Practice continued.

Elowen coached him from her couch while Sunny slowly melted into sleep against her side. Rain shifted against the windows in soft waves.

The gym on her screen warmed into late afternoon gold, and Lucien moved through each drill with increasing confidence. He missed some passes. He overcorrected others.

Once, a teammate tossed the ball too hard and it struck his forearm with a sharp sound that made Elowen wince.

"You okay?"

Lucien looked down at the faint red mark on his arm.

"It doesn't hurt."

"You don't have to say that every time something hurts."

He paused.

The silence after her words felt different from the easy quiet before.

Elowen regretted the sentence almost instantly, although she did not know why. Maybe because his face had gone still in that particular way again.

Then he said, "I'll remember that."

Softly.

Seriously.

As if she had given him permission for something larger than pain.

Elowen's throat tightened.

To cover it, she launched into a story about her own brief and humiliating volleyball career in college. She told him about weekend games behind the dorms, cheap convenience-store sports drinks, scraped knees, the girl from her literature class who served like she had a personal vendetta against the ball. She told him about the time she took a volleyball directly to the face during match point and bled all over her white hoodie while her teammates panicked.

Lucien stopped moving.

"You were bleeding?"

"Nosebleed, not fatal."

"Who hit you?"

Elowen stared at the screen, then laughed.

"Who?"

"She was my teammate."

"That doesn't answer the question."

The seriousness in his voice should have been funny. It was funny, partly. But beneath it was something else, something sharpened by the idea of harm even when the harm was years old and meaningless.

Elowen's smile softened.

"It was an accident. She felt awful afterward."

Lucien did not look comforted.

"People should be careful with you."

The words settled between them with unexpected weight.

Elowen looked away first, down at the blanket gathered in her lap. Her apartment seemed very quiet suddenly, despite the rain, despite Sunny's soft snoring, despite the distant traffic below.

"You say things like that so seriously," she murmured.

"I am serious."

She should have laughed it off.

Instead, she touched the edge of her phone with her thumb and felt strangely seen.

The gym began to empty as practice ended. Students drifted toward the locker rooms in noisy clusters, their voices echoing up into the high ceiling. Lucien stayed behind, collecting stray volleyballs and stacking them into a rolling cart.

"Do you always volunteer to clean up?" Elowen asked.

"No."

"Then why tonight?"

Lucien placed another ball into the cart.

"Because everyone else left."

That answer was simple enough to pass as ordinary.

Elowen almost accepted it.

Then he added, "And because you were still here."

Her chest warmed before she could stop it.

The worst part was that he said it without flirtation. Lucien never seemed to flirt. He offered devastating honesty with the calm of someone handing over a glass of water, and Elowen had no idea what to do with it.

"You're going to make me feel guilty for logging off," she said.

His hands went still.

Only for a second.

"Is that what I'm doing?"

The quiet uncertainty in his voice undid her.

"No. I'm joking." She leaned closer to the phone. "I like spending time with you."

Lucien looked up.

The gym lights had started coming on overhead as the daylight faded, turning the polished floor pale beneath him. He stood alone beside the cart, one hand resting on the handle, his face open in a way Elowen had rarely seen.

"You do?"

The question was so careful that she felt it under her skin.

"Of course I do."

He did not answer immediately.

But the small breath he took came through her speaker clearly, and somehow that felt more intimate than anything he could have said.

A pale timer appeared at the top of her screen.

01:00.

Elowen's mood dropped at once.

"Oh, come on."

Lucien's gaze flicked upward, following something he could not see but had learned to dread.

"The timer?"

"Yeah." She sighed. "One minute."

He looked away.

The gym was empty now. Without the other students, the space seemed too large around him. All that wealth, all that polish, all that beautiful architecture, and he still managed to look like the loneliest person in it.

"You'll come back tomorrow?" he asked.

Elowen hesitated.

The honest answer was probably. She had deadlines, errands, a publishing email she still needed to answer, and a life that did not always leave space for mysterious emotionally intelligent mobile games.

But Lucien was looking at her like the answer mattered more than tomorrow should.

"I'll try," she said gently.

His expression barely changed, but she felt the disappointment anyway.

The timer continued counting down.

00:35.

Elowen hated the quiet suddenly.

"Hey," she said, softening her voice. "You did really well today."

Lucien looked at her again.

"I only cleared the net four times."

"And the first one was very emotionally moving."

The corner of his mouth lifted, though the sadness stayed in his eyes.

00:18.

"Lowen."

"Hm?"

"I like hearing you."

The sentence landed with such directness that she forgot, for a moment, to be embarrassed.

Then the heat rose slowly into her cheeks.

"Oh," she said, suddenly shy. "Well. I like hearing you too."

The last ten seconds passed too quickly.

Lucien stepped closer to the screen, and for one irrational moment Elowen felt as if he could close the distance if the world allowed it.

"Goodnight," she said.

His voice came through low and careful, holding her name like something he did not want to release.

"Goodnight, Lowen."

The screen faded to black.

A familiar notification appeared.

Daily playtime limit reached. Please return tomorrow.

Elowen remained curled on the couch long after the game closed, her phone warm in her palm. Rain continued against the windows. Sunny slept with his head on her thigh, completely unaware that something in the room felt altered.

She set the phone facedown on the blanket.

"This is getting weird," she whispered.

Sunny snored softly.

Elowen smiled despite herself, but the smile did not last.

In the private sports hall of the Vale estate, Lucien remained beside the volleyball net after the connection ended.

The staff waited near the entrance, careful and silent in the way people became around him. Beyond the tall windows, evening pressed blue against the glass. The polished floor reflected the overhead lights so perfectly that Lucien seemed doubled in the shine beneath his feet.

For a long while, he did not move.

Her voice remained in his memory with unbearable clarity, carrying the tired warmth of her apartment, the softness that entered her tone when she praised him, the faint drowsy edge that came whenever she laughed late at night.

He lifted one hand and touched just below his ear, as if the sound might still be there.

One of the attendants stepped forward. "Sir, the car is ready."

Lucien lowered his hand slowly.

The silence of the hall gathered around him, vast and cold after the intimacy of her voice.

"Leave me," he said.

The attendant bowed at once. Footsteps retreated. Doors opened and closed.

Lucien stood alone until the building settled again.

Only then did he close his eyes.

In the dark behind his lids, he replayed the exact way Elowen had said his name, patient and affectionate and unaware that she had given him something he would not survive losing.