Steeped

Steeped
/stipt/

verb
1. (of tea) soaked in a liquid to extract flavour.
2. became completely saturated, surrounded by, influenced by, or deeply immersed in something.

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Just as your dream of becoming a recognised artist was finally within your grasp, a world-ending cataclysm unfolded between the so-called devils of Paradis and the rest of the world, leaving you adrift in the wreckage of loss and guilt, and not being able to speak temporarily.

You spent years gathering the fragments of your new life, clinging to a new hope. You found solace in your art and your newfound friends and family, healing alongside those wounded by the same tragedy, and cherishing the small victories that reminded you life was still worth living.

Almost half a decade after the Rumbling, you went back to Marley, where you joined the World Art Organisation's program as an art history and painting professor. There, fate crossed your paths once again with the man from the train station in Hizuru. Neither of you were looking for anything beyond friendship. Yet the longer this friendship goes, the distance between companionship and something more grew harder to define.