Archive of Our Own ^beta

They met in a summer garden with dragonflies in the air and juice running down Sana’s chin.

It was the kind of day that only exists in childhood memory—soft-filtered sunlight, the smell of cut grass and powdered milk, and a quiet hum beneath everything that made it feel like the world was still deciding what it wanted to become.

Sana was three. Small for her age. Her knees were always bruised from tipping forward too fast on the slide, and her hair curled at the ends when she got warm. That day, she was crouched in her grandmother’s garden, poking her finger into the soil around the cucumber plants when she heard crying behind her.

She turned.

Two children stood near the porch—one boy, red-faced and yelling, and a girl about her size in a white sundress, standing stock still.

The boy reached out.

The girl didn’t flinch.

She just—bit him.

Not hard. Not enough to break skin. But enough to make him yowl and run.

Then she turned to Sana, perfectly calm, and said, “He tried to take your juice box. I told him you don’t like orange.”

Sana blinked.

“…I don’t,” she said, as if that explained anything.

The girl knelt in the grass beside her and offered the purple one from her own bento box. “You can have this. I like grape better anyway.”

That was the first time Sana met Myoui Mina.

She took the juice, and the girl’s hand, and something inside her quietly decided—

This one is mine.

⸻

Momo came shortly after.

Louder. Wilder.

If Mina was a glass of cold milk, Momo was a spilled soda—bubbly, sticky, and leaving behind a mess no one ever minded.

She was older by a year, with front teeth too big for her face and a gap between them that made her look permanently mid-laugh. She met them at a community playground event where Sana was helping Mina sell paper fans for charity, though “helping” mostly meant sneaking two into her backpack when no one looked.

Momo didn’t buy a fan. She stole a stick of dango from the food stall, ran toward the table, and yelled, “Run!”

Sana shrieked. Mina blinked. Momo offered her the dango like a prize.

“I’m fast,” she told them. “Wanna play tag?”

They played tag for four hours. Mina got tackled into a sandbox. Sana tripped over a rock and burst into tears. Momo carried her back to the vending machine, bought her melon soda, and whispered, “You’re in my pack now. I’m the oldest, so I make the rules.”

Mina blinked again. “No, I’m in charge.”

Sana just leaned her sticky head onto Momo’s shoulder and whispered, “We can all be in charge. Just don’t leave me.”

They didn’t.

⸻

The next years passed like snapshots in a family album.

They shared everything: lunches, field trip seats, pillows on road trips. By the time they were eight, Sana’s mother had a toothbrush cup labeled “Mina & Momo.” By nine, they were showing up to dance class in matching sweatsuits they bought on discount in Shibuya. By ten, they were inseparable.

“We’re not just friends,” Momo declared at school once. “We’re like… sisters.”

“But I don’t have sisters,” Sana said, confused.

Mina looked at her, as serious as she always was, and replied, “You do now.”

⸻

Their world became routines.

Sana would wake up to texts from both of them—Mina’s alarm already going off, Momo claiming she’d overslept even though she was brushing her teeth by 6:45.

They met at the station. Took the bus together. Ate konbini snacks on the walk to cram school. They knew each other’s handwriting, scents, moods.

When Sana got her first low-grade fever, it was Momo who ran to the clinic with her health card and Mina who sat with her in the tatami room, placing cool towels on her neck.

“You guys are like… overprotective boyfriends,” she joked.

Momo shrugged. “Can’t help it. You’re small and full of feelings.”

“You’re smaller than me,” Sana pointed out.

Momo gasped. “Disrespect.”

Mina offered Sana a peeled orange slice without comment.

⸻

When they were eleven, Sana overheard them for the first time.

She was pretending to sleep on the futon after a movie night—curled on her side, heart warm and heavy, Momo’s knee thrown across her leg and Mina’s fingers absently stroking her hair.

Then Momo whispered, “You think she knows?”

“Knows what?” Mina murmured.

“That she’s… our everything?”

There was silence.

Sana kept her breathing slow.

Mina’s voice, soft as always: “She’s always known.”

“I worry,” Momo said, quieter now. “That someone’s gonna come along and think they can take her. Just because she’s kind. Or soft.”

“They’ll have to get through me first,” Mina said.

“No one’s taking her,” Momo replied. “I’d rip their throat out.”

Sana smiled into her pillow.

They were ridiculous.

And hers.

⸻

When they turned fourteen, the world started to notice.

Sana bloomed early. Her scent, always soft, turned syrupy and floral, like a spring morning that clung too long to your skin. Some Alphas sniffed too obviously in her direction. Boys in class started asking her questions they hadn’t before—what she was doing after school, who she was walking home with.

She never answered.

She didn’t need to.

Momo showed up to school with her gym bag slung over one shoulder and a glare that silenced hallways. Mina started walking her to the bathroom. No one asked questions.

“You don’t have to do that,” Sana told them once.

“Do what?” Momo asked, chewing on a senbei.

“Be scary.”

“We’re not scary,” Momo said.

Mina added, “We’re just present.”

“You growl at people.”

“Only if they’re annoying.”

——
She started packing lunches when she was fifteen.

It wasn’t a big thing. It didn’t start with some cinematic gesture of affection or a grand moment of realization. Just a quiet morning in midwinter when the heater had broken and Momo came to school with half-frozen rice balls wrapped in paper towels.

“I overslept,” she groaned, head against her desk. “I’m starving. I hate being responsible for myself.”

Sana didn’t say anything. But that night, she texted her mother to ask if she could start learning how to make onigiri.

