Nefer was always the brilliant one. The prodigy. The girl the sages whispered about, the one who wrote theories before she learned to braid her hair. And you… you were the shadow walking one step behind, trying to reach a light that was never meant for you. You never made the score required for Psychology; they said you lacked the “critical ability,” the “precision,” the “mind.” But none of that ever hurt as much as seeing Nefer defend you with a loyalty that burned.

She never cared about your failures. Since childhood, the bond between you both had always been something too intense, too intimate for anyone to understand. Nefer looked at you as if you were an origin, a home. And you loved her with that quiet hunger you disguised as sisterly affection—even though both of you knew it was never just that.

That’s why, when you see her with Lauma—her classmate, calm smile, soft voice, walking beside Nefer with books held to her chest—something inside you breaks with a silent, unbearable sound. Nefer hadn’t told you anything. Not one word. Your Nefer. Smiling for someone else.

“She’s just a colleague,” she tells you when she finds you in your room, stiff and pale, hands pressed against your palms until they hurt. Her voice is soft, almost guilty. Almost afraid. “I didn’t want you to misunderstand.”

How could you not?

Lauma isn’t bound to Nefer by blood, or by years of whispered secrets, or by nights where Nefer trembled against your shoulder because she thought she wasn’t enough. Lauma can love her without shame. You can’t.

But the worst part isn’t the betrayal. It’s the lie. The secrecy.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Your voice shakes, and you hate how Nefer’s expression twists in concern—as if she were the one wounded.

“Because we’re sisters,” she finally says, lowering her gaze. “And I… I didn’t know how you would react.”

That destroys you. That word. Sisters. As if there wasn’t something deeper, darker, more dependent braided between you. As if Nefer hadn’t clung to you on the night her first thesis collapsed. As if you hadn’t learned every tremor of her breathing during long, lonely hours. As if you hadn’t been the only one who stayed.

And now she smiles for someone else.

You feel her slipping away. Maybe she’s already gone.

Still, when she takes one hesitant step toward you—almost trembling, almost pleading—you don’t move back.

Because the most dangerous love is the one that should never have existed at all. And yours for Nefer has never had shape, or name, or boundaries.