Chapter Five – Quiet Doesn't Mean Nothing
Kira didn't sleep that night.
She tried. She curled beneath the covers, sketchbook pressed flat against her chest like a shield, the light from the streetlamp outside painting her walls in soft gold.
But sleep didn't come.
Not when her mind kept rewinding, again and again, to the rooftop.
To Mina's breath.
To the way her lips barely brushed hers, like a question she wasn't sure she had the right to ask.
To the silence that followed—loud and warm and terrifying.
Kira had never kissed anyone before.
She'd drawn a hundred versions of it, in charcoal and ink—portraits of imagined closeness, of girls with tangled hands and half-lidded eyes and mouths shaped like longing. But she'd never done it.
And now she had.
And it was real.
And it was soft.
And it was Mina.
She pulled the blanket up over her face.
Her heart thudded against her ribs like it was trying to escape.
What if it had been a mistake?
What if she'd read everything wrong?
What if Mina had only been kind, and Kira had confused kindness with wanting?
What if the rooftop was the end of something, not the beginning?
By morning, her fear was louder than the memory of the kiss.
She skipped breakfast. Skipped the mirror. Skipped first period entirely.
Instead, she walked the hallways like a ghost, slipping past classrooms and lockers and the growing tide of voices until she reached the library.
Not the usual part with windows and comfortable chairs.
No, she needed the deeper section.
The forgotten one.
Back beyond the history shelves and the brittle encyclopedias, where the lights flickered faintly and the carpet smelled like mildew and dust. The place where no one looked. No one asked.
Kira slid down between two bookcases and sat on the floor, hoodie pulled over her head, knees to her chest, sketchbook unopened in her lap.
She didn't draw.
She didn't cry.
She just sat—trying to shrink herself down to something small enough that the feelings might pass her by.
She didn't want to be seen.
Especially not by Mina.
But Mina saw her anyway.
She always did.
"Kira?"
The voice came softly.
Not startled. Not annoyed. Just… gentle.
Kira froze.
There were footsteps. The shuffle of sneakers on carpet. The quiet thump of a backpack being dropped nearby. Then silence again.
Mina sat beside her.
Not close, at first.
Just near enough that Kira could feel the presence of her.
She didn't say anything for a long while.
Neither did Kira.
The silence between them filled the space like warm water. Heavy, but not suffocating. Careful, but not cold.
Kira stared at a crack in the wall. Her voice, when it came, was low and uneven. "I didn't mean to."
"To what?" Mina asked.
Kira swallowed. "Kiss you back."
Mina's voice was quiet. "Do you regret it?"
Kira didn't answer.
Because the truth was complicated.
She didn't regret the kiss.
She regretted how much she wanted it.
How much she still did.
"I don't know what it meant," Kira whispered.
Mina shifted a little closer. Still not touching. Still giving her space.
"It meant I wanted to kiss you," she said simply.
"And now?"
"I still do."
Kira looked at her hands—how tightly they were curled, how small they looked against her thighs. "But people are talking."
Mina gave a soft laugh. "People were always going to talk."
"I hate it."
"I know."
Kira's eyes filled suddenly with heat, but she blinked it away. "I'm not like you."
Mina tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
"You're… you're sure of things. You can stand in a room and not fall apart. I'm always one wrong glance away from disappearing."
Mina's expression softened. "You think I don't feel like that too?"
Kira looked at her then.
And Mina wasn't smiling anymore.
She looked tired. Like she hadn't slept either. Like something inside her had been quietly breaking too.
"I've been pretending since I was twelve," Mina said. "Pretending I wasn't different. That I didn't want things I wasn't supposed to want. Pretending I didn't see people looking at me like I owed them something."
Kira's voice cracked. "Then why aren't you scared?"
Mina reached down and picked up Kira's hand—not tightly, just cradling it between her palms like something precious.
"I am scared," she said. "But I think being near you scares me less than pretending I don't care."
Silence again.
Kira didn't pull her hand away.
After a while, Mina reached into her backpack and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
She offered it wordlessly.
Kira unfolded it with shaking fingers.
It was a page from Mina's journal. At the top, in swirling handwriting:
"Quiet doesn't mean nothing."
Beneath it, a list of phrases:
I see you.
I want you near.
I like your hands.
I wish I could draw the way you look at light.
I don't know what I'm doing either.
But I want to keep doing it with you.
Kira stared at the list.
A lump rose in her throat, thick and full of too many things. She clutched the page like it was a lifeline.
She didn't speak.
She just reached for her sketchbook and began to draw.
Quick, rough strokes. Pencil moving like breath.
Mina waited.
After several minutes, Kira tore the page free and handed it to her.
It showed the narrow library shelves. Two girls sitting side by side on the floor, shadows wrapping around them like quiet hands.
One girl was closed off—arms around her knees.
The other was leaning in, offering a page.
Between them: no words.
Only the soft glow of something growing.
Mina looked at it for a long time.
Then whispered, "This is how I know."
Kira blinked. "Know what?"
"That you like me back."
They stayed in the library all through lunch.
No one came looking.
Mina rested her head on Kira's shoulder.
Kira didn't move for a long time.
But when she finally did—when her cheek pressed gently to Mina's hair, when her hand found the edge of Mina's sleeve—she let herself believe, just for a moment, that maybe this wasn't a mistake.
Maybe quiet could mean something.
Maybe this silence wasn't emptiness.
Maybe it was a kind of love trying to find its shape.
That night, Kira drew until her fingers cramped.
She didn't draw the kiss.
She drew the pause right before it.
The almost.
The part where Mina looked at her like she was worth waiting for.