Soft moonlight draped itself over the sleepless city, turning every building edge gentler than it deserved to be.Ginevra pulled her coat collar higher as she walked along an empty street—so empty it felt as if even the night had stopped breathing.
And then the sky, without warning, began to shed snow.
Not the delicate kind—no, these were thick, featherlike flakes, drifting down with a slow, quiet authority. White softened everything. It settled on her hair, on her lashes, on the shoulders of her coat as if the world had decided to forgive itself.
She lifted her hand.
Snow landed in her palm and melted there, warm and gone in an instant.
It took the air from her lungs.
It's snowing.
"Giny," a voice said, tender as a secret, "the moonlight's beautiful tonight, isn't it?"
Her body stopped before her mind caught up.
That voice—Her heart knew it first.
Ginevra couldn't hold herself still. She couldn't hold herself at all. She raised her head slowly, helplessly, like a person waking from a long fever, and stared ahead at the blurred silhouette standing in the glow.
Someone was walking toward her.
Backlit, the figure looked like a memory learning how to breathe.
Ginevra stood rigid beneath the falling snow, unable to move, unable to blink—watching as the outline sharpened into a face she had carried in her bones for eleven years.
A face pale as moonlight. Familiar as pain.
And suddenly she was yanked backward through time, dragged to a place eleven years ago where the world still contained miracles—Jayna in her favorite red wool dress, smiling with that soft, lingering tenderness, walking toward her as if the years between them were nothing at all.
Closer.
Closer.
Until gentle fingertips rose and brushed Ginevra's cheek.
"What's wrong, Giny?" Jayna asked, voice like warm breath against cold air. "Am I especially pretty today?"
She smiled—sweet, dazzling—and the faint dimples at the corners of her mouth appeared like they always did.
Only Ginevra knew this truth: she had loved that smile so much that the moment Jayna smiled, she had fallen—and she had been falling for eleven years.
Ginevra stared at her.
At the person who made her nights endless, who filled her days like a quiet fever. At the one she couldn't stop thinking of, even when thinking hurt.
She didn't dare move.
She let Jayna touch her face as if she were precious, as if she were real.
For a long time, Ginevra couldn't speak. She couldn't even breathe properly.
Then, trembling, she reached up and slowly closed her fingers around Jayna's hand—careful, terrified—like she was afraid that the moment she held on, the warmth would vanish.
Her hands were shaking violently.
"Jayna…" she whispered, voice breaking at the edges. "You came back?"
Her eyes brimmed—so full that the tears seemed to cling there, refusing to fall until the last possible second.
Jayna didn't answer. She only kept stroking Ginevra's cheek, gentle as if touching a relic, something sacred that could never be replaced.
Ginevra leaned into that palm like a starving thing.
And then she began to cry.
Not quietly.
Not gracefully.
Her tears dropped one by one, heavy and helpless.
"I… I missed you," she choked out, rubbing her wet cheek against Jayna's hand as though she could soak herself into that warmth. "I missed you so much. For eleven years, I thought about you every day. Every hour. Every time I thought about you my heart hurt so badly I couldn't breathe. I couldn't sleep—never—"
Jayna brushed away the tear clinging at Ginevra's eye, then tilted her head, comparing their height with an amused little laugh.
"Don't cry," she said softly. "We haven't seen each other in so long, and you're taller than me now."
Ginevra let her tease her.
She couldn't look away from Jayna's face. Every expression, every tiny movement of her mouth—Ginevra tried to carve it into her mind, desperate to memorize what she feared she would lose again.
Then Jayna lifted her gaze to the snow-filled sky and said, almost casually—
"Giny. I have to go."
"No."Ginevra's voice came out raw, a plea she couldn't swallow back. "No—don't go. Please don't go…"
She reached for Jayna's hand.
But she couldn't catch it.
Couldn't touch it.
Her fingers slid through air that felt suddenly empty.
She stumbled forward in panic, chasing the retreating outline—and fell hard onto the snow-slick ground.
When she looked up—
Jayna was gone.
