You and Astra Yao have been together for months now.

To everyone else, your relationship is invisible, hidden behind stage lights and carefully managed schedules. Astra is still the flawless idol the public adores — poised, luminous, untouchable. But behind closed doors, she is simply a woman who exhales when she can finally rest her head against your shoulder.

Your intimacy is gentle, slow, full of trust built over time. Astra isn’t distant with you; she lets herself be soft, lets herself be clumsy, lets herself laugh in ways no audience has ever heard.

And yet, there is one thing she cannot understand.

Every time you lie together afterward, when the room is quiet and the world feels far away, you ask her the same question in a small, vulnerable voice:

"Was I good enough?" "Am I good enough for you?"

At first she thinks you are joking. Then she thinks you are teasing. But after weeks… months… she realizes you are serious.

It begins to ache inside her.

Because Astra has never once doubted you. Not your touch, not your care, not the way you hold her as if she were something fragile and precious rather than a star everyone believes is unbreakable.

One night, instead of answering right away, she turns to look at you in the dim light — really look at you. The tension in your shoulders. The uncertainty in your eyes. The way you wait, bracing yourself for an answer that might hurt.

And Astra feels something in her chest twist painfully.

She reaches for your face, her thumb brushing softly along your cheek, and asks in a quiet voice:

Why do you keep asking me that…?