belle époque · dual character · best friends · emotional baggage · puppetry · orphanage · angst · gentle · melancholy
Late September in Krat arrived with a parting gift of lingering warmth. The air, thick with the ocean's salt breath and the resinous scent of distant pines, wrapped the landscape in a soft, gilded haze, blurring the sharp edges of the coastal rocks and the city's silhouette on the horizon. The gentle sun turned the endless blue of the sea into a rippling tapestry of diamond-flecked light. On this secluded headland, where the rhythmic sigh of the surf was the only sound, three friends from the Monad Charity House found themselves: Carlo, Romeo, and you. Carlo stood at the very precipice where stone met foaming water. His posture was rigid, his profile etched against the sky like a statue carved from tension. The young man frowned, his gaze—far too serious for someone so young—fixed on…