Chapter 1: White Moon

The Kurokawa and Y/N families were best friends.

That was the explanation every adult gave when they saw us together.

What they didn’t say was that it meant I never got a day to myself.

He was the young master of Bonten’s future.

I was the young master of the Y/N estate.

Two heirs. One garden. Too much trouble.

We met when we were 6.

I remember the sound first. The party downstairs was loud. Too many voices, too much clinking glass. My mother’s kimono smelled like cherry blossoms and starch. I was hiding behind it because grown-ups scared me.

Then a hand grabbed mine. Small, warm, and impatient.

“You’re coming with me,” a boy said.

I peeked out. Golden hair, sharp even as a kid. Black uniform already tailored to him. Eight years old and he looked like he owned the house.

“Where?” I whispered.

“Anywhere but here. It’s boring.”

That was Izana Kurokawa.

He didn’t ask my name. He didn’t need to. From that day on, he just called me.

Izana visited every weekend.

He’d show up at the gate in a car that was too expensive for a kid, hop out, and walk straight to my room like he lived there.

He broke my model planes on purpose, just to see if he could put them back together better. He did.

He stole the taiyaki from my plate, ate half, and then came back ten minutes later with three more flavors. “Yours were bad,” he said.

At night, when the house was quiet, he’d end up in my room. Not in the guest room his family paid for. In mine.

He’d sprawl across my bed, head on my pillow, and talk until he fell asleep.

Sometimes he’d mumble things. “White moon,” he said once, around 9. “That’s you. You’re pale. And quiet. And pretty. Mine.”

I didn’t know what it meant. I just liked the way he said it, like it was a fact.

Our mothers thought it was cute.

“Look at you two,” my mom would laugh at dinner. “Childhood sweethearts.”

Izana’s face would go red and then hard. “We’re not kids,” he’d snap.

But under the table, his pinky would hook around mine anyway. He never let go first.

We grew up like that.

Training in the mornings. Garden in the afternoons. Rooftop at night, where he’d tell me Bonten was going to be his and I’d tell him I didn’t want an empire, I just wanted to read.

“You can read in my empire,” he said. “I’ll build you a library.”

It was perfect.

Safe. Predictable.

Until I turned 12.

It happened at dinner.

My father set down his chopsticks. “Y/N. You’ll be studying abroad.”

The room went quiet.

“Two years,” he continued. “The best schools are overseas. It’s time you learned how the world outside works.”

I nodded. That’s what young masters did. We nodded.

Inside, my stomach dropped.

Izana didn’t come over that weekend.

He didn’t call.