20/03/2026
The first sip always lies.
It arrives like mercy—warm, slow, forgiving. It tells you the night will be softer than the day, that the weight in your chest will loosen its grip. And for a fleeting second, it does.
Kato believed that lie.
He sat deep in the leather chair like a king dethroned in private, the dim room folding around him like a secret. The glass in his hand trembled—not from weakness, he’d argue—but from memory. Always memory. The kind that claws at you when the world gets quiet.
He poured again.
The bottle didn’t judge. It never asked questions like, “Why did she leave?” or “Why didn’t you fight harder?” It didn’t remind him of the silence that filled his house now, or the echo of laughter that had long packed its bags and gone.
Another sip.
This one burned a little more. Good. Pain meant something was still alive inside him.
Across the table, the empty glass waited like a co-conspirator. Kato smirked at it.
“You understand me,” he muttered, voice thick, as if the glass had nodded.
Outside, the world moved on—cars, people, love stories beginning and ending—but inside that room, time dragged its feet.
He leaned back, eyes closing behind dark lenses. For a moment, he wasn’t here. He was back in a different night—her laughter spilling like music, her fingers tracing promises on his skin, her voice calling him by a name only she used.
He opened his eyes.
Gone.
He poured again. Faster now.
The mercy had left. The drink no longer whispered—it demanded. It wrapped around his thoughts, dulled their edges, turned sharp grief into a slow, sinking fog.
This was the part he chased.
Not happiness. Never that. Just… quiet.
But quiet has a cost.
His phone buzzed on the table. He ignored it. It buzzed again. Persistent. Annoying. Alive.
With a sigh, he picked it up. One message.
“Are you still coming tomorrow?”
He stared at the words as if they were written in a foreign tongue.
Tomorrow.
The word felt heavy. Unreal. Like something meant for other people—people who hadn’t surrendered their nights to bottles and ghosts.
His fingers hovered.
The room seemed to lean in.
The glass sat untouched now. Waiting.
The bottle stood tall. Patient.
Kato exhaled, long and slow, as if releasing something buried deep.
Then—unexpectedly—he set the phone down… and didn’t reach for the drink.
Silence.
Not the suffocating kind. Not the hollow kind.
A different silence.
One that didn’t beg to be filled.
He looked at the bottle, really looked this time—not as a savior, not as a friend, but as what it was: a pause button disguised as a solution.
It would still be there tomorrow.
That was its promise.
And suddenly… that didn’t feel comforting.
He stood up.
The chair creaked, protesting his departure, as if it knew it was losing him. The room held its breath.
Kato walked away—unsteady, uncertain, but moving.
Because the first sip lies…
…but waking up?
That’s where the truth begins.
