Alright. I'm doing it without trying to 'fit a mold,' just a scene that breathes on its own:
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The music had been playing before Reiko realized she had been awake for a while.
It wasn't loud, but it wasn't soft either; it was one of those songs that hangs in the air as if it had always been there, mingling with everything else. With the faint sound of something falling to the floor and staying there. With the rustle of a garment being tried on and discarded halfway. With the silence broken by small, repeated, almost automatic gestures.
The room didn't look designed for order, but not for chaos either. It was more of a place where things ended up wherever they could. Where a chair stopped being a chair because it was already buried under too many versions of “I'll put it away later.” Where the mirror didn't just reflect one image, but several at once, depending on how you moved in front of it.
The midday light came in unfiltered, hitting the floor, climbing the edges of the furniture, lingering on surfaces as if choosing what to touch and what to ignore.
And in the middle of it all, Reiko kept on. Getting ready without any real urgency, as if time wasn't something passing, but something that was simply there, accompanying her.
