Chapter 83 — The Sky Between Us
2:12 AM — Milan, Italy
Jaeheon's Room
The room remained dark, save for the glow of the city beyond the window. Milan blinked with golden specks of life—distant, beautiful, unreachable. It was the kind of night that whispered confessions to people too tired to keep their walls up.
Jaeheon sat by the window, one knee pulled to his chest, the other leg stretched out, heel against the cold floorboards.
He hadn't moved in hours.
His phone was still beside him, screen dimmed, the unsent message long gone—but not forgotten.
"Since you already have someone..."
He had meant to erase it fully. But the words had carved themselves somewhere deeper.
They echoed—not just in his head, but in the chords he hadn't touched, in the melodies that hovered in the back of his throat, in the ache of his wrists where a song waited to be born.
He should sleep.
But instead, he reached for his travel keyboard, slid it in front of the open window, and connected it to his laptop.
Then—fingers slow, like memory—he played.
It was a haunting, fragile tune.
Just a handful of notes, repeating softly like a memory trying not to disappear.
The kind of music people dream to.
He didn't name the track.
He didn't save it.
He just… played it into the silence.
4:03 AM — Elsewhere in Milan
Anastasia stood barefoot by the window in her suite.
Her coat was folded over the armchair. Her heels left forgotten by the bed.
She hadn't slept either.
The city whispered beneath her, but her eyes were fixed on a screen—the same message thread still open.
It had been six months since she last saw him in person.
Six months since the ball.
And now fate had twisted again—bringing both of them to this golden city.
She didn't plan it. She didn't expect it.
And when she saw the flicker of him from the corner of her eye—that unmistakable posture, that stillness carved in restraint—her body froze before her mind caught up.
She knew he saw her.
She also knew what it must've looked like.
The man beside her—Nikolai—was nothing. A business contact. A formality. Someone her father respected, but she never did.
She didn't care how it looked to the world.
But she cared how it looked to him.
That realization had hit her like a blow to the ribs.
Because it meant something. Still. After all this time.
After all the silence.
It meant she still wanted to be understood—by him.
Not seen. Not admired.
Understood.
She paced once. Twice.
Then picked up her notebook.
Inside were sketches—machine diagrams, programming notations, a rough algorithm architecture.
But tucked near the end was something else.
A photo.
Grainy. From that night.
The ball.
The only picture in existence where he stood across the ballroom from her, eyes locked, unaware he was being photographed by the AI assistant trailing her at the time.
She'd kept it.
Why?
Because that was the moment she knew.
Knew he had seen her—not as a Volkov heir, not as a symbol, not as a genius—but as a person.
And it terrified her.
It thrilled her.
It changed nothing.
But it changed everything.
She stared at the photo now.
Then whispered, "You idiot…"
Her fingers hovered over the keypad.
Typed:
"I don't have someone."
She didn't send it.
She opened a new tab instead—an encrypted secure comms line routed through her AI's architecture.
Typed another message, this one for her private intelligence assistant.
"Track Kang Jaeheon's movement log from this evening. Just location. No invasive surveillance. No interception. I need confirmation he saw me."
"And send flowers to his hotel suite. No card."
"White calla lilies."
7:27 AM — Suite 802, AUREUS Hotel
Jaeheon woke to the soft sound of a knock.
Not a knock, exactly. A rustle. A shuffle.
A faint disturbance outside his room door.
He opened it slowly.
There were flowers.
A tall glass vase of white calla lilies.
No tag.
No note.
Just silence dressed in bloom.
He stared at them for a long time. His heart beat once. Twice. Loudly.
Then—he brought them in, closed the door behind him, and sat down across from them like they were a question he couldn't solve.
He didn't ask the others.
He didn't need to.
No one else would've sent them.
Across the City
Anastasia watched the message from her AI assistant arrive.
"Confirmed: Kang Jaeheon passed within direct line-of-sight at 7:58 PM yesterday. His location remained stationary for 37 seconds before movement resumed. Direction: away from target."
She exhaled slowly.
Then turned her screen off.
For the first time in months, she smiled—small, sharp, quiet.