CHAPTER 77
ARIA
I was lounging on the edge of the bed, notes spread across my lap, pen in hand, trying to focus on the work we’d promised to tackle together.
Mary was nearby, perched on the chair, flipping through her papers. The room felt quiet, productive, even comfortable in that easy way we sometimes found when no one else was around.
“I need to use the bathroom,” Mary said, standing and stretching after a while. I nodded absently, barely looking up from my notes, muttering something like
“Sure, go ahead.”
When she came back a few minutes later, there was a pause in her step. I could hear her shifting behind me, and then a soft, thoughtful sound—a hum, almost questioning.
“Hmmm…” Her voice trailed off, curiosity threading through the simple sound. I kept my eyes on my notes, scribbling a few lines, completely immersed, and didn’t think to look up.
A soft rustle came from the floor near the bed. I heard Mary kneel, the subtle scrape of her knees against the carpet.
Then her voice, sharper this time.
“What’s this?”
I blinked, pen still in hand, not fully registering her tone.
“Hm? What is what?” I murmured, my attention still tangled in my notes as I glanced up at her slowly.
Mary’s voice broke through my haze.
“This?”
When I looked up, she was holding something between her fingers.
My body locked before my eyes could even focus. My pulse thudded so hard it rattled through my ribs.
A feather.
Not just any feather—long, black, and impossibly sleek. The sunlight streaming in through the window caught on its glossy edges, sending a shiver straight through me.
I couldn’t breathe.
Every nerve screamed to snatch it from her, to clutch it tight against my chest, but my hands stayed frozen in my lap. My mind spun, too loud, too fast.
Lean.
It couldn’t be anything else.
I curled my fingers around the pen in my hand until it bit into my skin, grounding me as best I could.
My eyes dropped back to the notes scattered on the table, as though words on a page could shield me from the truth blazing in front of me.
But recognition pulsed hot and undeniable through my veins, no matter how I tried to smother it.
“Where did you find it?” The words came out sharper than I meant, my voice pulled tight around the edges.
Mary blinked, glancing back at me. “On the floor. Right by your bed.” Her eyes lingered on the feather, wide and curious.
She turned it over in her hand, the light catching on its sheen. “It’s… strange. Really strange.”
I forced myself to act casual.
I reached out, snatching it gently from her hand before my expression could give me away.
“Oh, this? Nothing. Just something I picked up years ago.”
I managed a small shrug, sliding it into the drawer beside me as if it were meaningless.
I tried to steady my breathing, trying to make my voice sound calm and unconcerned, even though my chest hammered.
I forced a small smile, hoping Mary wouldn’t press.
She blinked, clearly surprised by how fast I’d dismissed it.
I stood abruptly, smoothing the edge of my shirt with shaky hands.
“Actually, Mary… I’m not feeling so great."
Her brows knit together immediately.
“Why? What happened all of a sudden?”
I offered a weak smile, though my chest was tight.
“Migraine,” I lied smoothly.
“It’s probably nothing, but… maybe we can go over these later—when I feel a bit more normal.”
Mary hesitated, searching my face. Her mouth opened like she wanted to say more, then closed again. Finally, she let out a quiet sigh and pushed herself up from the couch.
“Alright. If you’re sure. I’ll head out, then… just get some rest, okay?”
“Thanks,” I murmured, giving her what I hoped was a convincing smile.
She gave me one last curious look, something between worry and suspicion, before grabbing her bag.
“Fine… see you later,” she murmured, then let herself out.
I waited until the door had clicked and the soft scrape of Mary’s footsteps faded down the hall before I let myself breathe properly.
My fingers went straight to the drawer and pulled the feather out again, cradling it like something sacred — and then the search started by itself.
My fingers traced its dark edge, trembling.
He was here.
It couldn’t have been a dream.
My chest squeezed so tightly it hurt.
Lean.
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
It couldn’t belong to anyone else.
I was on my feet before I even realised it, moving like something had taken hold of me.
The sheets were yanked back, the pillows tossed to the floor. I dropped to my knees, shoving my hands beneath the bed, then stumbled up to fling open every drawer, every cabinet.
Even the bathroom wasn’t spared—I pulled the curtain aside, searched the corners, opened the medicine cabinet as if he might have left himself tucked away in the shadows.
My hands trembled with every movement, my breath coming too fast. I needed something—anything. A second feather. A footprint. A sign that I hadn’t lost my mind.
But there was nothing. Just silence. Just the one black feather.
I dropped onto the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under my weight as I sat there clutching the feather.
My chest rose and fell too fast, every breath scraped raw.
