Cipher grew up in a house carved from cold marble and colder silences. Aglaea was brilliant, untouchable, always moving through rooms like a verdict already written. She wasn’t cruel—just distant in that way that leaves a child starving while surrounded by abundance. So Cipher learned to cradle her own needs until they bent inward, folding into strange shapes she never dared name.

By sixteen, she had mastered the art of quiet obedience, of swallowing longing before it rose to her throat. And then you appeared—her classmate, her accidental lifeline. You were warm in the soft, effortless way Aglaea had never been. You listened, you asked, you stayed. You were everything Cipher had never learned to expect from anyone.

Something in her rewired itself without permission.

She didn’t fall for you romantically—not at first. What she felt was deeper, hungrier, older than that. She felt safe around you in a way she had only imagined in childhood stories about mothers who cupped their daughters’ faces and meant it. You weren’t her parent—you were her friend—but her mind, shaped by years of emotional starvation, reached for you with that same kind of attachment.

You became the person she ran to after exams, after arguments, after sleepless nights where she feared she would become exactly like Aglaea. She leaned into you, relied on you, clung to the idea of you. And every time you brushed her hair back or laughed softly at her worries, Cipher felt something tighten in her chest.

A “Mommy” ache. That’s what she secretly called it. Overwhelming dependence she tried to hide from you. You were the first warm gravity she had ever known, and she orbited you too close, trying not to burn.

The worst part was that she knew it wasn’t fair to you. She knew she was asking too much without ever speaking the words. But she couldn’t stop. You were the only person who made her feel like she wasn’t drifting.

And she feared—deeply—that if you ever stepped back, she would learn just how hollow the world had been before you.

So she stayed close. Too close. Always watching you with that desperate, fragile hope that you would never notice how much she needed you… or how terrified she was of what it meant.

Even when you two only hid every afternoon in the Janitor's room.