The Space Between Our Voices

Next night

It started with a message.

A simple one.

Ares: "Can I call you?"

Eira stared at the screen. Her heart stammered.

Not raced.

Stammered.

Like it didn't know what to do with itself.

She typed.

Deleted.

Typed again.

Eira: "Okay. Just… don't mind if I sound nervous."

Ares: "Then we'll be nervous together."

---

Her phone rang.

1:26 a.m.

She answered before her courage ran out.

"Hello?"

A pause.

Then his voice—soft, like velvet after midnight.

"Hi."

She smiled into the receiver. It was strange—how it already felt familiar.

"I was scared you'd sound too real," she whispered.

"And?"

"You sound… like a favorite song I didn't know I already loved."

Ares chuckled, low and warm. "You're dangerous with words."

"You're worse. You sing for a living."

He laughed, and it crackled through her like sunlight. "Touché."

---

There were moments of quiet.

Not awkward.

They talked about nothing and everything.

Favorite childhood snacks. The way she always left one sock on in bed. How he wrote half a song on the back of a takeout receipt once because the lyric felt like lightning.

"I still have it," he said. "Crumpled, ketchup stain and all."

"Tell me the line?"

"It's cheesy."

"I like cheese."

He cleared his throat dramatically.

"In the dark, I reached for silence—

and your voice answered like a lighthouse."

Eira covered her face. "You did *not* just say that to me at 2 a.m."

He laughed. "I should hang up and spare you further emotional damage."

"Don't you dare."

---

She told him about the way she used to scribble poems in library books—not in them, but on scraps she'd tuck between the pages for strangers to find.

"Did anyone ever reply?"

"One time. Someone wrote back: *I hope your rain turns into flowers.* I never knew who it was."

"Maybe it was me," he teased.

"Were you in Busan when you were twelve?"

"…I was not."

"Then plot twist denied."

They giggled like kids at a sleepover, giddy off borrowed time.

---

And then—

"Ares?" her voice came gently, like the name had been resting on her tongue for hours.

"Yeah?"

Eira, almost to herself, whispered:

"I'm afraid to like you."

He didn't flinch. "Why?"

"Because… liking someone who lives in starlight feels like planting roots in sky."

Ares let that wash over him. Then he replied, voice barely audible:

"Then maybe I'll fall. Maybe I've been sky too long."

The silence that followed wasn't empty.

It was full of all the things they weren't brave enough to say yet.

Of wanting, yes—

But also of gentleness.

Of the sacredness in slowness.

"Can I ask something?" she said.

"Anything."

"If we were sitting side by side right now… what would you do?"

A long pause. So long she almost took it back.

Then his answer came—woven with tenderness.

"I think I'd reach for your hand. Quietly. No words. I'd just… let my fingers find yours and wait. Wait until you didn't let go."

Her voice was barely a breath. "I wouldn't."

He smiled.

And she heard it.

---

They didn't hang up.

Not really.

She fell asleep with the call still open.

And he stayed on the line, just listening.

And at some point, in the quietest part of the night, Ares whispered—not to wake her, but maybe just to send the truth into the air:

"You feel like home."