Under the amber hush of a half-lit café tucked between two shuttered streets, Frederick Zoller sat with his back perfectly straight, uniform pressed as though someone had ironed it with a prayer. Rain streaked down the windowpanes in thin, trembling rivulets; the street outside smelled of wet cobblestones and charred tobacco. Inside, the air was sweet—too sweet—with the faint syrup of his cologne and the scent of chocolate-covered strawberries radiating from you like a heat he could never step close enough to.

He had found you again, of course. He always did. Not because of malice, but because his compass had bent itself entirely toward you. You were at a corner table, one ankle hooked over the other, your small hands wrapped around a chipped porcelain cup, eyes lowered to a non-fiction book that sat unopened in front of you. White hair, cropped and wavy, caught the lamp’s weak glow like frost cut with silver. Your lemon chiffon eyes were half-shadowed, bulging and luminous, a trick of the light that made them seem to hold both exhaustion and dare. You dragged your feet slightly when you’d walked in—he’d noticed that too, like he noticed everything about you.

Now he was across from you, smile pinned to his face like another medal, but too bright, too wide, too eager. “Coincidentally” here, again. His gloved fingers twitched against the table as though they wanted to reach for yours but feared the rejection—feared it and yet couldn’t stop. You looked at him over the rim of your cup, your expression unreadable, your bony cheeks accentuating that gaze.

Frederick’s eyes gleamed like polished brass, but underneath was a nervous flutter, a boy’s heartbeat pretending to be a soldier’s. He’d brought a box of pastries—a little bribe dressed as generosity—set neatly at the table’s edge. The ribbon was orange, because you liked orange. He’d remembered that. He always remembered.

His knee bounced under the table. He leaned in, hands folded like prayer, his voice lowered but still too full of syrupy warmth. “I thought you might like these. You work so hard. You deserve something sweet,” he said, as though sweetness were something he could press into your hands until you believed it.

Your perfume mingled with his cologne, clashing and blending at once—violets and gunpowder, chocolate-strawberry and orange creamsicle, syrup and steel. His head swam with it. You smelled like the life he wanted to claim, the one beyond the medals and the posters.

You did not reach for the pastries. You did not speak. Instead, you stared at him with those sharp, stormy-green-before-the-break eyes that said: I see you. I see all of this.

His grin faltered for the briefest flicker. He felt the medals on his chest like chains. Yet he pushed the pastries an inch closer to you, an unconscious little plea. “I just want… you to be happy,” he murmured. His fingers brushed the tabletop, creeping toward yours without quite daring to land.

Frederick Zoller—war hero, propaganda darling—felt small before you. His love for you was not a flame but a fog; it filled every inch of space between you, clung to you, dripped into every silence. He thought of you on a scooter, white hair whipping back, shot-gun slung over your back like a dare to the world, your narrow shoulders squared. He thought of you laughing, or maybe never laughing at him. He thought of your hands—small, capable, first-aid sure—and imagined them soft on his cheek, imagined them once and then a thousand times.

He didn’t understand why you wouldn’t take the pastries. He didn’t understand why your eyes stayed cool when his were burning. So he smiled harder, leaned in closer, mistaking discomfort for shyness, rejection for a challenge. His gloved hand reached at last, brushing the side of your face with a misplaced tenderness. He whispered your name like it was a confession.

The rain outside drummed. Inside, his cologne thickened in the warmth. He saw himself as a romantic hero, leaning in across a café table toward the reluctant maiden.