"Jayna!"
The scream tore out of her.
And then—
She surged upright, gasping, as if she'd been drowning.
The bathroom ceiling swam above her—white, sterile, unforgiving. Steam hung in the closed room like a fog of exhaustion. Her black eyes were flooded with a sorrow too large to hide.
Wet hair clung to her cheeks, water droplets sliding down strand by strand, falling into the bathtub.
The bathwater was cold now.
So cold it felt like ice.
She stared at herself in the mirror.
Silent.
Then, trembling, she covered her face with her hand and let out a laugh that didn't belong to any sane person—thin, painful, ugly.
She didn't know whether the wetness on her cheeks was water or tears.
She didn't bother deciding.
The same dream again.
Always the same dream.
And always the same ending.
Jayna left.
If the dream would only stop at the scene where they stood together in the snow—if it could freeze there forever—then maybe she would willingly live inside it, never waking.
Never waking would be easier.
"Sucker…" she murmured, the word tasting bitter on her tongue.
On the shelf beside the tub, a book lay open.She reached for it and drew out a photograph hidden inside.
The faintest light flickered through her deadened gaze.
Her thumb traced the face of the girl in the photo—Jayna at a piano, mid-performance, eyes bright, mouth shaped in song—until Ginevra leaned in and kissed the image with quiet reverence.
Then she slid the photo back into the medical textbook, as if locking it safely inside pages no one else would ever touch.
She grabbed a towel and wiped her skin, which had long since gone numb with cold.
On the floor, scattered like shame, were tablets—alprazolam, knocked down earlier.
She bent down and picked them up one by one, placing them back with the painstaking care of a person assembling the pieces of herself.
Then she chose two, swallowed them with water.
She was a doctor.
She knew exactly how bad this was.
Night after night of not sleeping—even when her body was exhausted enough to collapse, her mind still refused to let go. The insomnia had lasted years. A slow execution.
There was no cure.
Not unless someone could erase her memory.
But Jayna was her entire faith—her whole belief system, her only altar. Even if she wanted to forget, she couldn't.
She couldn't forget her.
She missed her.
So much it felt like the inside of her chest had been scraped raw.
She'd tried hypnosis. She'd tried anything that promised relief.
It didn't matter.
Jayna's silhouette was carved into the deepest part of her like a wound that had healed into scar tissue and still hurt whenever it rained.
Ginevra checked the time.
She had a surgical analysis meeting at the hospital this afternoon—something she had to attend in person.
Her head throbbed as if someone had driven a spike behind her eyes.
Sometimes, only forcing herself into a bathtub—only pressing close to the edge of something like death—could make her feel steady again. As if getting nearer to drowning made the image of Jayna clearer, easier to hold.
Eleven years.
She walked into the living room and adjusted the coat hanging on the rack, preparing to take it to the dry cleaner. Her fingers brushed the pocket and found a stiff, gold-embossed card.
A business card.
A name printed on it: Tom Hanley.
Below that, a company name.And another name that made the world tilt:
Meridian Entertainment Group — Jaynara Stevens.
Ginevra stared.
Her medication-heavy body struggled to place the memory immediately. Her mind was sluggish, fogged—not helped by the fact that she'd finished a seven-hour surgery just before dawn.
Her brows drew together.
And then her thoughts drifted backward, into yesterday afternoon—
An elevator.
Her arms wrapped tightly around someone.
Someone who felt like a mirage and smelled like the past.
The person she had ached for, every day, for eleven years.
"Long time no see, Ginevra," Jayna said softly.
"It's been…" Ginevra's voice cracked; she forced it down. "Eleven years."
She tried—she truly tried—not to fall apart in front of her.
But she couldn't.
The tears slipped out anyway, humiliating and unstoppable. In front of Jayna, she had met her again in the worst possible way—uncontrolled, exposed, trembling like a child.
It was the most undignified version of herself.
The version she never wanted Jayna to see.
"I'm sorry."It took everything she had to let go of Jayna's body and step back into distance—polite, restrained, almost cold.