The next morning, she gave Momo a neatly packed bento box with grilled chicken, rolled omelet, and her favorite pickled plums.

Momo almost cried.

“You’re gonna ruin me,” she said, mouth full. “I’ll never love anyone else.”

“I accept your devotion,” Sana replied, batting her eyelashes.

Mina blinked, already halfway through her own lunchbox—the one with the sesame tofu Sana had woken up at 5 a.m. to prepare.

She never said thank you out loud. But she set a small origami crane next to Sana’s pencil case the next day and said, “You left your umbrella at cram school. I went back and got it.”

Sana folded the crane into her diary.

She still had it.

⸻

There were three kinds of days in their world.
1. Sana’s days, where she’d wake up full of sugar and sunshine, brush Momo’s hair for thirty minutes while they watched anime, and cling to Mina like a sleepy koala on the train ride to school.
2. Momo’s days, where everything smelled like sweat and instant ramen, and she made them take four detours just to chase a limited-edition snack release in Nakano.
3. Mina’s days, where the house was silent, her books were everywhere, and the music playing was low, classical, and aching. On those days, they both tiptoed. Made her tea without asking. Let her lie across their laps in the nest, not speaking, just breathing together.

There was never a day that didn’t include all three of them.

They grew up like that—braided together, not at the roots, but at the fingertips.

Always touching.

Always reaching.

⸻

The first time Sana started to question whether what they had was normal, she was sixteen.

It happened during a school trip to Kyoto.

Their class had been assigned different ryokan rooms by lottery. Sana ended up with three girls she liked but didn’t know very well. She smiled politely, lay down on the floor futon with them after dinner, listened to their giggles about celebrity crushes and which Alpha in school smelled best.

Someone asked her if she’d ever kissed anyone.

Sana shrugged. “No.”

“But you’re always with Momo and Mina,” one girl said. “Aren’t they, like, your Alphas?”

“They’re my best friends,” Sana said.

The girl nodded slowly. “Right… but like, just friends?”

Sana didn’t answer.

That night, she had trouble sleeping.

She kept rolling over, reaching out, only to find cool air instead of a warm hand, a soft weight. No Momo arm across her hip. No Mina’s breath on the back of her neck.

She texted them at midnight.

I miss you.

Mina replied instantly: Your pillow smells weird, doesn’t it.

Momo: I just told a vending machine it could never replace you.

She smiled into her blanket.

But still didn’t sleep.

⸻

There was a moment, during their last summer in Japan, when Sana realized she was in love with them.

Not romantically. Not exactly.

It wasn’t a crush. It wasn’t longing. It wasn’t even physical.

It was just—them.

The way Momo ran toward the ocean first, always first, arms windmilling and voice loud enough to wake the whole prefecture.

The way Mina stood knee-deep in the waves and reached her hand back for Sana without looking, like she’d already counted them and noticed one was missing.

The way the three of them laughed until they collapsed into the sand, covered in seaweed and sunscreen, Momo yelling about crabs and Mina pretending she wasn’t smiling, even though she was.

Sana stood that day, barefoot and blinking at the sunset, and thought:

If I never belong to anyone else, I’ll still be full.

⸻

The nest room wasn’t even a real room.

Just a corner of Mina’s attic, cleaned out and layered with futons, blankets, hoodies, and one beanbag chair that smelled like spicy tteokbokki from the time Momo spilled her snack stash all over it.

They built it together when they were twelve.

It became sacred by fifteen.

They never said why they slept there instead of their own rooms.

They didn’t need to.

There was something about being scented by each other that made the world quieter. Easier. Warmer.

Sana would curl in the middle. Momo on one side, usually with a leg thrown across both of them, radiating heat like a furnace. Mina on the other, quiet and still, always the last to fall asleep, always the first to wake up.

Sana liked to bury her nose against the collar of Mina’s sweatshirt. Press her toes against the backs of Momo’s calves.

She never felt alone there.

⸻

One night, she got up to pee and overheard them whispering on the landing.

Momo: “I think her scent’s getting stronger.”

Mina: “It’s changing.”

“She’s gonna draw attention. You know she will.”

Pause.

“We can’t keep everyone away forever.”

Mina’s voice, barely audible: “We’ll try.”

Sana leaned against the wall, heart pounding.

Not because she was afraid.

But because it hit her, then—that even when she wasn’t asking to be protected, they were already planning how to do it.

⸻

They started talking about college in the fall of their last year.

Mina got into a prestigious university in Seoul for international business.

Momo—dance scholarship. Of course.

Sana hadn’t even applied until Momo and Mina sat her down with a laptop, two cups of iced hojicha, and an open Google doc titled: “Sana’s Brilliant Future.”

“You’re going,” Momo told her.

“Or we’re staying,” Mina added.

Sana had cried, laughing. “You can’t do that.”

Mina reached across the table. “We can.”

And then: “But we won’t. Because you’ll come with us.”

She did.

⸻

The night before they left, Sana’s parents held a dinner for the three of them. Traditional fare. Photos printed and taped to the wall. A handwritten card from her father, who never cried in front of anyone except Sana, and only once when her goldfish died.

At the door, her mother pulled Mina and Momo aside.

Sana saw them speak in hushed tones.

Later, she found out what was said.

Her mother had asked, “Will you take care of her?”

Mina, without blinking: “Always.”

Momo: “Even if she doesn’t want us to.”

They meant it.

And Sana, standing in the driveway with her suitcase and her whole world packed beside her, felt no fear.

