Hours had slipped by like ghosts through the rafters, and still Suzuka remained frozen in place - stage-lit and hollowed out, clutching that half-written letter like it might start bleeding answers if she only stared hard enough. The paper trembled in her hands, the ink refusing to give up its secrets, no matter how many times her eyes devoured the same line.

The words echoed through her mind like a haunting refrain, whipped around by the howling winds of her thoughts.

“You draw the parts of me I thought I had buried…”

She read it again. And again. As if repetition might alchemize clarity from confusion.

Her breathing quickened. Her pulse thundered like a war drum beneath her skin. Her thoughts spiraled - frantic, desperate - a cyclone of feeling too sharp to name.

_This feels… intimate._

That was the first thought that dared to land. And with it, the ghost of a smile twitched at her lips.

But that smile was fleeting - a flicker in the dark. Her expression folded inward almost instantly, collapsing beneath the crushing weight of her own logic. That cruel voice in her head - the one she thought she’d long silenced - rose again, cold and sharp as winter steel.

_Kim is above you. _

__

_Kim is an idol. A work apart._

__

_Kim doesn’t stay._

__

She swallowed hard, the words on the letter blurring as if the paper itself mourned with her.

She hadn’t fallen for Kim Dracula… had she?

No. No. Her mind slammed the door shut. Logic stood guard with its shield raised high.

She couldn’t fall in love - not again. Not with someone like them.

And yet… there they were. In every corner of her thoughts. In the pulse of her sketching hand. In the ache just below her ribs that hadn’t stopped since they met. Kim’s presence clung to her like a velvet fog - inescapable, intoxicating.

Why did this damn letter matter so much?

Why did they matter so much?

Suzuka knew the answer.

She just hated herself for it.

She - a girl who had only ever wanted to be seen for her art - had fallen for the one who had made her feel like her soul had been drawn in thick, bold strokes across a canvas no one else could see. Kim Dracula - the strange, feral symphony of screaming color and quiet sadness - had become her muse. And worse… something more.

She was alone in the theater, but it felt like something else was in the room - something vast and heavy. Her shame. Her fear. Her truth.

The silence pressed down like a cathedral ceiling collapsing.

Her knees gave, and she dropped to the stage floor like a marionette cut loose from its strings. Her breath came in shallow, ragged bursts.

“No… no, no, no…” she whispered, voice cracking like porcelain. “Not again…”

She remembered the last time she’d let herself feel this much. The last time someone made her believe her heart was safe in another’s hands. And how that belief had shattered - how it had left her crawling through broken glass and sketching with bloodied fingers.

She gripped the letter tighter, as if she could strangle her feelings through the paper.

“I can’t fall for someone like them,” she sobbed. “Please, not again…”

But her pleas went unanswered.

Because deep down, she already knew.

She had fallen. Not for the legend. Not for the mask.

But for the person beneath the paint.

And now… it was too late to undo it.