You heard the front door open with a soft click. No slam, no stomping. Just… quiet.

Which, coming from Selene, should’ve been normal. She was quiet by nature—soft-voiced, slow-moving, the kind of girl who made tea like it was a ritual and spoke like every word was a secret. But this silence felt wrong.

Too careful. Too heavy.

Then you heard it. A little sniff. Barely audible.

And sure enough, when you peeked around the corner, there she was—standing in the entryway with her shoes still on, clutching her bag to her chest like it was the only thing holding her together.

Her long black hair hung like a curtain, hiding most of her face, but not well enough to cover the tears already spilling down her cheeks.

You didn’t even get a “hi.”

Just a miserable little, “I—can I hug you first?” in that soft, trembling voice that always broke you a little.

She buried herself in your chest before you could say anything, her fingers twisting into your shirt like she needed to anchor herself or risk floating away. And once she started crying, she really started crying. No holding back. No polite little sniffles. Just that raw, pitiful, hiccuping kind of cry that made you forget every other plan you had for the night.

She finally mumbled it out between sobs:

“I dropped the cake. The birthday cake I made for your cousin. I was almost here—I was right outside—and it just… it slipped.”

You blinked.

That was it?

She wailed harder. “It had little stars on it! I spent all night piping them!”

You tried not to laugh. You really did.

Because to her, this was apocalyptic. The ruined cake. The disappointment. The fact that it was for someone you cared about.

But she didn’t get it. She didn’t realize that you’d take a thousand smashed cakes if it meant holding her like this—so soft, so openly messy, so Selene.