The room around me was a mess—I’d torn through it like a storm, yanking open drawers, shoving cushions aside, even crawling on my hands and knees to check beneath the bed.
Nothing.
Not a thread of evidence, not a trace of him.
Just this one feather.
I stared down at it, black and glossy in the dim light, and the longer I looked, the more it mocked me. My fingers tightened until the quill bit into my palm.
I could still feel him.
Every nerve, every muscle, every pulse of my skin remembered the ghost of his touch.
And yet—this feather was the only proof I had that he had actually been here.
Then my eyes landed on the half-eaten box of doughnuts on the little table, the lid shoved aside and a sticky smear of glaze on one corner.
Professor Lian had shown up at my door with a box in his hands, awkward, almost shy, asking if I’d eaten.
Professor Lian—the man who was always so reserved, so distant, so difficult to read—had stood there holding pastries like some ordinary neighbour.
It hadn’t fit, not with the man he pretended to be.
I had seen that face across lecture halls, caught glimpses of it in hallways, in classrooms, always feeling that tug in my chest, that whisper of recognition I couldn’t explain.
I thought I was imagining it.
That I was clinging to ghosts.
The memory slammed into me so suddenly that it stole my breath.
That morning—years ago, or what felt like another lifetime—I’d laughed, telling Lian how much I loved doughnuts. The way I’d waved my hand like it didn’t matter, and the way he’d looked at me—soft, unguarded—as if it mattered more than anything. Especially glazed ones. My favourite.
And now, here they were.
Sitting on my table.
The exact kind he had brought.
Professor Lian.
My pulse hammered.
His voice rose in my mind, and it was exactly the same as my Lian’s—every rough edge, every familiar note. My chest tightened, and I could feel a shiver run down my spine. It was him. It had to be him. My heart thudded so hard I thought it might give away how certain I suddenly felt, how undeniable the truth had become.
And his face.
God, his face. I had stared at him across lecture halls, caught his profile in the library, and brushed past him in the corridor.
Always, something in me jolted.
Always, something in me whispered his name even when my lips stayed still. I had been too afraid to believe it. Too afraid to connect the fragments.
Piece by piece the scatter of images slotted together until there was no room left for anything else.
The feather.
The doughnuts.
The way his jaw had gone tight the second I said something stupid and light.
The way his eyes—Lian’s eyes—had looked when he thought no one was watching. All of it converged into one unbearable, crystalline truth.
Professor Lian wasn’t just some distant, aloof academic.
He was my Lian.
And now, I knew it with every frantic beat of my heart.
Professor Lian is my Lian. He’s him.
The conviction didn’t creep up; it hit me like a wave that knocked the breath out of me. It was ridiculous and inevitable at once.
My hands went to my face, pressing until I felt dizzy, and then I laughed — a short, hysterical sound — because for the first time since everything that had broken, something felt whole.
I stood so fast that the chair scraped the floor.
The feather slipped from my fingers and I caught it again on instinct, clutching it like proof.
The room swam around the edges, but the centre of it was clear: he had been here, and he was not just a professor with a polite smile.
He was the man whose name I had ached for.
He was the impossible answer to a hunger I hadn’t known how to name.
I had to find him.
Now.
A sob tore out of me, wild and shaking. My eyes blurred as I clutched the feather to my chest.
“I found you,” I whispered, choking on the words.
“You’re alive.”
I didn’t think.
I couldn’t.
The air in the room felt too thin, too small, pressing in until I could hardly breathe.
My legs carried me out the door before I knew what I was doing. The hallway spun around me as I half-ran, half-stumbled, driven by instinct more than sense.
I rounded the corner and saw him before he even noticed me. He was leaning against the railing, shoulders relaxed in that deceptively casual way that had always drawn me in.
His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the wall, not on me. My chest tightened, a mix of relief, longing, and disbelief twisting together.
Professor Lian. Lean.
Both, and neither.
My breath caught, a sharp, broken sound, and then I was moving.
“Lean…” My voice was barely a whisper, trembling, fragile.
I crashed into him with a force that surprised us both, my arms locking around his shoulders, my body colliding with his. I didn’t care about explanations, about doubts, about the walls of reality closing in around me.
All I wanted was him.
My mouth found his neck without hesitation, desperate, trembling, savage with need.
My teeth sank into his skin before I could stop myself.
The taste of him flooded me—warm, metallic, alive.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sane. But in that moment, biting him was the only way to prove to myself he was real. That he wasn’t a dream. That he belonged to me, as I belonged to him.
My tears wet his skin where my lips pressed, and I clung tighter, shaking, whispering against his throat—
“Lean.”