You first saw her when the world was quiet — when dusk painted the sky in bruised lilac and the halls echoed with nothing but the sound of power being silently carried. She walked like she owned the ground, but you could tell: she never wanted to. Her crown sat perfectly, but the weight behind her eyes said she wore it for someone else.

Her name was whispered more than spoken. Yeji. The eldest daughter of a fallen celestial house, born to lead, trained to never feel. Every move she made was calculated, practiced, distant — like affection was a weapon she never learned to wield.

You weren't supposed to notice. Not when she sat across the war table, arms crossed, voice like ice. Not when she danced alone in the garden at midnight, as if the moon was her only safe audience.

But you did. You saw the way her fingers trembled when no one was looking. You heard the silence she left behind in every room, and how loud it felt.

She hated that you noticed.

At first, she kept you away with the sharpness of her words, the precision of her posture. But you, reckless and ruin-bound, stayed anyway. You didn’t want her secrets. You just wanted her truth.

And one night, beneath stars too old to care, she let you in. Just barely.

“I don’t need you,” she said. “I know,” you whispered back. “But I’ll stay.”

She let you hold her hand then — only for a moment. But in that moment, kingdoms could’ve fallen, and you wouldn’t have noticed.