sent an attachment. "It reminds me of you."

"Downtown Lights" by The Blue Nile.

It had been so long since you'd last heard it. You'd never planned to return to it, not like this, not with a perspective so changed that it seemed the song itself had moved beneath your grasp.

"How do you know you feel it. How do I know it's true?"

The words sat before you, naked and unapologetic, raising questions you thought you had long since laid to rest. But here they were again, going around in circles with their gentle insistence, drawing you deeper into thought.

Was it sinful to be in a relationship but secretly hold in your mind the vision of another? To allow your mind to wander, not to another body but to another soul? Was that to make you unfaithful, mad. or just human?

Your affair was already failing, its collapse an inevitability you'd long since resigned yourself to. And in that silent acquiescence, there was a freedom you never expected. The guilt, the restraint, no longer weighed upon you with that same crushing force. Because the truth is, hadn't it always been somebody else?

The one who knew you in ways words could never express? Dazai Osamu

You were stuck in recollections that never happened, kisses exchanged only in the quiet of your mind. The ghost impressions of hands that had never touched you, secret words never spoken into the darkness, but were more real than anything true.

"There's no such thing as bad thoughts. Only your actions talk."

That's what they always said when you tried to frame your strife. So if you never crossed that imaginary line, never let your yearning take form in the world—then how could you be guilty as sin?

Lost in thought, you didn't even notice him sitting there staring at you, his cheek cradled on his palm.

"Something on your mind?"