"It doesn't."

His voice was calm, but his eyes had not left her face.

She swallowed.

The elevator chimed.

The doors opened onto their floor.

Elowen stepped out first, grateful for the sudden space. "Well. Welcome again, Lucien Vale, who is apparently my neighbor and also has the name of my fictional emotional support teenager."

A faint crease appeared at the corner of his eyes.

He was smiling beneath the mask.

She could tell.

It made her stomach do something deeply inconvenient.

"Thank you, Elowen Harlow."

Her name in his mouth felt different than it should have.

She walked toward her door, acutely aware of him moving behind her toward the apartment next to hers. The hallway seemed narrower than usual. Her keys sounded too loud when she fumbled them from her bag.

Before unlocking her door, she glanced back.

Lucien had stopped outside his apartment.

He was watching her.

This time, there was no mistaking it.

Something passed through her chest—unease, yes, but not entirely. There was also the disorienting awareness of being seen with such focus that the rest of the world seemed briefly less important.

He looked away first.

"Good afternoon," he said.

"Yeah." She cleared her throat. "You too."

Elowen slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

Sunny arrived immediately, tail wagging hard enough to make his whole body bend.

"You will not believe what just happened," she told him.

Sunny sneezed.

"Our new neighbor is extremely handsome, possibly from a luxury perfume ad, and has the exact same name as Lucien from the game."

Sunny's expression suggested this information did not affect his dinner schedule.

"I know. It's weird, right?"

She set her coffee on the table and sank into a chair without taking off her coat.

Through the wall, the neighboring apartment remained silent.

Elowen touched the rim of her cup, thinking of gray-blue eyes and a voice too controlled to be casual.

Then, because apparently she had no survival instinct when it came to curiosity, she opened Lumina.

The game loaded into a dark office.

Lucien sat at a broad desk covered in documents and financial reports far too advanced for any teenager to look at without legal intervention. City light pressed against the windows behind him. His dark hair fell neatly across his forehead, his expression distant and focused.

Elowen frowned.

"Why are you always working like an exhausted middle-aged businessman?"

Lucien looked up immediately.

The change in him was almost painful.

A moment ago he had seemed carved from silence. Now something alive moved through his face, subtle but unmistakable.

"Lowen."

His voice through the phone was softer than the one she had heard in the elevator.

Or maybe she only imagined that.

"I'm here," she said.

Lucien's gaze stayed on her with unsettling warmth.

"You told me."

The reminder made her smile.

"I promised, didn't I?"

"Yes."

Such a simple word.

Such a devastating amount of feeling behind it.

Elowen tucked her legs beneath herself in the chair.

"So. Something weird happened today."

Lucien's hand stilled over the papers.

"What happened?"

"I met my new neighbor." She leaned closer to the phone, still amused by the absurdity of it. "And his name is Lucien Vale."

For the first time since she opened the game, Lucien did not respond.

His face remained composed.

His eyes did not.

Elowen's smile faded slightly.

"Lucien?"

He looked down at the papers in front of him, though she had the distinct impression he wasn't reading anything.

"That is a coincidence."

"Right? That's what I said." She laughed softly, relieved by the answer. "He's older than you, obviously. Very fancy. Wears suits that look personally approved by capitalism. Also a mask, which is mysterious but probably just health-conscious."

Lucien's fingers curled slowly against the edge of the desk.

Elowen didn't notice.

"He seems polite, though," she continued. "A little intense maybe, but not in a bad way."

Lucien looked up.

"Do you like him?"

The question was quiet enough to make her blink.

"What?"

"Your neighbor."

"I just met him."

"That wasn't my question."

Elowen stared at the screen.

For a second, the room seemed to hold still around her.

Then she laughed, because the alternative was admitting that something about his tone had made her pulse shift.

"He's attractive," she said carefully. "That's not the same as liking someone."

Lucien's expression did not change.

But something in the air between them did.

Elowen leaned back slowly.

"Are you jealous?"

The question came out teasing.

Mostly.

Lucien looked at her for a long moment.

Then he said, "Should I be?"

Her breath caught.

The game had no right to feel this real.

She looked away, cheeks warming despite herself.

"You're being strange tonight."

"I don't want him to make you uncomfortable."

"He didn't."

Lucien's gaze darkened almost imperceptibly.

"That doesn't mean he won't."

"Lucien."

"I'm only saying you should be careful."

The words were ordinary.

Protective, even.

So why did they feel like they had closed around something?

Elowen studied him for a few seconds.

Then her expression softened. "That's sweet, but I'm okay. He's just a neighbor."

Lucien held her gaze.

Just a neighbor.

The phrase lodged inside him with cruel precision.

Because she was right.

To her, he was a stranger in a mask.

A man in an elevator.

A polite coincidence.

To him, she was every morning spent waiting for her apartment lights to turn on, every night watching rain blur the windows while he wondered whether she had eaten, every message he had saved and reread until the words became something close to prayer.

Just a neighbor.

He smiled.

It was perfect.

It was also nothing like happiness.

"As long as you're safe," he said.

Elowen relaxed again.

"There. See? Normal protective friend behavior."

"Friend?"

She froze.

Lucien watched her with an expression she couldn't name.

Elowen suddenly wished she had thought before speaking.

"Well," she said lightly, "you know what I mean."

"I do."

He didn't sound like he did.

The session timer appeared.

Elowen nearly sagged with relief.

"Oh, timing. Saved by the system."

Lucien looked toward the invisible countdown.

His face softened again, but not fully. The earlier shadow remained beneath the surface.

"You'll come back tomorrow?"

"I'll try."

His eyes shifted.

She caught it this time.

Elowen sighed softly. "I'll come back tomorrow."

The correction changed him immediately.

Not dramatically enough to make her uncomfortable.

Just enough to make her heart ache.

"Good," he said.

The screen dimmed around the edges.

"Goodnight, Lucien."

"Goodnight, Lowen."

The game closed.

Elowen sat in the quiet apartment with Sunny asleep beside her chair, her coffee cooling untouched on the table.

Through the wall, her new neighbor's apartment remained silent.

She looked toward it despite herself.

In the apartment next door, Lucien Vale stood with his back against the closed door, one hand still curled tightly around the key he had not yet set down.

He had heard her voice through two worlds today.

One version of him had stood beside her in the elevator, close enough to see the faint tired shadows beneath her eyes and smell the soft sweetness of her shampoo.

The other had listened through a screen as she described him like a stranger.

Older.

Fancy.

Polite.

Attractive.

Not his.

Not yet.

Lucien closed his eyes.

On the other side of the wall, Elowen moved through her apartment with familiar small sounds: the clink of a mug, Sunny's collar, the soft slide of a chair against the floor.

He had spent years loving a voice that came and went without warning.

Now she was close enough for him to hear her living.

The knowledge moved through him with terrible tenderness.

He turned his head slightly toward the wall.

"Goodnight, Lowen," he whispered again.

This time, no screen carried the words to her.