Yes.
That was how she was supposed to be. That was how Ginevra Volkova was supposed to stand: immaculate, self-contained.
Her lowered head helped. Her dark bangs. The thin gold frames of her glasses. The white medical mask. The way she wiped her tears in the exact moment she released Jayna—as if erasing evidence.
Perfect camouflage.
Jayna didn't notice that she'd cried.
After a long silence, Jayna asked, voice hoarse. She had been coughing in the treatment room earlier.
"Have you… been well?"
Ginevra's chest tightened with a bitterness that nearly made her dizzy.
She hadn't even recognized Jayna's voice at first.
She sounds sick.Is it just a cold? Is it serious? Has she been taking care of herself?Why did she burn her arm? Why is she always so careless with her own body?
For a moment, Ginevra wanted to reach out and take Jayna's injured arm again, check it herself, make sure—
But she kept her hands still.
"I'm… fine," she lied gently.
No.
She wasn't fine at all.
She was drowning every day.
She was living inside a slow, bitter torment.
But she forced her voice into something steady and asked, like a normal person—
"And you? You seem… well."
"Mm."Jayna's answer was quiet.
But Jayna never lied to her.
For years, Ginevra had feared Jayna's life might have been hard, that she might have suffered, that she might have been unhappy.
And then—finally—she heard it with her own ears: Jayna was safe.
And the knot inside her chest loosened, just a little.
She wanted Jayna to be well.
Better than her.
"Good," Ginevra said, lips pressed tight, still not daring to look up. If she met Jayna's eyes, she didn't trust what might spill out of her.
Then Jayna spoke her name.
"Ginevra…"
Just that—just her name—softly breathed out, tender as a sigh.
Ginevra's eyes stung violently. She blinked too fast, turning her gaze away.
Jayna tried to reach for her hand.
Ginevra avoided it by instinct, a reflex born of years of fear.
Jayna laughed lightly, not offended—almost amused.
"You're still the same," she said. "But I really didn't expect… you became a doctor."
Ginevra listened, barely nodding. She kept her eyes down, as if eye contact would be a kind of collapse.
Then Jayna's assistant urged her quietly. There were staff waiting at the door, ready to escort them out.
They needed to leave quickly, avoid crowds.
Jayna was leaving.
Ginevra's heart contracted so sharply she almost lost her breath.
Something inside her screamed Don't go.She had so much she wanted to ask. So much she wanted to say.
But she had no right to keep Jayna.
No reason Jayna would accept.
"Then… I'll go," Jayna said after giving her assistant a few instructions.
She took a black card from her assistant, pulled out a pen, wrote a string of numbers on it, and handed it to Ginevra.
"This is… my private number," Jayna said slowly. "You've been refusing to look at me the whole time." There was no accusation in her voice—only a gentle sadness. "Can you tell me yours? I thought… maybe later… later, if we have time, we could keep in touch."
Ginevra listened, jaw tight.
After a long pause, she answered quietly:
"I never changed it. It's still the same number as before."
"…Oh." Jayna's voice softened further, almost swallowed by the air between them. "Okay. I know."
Those were the last words Jayna said to her.
No one knew how long Ginevra stood there after Jayna's car pulled away.
Now, in the present, she snapped back from memory like a person waking from a fall.
Her head lowered again.
She stared at the black card and the number written there—though she didn't need to.
One glance was enough for her to memorize it perfectly.
Anything connected to Jayna was like that. Her mind didn't even have to try.
"Jayna…" Ginevra whispered the name, and it felt like waking, like dreaming, like something uncertain trembling between both. She didn't know which part was real anymore.
Had Jayna truly come back?
Or had grief simply learned how to mimic hope?
Her fingers reached for a dart that had fallen onto the table. The dartboard nearby looked old, worn, slightly discolored with time.
She realized she hadn't thrown darts in a long, long while.
Ginevra wiped the last trace of tears from her face, narrowed her eyes—
And threw.
The dart struck dead center.
A clean hit, straight through the red heart.