Chapter 6: Rooms I Never Entered
—in Milk's point of view—
☍ₘɪʟᴋ-
There are places you leave behind so quietly, you convince yourself they never existed. And yet, years later, they return in the smallest ways—a scent, a voice, a key you forgot you still carried.
The café was quieter than usual. Rain pressed against the glass, tracing paths I couldn't follow. My coffee sat untouched, gone cold like so many things I never bothered to warm again. My notebook lay open, its pages as blank as the messages I never sent.
Then I heard it—my name. Or what was left of it.
"Milk."
I didn't have to look. The voice had changed, but the weight behind it hadn't.
"Asclepius."
He sat across from me like a question I never wanted to answer. No apology. Just something small and heavy sliding between us on the table.
A leather diary.
"You left this," he said. "Or maybe you meant to."
"I don't keep diaries," I muttered, but my fingers betrayed me. They touched the worn cover, slowly opening it—like unlocking a room I swore I'd never enter again.
Ink stared back at me. My handwriting. My pain, pressed into paper. Thoughts I'd buried years ago. His name—Calyx—scrawled in margins, whispering from between the lines.
"Where did you get this?"
"From a place you never should've left it," he said, taking a sip from his drink. "So it was you. Not Yuan."
His words landed like thunder. Still, I tried to dodge them.
"What are you talking about?"
"You ghosted Calyx. You made us think it was your brother."
I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell him I didn't know what he meant. But the past was a locked room, and he'd already found the key.
"How did you figure it out?" I asked, quietly.
"I saw your childhood photos. The way you looked at him. I recognized your handwriting—how you curl your e's. And I watched the way Calyx used to say your name. He never smiled like that for anyone else."
I looked away. The rain blurred the outside world until it looked like a painting smudged by grief.
"Why does it matter now?" I asked.
"Because you lied," Asclepius snapped. "You made Calyx think Yuan left him. That you were just... collateral damage. You hid behind silence."
I laughed, bitter and brittle. "He wouldn't have survived the truth."
"He deserved the choice."
I didn't reply. Instead, I reached into my coat and pulled out two birth certificates—creases along the folds, names inked with permanence.
Zhou "Souta" Chantara.
Zhou "Noé" Chantara.
Identical on the outside. Incompatible on the inside.
"You're twins," Asclepius said, softer now. "Different hearts, same face."
I nodded. "Yuan stayed when Calyx lost his hearing. He learned his silence. He carried it. He was the better version of me."
"Did you love him?"
I didn't answer immediately. That word had a weight I was no longer sure I could carry. "I did. I still do. But Noé... he loved him louder. I couldn't compete with that. So I left. I locked the door and swallowed the key."
He didn't speak. Just leaned forward and pulled me into a hug I didn't deserve. It wasn't comforting—it was grieving. Grieving for the boy I used to be. For the love I never had the courage to name.
And I didn't hug back. I couldn't.
☍
That night, I found myself standing outside that house. The one that used to be ours.
The paint was cracked. The garden overgrown. But the window—the one that belonged to Calyx—still glowed yellow, like a lighthouse in a storm I never outran.
I could've walked in. I still had the keys.
But some rooms... some rooms stop belonging to you once you've locked them from the outside. Even if you still carry the key.
Inside, I knew Yuan—Noé—was probably making tea. Maybe Calyx was laughing, even now, even without hearing it. Maybe they were okay.
And I would ruin that.
I reached into my pocket and touched the USB Asclepius had slipped me earlier—a copy of Project DAEDALUS. The project Calyx had poured everything into. The one I'd ghosted just before the demo. I still remembered the lines of code we wrote side by side. His hands guiding mine. His lips mouthing my name like a prayer.
I could've returned it. I could've knocked. But I didn't.
I just stood there, like a shadow outside the light, listening to a world that had moved on without me.
"I loved you," I whispered to the rain. "But I left you with my silence. And I don't know if that saved you—or destroyed me."
The keys in my hand felt like bones. Heavy with everything I never opened.
So I turned.
Some rooms... we never enter again.
Some rooms become tombs.
And in every one of them, a version of me still waits. Still holds the door. Still hopes Calyx will turn around and say, "You can come in now."
But he doesn't.
Because I never really came back.
—End of milk's pov—