Urenna Obi had always believed that some houses remember the people who pass through them.
The City-view estate certainly remembered her.
Children in town claimed it was haunted. Adults said it simply needed repairs. But ten-year-old Urenna had known better and so was the man who lived inside it.
It still stood at the far edge of the Mariner's Block, huge and pale colored, its windows reflecting the sea in long, wavering blue strips.
Back then, Echezona was merely a distant figure to her, an elegant silhouette glimpsed through tall windows, moving quietly past rows of books.
A man whose family owns the estate, thick haired, charming, who spoke gently, asked thoughtful questions, and always looked like he was listening to something she couldn't hear.
She remembered the first day she followed her mother into that house, she was employed to tend the garden.
Her small boots muddy, her jar of fireflies flickering like miniature lanterns in her hands, her heartbeat quickened by equal parts shyness and curiosity.
Her mother had knocked on the huge mahogany front door. It opened almost instantly, and there he was; autumn eyes. warm voice. A small, soft smile.
"Ms. Obi," he had greeted her mother. "Welcome."
Then his gaze drifted downward, to the little girl clutching a jar of light.
"Now who…," he asked, warmth blooming in his tone, "is this astronomer you have with you?"
Urenna had puffed her cheeks playfully,
"I'm not an astronomer. I only collect stars."
Most adults would have laughed, corrected, or humored her.
Echezona only knelt, lowering himself to her height.
"Then you're something far more extraordinary," he said to her.
"A keeper of the cosmos."
They laughed.
While her mother continued her work, Urenna sat at a corner, combing her environment with her eyes in search of her mother's employer.
From that moment, she followed her mother to work, the City-view estate became the first place Urenna ever felt seen, spoken to and heard.
The seasons passed, and when her mother's work ended, she sought something better out of town.
The stone house became no more than a distant shape on the hills.
The jar of fireflies dimmed.
The man in the window faded into memory.
Until the day he didn't.
The first thing Urenna noticed upon returning to the Mariner's Block wasn't how much the town had changed, but how much she had.
She was twenty now.
Independent.
Confident, at least by appearance.
Carrying a new kind of weight; responsibility for her mother's deteriorating health, the demands of adulthood, and the quiet ache of outgrowing a life that had once fit her perfectly.
She'd come back only for a few months, that was the plan, her mother wanted to connect with the place she had lived and known as home.
It happened on a breezy September afternoon. She was walking home from the store with a paper bag of groceries when she passed the familiar iron gates at the hill's edge.
The City-view estate; Still huge.
Still silent.
Still watching the sea.
Urenna slowed, her breath caught.
Just a glance, she told herself. She blamed it on nostalgia but nostalgia is a powerful current, and before she realized it, she had lifted the gate's latch and walked the long, overgrown path to the front door.
She hesitated only a heartbeat before knocking.
The door opened…
And everything inside her stilled,
Echezona Oko stood in the doorway, older than the memory she carried, hair touched with silver, jaw sharper, shoulders more rigid.
His eyes…
She would have known those eyes anywhere.
"Ure?" he breathed.
Her name on his lips felt like the opening of an old music box.
"You remember me," she whispered.
A small, disbelieving laugh escaped him.
"Remember you? Urenna, you turned an entire corner of my library into a museum of constellations."
Heat rose in her cheeks. "I was just a child playing around with stuffs."
"You were," he said softly. "And now… you're—"
He stopped himself abruptly, as though he had stepped too close to something fragile, but Urenna understood the part he didn't say…
'And now you're not a child at all'. She smiled.
"I'd love to see the library again if you'll let me." She smiled softly.
"Of course," he said instantly.
"Come in."
Back then, when she was only ten and her world was small and sun-lit, Echezona had called her his 'little wife' in the teasing, harmless way adults often did with overly attached children.
She didn't fully understand the words, but she understood the warmth behind them… and that was enough to plant something in her chest.
Something too tender to name.
He was eleven years older, a quiet man in the neighborhood, and though she was young, she knew what beauty was— she knew he was an eye catch and she loved him.
Perhaps it was childish, perhaps a little foolish, but the feeling was fierce, and possessive.
She hated the girls his age.
Hated the way he laughed with them, played with them, spoke to them with an ease he never used with her.
Years drifted by, soft as dust on forgotten shelves, and the innocent fondness of a child grew into something sharper. Something hungry.
He noticed.
Slowly, because he was too old—she was too young —he stepped back.
He avoided her gaze, softened his voice, kept the distance wide and safe.
To him, she was a teenage girl with a heart too bright, and he feared wounding her with the weight of feelings she wasn't ready to carry.
Then came the day she moved with her mom.
The library was exactly as she remembered it and nothing like she remembered it, a bit of both.
Books still lined the walls, their spines forming a tapestry of color and words.
Dust motes drifted lazily through beams of afternoon sun. A faint scent of Foreign books clung to the shelves.
But…
Something new lingered there too, on the far wall, her childhood constellation drawings, yellowed, curled at the corners were carefully preserved behind glass frames.
Her breath caught. "You kept these?"
Echezona stood beside her, hands lightly clasped behind his back. "They're a part of the house now."
She touched the glass lightly. "You didn't have to do that."
"No," he said. "I wanted to."
Their eyes met, brief, bright, charged. Then he cleared his throat. "Tea?"
She laughed. "You still drink spearmint, don't you?"
His lips twitched. "And you still prefer four spoonfuls of sugar."
"I do not!" she protested.
"You always have."
"Maybe when I was ten…"
He raised an eyebrow, amused. "Five spoonfuls?"
She huffed, flustered. "Just two."
He gave a small, triumphant smile and walked toward the kitchen.
Urenna watched him go, feeling something warm unfurl slowly in her chest. How strange, she thought.
What she felt as a child had been soft and innocent, like a candle glow.
This feeling was different.
Older.
Heavier.
Something far, far brighter.