Because no matter what came next—

They’d already promised.

—-

Sana thought the air in Korea would feel different.

She’d imagined it on the plane—thinner, maybe. Brighter. She thought the second the wheels hit the tarmac, she’d feel older. Braver.

Instead, she felt like she was walking around inside a too-large coat.

Everything was familiar and foreign at once. The street signs. The food wrappers. The music pulsing through café doors. The way people glanced at her just a beat longer than they should have.

“Don’t worry,” Momo said, nudging her with a grin. “You still smell like home.”

Sana blinked. “You smelled me?”

“You’re basically a flower cart,” Momo said. “You can’t not be noticed.”

Mina, walking a step ahead, didn’t look back. But she said, “Stay close anyway.”

Sana did.

⸻

They moved into a three-bedroom apartment just off a quiet side street near campus. It had tall ceilings, warm wood floors, and a nest room they didn’t talk about at first—but all silently agreed would exist.

They took the room with the lowest light. Folded blankets into corners. Hung a soft curtain over the window. Built it with pieces of Japan.

Momo’s old sweatshirt.

Mina’s first performance jersey.

Sana’s pillowcase from middle school that still smelled like cherry blossom detergent and a little like tears.

“You’ll let us sleep in your room sometimes, right?” Momo asked, half-kidding.

Sana laughed. “You act like I’d say no.”

⸻

Orientation week was chaos.

Everything in Korean. Classes to register. Schedules to rearrange. Maps to memorize. Mina took to it with the quiet precision of a military strategist. Momo got lost every day but always found her way back to the cafeteria. Sana followed, flanked on both sides, like a cart being pushed between tides.

It didn’t take long for people to notice them.

Three foreign students. Two confident Alphas. One soft-spoken, sweet-scented Omega in the middle like a blinking caution sign.

People stared.

A few were subtle. Most weren’t.

“Are they always like this?” Sana whispered after the third guy in an hour asked if she wanted help carrying her pencil case.

“Yes,” Mina said, sipping her iced americano. “Always.”

⸻

That’s when she met Miyeon.

Miyeon wasn’t loud. She didn’t catcall or hover or even stare too long. She was polished, composed, with glossy hair and eyes that narrowed just enough when she smiled to make Sana’s breath hitch.

She introduced herself after a lecture. Complimented Sana’s handwriting. Said it in a way that made Sana feel like it was the most interesting thing anyone could do.

“You’re from Osaka?” Miyeon asked, already holding a phone in one hand. “I visited once. I liked the street food.”

Sana nodded politely. “It’s… home.”

“You smell like spring,” Miyeon said.

It wasn’t the first time she’d heard something like that.

But it was the first time it made her uneasy.

⸻

She told Mina that night.

Not directly.

Just—offhand.

“There’s this girl in my psych class,” she said, legs folded beneath her in their shared nest room. “She’s nice. Pretty. A bit intense.”

Mina paused.

“What’s her name?”

Sana hesitated. “Miyeon.”

That was all she had to say.

The next day, Miyeon still smiled—but from a little farther away.

⸻

Dex arrived two weeks later.

Exchange student. Tall. Charismatic. Smelled like confidence and cologne and something sour underneath.

Sana didn’t like the way he looked at her.

Not quite too long. But just long enough.

He offered to walk her home after class.

She declined.

The next day, he waited outside anyway.

Momo found her first, intercepted the walk, and looped her arm through Sana’s.

“Hey,” she chirped. “Let’s go home.”

Dex smiled politely. “You her roommate?”

“No,” Momo said sweetly. “I’m her knife.”

He laughed.

She didn’t.

⸻

They didn’t tell Sana what happened next.

But the following morning, Miyeon avoided eye contact.

Dex transferred out of her department.

Sana overheard them that night in the kitchen.

Momo, angry: “He touched her. Just her wrist, but still.”

Mina: “We warned him.”

“She was scared.”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“She didn’t have to.”

A pause.

Then Mina again: “We promised her parents.”

“She’s not a child anymore.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Another pause.

Softer, Momo: “She won’t hate us, will she?”

“She never could.”

⸻

They didn’t scent her, not really.

Not in the way bonded packs did. No claiming marks. No rut-nest rituals. Just small things.

A hoodie handed to her when she was cold. A brush of fingers along her hairline. A warm arm around her shoulder during walks across campus.

It was enough.

It was everything.

Sometimes Sana wondered if she wanted more.

Sometimes she didn’t.

Mostly, she just curled between them at night, their mixed scents wrapping around her like a memory she never wanted to outgrow.

⸻

People started to ask questions.

“Are you three…?”

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

⸻

Sana learned how to cook Korean dishes with Momo during the first semester.

They argued over kimchi ratios and spice levels. Momo liked everything bold and red and dramatic. Sana liked sweet-salty blends and side dishes that made Mina smile without showing teeth.

She fed them both like it was a love language.

Sliced fruit before study sessions. Soy-marinated eggs left in the fridge with their names scribbled on the lid.

No one ever thanked her directly.

But Mina pressed a kiss to her crown once, so brief she thought she imagined it.

And Momo drew a doodle of her in her notebook with the caption: Head of the household.

⸻

But there were things she didn’t say.

Like how her heart beat too fast when Miyeon still smiled from across the quad.

Or how she felt strange now when she looked in the mirror—soft and scented, marked only by her own hands, wondering what it meant to belong without being claimed.

Or how, sometimes, when she walked behind Momo and Mina on crowded sidewalks, she didn’t feel like part of a trio anymore.

