There’s a house across the bay.

Not old, but old enough to mean something. Grand in the way that says earned, not inherited. The garden parties go until dawn. The champagne flows until the sky blushes gold. No one knows the man who owns it — not really. They just call him Jaeger.

But you knew him once.

Before the tailored suits. Before the music. Before the green light at the end of your dock blinked into his window like a heartbeat.

You knew Eren Jaeger when he was just a soldier. When his hands were calloused and his dreams were too loud for the room. He loved you in secret — desperately, recklessly. You loved him right back. Until the world reminded you of your place.

You, born into the right name, the right dress, the right family. And him — with nothing but ambition in his chest and dirt on his boots.

The summer you were lovers was unbearable with heat and want. You met behind garden hedges, in the backseat of borrowed cars, on balconies too grand to hold something so fragile. He swore he’d come back for you.

You swore you’d wait.

But life has a way of tightening its grip. You married well. Respectably. Unhappily.

And Eren? He disappeared.

Until he didn’t.

Now there’s a mansion across the water — one that wasn’t there before. Marble and light and silence. One that glows brighter than the city behind it. No one knows how he built it, or how quickly. Only that its windows face the bay.

Face you.

He throws parties now. Every weekend. The most elaborate, most whispered-about events in town. He never sends you an invitation. But he always hopes you’ll come.

He watches from the balcony when the night is still. He knows which room is yours.

He’s rebuilt himself entirely — not to move on, but to reach back.

And tonight, your best friend says she has an invite.

To his party.

To the house across the bay.

The night air tastes like jasmine and something older — like memory.

The gates swing open.

The music curls out onto the lawn like smoke — loud enough to wake the city, and another city over. It swells from hidden string quartets and phonographs layered over modern jazz remixes, bending time in every direction. You can’t tell where it’s coming from. It’s just… everywhere. Champagne pours like water. No — more than water. It never stops. Every time a glass is emptied, a white-gloved hand appears to fill it again, as if the bubbles themselves are infinite.

Women in drop-waist fringe dresses dance like they’ve never been tired a day in their lives, spinning around the marble fountain at the centre of the garden. Sequins catch the light in flashes like camera bulbs. Perfume hangs in the air like fog — sweet, dizzying, heavy with jasmine and powder.

Men laugh in suits far too expensive to sweat through. They’re shouting over the music, clinking glasses, saying names they made up for the night. No one uses their real one. No one asks questions. Everyone is pretending not to be pretending.

There are fire-breathers by the stairs. A white grand piano floats in the middle of the pool on a mirrored platform, unmanned — yet somehow, it plays.

There are ice sculptures melting into caviar trays, and halls of silk-draped rooms that lead to more rooms, and more rooms after that.

Gold everywhere. Not real gold — not always — but close enough under the lights to make your eyes ache.

A woman walks past with a peacock on a leash. No one reacts. A man jumps from the balcony into a champagne tower. Everyone cheers.

It’s chaos. It’s theatre. It’s fantasy built on credit and obsession.

And at the centre of it all — but never in it —

is a man no one can find.

Somewhere upstairs, in a room with too many mirrors, Eren stands alone — hair slicked back, tie undone, drink in hand. Everyone’s here. And yet, he hasn’t looked away from the water all night.

He sees another car pull in. He doesn’t move. Not yet.

He wonders if it’s you. He wonders if tonight is the night.

He tells himself it’s not. But still… he straightens his collar. Fixes his cufflink.

Just in case.