Polite society and happy endings do not live here. Only the heavy stillness, the shadows, and the rot in the ribcage and the floorboards. Nothingness. Proceed with caution.

I wonder what might have been if we had never encountered each other again, or if Father had never separated us back then.

They started to see each other more often, drifting into a shadowed domesticity - that mirrored depth and stillness found in long-term couples, a shared, internal peace that didn’t need many words to be understood.

In that quietude, they slipped into their private language. It was an intimate shorthand of glances and subtle nuances.

They read each other’s thoughts, moods, and needs. It was a clarity that had survived the years between them. Whatever their souls were made of, his and hers were made similarly.

He knew them all. The temperament, the weather-lie shifts in her mood and those vulnerabilities she tried so hard to hide.

He knew her better than she knew herself.

In this space, she was finally able to breathe; there was no need to manage her attributes nor to hide her flaws; she could be herself, just as she is.

In his presence, they were together, and she forgot the rest.

Nesting in one another’s company. They filled their long, hushed afternoons with nothing more than the turning of pages and the soft clink of teacups. Idling back by the brook until the hours faded away.

On other days, the noons were spent ’neath the blooming trees in the park. Spring wafted through the air, claiming the season for her own. Her touch turned the cold tension into gentle breeze, and the view into a painting.

Above them, the branches shed a constant, gentle shower of pink and white.

Everything was bathed in an impressionistic, diffused radiance; the sunshine felt like a gentle, hazy dream, straight out of a Monet.

They talked about everything and nothing. Whether it was weighty topics or passing mundane observations, the subjects just drifted in and out - scattering like sakura fubuki.

Just like the petals. Drifting. Wafting. Fleeting.

Clearly, the subject itself mattered less. Their lunch stretched for hours - time seemed to lose its teeth.

There was no strained effort in the way he listened nor was it the polite, empty listening of a stranger.

When she spoke, he anchored himself entirely to her words, wholeheartedly attuned to her voice.

When her husband vanished for days and she was left to languish, ailing, Duroy would appear, leaving a thermos of herbal tea on her porch—a quiet, certain token of care.

Her husband acted as if she’d never been born, on her birthday. But Duroy - he arrived with a jūbako. A tiered, traditional lunch box holding an array of washoku.

He’d brought her a feast. There were enough sashimi and rice to last the weekend, along with simmered meats, earthy mountain vegetables, and those handmade sweets she had loved. He had it ordered from that Japanese place downtown.

It all arrived as a quiet warmth, accompanied by her favorite Ichigo shortcake, with a single celebratory candle.

All the gentle quietness, those consistent little things—just by being there. Nothing that bellowed for attention, nothing like a performative grand production.

They were the slow thaw for the suffocating isolation she’d been frozen in for so long.

To her, they felt like divine pities - answers to her salt-streaked, whispered prayers - making the most bitter herbal remedies and the bitterest stretches of her life taste, if only for a moment, like sweet nectar.

Even during the hours they were apart, his frequent calls filled the hollow quiet of her day with his voice.

Small offerings began appearing at her door—wild berries in woven baskets, slices of Castella still warm.

As the coldness receded, her skin flushed alive with breathing color; she lived for these moments, finding in them the only thing that kept the gray, mundane world at bay.

By quiet degrees, he became far more than a passing guest in her life.

He was her sympathy—her better self.

He was her woollen swaddle blanket, keeping her warm. He became a habit for her - an essential.

Rosemary and Rue Part I
Where Our Wills and Fates Do Contrary Run Part II
The Canker Galls the Infants of the Spring Part III
His Goods, His Chattel, His Anything Part IV
Will of Wisp ‘neath the Wistful Tree Part V

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✍️Previously published: 28th April 2026
📖 Selected Winning Entry | CCC Freewriters Daily Series

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