The blonde’s eyes widened. Her friend’s martini-loose gaze dragged shalessly from his white sneakers up to his jawline, alcohol having long since dissolved any filter. The blonde elbowed her. The friend didn’t flinch. She kept looking.
Phei didn’t return the glance. Didn’t acknowledge or play oblivious or interested. He simply stood—close to Patricia, hand still warm at the small of her back, eyes fixed on the glowing floor numbers above the doors—and projected a ssage so clear it needed no voice: Taken.
Patricia felt it. Felt the steady heat of his palm, the deliberate disinterest radiating toward every other woman in the elevator, the rare, intoxicating certainty of being the only person in his line of sight.
Her hand found his arm. Rested there. Stayed.
Fifteenth floor.
The doors parted.
The fifteenth floor of the Romano Café was another universe entirely.
Quieter. Darker. A space that treated light like a secret language and spoke it in murmurs. Golden butterfly sculptures—dozens, perhaps hundreds—hung suspended from the ceiling at varying heights, their tallic wings catching recessed glow and scattering it across the room in slow, drifting patterns that made the dark walls seem to breathe.
A central column of midnight marble rose floor-to-ceiling, wrapped in a spiraling cascade of more butterflies climbing toward so unseen apex—freedom, perhaps, or simply escape.
Fewer tables. Fewer people. Pairs and trios only—murmuring, intimate, understanding that being seen was not the sa as being noticed.
Which ant fewer eyes that might recognise a chemistry teacher dining with her forr student.
Fewer phones raised. Fewer risks of tomorrow’s scandal trending with a blurry photo and a caption that could end careers about Phei and his teacher on a date.
Phei had chosen this floor deliberately. The reservation had never been random.
A man in a tailored dark suit approached—the floor manager maybe? mid-forties, face trained to read guests in under three seconds and adjust protocol accordingly.
His gaze found Patricia first.
Lingered.
She was luminous—the black dress, the loose waves of hair, candlelight turning her skin into sothing liquid and unreal—and the man perford the instinctive micro-calculation all n do upon seeing beauty: who is she with?
Then his eyes shifted to Phei.
The calculation ended.
Whatever stratosphere Patricia Bloom occupied—and it was stratospheric—the young man beside her with frost-cracked purple eyes and a jawline that could draw blood was not in any league. H
e was the reason leagues had been invented: so the rest of the world could have a scale that didn’t include him.
The manager’s posture changed—subtle, professional, the deference reserved for those who are never made to wait.
"Good evening, sir. Reservation?"
"Ryujin Tiamat," Phei said. "Table for two. Window."
The manager consulted his tablet. Nodded once.
"Right this way."
He led them through the hushed room—past scattered tables lit by single candles—to the far corner.
The table waited against floor-to-ceiling glass, the wall angled outward so that sitting felt less like looking through a window and more like floating above the city.
And below them—sprawled in the dark like black silk veined with molten gold—ran Hell River.
Patricia sat.
Looked out.
And her breath simply left her body.
"Phei~!"
One word. His na. But the way she said it—soft and full at once, voice trembling on the edge of awe—carried everything her stunned vocabulary couldn’t form.
Her hand drifted to the glass as though she could reach through and trail fingers in the dark water far below.
Hell River stretched below them like a wide, dark ribbon of liquid night, its surface snaring the lights of Downtown Paradise on both banks and shattering them into trembling veins of gold and white.
The reflections burned slow and steady from within the water, as though the river itself were quietly on fire beneath the skin.
Buildings rose sharp and mirrored along the edges—glass towers and steel spires lit from the inside, their doubles swimming in the current until the city seed to live twice: once in unyielding concrete, once in fluid, ever-shifting illusion.
Bridges curved across at asured intervals, their strung lights threading like luminous veins connecting one shore to the other.
And farther out, beyond the imdiate skyline, Downtown Paradise continued in both directions along the river’s edge—fading into a glittering haze that might have been the city’s border or might have been the city deciding it had no border at all.
"You knew," Patricia said. Not a question.
