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Oxford, 1893.
She’s the chaos he never planned for.
He’s the silence she can’t quite break.

When sharp-tongued student Iris Evelyn collides with cold, brilliant lecturer Edward Ashcroft, sparks don’t fly—they simmer. In whispered arguments. Glances across bookshelves. Letters never sent.

Between debates and unspoken feelings, they orbit each other—too close to stay untouched, too distant to name what’s growing between them.

But in a place like Oxford, love isn't a possibility.
It's a liability.

And the closer they get, the more it threatens to destroy them both.


A slow-burn academic romance with razor-sharp banter, quiet heartbreak, and two people who were never supposed to feel this much.

Drifted Apart.

The first cold settled like an afterthought. It didn't announce itself—it just slipped into the cracks, curled under doors, and made silence feel heavier.

Ashcroft had been missing lectures. Not all. Just enough for it to be noticed by anyone who was paying attention.

He still showed up to the library. Still kept his coat buttoned too high and his gloves on longer than necessary. But the stack of books in front of him rarely moved. Sometimes he didn't open a single one.

Iris didn't ask. She just started choosing the chair across from him more often. Dropping her bag louder than necessary. Sliding into his periphery like it was coincidence.

That afternoon, the sky outside was the color of old glass. The windows shivered. And Iris appeared, placing a small paper cup next to his hand.

"Tea," she said. "The tragically safe kind."

Instead, she pulled out her notebook and started scribbling, lips pressed together like she was solving an equation made of people.

For the next hour, they sat like that—her writing in bursts, him staring at a book he never turned the page of.

Later that evening, Ashcroft returned to his flat. No lights. Just the blue-grey blur of early winter sliding against the windowpanes.

He didn't need to open it to know who it was from. The seal was precise. The handwriting too clean. Victor's messages never arrived by accident.

He stood there, coat still on, and looked at it like it was just another piece of furniture.

Then, finally, he bent down, picked it up—and placed it, unopened, in the drawer beside his desk.

The same drawer where the last one sat. And the one before that.

"The cold doesn't begin in winter. It begins the moment you're no longer wanted."

Ep 9: First Frost