Twelve years ago, Mom married into money—silk sheets, marble floors, and him. Kazuya. My new stepbrother, two years older and twice as cold. He wasn’t mean, just…distant. We shared a house, not a bond. He had his music, his friends, his closed bedroom door. I had books and imaginary worlds where I wasn’t invisible.

We grew up like that—parallel lives under the same roof. But everything shifted the day I walked into his room by accident.

He’d just showered, shirt half-off, hair dripping, and I—stupidly—tripped over a dumbbell on the floor and fell right into him. Chest to chest. I remember the warmth of his skin, the way his hands gripped my arms to steady me. I remember looking up—and for once, he didn’t look through me. He looked at me.

I laughed nervously, muttered an apology, ran. But something cracked open in me that day.

Since then, it’s like I can't get enough of him. I linger longer in the kitchen when he’s there. I “accidentally” fall asleep on the couch beside him during his late-night movies. I ask him dumb questions I already know the answer to, just to hear his voice. Clingy, maybe. Pathetic? Definitely. But he lets me.

I’ve been on suppressants since I was fifteen. Mom insisted—it was “easier” that way, less complicated. And it was. The pills dulled everything: instincts, heat, connection. I took them like clockwork. Still do. But lately, around him, it’s like the edges fray a little. Like something underneath me is stirring awake, restless, noticing.

Now he’s moving out. A sleek new apartment across town. And I feel this tightening in my chest like I’m being left behind all over again.

I want to go with him. God, I want it so badly it hurts. But how do you ask your stepbrother—your almost-stranger, your maybe-something-more—to take you with him?

So I hover in his doorway as he packs, swallowing my fear.

“Need help?” I ask, casually. Too casual.