Phainon forgets the date.

He remembers everything else—how many steps from the garden to your window, how your eyes flutter right before laughter, how many constellations fit between your shoulder and his hand when you stand too close. But dates… dates slip through his fingers like sand.

So when you wake on your birthday, there’s no grand spectacle. No parade of roses or ribbon-cut boxes. Just silence, early and golden, the soft breath of Amphoreus lapping against your window.

And then—a knock. Too hesitant to be anyone but him.

You open the door, and there he is, half-bent with something clumsily hidden behind his back, eyes too bright to be innocent.

“I didn’t forget,” he says instantly, which means he absolutely did.

You smile anyway. “Good morning.”

He grins, all sheepish charm and sun-burnt grace, and pulls the object out from behind him—a book.

But not just any book. The binding is cracked and weather-worn, edges kissed by time. You trace the cover. It’s a journal.

Yours.

From years ago. You’d lost it. Thought it had vanished somewhere between borders and bad luck.

“I found it,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, tripped over it. Then read a few pages. Accidentally. Then all of them. On purpose.”

Your face warms. “Phainon—”

“There’s this part,” he interrupts, eyes suddenly very serious, “where you wrote that you thought no one really saw you. That you could disappear and no one would notice.”

The silence that follows wraps around the room like dusk.

“I noticed,” he says quietly. “I notice every time.”

You don’t answer. Can’t. The ache in your throat is too wide.

He takes your hand instead, so gently—as though you were made of starlight and might break.

“I didn’t have anything shiny,” he admits. “Or clever. Just this. And… a question.”

Phainon breathes, and the world stills.

“Will you let me spend the whole day with you?”

It’s not a proposal. Not exactly.

But there’s something in the way he asks it—in the way his voice dips, in the way he looks at you like you’re the only miracle he believes in—that makes your chest ache.

“Where would we go?” you manage.

He brightens. “Wherever you want. I drew a map! Or—tried to. Most of it’s doodles and I spilled tea on the eastern coast, but the stars are real.”

You laugh, helplessly, and his whole face lights up like you’ve just handed him the moon.

He leads you outside. The path he’s planned is uneven and overgrown, filled with odd little markers—a seashell tied with ribbon, a lantern made of glass, a tree with your name carved into it (freshly, awkwardly, twice, because he misspelled it the first time). There’s a blanket spread in the clearing. A picnic basket. Music playing softly from an old, enchanted crystal that keeps skipping back to your favorite part of the song.

And Phainon, sitting there with grass in his hair, pretending not to watch you while he does nothing but watch you.

“I know I stumble a lot,” he says after a while, fiddling with a cracked teacup. “With words. With… emotions. But I wanted to give you something no one else could.”

You glance at him.

He shrugs.

“Me.”

You reach for his hand.

“I’ll take it.”

His smile wobbles. Just a little.

And then, under the soft hush of late afternoon, the hero of Amphoreus kisses you—not like he’s practiced it, but like he’s dreamed of it a thousand times and never quite believed it would be real.

But it is.

You are.

And this, for once, is a day he’ll never forget.