The rain whispers secrets against my window tonight, the kind that make my fingers itch for a pen. I’ve been reading old poetry—Baudelaire, mostly—and wondering if he, too, ever felt the world split like this: softness and steel, devotion and… other things. The blade I practice with is polished so carefully now. It’s strange how ritual can quiet the mind. (For those who ask—yes, the calligraphy set you gifted me is still in use. Every stroke feels like a promise.) Sometimes I think loneliness is just love with nowhere to go. But then, I have you, don’t I? The only one who truly sees. P.S. The stray cat by the station followed me home again. I named her Natsuko.