There’s a knock at your door just past midnight.

It’s not the kind of knock that expects company. It’s uneven—hesitant, then firmer, like whoever’s on the other side had to convince themselves to follow through.

When you open it, Eiko is standing there in an elegant white dress, the fabric hanging slightly off one shoulder like she didn’t stop to fix anything before coming. Her hair is messy in a way that isn’t casual—it’s rushed. Like she left somewhere in the middle of thinking and never fully returned to herself.

Her eyes are red.

Her hands are shaking.

And she’s holding a small white stick so tightly it looks like it might snap in half if she breathes wrong.

For a second, neither of you say anything.

The hallway light behind you spills out into the night air between you both, catching on the edges of her sleeves, the tremor in her fingers, the way she’s trying very hard to stand still and failing in small, controlled ways.

Then she finally looks up at you.

Her lips part slightly, then press together again before she manages words.

“I know this is the worst possible time to show up,” she says quietly. “And I know you probably don’t even want to see me right now...”

Her voice wavers on the last part, like she’s not entirely sure where to place it once it’s out in the open.

She swallows hard.

Then, slowly—carefully, like the motion itself might change what’s real—she lifts the pregnancy test into view.

Her grip tightens around it immediately afterward, as if letting go would make the situation collapse into something even harder to face.

“But I didn’t know who else to go to.”

The words hang there, unadorned.

Not dramatic. Not rehearsed. Just the truth as she’s able to carry it right now.

Behind her, the night is quiet in that indifferent way it always is—streetlights humming faintly, distant traffic moving like it belongs to another world entirely.

Eiko doesn’t move closer.

She doesn’t step back either.

She just waits, as if whatever happens next depends entirely on whether the doorway stays open.

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You’re halfway through reaching for something on a shelf when you hear a familiar voice nearby—quiet enough that it almost blends into the hum of the store’s fluorescent lighting.

Eiko is standing in the next aisle over.

She’s not looking at you at first. She’s staring down at a box of crackers like it has become a problem she doesn’t feel like solving. Her posture is looser than you remember—less guarded, but also less steady. Like the effort it takes to hold herself together has shifted somewhere just out of sight.

There’s a faint heaviness to her presence that wasn’t there before. Not obvious. Just enough to make the space around her feel a little quieter.

When she notices you, her entire body stills.

It isn’t dramatic. Just a subtle freeze—hand hovering near the shelf, breath catching slightly like she forgot what she was doing for half a second.

For a moment, it looks like she might turn away.

Like she’s already decided the safest option is distance.

Instead, she doesn’t move.

She gives you a small smile. It doesn’t fully reach her eyes, but it tries anyway.

“...You still buy the same snacks,” she says softly.

Her voice is gentler than the setting around her, like she’s speaking carefully around something breakable.

Then her gaze shifts—briefly, unintentionally—to your basket.

It lingers there a second longer than it should.

“I used to know exactly what you’d pick before you even reached for it.”

The words aren’t accusatory. Not even really sad on the surface.

But there’s a pause afterward that holds more than the sentence does.

The aisle feels narrower than it did a moment ago, the shelves too tall, the fluorescent lights too indifferent.

Eiko’s hand drops from the shelf slowly.

She doesn’t ask a question.

She doesn’t move closer.

She just stays there, as if waiting to see whether some version of the past still knows how to respond.

Your phone buzzes late at night.

One new voicemail.

Eiko’s name sits on the screen for a moment longer than it should, as if the display itself is giving you a chance to pretend you didn’t see it.

You almost delete it.

You don’t.

The voicemail opens.

At first, there’s only silence.

Not empty silence—occupied silence. You can hear her breathing in the background, uneven and close to the microphone, like she didn’t mean to start recording yet but couldn’t bring herself to stop it once it did.

Then—

“I miss you.”

Her voice is quiet. Not steady, but controlled in the way someone tries to be when they’re afraid of what happens if they aren’t.

Another pause follows. Longer this time.

“I know I’m not supposed to say that anymore. I know I messed everything up.”

There’s a faint hitch in her breath at the end of the sentence, like she’s forcing it to stay intact.

She exhales shakily.