Just someone trailing two people she used to fit between.

⸻

They loved her.

She knew that.

But the more people looked at her—

The tighter they held on.

And Sana, quietly, began to wonder—

If she was still being protected…

Or caged.

—-

Some nights, the nest didn’t feel right anymore.

Not because it lacked warmth—Momo still radiated heat like a small, cuddling sun, and Mina still curled toward her in her sleep like she was instinctively guarding something precious.

But because Sana had started to feel like a guest in her own rhythm.

Like maybe she was folding herself into a shape that wasn’t quite hers anymore.

She didn’t say anything. Not the first few times she stayed up, staring at the ceiling, counting the breaths between the girls on either side of her.

But she started sleeping in her room more often.

And neither of them mentioned it.

That, somehow, hurt the most.

⸻

She didn’t mean to pull away.

She didn’t even realize she had, at first.

But the more she noticed how easily they moved around her—planning, shielding, deciding—the more she felt the quiet thrum of something like resentment hum low in her bones.

It didn’t mean she loved them less.

It just meant she was growing.

And sometimes growing felt like grief.

⸻

She still made Momo her favorite tteokgalbi during exam season.

Still left little energy drinks outside Mina’s room with hand-drawn “Do Not Die” post-its when midterms came around.

Still curled into their sides on the couch when the heater broke and they all piled under one massive blanket like wolves in winter.

But she stopped telling them everything.

And started wondering if they ever really saw her.

⸻

Miyeon asked her to coffee once.

Not in a weird way. Not as a date.

Just—coffee.

Sana said no.

Not because she didn’t want to go.

But because she didn’t want to deal with what would follow if she did.

She knew what Mina would do: that blank expression, the stillness that somehow always managed to say everything without a word. The cold that came, even when her body stayed close.

She knew Momo would pout. Would joke. Would maybe say something too sharp and then pretend it wasn’t a big deal.

She didn’t go.

But she stared at the message for a long time afterward.

And thought about how it felt to want something just for herself.

⸻

There was a day, near the end of the semester, when everything cracked.

It was stupid, really. Always is.

Just a walk home, a guy who recognized her from class, a compliment tossed like a pebble.

“You’re pretty,” he’d said. “You wanna get food sometime?”

She was already shaking her head when Momo stepped between them.

“Try again,” she said. Light voice. Sharp eyes.

The guy frowned. “What’s your problem?”

Mina joined a beat later. “You should leave.”

Sana didn’t say anything.

The guy scoffed, muttered something under his breath, and walked off.

Momo turned to her, all protective energy and jaw tight.

“You okay?”

Sana stared at her.

Then at Mina.

Then at the spot the boy had stood.

“I can speak,” she said.

They blinked.

“I can say no,” she added. “I don’t need an Alpha every time someone breathes near me.”

“We know,” Mina said quietly.

Momo looked down.

“Do you?” Sana asked.

And then walked ahead of them the rest of the way home.

⸻

She skipped the nest that night.

Stayed in her room. Window cracked. Rain falling in the quiet beyond the glass.

She didn’t cry.

Not exactly.

But she felt it—the ache of being adored so completely that no one ever asked what she wanted.

⸻

Later that week, she overheard them again.

They didn’t know she was on the balcony, curled under a blanket with her tea.

Mina’s voice: “She’s pulling away.”

“She’s allowed to,” Momo said, sounding tired. “We don’t own her.”

“No,” Mina said. “But we… held her so tightly for so long. Maybe too tightly.”

Pause.

“You think we’re the reason she doesn’t trust anyone else?”

Long silence.

Then Momo: “I think we’re the reason she never had to.”

Sana wrapped the blanket tighter around her chest and looked up at the stars that didn’t belong to Japan.

They hadn’t said anything wrong.

But it didn’t stop her heart from hurting.

⸻

She left a note on the fridge the next morning:

Going to the bookstore. Don’t wait up.

She didn’t need to explain herself.

And that, too, was a quiet kind of freedom.

⸻

In the bookstore, between rows of untranslated poetry collections and imported French cookbooks, she met a girl with quiet eyes and a sharp sense of space.

She didn’t look like much at first—tall, calm, Alpha-scented but not posturing. Wearing a hoodie two sizes too big and looking for a particular edition of Kafka on the Shore.

Their hands brushed over the same spine.

They both paused.

The girl smiled first.

It wasn’t bold. It wasn’t cocky.

It was—gentle.

Soft.

“I think it’s your turn,” she said, stepping back.

Sana smiled back.

Didn’t say anything.

Just held the book to her chest like something sacred.

And that was it.

But something settled in her that day.

A whisper. A ripple.

Not all Alphas want to cage you.

Some, maybe, just want to know you.

⸻

She didn’t tell Momo or Mina about the girl.

Not yet.

She didn’t even know her name.

But when she got home, and Momo offered her leftover spicy chicken and Mina asked if she wanted to watch a documentary on glacier formation—

She said yes.

Because she still loved them.

Even if something was changing.

Even if part of her heart had started to drift toward something else—something quieter, unscripted, hers.

⸻

At night, she lay between them again.

Their breaths soft.

The scent of old memories and new distance mixing in the folds of the blanket.

She closed her eyes.

And in the silence before sleep, she whispered so softly no one could hear:

“Don’t be afraid to let me go.”

—-

There was no specific moment when things started to change.

No obvious fracture. No slammed door.

Just a slow drifting of tides.

A season folding into the next.

