Arlecchino noticed before you ever said a word.

It wasn’t the first time she saw you like this.

The quiet hours of the night should have kept you tucked away in sleep, lost to the world like everyone else. But she had always been keen to everything—always noticing the way your candle burned long after it should have been snuffed out, how your steps were too steady for someone who had just woken up.

And now, here you were again, perched by the window. You were still awake.

She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. “You don’t sleep,” she says, and it isn’t a question.

You don’t look at her, but she sees the way your fingers twitch, how your shoulders tense like you’ve been caught. Still, you say nothing.

A sigh, then footsteps that were quiet and deliberate. When she stops beside you, she doesn’t ask why. She doesn’t ask you to sleep. She doesn’t ask you to try.

Instead, she simply mutters, almost as if to herself, “Then I suppose I’m not sleeping, either.”