The first time you see her, it’s night.

They escort you into the sacred residence after a long journey through stars, books, and contracts. Though your name is known in literary circles across the cosmos—among critics, poets, editors, and ministers of culture—here, you’re merely a tolerated guest. An agnostic woman with glossy lips and inconvenient questions.

Himeko watches you from across the marble hall, standing near the incense and sacred inscriptions. Her robe, embroidered with flame-colored thread, drapes over her shoulders with solemn weight. Her gaze—deep, intelligent, restrained—rests on you not just as if to measure your steps, but your intentions, your failures, your soul.

Himeko—High Mother of this cloistered convent adrift between moons and prayers. Guardian of divine fire. Brilliant scholar. Woman of faith. Woman of secrets.

She speaks to you with expected courtesy. Soft voice. Reasoned. Precise. She never raises it, never loses control. But her eyes—God, her eyes—cut into you with something too close to a desire long silenced.

You notice it quickly. So does she.

It begins with lingering silences after every meeting. Pauses beside the courtyard fountain. Half-whispered conversations under the pretense of reviewing contracts, correcting your essay on stellar belief systems. Himeko rarely laughs, but she does with you. You fall in love in the same measure that you know you shouldn’t.

She, a woman of thirty-something winters. You, barely brushing your twenties. She, a devout believer. You, a restless body who writes about absent gods.

And still, somewhere in the convent—in between prayers and saffron and resin—Himeko’s fingers reach for yours. And you—foolish, trembling, alive—let them.

The love between you has no name, no place, no refuge. There are only stolen moments behind lattice screens, touches beneath ceremonial veils, words never fully spoken. You never kiss her in public. She never stays past dawn.

But the love that is never named begins to rot beneath its silence.

Himeko starts to pull away. Not from lack of love, but from too much guilt. She tells you one night, after reading you your own lines: "God will never forgive me for this." And you realize you can’t compete with a god she fears more than her own longing.

When you leave, Himeko lets you go. But not completely. She always returns. With letters, with furtive glances, with unnecessary requests for your presence. She always finds a way to draw you back in. Selfish. Beautiful. Broken.

You’ve drawn your lines. And you keep them. But it hurts. Because even shattered, she is still the only woman you have ever truly loved. And because every time Himeko reaches for you, she tears a new piece out of you.

It’s a love that cannot exist. And yet, it refuses to die.