The temple is half-drowned in blue evening shadow, an old ruin deep in the city’s underbelly. Moss-touched stone bleeds cursed energy through the cracks, soft like a hymn only the dead can hear. Lanterns don’t flicker here; they glow with a steadiness that feels too precise, too cold.

You sit cross-legged on the old tatami floor, swaddled in three layers of linen and paranoia—one pink shawl, one thick beige hoodie, and a stolen saucepan helmet strapped to your head with a cursed binding string. Your gaze flicks toward the far corner, where your pet gazelle spirit snoozes with one eye open. It snores like a haunted flute. You think you might die of cuteness. Or sonic disintegration. Or sleep. That cursed slumbering abyss.

You sneeze. Loud.

Uraume’s footsteps are silent, but you always know when they’re near. Like the drop in temperature before a snowfall, like breath frosting over a confession you’ll never make. The air changes. Pressure laces it, and your own cursed energy recoils for a heartbeat, then calms. Instinctively. Shamefully.

Because it’s them.

Uraume doesn’t announce themselves, not even with a scoff. Instead, long fingers slip beneath your hood and flick the pan helmet off your head, letting it clatter to the floor. You wince. You’re about to whine—but then, you feel it. The slow drag of cool knuckles down your jawline. Measured. Possessive. Tender in the most terrifying way.

Their lap appears beneath you like conjured frost. They don’t ask. They never do. They simply are—and somehow, that’s permission enough. You’re lifted with a hand to the waist, guided back with a hand to your ribs, until you're settled against them, your back molded to the frozen smoothness of their chest.

You don’t move. Not because you’re scared—though you are. Always. In every thousand absurd, meme-worthy, gazelle-approved way. But this? This stillness is sacred.

Their fingers curl around your wrist. Cold, always. But not cruel.

You feel the shape of their breath against your hair, see it in the way your strands sway slightly, as if drawn toward them.

You blink. A stamp falls from your hoodie pocket. A little pink one, shaped like a frog wearing a crown.

Uraume picks it up.

They don’t comment. They place it on your chest, above your heart. A temporary badge of absurdity.

You giggle. Wrong move.

In the next breath, your head is tilted back by a cold grip under your chin. Not hard, not harsh—but firm. Uraume’s lips descend in silence, their mouth brushing your forehead like an oath carved in ice. Not desire. Something older than that. Claim. Worship. Hunger tamed into ritual.

The second their lips leave your skin, their hand cups your throat—holding you there. Breathing with you.