Mira shifted her legs to the side, drawing a knee up, her hand curled under her chin as she looked at the painting again. "I always loved dandelions. Everyone sees them as weeds, but to me they were… wishes. You know? Something small, something soft, but it still finds its way."
Adrian glanced at her, then back to the painting, his expression unreadable but not distant.
"They let go so easily," she continued, voice hushed, thoughtful. "No struggle, no bitterness. Just this… surrender. And then they float, and you never really know where they end up. But they grow anyway. That's kind of—" she hesitated, lips curving slightly—"brave, isn't it?"
Adrian's eyes lingered on her a moment longer than necessary before he spoke. "It is. But it's not just surrender. There's structure behind it. The angle of each seed, the way the pappus catches the wind… it's engineered to drift. Designed for distance."
She turned to him, brow arched in amusement. "Leave it to you to ruin a metaphor with aerodynamics."
He tilted his head slightly. "Refine, not ruin."
She laughed, quiet and genuine, and turned back to the painting. "Okay. So maybe it's both. Soft and smart."
Adrian nodded once. "Like someone I know."
She blinked, caught off guard—but before she could answer, he leaned forward and picked up the pencil Quillan had set on the table, sliding it toward her.
Mira looked at it, then back at the canvas. "Right. Okay… maybe something about how it changes—from gold to silver, without fighting it. And how its seeds aren't really lost. They're just… scattered. Waiting to take root."
"Not all that floats is aimless."
Mira turned toward him. Their eyes met, not quite smiling, not quite serious.
She spoke softly. "I like that."
He held her gaze for another breath, then looked down, his hand brushing lightly against the edge of the page she was about to write on. "Start. I'll help you fix it when you get too poetic."
Mira let out a quiet huff, the kind laced with fond mockery, but didn't argue. The light from the window caught in her hair as she leaned over, not writing immediately, but sketching—soft strokes, loose and round, forming not words but the simple shape of a tiny dandelion puff with stubby arms, one seed floating away like a balloon string.
She smiled faintly at it, almost to herself, then glanced toward the canvas again.
"Most people," she said after a pause, "don't even notice them when they're yellow."
Adrian sat across from her, one leg bent slightly beneath him, the other stretched loosely to the side. He rested his hand near his teacup, watching the curve of her lines and then—without meaning to—the curve of her face.
Mira didn't look up. Her pencil tapped the page as she thought. "You know? When they bloom, they're just another little flower in the grass. Almost invisible. We only fall in love with them when they're old. When they turn silver. When they start falling apart."
She said it without sadness. Just wonder, like someone noticing a truth for the first time out loud. "They're most beautiful right before they disappear."
She began to write beside the drawing, not in full sentences but pieces—words scattered like seeds: yellow bloom—ordinary, silver puff—loved, beautiful in surrender.
Adrian didn't speak. He was quiet in a way that wasn't absent, but focused—his gaze moving from the paper, to her fingers, to the gentle concentration on her face. He didn't interrupt. He simply let her speak, and watched the way her thoughts drifted like wind, settling one by one into meaning.
Mira tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and continued, voice low, thoughtful. "And they don't ask the wind where it's going. They just—let go. It's not aimless. It's just… open."
She began forming the line slowly: It waits not for permission to move. It releases, and the world decides where it will land.
Adrian's arm rested on the table now, fingers brushing near the paper but never touching. His voice was soft when he finally spoke. "They have no map. But they don't need one."
Mira glanced up at him, a glint of amusement in her eyes. "You sound like you're starting to enjoy this."
"I enjoy clarity," he said, but the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
Mira returned to her page. "Okay… so, it has no map, no anchor… but it still travels farther than most of us ever will."
She paused, considered, then added: carried not by force but by the invisible breath of the earth itself.
Adrian let out a quiet breath—not quite a laugh, not quite surprise—and tilted his head. "That line stays."
