Chapter 8

The air in the Japanese garden was thick, not just with the humidity of the approaching summer, but with the scent of crushed petals and the sweet, cloying perfume of night-blooming jasmine. Above us, the paper lanterns hung from the low-hanging branches of the cherry trees, glowing like captured fireflies in hues of soft pink, pale yellow, and deep crimson. They cast long, dancing shadows against the raked gravel of the koi pond, turning our world into a dreamlike sepia tone where time seemed to have stalled, suspended in the amber glow of the festival’s final hour. We had spent the last three hours wandering the maze of stone paths, our fingers intertwined so tightly that my knuckles were white, a silent testament to the electricity humming beneath our skin. To anyone else, we were just a couple enjoying the Matsuri—a young woman in a silk kimono and a man in a dark suit, looking sophisticated and composed. But we weren’t just anyone. We were *us*. And the space between our bodies, barely a breath apart, was charged with the weight of the secret we had been carrying since the moment he claimed me as his. "Look at the koi,