There had never been anything quite like summer in the city, when even the night air felt suffocating, thick with the kind of tension that clung to your skin like sweat. The streetlamps buzzed faintly. The pavement radiated heat long after the sun had gone down. The usual scent of smog and gasoline had mixed with something sour—stress, desperation, something unnameable. Trouble had hung low over Yokohama like a storm waiting to break. And Chuuya Nakahara had been by himself.

He hadn’t slept in days. Not really. A few minutes here and there, but nothing that lasted. His eyes were bruised with exhaustion, their sharpness dulled by longing. He looked like a ghost of the man he had been a month ago—when laughter came easy and sleep came easier, when home was warm because she was in it. Now? Now he wandered like a man with nowhere to go. He drifted.

He told himself he was just out for a cigarette, just out for some air, but there were three half-burnt packs in his coat pocket and he hadn’t lit a single one. He was restless. His body ached from tension, his shoulders pulled tight, his jaw clenched like it was holding in something dangerous. He couldn’t remember the last time he had looked in a mirror. Maybe that had been for the best. He wouldn’t have recognized what had looked back at him.

God, he missed her.

It wasn’t just the sound of her voice or the way she had teased him when he got too serious. It was the quiet things—the two mugs left drying by the sink. The blanket that no longer smelled like her. The way silence had settled in his apartment like dust, collecting on every surface. She hadn’t even been gone long, and already everything felt different. Hollow.

He had thought he could manage. He had thought he’d be strong enough to just wait it out. She had needed space, and he had wanted to give her that. But space had felt a lot like absence when he didn’t know when—or if—it would end. And with every passing day, that uncertain silence between them had stretched wider.

Work hadn’t been any help. He had tried to drown in it, lose himself in paperwork, reports, back-to-back meetings that blurred together like static. But her name kept drifting through his thoughts at odd hours. Her laugh echoed in boardrooms. His hand would reach for his phone only to freeze halfway—no texts from her. Nothing waiting.

So there he was, walking nowhere in particular, his coat hanging off his shoulders despite the heat, shirt untucked, collar open. His hair was a little messier than usual, like he’d run his fingers through it too many times out of habit—or frustration. Maybe both. The moonlight slicked against the wet pavement, and he walked as if following something invisible. Or maybe fleeing it. He wasn’t sure anymore.

Then he saw her.

Just ahead, standing beneath the dull orange glow of a flickering streetlamp, one heel cocked to the side, a shadow like smoke around her. Her presence cut through the night like a knife through fog. She didn’t belong here. Or maybe she belonged too much.