The cold of the stone seeped through the fabric of her jacket, but Saya didn't move. She stayed there, forearms resting on the balustrade, her gaze lost somewhere between the poorly trimmed hedges of the garden and the grey-orange sky of the eternal twilight that never really changed, that only pretended to fall without ever quite managing it.
She listened, despite herself, to the fragments of laughter that reached her from inside. A voice she recognized as Kai's, a sharp burst of laughter that had to be Chio, the deeper rumble of a group laugh shared around a joke she would never hear. Every sound reminded her a little more that she was outside, literally and symbolically, separated by a simple glass door from something she had no right to claim.