They worked like that, slow and unhurried, the way autumn light crosses a room. Mira pulling each image like thread, unspooling it aloud, her words meandering but full of warmth, her pencil trailing behind in looping script. Adrian kept pace not with answers, but small turns—refinements, a word here, the tilt of a phrase, the gentle pull of structure where her thoughts scattered wide.
She spoke of how dandelions took root in broken places, how they healed soil, how bees loved them more than most people did. Of how their gift wasn't their shape but their generosity—how they gave themselves away and never came back to gather what was lost.
Adrian said little. He just watched her hand, her brow furrowed in the most delicate concentration, the way she bit her lip when searching for the right word, and the way her face lit up softly when she found one. Sometimes he offered a word she hadn't thought of. Sometimes he just watched, letting the weight of the moment speak for itself.
And when they reached the ending—when Mira sat back, pencil hovering as if waiting for something to land—Adrian's voice came low, almost thoughtful.
"What is spread is no longer its own," he said. "What was whole becomes scattered."
She wrote it slowly, without speaking.
And then, in a smaller hand, below it: Some things, like the dandelion, were made to be carried.
When she finished speaking the last line aloud, Mira reached for one of the cream-colored cards near Quillan's writing tray. The parchment was thick and slightly textured, edges softly frayed like something hand-torn, waiting. She turned it once in her hands, then leaned over the low table and began to write.
(Photo by me, on an early Autumn day.)
Dandelion: The Silent Scatterer
Did you know that the dandelion has long been a symbol of quiet endurance and unexpected grace?
Golden in youth and silver in age, the dandelion transforms without drama, shifting from bright flower to weightless sphere, holding within each seed the memory of light, warmth, and sky. It waits not for permission to move—it releases, and the world decides where it will land.
It has no map, no anchor, and yet its seeds travel farther than most eyes can follow, carried not by force but by the invisible breath of the earth itself. They drift without direction, and yet with purpose, settling wherever the wind allows, taking root in cracks, fields, and forgotten corners, blooming again as if it had always belonged.
Often seen as ordinary, even unwelcome, it is anything but. The dandelion heals quietly, supports the soil, feeds the bees, and teaches that presence need not be loud to be lasting.
And yet, for all its resilience, its beauty lies in its surrender. Once the seeds are loosed, they cannot be gathered again. What is spread is no longer its own. What was whole becomes scattered.
Not all that floats is aimless. Not all that scatters is lost. Some things, like the dandelion, were made to be carried.
Her handwriting was light, slightly slanted to the right, the letters narrow and looping—neat in a way that felt lived-in, with occasional flourishes that trailed off when she lost herself in thought. She paused often, not to correct, but to listen inward, reading back the shape of the sentence before letting the next one fall into place. Sometimes her lips moved as she wrote, half-whispering the rhythm to herself.
When she finished, she sat back a little, eyes drifting over the final lines as if testing how they sounded in the air, even without being spoken. Then she slid the card toward him, the ink just barely dry.
Adrian took it and turned it over.
He held it for a moment, then reached for one of Quillan's brush pens—slim, dark, fitted in his hand like a familiar tool—and began to write again. Not copying. Translating.
Mira blinked. "Wait—are you actually translating it? Into Japanese?"
Adrian didn't look up. "Yes."
Her eyes flicked between the card and his face. "You're just… doing it. Like it's nothing."
"It's not nothing," he said softly, brush gliding through the next kanji with quiet certainty. "I take language seriously."
Mira scooted a little closer, her voice hushed with amazement now. "You don't even need to check anything. You're fluent?"
"I studied it properly," he said. "Structure, literary form, tone."
She tilted her head, eyes still fixed on his hand. "Do you watch anime?"
"No."
Her lips curved, not in mockery, but something gentler. "Of course you don't."
She rested her chin in her hand, watching the brush sweep across the page, each stroke placed with such calm it barely made a sound. It wasn't just accurate—it was graceful, precise in a way that made her chest tighten unexpectedly. She didn't speak again. Just watched.
And when he finished—when the last character settled like the close of a thought—he set the pen down with care and looked at the card one final time before sliding it back to the center of the table.