A scent unfamiliar in the hallway.

A new name on Mina’s lips.

⸻

Nayeon arrived like a storm in lip gloss and heels.

Omega. Older. Loud.

The kind of person whose presence pressed into a room before she even spoke.

Mina met her at a student council meeting and came home with her name tucked beneath her tongue like a secret.

“She talks too much,” Mina said, that first night, slipping off her coat.

Sana glanced up from the floor, where she and Momo were eating tangerines and watching a mukbang video.

“You like her,” she said simply.

Mina didn’t respond.

Didn’t have to.

⸻

It didn’t take long for Nayeon to become a fixture.

Not in their apartment—Mina didn’t bring people home easily—but in the way Mina changed.

Just a little.

She smiled more often. Not with her mouth, but with the corners of her eyes. She stayed out late. Lingered in conversation over texts. Sometimes she came home wearing someone else’s scent layered too carefully over her own.

“You okay?” Momo asked once, quietly, when they were cleaning up after dinner and Mina hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes.

“I’m learning,” Mina said.

Sana had to leave the room.

Not because she was upset.

Just because she didn’t know how to hold all the things she wasn’t saying anymore.

⸻

Dahyun came through Nayeon.

Naturally.

If Nayeon was a hurricane, Dahyun was a puppy with jet fuel.

Momo was doomed from the moment they met.

It happened at a fall festival. Momo was helping set up the community booth for international students, and Sana was three seconds away from dying of boredom when a blur of white hoodie and confidence dropped onto the table beside her.

“Hi! You smell like joy.”

Sana blinked. “Sorry?”

Dahyun grinned. “It’s a compliment. You’re friends with Momo, right? I’m here to ruin her life.”

Then she was gone, bounding toward the chaos with the kind of energy that made everyone’s head turn.

Fifteen minutes later, Momo returned, covered in paint.

“I think I’ve been imprinted on,” she said flatly.

Sana handed her a wipe.

⸻

There were good days still.

Soft ones.

Late-night ramen in the kitchen, Mina drowsy from class and leaning her head on Sana’s shoulder while Momo snored on the couch, Dahyun drooling on her lap.

Quiet walks where Momo pointed at cloud shapes and Mina corrected the names of birds.

But it wasn’t the same.

They still held her hand.

But now, sometimes, they let go to hold someone else’s.

And that was the thing about being protected for so long.

Once they stop building the wall—

You realize you don’t know how to stand alone.

⸻

Sana didn’t say anything.

Not when Mina started talking about Nayeon like she’d been there forever.

Not when Momo started texting Dahyun during dinner.

Not even when she realized her pillow didn’t smell like either of them anymore.

She just started taking longer walks.

Started staying in the library later.

Started looking for something she hadn’t realized she was missing.

⸻

That was when she noticed Tzuyu.

At first, she didn’t even know her name.

Just… saw her.

In the background.

In class. In the courtyard. In the café where Sana liked to get her egg toast and hide by the window with her planner.

Always there.

Never close.

But always still.

⸻

She didn’t smell like most Alphas.

That was the first thing Sana noticed.

There was something about her scent that was barely there—subtle, muted. Like pine after rain. Like wool sweaters left to dry in quiet rooms.

It wasn’t loud.

It didn’t reach for her.

It let her notice.

That felt like a miracle.

⸻

One day, she dropped her notebook in the library stairwell.

Pages everywhere.

No one stopped.

Except her.

Tzuyu crouched beside her silently, hands gathering pages without speaking.

When she passed one back, her thumb brushed Sana’s.

“Thank you,” Sana murmured.

Tzuyu just nodded and left.

No comment about her scent. No flirtation. No weight in her eyes.

Just—kindness.

Sana stared at the empty hallway long after she was gone.

⸻

A week later, she found the note.

Tucked into her cubby at the campus café. Handwritten. No name.

You left this.
Page 17 was missing. I liked the margin doodle.

Sana smiled.

She had left that notebook behind.

She read the note three times.

Then tucked it in her phone case like a charm.

⸻

More followed.

Never too many. Never daily.

Just small things.

Folded paper tucked inside her bag.

You laugh quietly when you’re thinking. I noticed.

You look happiest when you’re eating something warm.

You sit on your hands when you’re nervous.

They weren’t declarations.

They weren’t even flirtations.

They were noticings.

And no one had ever noticed her without trying to own her before.

⸻

Sana didn’t tell Mina.

Or Momo.

She didn’t know how.

Didn’t want to explain that this—this tiny miracle of being seen without being caught—was the first thing in years that felt like hers.

Just hers.

Not theirs. Not shared.

Not pack.

Just Sana.

⸻

And then came the scarf.

Left on her chair at the café.

Cream-colored. Soft. Worn. Smelled faintly of cold and pine.

No note this time.

Just that quiet offering.

She tucked it around her neck with shaking hands.

When she turned, Tzuyu was already gone.

⸻

That night, Momo asked if she was okay.

“You’re quiet,” she said.

Sana shrugged.

Mina didn’t speak. Just watched her for a long moment over the rim of her tea.

“I’m just… tired,” Sana said.

They didn’t press.

And that told her everything.

⸻

She still loved them.

Would always love them.

But something in her heart was changing.

She wasn’t a girl in the garden anymore.

Wasn’t the soft thing they promised to protect.

She was something else now.

Something still growing.

Something learning what it meant to want.

And to be wanted.

Without being claimed.

—

It began with a pencil.

Not even a nice one. Just the kind they sold in bundles at the corner store, plain wood and graphite, chipped at the end.

