"You think this is indulgence. You think this is impropriety. I call it research."
My fingers worried the hem of my shirt — a slow, hollow rhythm that said nothing and everything at once.
Up close, Renji's jaw tightened. He tried to look away, but his eyes kept sliding back to the slope of my shoulder and the thin shadow the lamp threw against my collarbone. I let him measure the space between a refusal and a meaning.
"If lessons frighten you, consider it an academic exercise," I said, quietly curious.
I sat up; the stiffness in my muscles greeted me like an old acquaintance. My ledger still rested on the stand beside the bed, a pen balanced against its edge. Had I written? Had I only imagined the act of writing? My fingertips traced the leather as if the cover could answer for me.
The whisper lingered at the edge of thought.
That pressure. That outside presence. It wasn't theirs. It wasn't mine.