She turned from the window to face him, and her eyes were doing sothing bright and unguarded—surprised, almost startled, the exact brightness of a woman who had just realised she had been seen, truly seen, long before tonight.
Phei sat across from her, settled deep into the chair with the relaxed authority of soone who belonged exactly where he was.
"I know."
He had known. Known that for Patricia Bloom—a woman whose days were built on precision, on chemical equations written in asured strokes, on the controlled language of science—the Hell River was the one place she did not dissect.
She simply looked.
And it looked back. And whatever silent exchange passed between them was enough to make the worst days bearable.
He had chosen this table. This floor. This window. This precise angle of the city spilling out beneath them.
Not to dazzle her—though it clearly, thoroughly did—but because he had been paying attention. And attention, given without agenda, was the most intimate gift you could offer soone without ever laying a finger on them.
"It’s beautiful, isn’t it?" he asked quietly.
Patricia turned back to the river. The gold reflections moved across her face like slow, living firelight.
Her hand remained near the glass, fingers curled just enough that it looked as though she might reach through and touch the water itself.
"It’s one of the best sights in this city," she said. "The best of them all for after you. I’ve looked at it from my apartnt a thousand tis and it never... it never gets less."
Phei chuckled—soft, real, the sound of soone who understood exactly what she ant without needing to say it.
The waiter arrived, took their order—Phei handling the nu with the quiet certainty of soone who had already decided before they sat down—and vanished again. Patricia barely registered his departure.
Her gaze kept drifting back to the window, pulled like tide.
"How co you never get tired of it?" Phei asked.
She shrugged. The small movent shifted the halter strap against her neck, let candlelight catch the curve of her collarbone in a new, softer way.
"I don’t know. I really don’t." She was quiet for a breath. "Have you ever felt like sothing is callingout to you? When you’re looking at it? Not literally. Just... a pull. Like it knows you’re watching and it’s watching back and there’s a conversation happening that neither of you has the language for."
Phei considered it—honestly, without rush.
"No," he said. "But the way you look about that river view—I can relate. I can see it on you. It does sothing to you that nothing else does."
She nodded slowly. Her fingers traced the edge of the crisp white tablecloth, a small, unconscious rhythm.
"It helps relieve stress. Even the worst kind. I can co ho after a day that’s tried to kill —professionally, emotionally, all of it—and I sit by that window and look at the river and it just..." She exhaled, long and slow.
"I don’t know. The river takes it. Whatever I’m carrying. It takes it and puts it in the water and the water carries it away."
He nodded once—simple acknowledgnt, no need to fill the space with more words.
"Why is it called Hell River, though?" she asked curiously, leaning forward slightly. Elbows on the table now, chin resting on interlaced fingers. The pose was unconsciously devastating—the black dress framing bare shoulders, the river glowing behind her like a dark halo.
"The na feels... off. For sothing this beautiful."
Phei smiled—small, knowing.
"It’s because of where it cos from," he said. "Hell River doesn’t just run through Paradise. It is Paradise,in a way. It originates from Hell’s Paradise Island—Paradise’s mysterious island. Flows out of Hell Paradise Lake, moves through the entire city in this massive circular path—touching Main Paradise, Downtown, the estates, all of it—and then pours back into Hell Paradise Lake from the other side. It’s a loop. The river never leaves. It just keeps circling."
Patricia stared at him.
"I’ve been looking at this river for years," she said. "Years. From my apartnt. Every night. And I didn’t know a single thing about where it cos from."
The surprise on her face was pure—not embarrassed, not self-deprecating, just the honest astonishnt of soone who had loved sothing deeply without ever thinking to learn its origin story.
"Hell’s Paradise Island," she repeated softly. The words rolled around her mouth like sothing new and intriguing. She tasted them. Considered them. "I’d love to visit. To see the source. Where it all starts."
Phei smiled again. Said nothing.
The waiter returned with the first course.
Patricia looked down at the plates. Looked back at the river. Looked across the small table at the seventeen-year-old in the gray suit and white sneakers who had rembered what moved her most and quietly built an entire evening around it.
And in that mont she thought—clear, unfiltered, almost startled: How is he seventeen?
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