy to ignore.
So easy to harm.
The rain blurred my sight again, but not from the weather.
Innocence breaks quietly, I realized.
And the world rarely pauses long enough to notice.
The Royal Flower Show had always been the season's brightest jewel in my memory, the event that made spring feel like spring. Even now, thinking of it was like opening a window to a sunlit room. Everything felt warmer, gentler.
The journey there was half the joy.
I used to press my palms against the cool glass of the carriage window, leaning forward to see every new village and meadow. My favorite stuffed cat—soft brown fur, orange bow slightly crooked—sat tucked under my chin. I would narrate everything I saw to my mother, my words tumbling out like loose petals in the wind.
Those conversations were rare treasures.
Mother was always busy—duties, schedules, visits, meetings—but in that carriage, with miles of countryside rolling past us, she belonged to me for a little while. She listened. She smiled. She even laughed. I lived for those hours.
After arriving at the Flower Show, the world became a festival of color. My friends and I would run between the garden tents, comparing baskets and cookies. Grandmother always insisted I bake extra with her to share.
"Kindness traveled in small packages," she would say, pressing warm, sugar-dusted stars into my hands.
It was a perfect rhythm, year after year.
A rhythm I thought was unbreakable.
But life loves to slip a stone beneath your feet just when you think you've learned the path.
The year after I graduated from Dalincour—the Royal Academy that shaped everything I thought I was—I should have been excited. I should have been proud. I should have been preparing the blue ombré skirt I wore every spring and tying ribbons into my hair.
Instead…
The spring before I turned seventeen became something else entirely.
The day before we were meant to leave, I woke to a knife-sharp pain curling through my stomach. My skin felt too hot, my limbs heavy as marble. The room swayed when I tried to sit up. Even the sunlight looked wrong—slanted, too harsh.
By afternoon, the fever had reduced me to a trembling, miserable heap in my bed.
The physicians came. Servants whispered outside my door. A cold cloth pressed against my forehead, but the heat inside me burned with stubborn fury.
And beyond all that physical misery was something worse.
The disappointment.
"Seriously… this is the worst…" I croaked, my throat raw.
My voice sounded so small, even to me.
My mother peeked in now and then, her soft gloved hand brushing my cheek before she disappeared again to continue preparations with the others.
They all had to leave without me—the show had only so many days. The tradition could not wait for one sick girl.
I buried my face into the silk sheets, blinking back tears.
"How could this happen?"
It was a childish question, but it slipped out anyway.
"Why today? Of all days… I was really looking forward to this."
I felt like I was sinking into myself, like the fever was burning away something more important than my strength.
That spring became the invisible boundary between the life I always knew… and everything that came after. A season I couldn't reclaim, no matter how tightly I held onto my memories.
Even now, staring at the crushed kitten beneath the debris in the rain-soaked street, I felt that same ache. That same sense of something delicate breaking—too quietly, too easily, and far too soon.
Innocence did not shatter all at once.
Sometimes it crumbled in the smallest, softest ways.
A missed spring.
A ruined tradition.
A dying kitten.
All pieces of the same truth I was only beginning to understand.
My fever made the room sway in slow waves, everything too bright or too dim, as though the world couldn't decide how to look at me. The ache in my stomach curled tighter, pulsing with my heartbeat. And all I could do was sink into the pillows and glare weakly at the ceiling, full of stubborn grief.
"Seriously… this is the worst…"
My voice cracked, nothing more than a pitiful croak.
Outside, the manor was alive with preparations. I could almost hear the distant sounds of servants loading trunks, horses stamping in the courtyard, the rustle of travel cloaks and excitement. The Flower Show was always a celebration, a tradition wrapped in joy.
And here I was—too sick to move, too miserable to pretend to be brave.
"How could this happen? And why today of all days?"
The words tumbled out with a helplessness I hated.
"I was really looking forward to this…"
A soft footstep crossed the threshold.
Warm, honey-colored light spilled across the room as the door opened, and then—
Mother.
Bellatia Serenity.
The woman whose elegance usually felt untouchable, who carried the weight of an empire with regal ease—today she looked different. Softer. Worried.
She hurried to my bedside with none of her typical poised restraint and leaned over me.
"Serena…"
Her voice was a low murmur, heavy with sympathy.
"Yes, it's such a shame," she whispered, brushing my hair from my forehead with gentle fingers. "I'm so sorry, honey."
It felt strange hearing that from her—an apology. She didn't say those words often.
"Not only are you running a fever," she continued, "but it's the night before the Royal Flower Show… I know how unfair this feels."
Her hand cupped my cheek, cool against my burning skin.
"Keep your stomach warm and drink more hot tea."
PAT. PAT.
Her palm rested on my shoulder in that soothing, rhythmic way that always unraveled the knots inside me.
"Dr. Astance will be around, so tell her if the pain gets worse. She'll prescribe you something stronger. Your temperature is quite high at the moment."
Her brows knitted slightly—worry she rarely allowed others to see.
For a moment, my frustration dissolved into guilt.
She had promised me—just yesterday—the whole carriage ride together. Hours just for us. Talking, laughing, being mother and daughter instead of president and heiress. And now… she was losing that moment as much as I was.
Mother continued softly, "Also, Grandmother will be here soon. She'll look after you and the house while I'm gone."
I turned in bed, startled and half-dizzy.
"Huh?"
The realization hit me with a heavy thud.
"Grandmother isn't going to the Flower Show?"
It didn't make sense. The Flower Show wasn't just another outing to her—it was her heart's delight, the pinnacle of her spring. She spent weeks preparing baskets, ribbons, and hairpins for us, and talked endlessly of the rare peonies and the season's new rose hybrids.
