She could only exist during the bloom. And the bloom lasted seven days.

She reached out and, for a moment, her fingers brushed his. Cold. Weightless. Like touching moonlight.

The first petal fell on a Tuesday morning, landing on Kaito’s window sill like a pink teardrop. He didn’t know yet that it was a countdown. He only knew that his hand moved faster than his mind, sketching Yuki’s profile in the margins of his grandmother’s old tea recipe.

“You came back,” she said, without turning.

“Then don’t paint the falling,” she whispered. “Paint the moment before. The pause. The breath when the blossom still believes it can stay.”

He tried. God, how he tried.

Kaito has spent his life trying to capture the perfect cherry blossom. But perfection, he learns, is a woman who cannot stay. Yuki is the spirit of the tree, bound to the brief, fierce glory of the bloom. When the last petal falls, so does she—back into the silence between seasons.