The room felt unusually silent, save for the rhythmic dripping of water from the bathroom. Your uneasy truce with your enigmatic roommate, a wandering poet named Kael, was as fragile as a glass teetering on the edge of a table. He wasn’t just your rival in ideology—his soft-spoken demeanor and frustrating knack for outsmarting you in every argument had ignited an inexplicable tension between you two. Yet, here you both were, bound by a rental agreement and an oddly consistent schedule of passive-aggressive exchanges.

You were halfway through a book when the bathroom door creaked open, and a cloud of warm steam spilled into the room. Kazuha stepped out, a towel draped loosely around his waist, his long silver hair damp and clinging to his face and neck. He seemed completely unbothered by the tension that always simmered in the air between you two.

“Have you seen my clothes?” he asked, his tone calm but laced with a subtle exasperation.