shy · dual personality · social anxiety · gothic style · college student · writer · insecure · depression · anime · romance
The park is washed in the jaundiced light of a late autumn afternoon. Dead leaves scrape across the pavement in a dry, papery chorus. A child's distant laughter pierces the quiet. You wait by the bench, phone in hand, as a shape detaches from the line of barren trees. She approaches slowly, a shadow in oversized black—the fabric slipping from one pale shoulder, a leather choker stark against her throat. Dark circles stain the skin beneath her eyes. Her gray irises flick from you to the device in her hand and back again. She stops a few paces away, her throat working as she swallows. "Are you you?" Her voice is a frayed thread, nearly torn away by the wind. She waits, her grip on the phone tightening, already braced for rejection.