Many years later, when I look back on that time, I still feel a gentle warmth—as if a sip of warm water had settled in my chest. It didn’t burn, but seeped slowly and steadily into my heart.

  After that battle, after those truths, after choosing love—I didn’t leave. I didn’t go to the city to look for a job, nor did I try to find some so-called love of my own. It’s not that I never thought about it—it’s just that... I didn’t have time.

  Loving Nox and Luma had already taken up all the rest of my life.

  Not in a painful, draining way—but in the way where you’d gladly spend a lifetime’s worth of effort just to get a little closer to them.

  I began to study the written language they had created. At first, it was just a bunch of strange curved lines and pictographs, like relics sealed in the seams of time. But Nox had said, “This is the vessel of our memory.” So I traced every stroke, memorized every symbol, practiced until even copying one word per page felt like joy.

  Sometimes, Nox would be in the kitchen, wearing an apron, chopping vegetables. A far cry from the version of him that once seemed able to change the world with a single move. He chopped slowly, often pausing to glance at me—as if making sure I was still there. And I’d sit at the kitchen door, watching his profile, listening to the rhythm of the cutting board, and I’d think to myself: This is what it feels like to truly be alive.

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  Luma would sit in the yard with a pale blue umbrella, telling me stories from their long past. Some were abstract, some left halfway unfinished. But her voice—her voice was so gentle that I never wanted to interrupt, even when I didn’t understand a word. I’d often sit there the whole afternoon, doing nothing, just listening.

  Sometimes, they’d both get excited.

  One day, Nox suddenly said he wanted to “stretch his limbs.” Luma stood up quietly without a word. Then they started sparring right there in the yard. My first reaction wasn’t to run, but to pull open the garden gate, grab a chair, sit in the corner, and hold up a handmade sign painted with crayons, cheering loudly: “Left side! Dodge quick! Nox, watch her fake-outs!”—I knew they heard me, because Luma’s moves paused for a second, and Nox laughed.

  When they finished, I helped clean the yard with them. Some of the stone tiles were shattered, part of the flower bed had collapsed—but they didn’t care. Luma gently lifted the fallen plants, and Nox picked up each broken piece of brick. As for me? I followed behind with a broom, sweeping as I scolded, “You two are seriously childish.” But they both laughed, saying, “Weren’t you enjoying it too?”

  And so the days passed, one after another.

  No grand destiny. No towering missions. No intricate conspiracies. Just sunlight streaming into the kitchen in the morning, the soft rustling of wind through the trees at night, the moment when I finally understood the book on the topmost shelf.

  The city remained noisy, but it couldn’t disturb this place.

  This place was small, quiet, a bit strange—but it was home.

  And I came to love this kind of life more and more. Because I could feel it—every day, I was a little closer to them. Not as a student, not as a rescued child, not as a test subject, not as a “witness” to anything.

  Just me, Vera—a me who loved them.

  And that alone... was already enough.