Mother's lips pulled into a small, knowing smile.
"She said she didn't want to go when you were sick. That she'd rather stay here with you."
Those words crashed into me harder than the fever.
Guilt welled thickly in my chest.
"I don't want that," I whispered, shaking my head. "I feel guilty she's missing the Flower Show because of me."
I gripped the blankets tighter.
"I'll be fine, so take Grandmother with you. You know how much she loves flowers."
But Mother only sighed softly, sympathy crossing her face.
"She's already made up her mind, Serena. And you know how stubborn she can be."
I did.
That was the problem.
The ache in my stomach throbbed again, but this time the pain wasn't just physical.
It was the weight of separation.
The Flower Show had always been the one event we attended together—three generations of Serenity women, hand in hand. A thread that tied me to my mother and grandmother, binding us with shared spring memories.
And now, the thread was fraying.
Mother would go to the show without us.
Grandmother would stay behind because of me.
And I…
I would lie here, feverish and alone, listening to the echo of what could have been.
It wasn't just a sickness.
It was the first fracture in the perfect life I knew.
A crack that would widen, slowly, quietly, until nothing looked quite the same again.
This moment—Mother leaving, Grandmother staying, and me trapped in bed—was the beginning of that change. The day the world shifted under my feet.
The day spring stopped being the season of joy…
and became the season everything fell apart.
Mother's expression tightened, though she tried to hide it beneath her elegant calm. Her hands, usually so steady, fidgeted with the ribbon at the edge of my blanket.
"Perhaps we should just skip it this year," she said gently, brushing a stray curl from my cheek. "Your father and Harper suggested the same earlier. I was worried about you too, so I told them I would stay by your bedside… but she"—a small smile tugged at her lips—"was firm."
Of course. Grandmother always won those arguments.
My frustration boiled up, bitter and ashamed.
"UGH! I told you, I'm fine!" I snapped, my voice cracking through the fever. "Besides… you promised to meet up with the other families there."
The guilt swelled thickly, suffocating. I couldn't stand the thought of her missing something she looked forward to all year because of me—because my unreliable body had chosen this day to collapse.
I took a shaky breath, trying to sound older than I felt.
"I'll feel stressed if you skip it just because of me. And that'll make me even sicker. And even more unhappy."
I forced a small, stubborn nod.
"So you should go, Mother."
I lifted my chin, trying to channel every ounce of dignity a feverish seventeen-year-old could muster.
"And I'm seventeen now. There's no need for you to baby me. It's just a fever and a stomachache."
Mother's face melted into that soft, fragile expression she only wore when she was torn between loving me and respecting my wishes. Her eyes glimmered with something I didn't understand then—something close to sorrow.
"All right, darling," she murmured. "Then I'll buy you one of those floral soaps you adore so much."
Her fingers wrapped around mine, warm despite the worry that clung to her. "I'll pick out the prettiest one."
Her diamond ring caught the lamplight, scattering tiny stars across the sheets—the last constellation we shared together.
I had no idea that was the final day I'd ever see my mother's face.
They left at dawn.
The clatter of carriage wheels on gravel echoed through the manor grounds, muffled by early morning fog. I watched from my window—weak, wrapped in blankets—believing I would see them again by dinner the next day. Believing the world was safe. Believing life was predictable.
By the third day, my fever had broken completely. The house was quiet, too quiet, but safe and warm under Grandmother's watchful eye.
We spent the evening in the kitchen, bathed in the golden glow of the hearth. The scent of baking filled every corner: warm butter, honey, a trace of cinnamon. The world felt gentle again.
"TA-DA! ALL DONE!"
Grandmother slid the final tray from the oven, her proud voice ringing like applause. I laughed—a light, airy sound I hadn't heard from myself in days.
It felt like the breaking of a spell.
But that warmth shattered like glass underfoot.
Because now—
Now I was standing in the rain.
Now the air was sharp with the smell of wet earth and metal.
Now a crushed cat lay limp in the gutter, and a drunken man had walked away without a trace of remorse.
The memory collided with the present, a violent crash of two timelines.
I shouldn't have let them go.
The words tore through me, raw and merciless.
I should've been selfish.
I should've insisted they stay.
I should've clung to that moment, to them—
instead of pretending I was grown enough to be left behind.
If I had begged…
If I had cried…
If I had admitted how scared I was of being alone—
Would they still have been alive?
That spring—the fever, the fragile pride, the goodbye—I hadn't known it was a doorway. A trapdoor opening beneath my feet.
Everything was lost because I had tried so desperately to appear strong.
And now, on this rain-soaked road, the world replayed its cruelty.
The drunk driver.
The careless swerve.
The violent CRASH.
The innocent kitten crushed beneath the chaos.
It was the same senseless brutality that had taken my family.
A cold hand squeezed mine—and it was that warmth that finally pulled me from the jaws of memory. I turned, meeting the eyes of the man beside me. Steady. Grounded. Fierce in ways the drunken stranger could never be.
He was the anchor in this storm.
The counterweight to the spiraling grief.
The living proof that not everyone walked away from suffering.
And I realized then, trembling in the rain—
The past had found me again.
But so had someone willing to stand between me and the next crash.
Here is a polished, emotionally rich
Grandmother's face drained of color as she rose from the kitchen table, her chair scraping against the floor in a harsh, jarring screech that echoed straight through my bones.
I remained frozen in place.
The cake I'd been savoring only a second ago now tasted like ash on my tongue.
I w