I want to put my mouth—
"Stop looking at me like that," she says.
"Like what?"
She doesn't answer, putting distance between us, and I'm out of the bed before I've decided to move.
She flinches when I appear beside her. Good. She should.
"I can dress myself," she says.
"Yes."
I don't step back.
She stares at me and I stare back. The silence stretches until she finally looks away, her jaw tightening.
"Fine," she mutters. "Fine. Stand there, then."
I do.
I stand there while she pulls clothes from the wardrobe, while she turns her back to me and pulls my shirt over her head—
The scars.
Raised white lines crisscrossing her back. Old. Healed. A whip, maybe. Something designed to hurt without killing.
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
I stand there while she steps into a dress, while she struggles with the laces at her back, while she—
"Let me."
My hands are already on the laces. She's still. My fingers brush her skin where the fabric gaps, tracing over the ridges of scar tissue, and the heat of her seeps into my knuckles.
"You don't have to—"
"Who did this?"
She stiffens. "What?"
"Your back." My fingers find a thick ridge near her spine and follow it down. "Who."
Silence.
"It doesn't matter," she says finally. "It was a long time ago."
"It matters to me."
"Koshin—"
"Who."
Another silence. Then, quieter: "My father. When I was… disobedient."
Her father. The man who sold her. The man who handed her over as payment for a debt and walked away without looking back.
Still alive. Still breathing. Still walking around with skin on his back while hers looks like this.
