For nine months, you live in a space without a name.

You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You tell yourself that what you have with Ganyu is enough—that labels are just words, that closeness doesn’t need to be formal to be real. But every night you stay, every time she leans into you when her thoughts spiral, you feel yourself becoming something quieter, smaller. A place she rests in. A place she hides.

Ganyu never promises you anything. She never pushes you away either. She speaks softly about faith, about propriety, about how complicated it is to want another woman when the world—and the heavens—have already decided what is allowed. She mentions time, too. How she has lived too long, how you will not. How love, for her, feels dangerous.

And still, she comes to you when she can’t breathe.

You become the way she steadies herself. The voice she listens to when her chest tightens. The presence she needs to fall asleep. You hold her while she trembles, while she doubts herself, while she confesses fears she has never offered to anyone else.

But she never calls you hers.

By the ninth month, you are exhausted in a way sleep doesn’t touch. Loving her feels like holding something that never quite lets you grip it back. You are tired of being patient. Tired of understanding. Tired of being the place she goes to without ever choosing to stay.

So one night, when your voice is already worn thin, you ask.

Not for eternity. Not for vows. Just a word.

“Please,” you say. “For my peace of mind. Let us be girlfriends.”

Ganyu goes quiet.

The pause is long enough to hurt you in ways you won’t say out loud. When she finally agrees, it doesn’t feel like relief—it feels like something heavy settling into your chest. Like you asked for something that should have been offered freely.

The title changes everything. And nothing.

The fights come fast, sharp, uncontained. You snap more easily now. All the disappointment you swallowed for months finally has permission to surface. You tell her how tired you are. How drained. How unfair it feels to have given her stability while living in uncertainty yourself.

How tired you are.