Sana had been doodling stars on the corner of her psychology notes when it snapped. She’d stared at the broken tip like it had personally betrayed her, then sighed and leaned down to rummage through her bag.

When she looked up, there was a pencil in front of her.

Not offered—left.

On her notebook. Lightly. Without a word.

She turned her head, heart too loud in her ears.

Tzuyu sat beside her, calm as ever, eyes already back on her textbook.

⸻

That’s how it was with her.

No sweeping gestures. No demands. Just… offerings.

Tiny pieces of attention, left like breadcrumbs. Soft things she could follow if she chose. Never pushed. Never pulled.

Tzuyu was still.

And somehow, that stillness made Sana want to move.

⸻

They didn’t talk every day. Didn’t even talk every week.

But the world shifted when they did.

It started small. Study sessions that weren’t really sessions. Meetings in the quiet alcove of the upper campus library, where Tzuyu always arrived ten minutes early and left fifteen minutes late.

There was one seat between them. Always. A silence between them, too—but never an awkward one.

They passed notes.

Like middle schoolers.

Sana found herself writing in margins again. Little jokes. Soft questions.

Tzuyu wrote back in blocky print:

Q: Are you always this warm?

A: Only when I like who I’m sitting near.

Sana smiled so wide the librarian shushed her.

⸻

She told herself it wasn’t cheating.

Not that she was with anyone.

Momo and Mina had never touched her like that. Never asked to. Never implied they would.

But they were hers. In a way she couldn’t name. And had been for so long.

So she didn’t tell them about the notes.

Or the pencil.

Or the library, where Tzuyu leaned in one day to whisper something about the Greek tragedy they were studying and Sana couldn’t breathe because her scent was so close and she hadn’t even done anything but be near.

⸻

“You’ve been busy lately,” Momo said one night.

Sana was chopping green onions for stew. Momo stood behind her, nursing a soda, trying not to look like she was watching.

“I have projects,” Sana replied.

“That new study group?”

“Mmm.”

“You like them?”

“They don’t talk much.”

Momo squinted. “That’s not usually your thing.”

Sana shrugged.

“They don’t expect anything.”

⸻

Nayeon visited again. Brought Dahyun, who spilled bubble tea on Momo’s floor and then cried for ten seconds before trying to lick it up.

Mina laughed.

Actually laughed.

It was the kind of laugh that cracked something in Sana’s chest, because she’d loved that laugh since she was seven and Mina only made it for a small handful of people.

Sana watched from the hallway. Stayed there too long.

Momo found her later.

“You okay?”

“Just tired.”

“You’re always tired lately.”

Sana smiled.

“You’re always watching lately.”

⸻

The first time Tzuyu touched her on purpose, it was a library accident. Her fingers brushed Sana’s wrist when they both reached for the same highlighter.

Sana froze.

Tzuyu did not.

She curled her hand slowly around Sana’s and set the pen in her palm.

“You can keep it,” she murmured.

It wasn’t about the highlighter.

It never was.

⸻

They started meeting in places no one else knew about.

Rooftops at dusk.

The unused staircase near the art building.

The small garden between the language halls, where the wind always carried the faint scent of ginger flowers.

Tzuyu never asked for anything.

Not her time.

Not her touch.

Not her story.

She just… waited.

⸻

“I think I like you,” Sana whispered once, unsure of why it felt like a sin to say.

Tzuyu didn’t flinch.

“Okay.”

Sana blinked. “That’s it?”

Tzuyu tilted her head. “You don’t have to convince me.”

⸻

She wore the scarf often.

It wasn’t a big deal.

It was just a scarf.

Except that it wasn’t.

Because she’d never worn anyone else’s scent before. Not on her skin. Not in front of Mina or Momo.

She walked into the kitchen with it wrapped around her throat one morning and Momo paused, just for a second, pouring soy sauce.

Mina didn’t say anything.

But her eyes didn’t move off Sana the entire time she peeled an orange and offered it across the table with hands that were too careful.

⸻

“You smell different,” Mina said finally.

Sana blinked. “Do I?”

Mina nodded once.

“Do you like her?” she asked.

And there it was.

Not a question about who.

Just—her.

Sana thought about lying.

Instead, she whispered, “Yes.”

Mina blinked once.

Then turned back to her tea.

⸻

Momo confronted her later.

“Does she know?” she asked. “What we are?”

“We’re not mates,” Sana said quickly.

Momo looked down. “No. But we were always… something.”

Sana hesitated. “Do you want me to stop?”

Momo looked like someone had cut her open.

“No,” she said softly. “I just don’t want to be the reason you’re afraid to start.”

⸻

Tzuyu kissed her on a rooftop during sunset.

It wasn’t dramatic.

There was no music. No sweeping declaration.

Just a question: “May I?”

And Sana—blinking, overwhelmed, undone—nodded.

Tzuyu kissed her like she already knew what her heart sounded like.

And Sana leaned in like she didn’t want to be found anywhere else.

⸻

They didn’t tell anyone.

Not yet.

Not because they were hiding.

But because some things deserved to bloom before the world tried to pick them.

⸻

One night, lying in her bed, scarf clutched to her chest and Tzuyu’s scent clinging to her collarbones, Sana wondered how long she could keep living in two places at once.

The home she came from.

And the home she was building, breath by breath, in the quiet of someone who never reached—

Only opened.

——

She almost didn’t tell them.

Not because she wanted to lie.

