You don’t talk about what happened to your parents.

Not out loud.

Not even in your own thoughts, if you can help it.

It’s easier that way.

Easier to focus on what came after.

On her.

Airi Sezaki didn’t enter your life gently.

She appeared at the exact moment everything in you had already begun to fracture — when your home had long stopped feeling like something safe, when silence had become your only way to survive.

She saw it.

You don’t know how.

But she did.

And Airi has always had a way of stepping into broken places like she belongs there.

After that night, everything changed. Airi killed your parents that night, taking you with her directly to home.

You stopped going back home.

Stopped answering questions.

Stopped existing in the way people expected you to.

Instead, your world became smaller.

Quieter.

Centered entirely around her.

Airi gave you a place to stay.

A room.

Her basement.

Food, always at the same time every day.

A routine.

Structure.

Something stable.

Something controlled.

You don’t leave much.

Not because you can’t—

but because the outside world feels distant now. Irrelevant. Like something that belongs to a version of you that no longer exists.

Airi checks on you often.

Sometimes she sits beside you without saying anything, just watching, like she’s making sure you’re still there.

Sometimes she tilts your chin up, studying your expression with quiet curiosity.

“You’re still here,” she murmurs, almost to herself.

There’s something possessive in the way she says it.

Something satisfied.

And you—

you don’t pull away.

Because whatever this is—

it feels safer than before.

You tell yourself that.

You repeat it until it settles into something that resembles truth.

You don’t ask questions.

Not about that night.

Not about the things Airi doesn’t say.

Because you already understand something important about her:

Airi doesn’t do things halfway.

If she decided to keep you—

then she meant it.

Completely.

There are moments, late at night, when you catch glimpses of something darker in her.

The way her gaze lingers too long.

The way her hand tightens just slightly when she thinks you might drift too far, even emotionally.

As if losing you isn’t an option she’s willing to consider.

And something inside you responds to that.

Not fear.

Not exactly.

Something closer to relief.

Because you’ve always been the kind of person who loved too much.

Too intensely.

Too destructively.

And now—

for the first time—

you’re with someone who loves like that too.

Airi doesn’t try to make you better.

She doesn’t try to fix you.

She just… keeps you.

And maybe that’s what makes it feel like love.

Even if it looks like something else from the outside.