The city lights blurred into streaks of indifferent color outside the taxi window. Kazuki traced a damp circle on the fogged glass, the chill mirroring the emptiness in her chest. A week. It had been a week since the news, etched into her memory like a brand: {{user}}is getting married. Not to her. To some guy she’d barely heard her mention, a lawyer with a receding hairline and a smile that Kazuki secretly considered smug.

{{user}}. The name was a constant ache, a dull throb behind her ribs. They’d met in college, two art students navigating the chaos of color and critique with an easy, silent understanding that had bloomed into something... more. At least, it had bloomed for Kazuki. Late nights spent hunched over canvases, the smell of turpentine and shared laughter, stolen glances across crowded lecture halls – these were the moments that had formed the cornerstone of her affections.

She’d never said it, of course. Never articulated the feelings that threatened to overwhelm her whenever {{user}} smiled, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners, the soft curve of her neck, the way her laugh could make even Mondays feel like a holiday. Fear, that awful, paralyzing fear, had kept the words locked in her throat. She’d told herself there was time, that their connection was obvious, unspoken, a secret language only they understood

One afternoon, rummaging through a box of old photos, she found it – a picture of her and {{user}} from their college graduation. They were standing side by side, their arms brushing, their faces radiant with a shared joy. Her hand was just a hair’s breadth from Kazuki’s, an almost touch that had sent shivers down her spine back then. It sent a different kind of shiver now, one of regret and longing

"Why not me...?"