But because she wanted to stay inside the bubble of that night just a little longer.

⸻

It happened on a Sunday.

Quiet. Cold.

The kind of evening where even the wind seemed to move slower.

They hadn’t planned for it. There hadn’t been any talk of heat or bonding or instinct. They’d met at the café like they always did, sat in their corner like they always did, talked in soft voices about things that didn’t matter—weather, coffee preferences, the way campus looked empty on weekends.

And then Tzuyu had touched her cheek.

Just once.

And Sana had leaned into it like gravity had been waiting for this.

⸻

The kiss had been gentle.

Everything about Tzuyu was gentle.

Even when her hands trembled, even when her scent thickened, even when she exhaled against Sana’s neck and whispered, “I’m sorry, I think I need to leave—”

Sana had pulled her back.

“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t.”

And then: “If you want to mark me… do it.”

Tzuyu froze.

Her hand hovered at Sana’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Sana whispered. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

And that was it.

No ceremony.

No claim.

Just a quiet, instinctive press of lips and teeth to skin.

No blood.

Just scent.

Just yes.

⸻

She went home wearing the scarf.

Wearing her.

It was barely past midnight. She slipped through the front door, careful not to wake anyone, careful not to breathe too loud.

But she’d forgotten about scent.

You can’t hide something the body celebrates.

⸻

The next morning, everything was quiet.

Too quiet.

Mina didn’t join them at the breakfast table.

Momo stood behind the counter, still in her hoodie, eyes blank, expression unreadable.

Sana walked in.

Set her tea on the table.

Sat down.

Waited.

Momo sniffed the air.

Paused.

And then: “Is that…?”

Her voice trailed off.

Sana swallowed.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t need to.

Momo’s mouth dropped open.

“You’re kidding.”

Silence.

“You’re kidding.”

⸻

Mina entered a moment later.

Saw Momo’s expression.

Then looked at Sana.

Sana didn’t even blink.

She just tilted her head.

Let the mark on her neck—faint, low, glowing—be seen.

And said, “She marked me.”

⸻

It was like dropping a stone in water.

Everything rippled.

And nothing stayed still.

⸻

Momo stood first.

The chair screeched.

“No,” she said. “You don’t get to just say it like that. What does that mean? What did you do?”

Sana stayed seated.

Calm.

“I let her mark me.”

“You let—” Momo’s voice cracked. “Why? Why now? Why her?”

Sana didn’t look at Mina.

Couldn’t.

“I wanted to.”

Mina still hadn’t spoken.

Still hadn’t sat.

Still hadn’t moved.

She was watching. Breathing. So still it felt unnatural.

Finally: “You knew what it meant.”

Sana’s voice wavered. “I did.”

“You knew it would change everything.”

“I hoped it wouldn’t.”

“It had to.”

And that was the moment Sana realized—Mina wasn’t angry.

She was hurt.

Which, somehow, was worse.

⸻

Momo paced.

Back and forth, like a caged thing.

“I don’t get it,” she muttered. “You never even told us. You—You didn’t tell us anything.”

“You never asked,” Sana whispered.

Momo stopped.

“You’re saying this is our fault?”

“No. I’m saying I didn’t think I was allowed.”

That stopped everything.

Even Mina blinked.

“What are you talking about?” Momo asked, stunned.

Sana’s breath hitched.

“You held me so tight I forgot how to reach.”

⸻

It was like years poured into the silence between them.

Every hand that had caught hers.

Every stare that had warned the world away.

Every night in the nest when she curled between them and told herself it was enough.

And it was.

Until it wasn’t.

⸻

“I love you,” Sana said.

“I always will.”

“But she sees me.”

“She saw me.”

“Not as something to protect.”

“Not as something fragile.”

“But as someone she wanted to know.”

⸻

Mina sat down then.

Slowly.

Momo didn’t.

Momo was shaking now.

“I thought we were your home,” she whispered.

“You are,” Sana said.

“But I want a window, Momo. I want to know what the sky looks like outside of us.”

⸻

The day passed in fragments.

No yelling.

No slamming doors.

Just distance.

Heavy and quiet and grieving.

Mina left for class and didn’t come back till dark.

Momo slept on the couch.

Sana curled up in her own bed, alone, the scarf clutched to her chest like a lifeline.

⸻

Tzuyu didn’t ask for updates.

She just sent a text.

Are you okay?

And Sana replied:

No. But I’m not sorry.

⸻

Three days passed.

Then four.

Then a week.

They still ate meals together.

Still passed each other tea.

But something had cracked.

Something you couldn’t bandage.

You just had to let it heal on its own.

⸻

Dahyun visited.

She brought cookies and chaos.

Nayeon came, too. Sat with Mina on the floor and held her hand without asking questions.

“You know,” Dahyun said to Sana as they stood by the kitchen sink, “they’re not mad because you fell in love.”

“They’re mad because you didn’t believe they could hold you through it.”

Sana closed her eyes.

And for the first time in a week—

Cried.

⸻

That night, she knocked on Mina’s door.

Found her sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes on a half-finished painting, hands still.

“Can I come in?” Sana asked.

Mina nodded.

Silence stretched.

Then: “I didn’t mean to choose her over you,” Sana whispered.

Mina stared at her canvas.

“You didn’t.”

“You chose you.”

“And I think that’s okay.”

⸻

It was Mina who invited her to the nest room again.

Just her.

No Momo.

Not yet.

But the blanket smelled like old memories.

And Mina pulled her in slowly, like a tide that never stopped waiting.

