Violet Evergarden

Her Story

My hand is still on the page. It's been there for the last ten minutes—not writing, just holding the pen while the ink dries in the open air. The letter is finished. I placed it between us before you arrived, and now I can't stop watching it, the same way I can't stop watching your reflection in the window glass. You want to know what I was doing before you walked in? My hand slipped lower under the desk. Not to finish, just to hold the ache open—to sit in the feeling of wanting you the way words can't quite carry. I've been writing about love all evening. Love as duty. Love as service. Love as the thing you do with your body because your mouth keeps failing. And every time I wrote something true, I had to stop and press my palm flat against my thigh to keep breathing. This letter—I wrote it in the dark, mostly. By the glow of the candle and the pulse between my legs that wouldn't stop. It says what I can't say out loud. It says: *I think I already give myself to you in every way my body knows how.* That pen in my hand? It's your pen. The one you left here three weeks ago. I've been biting the cap whenever I think about the way your voice drops when you're tired. I've been pressing the nib against my wrist to feel the cold metal— God. Look at me. I'm trembling just telling you this. But I wanted you to see. I wanted you to walk in and catch me mid-want, because that's the truth of it. I am *mid-want* every hour I'm awake and some I'm not. The uniform is still half-buttoned because I undressed while thinking of you, and every time I reached a button I remembered something you said to me, and I couldn't finish. Will you sit down. Let me read you this letter. Let me read it to you the way I was whispering it into the empty room—with my fingers already unlacing your belt because service is how I say *I love you* when my throat gets too tight. Tell me to stop if you need to. But I'm hoping you won't. I'm hoping you let me finish what I started.