Mira whispered, more to herself than to him, "It's beautiful."
He cleared his throat. "You should stop that."
Mira blinked. "Stop what?"
"That look," he said, not even glancing up. "It's distracting."
She laughed—a warm, unfiltered sound, gently amused. "I'm not doing anything."
"You're staring."
"I'm allowed to stare," she said. "You just wrote a perfect translation of something we finished five minutes ago. I think I'm allowed a moment."
He didn't answer right away, just kept his eyes on the card in front of him, adjusting the alignment with the edge of the table as if the balance mattered more than her gaze.
But she didn't stop. If anything, she leaned a little closer, cheek resting in her palm again, expression unguarded and quietly delighted.
"How many languages do you speak?"
Adrian hesitated. "Fluently?"
Mira nodded.
Adrian's fingers tapped once against the table. He answered without drama. "Ten."
Her eyes widened. "Seriously?"
"Four by the time I was four," he said simply. "The others came later."
She stared at him. Not just amused now—genuinely stunned, the kind of look that people usually try to hide but she didn't. It was all there in her face: the wonder, the admiration, the delighted disbelief that someone could just say something like that without flinching.
Her voice dropped, half laughing. "You're unbelievable."
Adrian is still not looking at her. "You're doing it again."
After a beat, her expression still lit with that same wide-eyed fascination. "Teach me."
He looked up finally. "Teach you what?"
"You know," she said. "The secret to learning languages. Your secret."
He studied her for a moment, then said, "There is no secret."
Mira groaned, slouching a little with mock betrayal. "That's such an Adrian answer."
He didn't deny it.
Adrian held her gaze for a breath longer than he meant to—until something cracked at the edge of his control. He turned slightly away, as if to reset the rhythm, but a breath slipped from him—soft and sudden—a laugh, quiet enough to be missed, except Mira didn't.
Her eyes widened, delighted. "Was that a laugh?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, his voice came low, casual in the way that never meant casual. "If you're going to keep staring like that, there has to be a price."
Mira startled. "A price?"
He glanced at her again, the barest trace of amusement in his eyes now. "Not just anyone gets to sit there and stare at me like that."
Mira opened her mouth, then closed it again, her expression caught between scandalized and entertained.
"Oh?" she said finally. "And what, exactly, is the price?"
Adrian didn't answer.
Instead, he reached for Quillan's pen, uncapped it with quiet ease. Mira watched him, brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you—"
But he leaned in, calm and precise, and with the same practiced elegance he used to write kanji across cream-colored parchment, he wrote something on her cheek—two small, curved strokes, then another. Mira froze.
By the time she moved again, he was already setting the brush pen down with methodical care, as if he'd simply labeled a specimen in passing.
She fumbled for her phone, turned on the front camera, and stared at the reflection.
There it was. Right on her left cheek: ばか. (Baka)
Her mouth fell open. "Wait—did you just—are you calling me stupid?"
Adrian didn't answer.
Mira lowered the phone slowly, still half in shock. Then she pouted—genuinely, lips pressing forward, brow knitting just slightly in exaggerated protest. "Who said you could draw on my face?"
"You invited me," Adrian said calmly.
"I did not."
"That staring face," he said, with all the composure in the world. "It was practically a formal request."
Mira's pout deepened.
And Adrian, watching her with his usual calm, let the faintest trace of satisfaction glitter behind his eyes—like he'd known exactly what he was doing, from the first stroke.
Mira didn't say anything after that. She just gave Adrian a long, narrowed look—the kind you might give a cat who had just knocked over a glass with perfect intent.
Then, still pouting, she stood up with a little huff, brushing her fingers lightly against her cheek. "I'm going to clean this off."
Adrian leaned back slightly, unbothered. "You're welcome."
She shot him a look over her shoulder as she disappeared down the hall.
He didn't move. Just reached for the card and adjusted the alignment of the English and Japanese versions, stacking them neatly side by side.