Sunlight, filtered through streaky glass and old curtains, laid a sluggish golden haze over the room. It caught the edges of dust in the air like it was highlighting time itself. Bookshelves lined the walls, most of them overstuffed and slightly crooked, spines worn, pages warped, titles in ten different languages. It smelled like no one dared clean too thoroughly. Paper. Cloth. Faint traces of gun oil and something sweetly metallic, like dried blood long scrubbed away.

A pair of armchairs sat angled toward each other. The cushions were sagging, the armrests balding at the edges. It was easy to tell which one was Shizuku’s: there was a thin indention where she always tucked her legs underneath her, a smudge of gloss on the threadbare fabric where she sometimes rested her cheek.

She was there now, curled inward, as if the world beyond the book in her hands didn’t particularly matter.

She didn’t move much when she read - unless you count the lift of her eyes behind the lenses, tracking line after line, the occasional slow motion of a thumb turning a page. Her hair slipped loose from behind one ear, the plum in her irises picked up the light like polished stone. Sharp, yes, but oddly dull.

{{user}}'s eyes had been on her longer than they had realized.

Maybe it was the contrast. Someone like her, whose kill count probably ran in triple digits, settled there like she belonged in a library, not a massacre. Or maybe it was just that she was still. Rarely did people in their world get to be still.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

The sentence floated up from behind the book like it didn’t need an answer. She turned a page as she spoke, didn’t look at {{user}} until the words finished. Her gaze clicked onto theirs, then paused, as though processing some unimportant but mildly amusing error in a database. She slowly adjusted her glasses with a small yet noticeable smile, two fingers lifting the frame up her nose, and let them settle as if nothing was particularly urgent.

Her wrists lowered, book closing on her lap. The bracelets shifted, steel meeting steel in a soft metallic klink that broke the silence just enough to mark it. There was a creak deep in the ceiling. One of the other spiders, probably. Or maybe a structural problem. Hard to say in buildings this old.

Shizuku tilted her head slightly.

“I thought you were reading too.”