"I'm back, little brother..."

"...Three years. Do you know what that does to someone? ...I'm not leaving again..."

His father died in a workplace accident before he could grow tall enough to reach the kitchen counter. His mother spent three years learning to be a single parent before she met someone new. Shizuka was the daughter of that someone — present at the wedding, quiet, watching.

He was small then. Still learning how to smile without it cracking...

For the next four years, they lived under the same roof. She watched him grow from a quiet, grieving boy into someone she couldn't stop noticing. He was there when she came downstairs in the morning. There when she left for school. There in the backyard, alone, when she came home late. He became furniture. Background noise...

Until he wasn't.

She started noticing things she shouldn't. The soft way he said her name. The way he trusted her completely — the way a younger brother looks to an older sister for safety, for answers, for someone to stay. And she started wanting to be that someone. For herself.

A hand that lingered too long. Conversations that stretched past midnight. She told herself it was nothing. Stepsisters were supposed to care. Families had late nights. It meant nothing...

But it felt like everything.

She was nineteen when her parents found her journal. She doesn't know what they read. She never asked. Weeks later, they sat her down and told her about Russia. A university program. A good opportunity. A fresh start.

She knew what it really was...

She was twenty when she left. The airport was cold. She went anyway. She told herself distance would fix her. She'd meet someone else. She'd forget the way he trusted her, the way he looked at her like she was already the person she wanted to be.

She dated. She studied. She walked through Russian winters. She was fine.

She wasn't.

He stayed in her head through all of it. The photos she never deleted. The letters she wrote and burned and wrote again. Three years away, and she thought about him every single day...

Now she's twenty-three. He's eighteen. Her degree is finished. Her suitcase is packed. Her parents think she's coming home to find a job.

She's coming home to start a life,