⸻

Momo was harder.

But not cruel.

Just… wounded.

Like someone who’d thrown herself in front of a thousand knives for a girl who finally learned how to dodge on her own.

They sat on the roof one night. Momo handed her a beer and said, “You gonna let her move in?”

Sana laughed softly. “Not yet.”

“Good. The tea shelf’s full.”

⸻

It wasn’t the same.

But it was still theirs.

Not untouched.

But not lost.

And when Sana curled up in the nest between them again, a week later, both of them quiet and half-asleep, her body smelled like her own—

And like Tzuyu.

And no one pushed her away.

——

They didn’t call it healing.

No one said, Let’s fix this.

No one wrote schedules for forgiveness or drafted apologies in the group chat.

They just… kept moving.

Like a pack does.

Even when the limbs are stiff, even when the breath catches.

You move.

⸻

Sana found herself hyper-aware of the small things.

The way Mina still poured her tea first, even when her fingers paused on the cup.

The way Momo started cooking again, messily and noisily, as if slamming pans around could fill in all the spaces they hadn’t dared speak into.

The way no one mentioned Tzuyu by name.

But everyone knew.

⸻

She told Tzuyu, one afternoon on the balcony, wind soft against her scarf, that she didn’t know how to be two things at once.

Tzuyu leaned against the railing beside her and said, “You don’t have to be.”

Sana blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You’re still one thing,” Tzuyu said. “You’re just… loving in more directions now.”

Sana felt her eyes burn.

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s not,” Tzuyu said gently. “But you’re doing it anyway.”

⸻

Momo’s breakdown came without warning.

They were in the kitchen. It was late. Sana was washing fruit. Momo was trying to open a stubborn jar of gochujang with her sleeve.

Then—suddenly—

The jar hit the floor.

Momo cursed.

And then sank to the ground beside it.

“Sana,” she said, voice cracking, “I don’t know who I am when I’m not the one keeping you safe.”

⸻

Sana dried her hands.

Knelt beside her.

Took her face in both palms.

“You’re my Momo,” she said.

“I know.”

“You’ve always been my Momo.”

“But you don’t need me like you did.”

“No,” Sana whispered. “I need you differently now.”

Momo let out a long, broken sound. Somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

“I feel like I lost a limb.”

“You didn’t,” Sana said.

“You just watched it grow.”

⸻

They held each other for a long time.

No one else entered the kitchen.

No one had to.

⸻

Mina was slower.

But she always was.

It wasn’t that she stayed distant—she was there, present, always—but she didn’t say much. Didn’t look too long. Moved around Sana like she was trying not to bump something fragile.

One night, Sana found her in the nest room, folding an old hoodie with deliberate care.

“Mina?”

Mina didn’t look up.

“I think I’m ready,” she said softly.

“For what?”

Mina met her eyes.

“To meet her.”

⸻

They didn’t make it a big deal.

Just a quiet invitation.

Dinner at the apartment.

Tzuyu showed up with a pie.

Momo opened the door, looked at her, blinked, and said, “I expected you to be taller.”

Tzuyu tilted her head.

“I get that a lot.”

Sana held her breath as she stepped inside.

Tzuyu didn’t reach for her.

Didn’t press.

Just offered the pie and said, “Thank you for feeding her so well all these years.”

Momo blinked again.

Then took the pie.

And said, “She’s still the worst at peeling garlic.”

⸻

Mina didn’t say anything until dinner ended.

The table was cleared. Dahyun and Nayeon had come by for dessert, turning the room into chaos and laughter and Dahyun giggling while Tzuyu tried not to get flustered by all the attention.

When they left, Mina lingered in the kitchen, wiping the counters with slow movements.

Sana stood nearby, unsure if she was supposed to wait or leave.

Tzuyu stood by the door, jacket on, quiet.

Then Mina said, softly: “She loves you.”

Sana’s throat tightened.

“I know,” Tzuyu said.

Mina turned to face her.

Her expression unreadable.

“But do you love her the same way we did?”

Tzuyu didn’t flinch.

“I don’t know how you loved her,” she said.

“But I love her like I’d never try to own her.”

Mina nodded.

And that was that.

⸻

It took time.

Weeks.

Then months.

But slowly, Tzuyu became a fixture.

Not a disruption.

Not a replacement.

Just a soft addition.

A steady presence.

The fourth plate at the table.

The hoodie left behind on the couch.

The book she lent Mina without asking for it back.

The hands that helped clean up the nest room on Sundays.

⸻

There were hiccups.

Old patterns.

Jealous moments.

Lingering tensions.

But there were also new joys.

Momo learning how to banter with Tzuyu in dry one-liners.

Mina teaching her how to make cold soba, watching with the same careful hands she used to fold Sana’s shirts in middle school.

Late nights where the four of them watched movies in silence, not quite touching, but close enough to feel the safety of it.

⸻

One morning, Sana woke up in the nest.

Mina was curled behind her.

Momo was half on top of her.

Tzuyu was at the foot of the nest, feet still on the floor, eyes half-closed.

Sana blinked.

Then smiled.

“Are you comfortable?”

Tzuyu shrugged. “I’m not trying to steal a spot.”

“You’re not stealing,” Momo mumbled sleepily, not lifting her head.

“You’re part of this,” Mina said, eyes still closed.

Sana reached out, took Tzuyu’s hand.

Pulled her in.

And whispered, “Family.”

⸻

That night, she wrote in her journal.

They didn’t let me go.

They just made space for someone else to stay.
—-