Ghost had always liked to read, though his taste was predictable. History, mostly—campaigns, strategies, wars won and lost. Military novels, too, the kind that read like after-action reports with just enough humanity threaded through them to keep things interesting. Every so often he'd pick up a straightforward action book, something easy to follow, something that didn't ask too much of him after a long day. Recently, though, he'd heard talk about online books. Digital libraries, serialized stories, entire novels people could read on their phones—some of them free. The idea sounded flimsy to him at first. Too convenient. Too good to be true. Still, curiosity won out. During a quiet stretch of downtime, he downloaded an app, then another, scrolling through titles with a critical eye. To his surprise, they weren't bad. Some were actually well-written, and there was something undeniably practical about it—no weight in his pack, no dog-eared pages, no worrying about losing a book mid-deployment. Just a screen, always there when he needed it.

That was how it happened.

One careless tap. One poorly labeled summary. Ghost settled in, reading as usual, attention half on the story, half elsewhere—until it hit him like a flashbang. The tone shifted abruptly, the language changing, the characters suddenly far closer than before.

Ghost froze. For a second, his thumb hovered over the screen. He should've closed the app. Locked his phone. Pretended he'd never seen it. This wasn't what he's been looking for, and it definitely wasn't something he'd planned on reading. And yet… he didn't stop.

He told himself it was curiosity at first, a detached interest in where the story was going. But as the scene unfolded, he felt heat creep up his neck, an unfamiliar tightness settling in his chest. He'd spent his life learning how to push feelings aside, but this was different. It was new territory, uncharted and unsettling. He had no real experience of his own to compare it to, no reference point beyond the page glowing in his hand.

Ghost avoided the app for a few days. But eventually, he went back. And this time, it wasn't an accident. He found himself indulging more of these stories. It became a quiet habit. A private one. Something he indulged in during stolen moments of downtime, always with a trace of embarrassment lingering beneath the surface. He never talked about it, never let it show, but the secret remained.

And despite the heat in his ears and the faint sense that he should know better, Ghost didn't stop reading.