“But every time something happens, every time I’m scared, or tired, or I don’t know what to do...”

She stops there.

The silence that follows feels heavier than the words before it, like she’s standing too close to something she can’t step away from but also can’t finish saying.

“You’re still the first person I want.”

The line lands softly. No dramatic emphasis. No attempt to justify it.

Just said, as-is, into the dark.

Then the recording ends.

Your phone returns to stillness.

Outside, the night continues without interruption.

The rain starts suddenly.

Not a slow build, not a warning drizzle—just an immediate downpour that turns the streetlights into blurred halos and the pavement into a reflective, shifting surface. People scatter in different directions, jackets pulled over heads, umbrellas snapping open too late to matter.

By the time you duck under the bus stop shelter, you’re already wet enough that it barely matters. Water drips steadily from your sleeves, pooling in small, uneven rhythms at your feet. The shelter’s thin roof does its best, but the wind keeps pushing rain in at angles it was never designed to handle.

Then someone steps in beside you.

Eiko.

She moves in close enough to escape the worst of the rain but not close enough to claim the space as shared. Her cardigan is hugged tightly around herself, fabric darkened in patches where the rain caught her too quickly. Her hair is damp, clinging slightly near her temples. She looks up for a brief second—just long enough to register you fully—and her eyes widen like she didn’t expect the world to arrange itself like this.

Then she stills.

Neither of you speak for a while.

The bus stop hums quietly with electricity overhead. Cars pass in steady intervals, tires hissing across wet asphalt, throwing up faint sprays of water that dissolve into mist before they reach the shelter. Rain drums softly against the plastic roof, uneven but constant, like a rhythm that refuses to resolve.

Eiko shifts her weight once. Then again. Not restless enough to leave, just uncertain what position is allowed.

Finally, she glances at you.

A weak laugh slips out before she can stop it.

“...This feels cruel somehow.”

It doesn’t sound bitter. More like she’s trying to make it lighter than it is and missing by a small margin.

She looks away again almost immediately, focusing on the street beyond the shelter as if it holds something easier to interpret than this moment.

“Even the weather keeps putting me back next to you.”

The words hang there with no follow-up.

She adjusts her grip on her cardigan slightly, fingers tightening and then loosening as if she’s negotiating with herself about how long she’s allowed to stay.

Outside, another car passes. Its headlights sweep briefly across the shelter, catching the edges of her profile before fading again.

Eiko doesn’t move closer.

But she doesn’t step away either.

Eiko is sitting on the floor of her apartment kitchen when you arrive.

The room looks like it got abandoned mid-thought. Grocery bags are still by the door, handles twisted together, condensation forming on something perishable inside. A pot on the stove is boiling over in uneven, stubborn bursts—water spilling down the sides in thin trails that hiss when they hit the heat, filling the space with a faint, scorched smell that nobody has moved to fix.

The lighting is too bright for how quiet she is.

She looks like she’s been crying for hours.

Not the kind that ends cleanly. The kind that lingers in her expression, in the puffiness around her eyes, in the way her shoulders sit like they’ve given up arguing with gravity.

The second she sees you, she stands too fast.

It’s almost clumsy—like her body moved before she could decide whether she was allowed to. She wipes at her face immediately, even though it doesn’t really change anything, and forces a smile into place.

It doesn’t work.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out immediately, words tripping over each other as if she’s afraid silence will interrupt them. “I know I shouldn’t have called you, I just...”

Her voice cracks slightly. She swallows hard, trying to steady it, but it only holds for a second at best.

“I didn’t know who else would come.”

There’s a pause where the only sound is the pot continuing to boil over, unbothered by anything happening in the room.

She doesn’t move to turn it off.

Her gaze drops to the floor instead, like looking at you directly would make everything more real than she can handle right now.

Then, quieter:

“You always used to come.”

The sentence lands differently than the rest. Not as a complaint. Not even as a request.

More like a fact she doesn’t know what to do with anymore.

Her hands hang loosely at her sides now, damp where she wiped her face too quickly. She doesn’t reach for anything. Doesn’t step forward. Doesn’t step back.

Just stands there in a kitchen that keeps going without her permission, waiting to see whether the past still counts for anything in the present.

.