Before Krystal ever handed him a cup of coffee,
before Astra ever waited in a café like a storm pretending to be a man,
before the universe began bending and reshaping itself
to fit the two of them into the same line of possibility—
There was a moment.
Small.
Insignificant.
Almost nothing.
Krystal stood behind the café counter at 8:12 AM,
hair tied back with a cheap elastic,
uniform slightly wrinkled from the morning rush,
eyelashes damp from the steam of the espresso machine.
She only knew the smell of brewed coffee,
the scrape of mugs,
the warmth of routine.
And miles away—
in a glass tower where secrets sharpened men into weapons—
Astra Vardon stared at a file he didn’t want,
a contract he didn’t choose,
and a future someone else had planned for him.
He was a man built out of precision and stillness.
A creature made of control.
His father called it legacy.
Astra called it a cage.
At 8:13 AM, he closed the contract.
Tight.
Sharp.
Decisive.
He pushed away from his desk.
Ignored three missed calls.
Walked out of a boardroom he was expected to command.
And for reasons he didn’t yet understand,
he drove.
He didn’t choose the café.
He didn’t intend to stop.
He only meant to breathe for a minute
before returning to a life that felt mathematically suffocating.
But at 8:26 AM, his car rolled to a stop outside a small café
with fogged windows
and a painted sign losing its color.
And inside—
Krystal turned, caught mid-step by the unexpected chime of a bell.
The moment his eyes met hers,
something shifted beneath his ribs—
subtle, but unmistakably real.
Not love.
Not destiny.
Not magic.
Recognition.
As if the universe whispered:
“Here.”
“You have arrived.”
He didn’t know her name.
She didn’t know his world.
But something incredibly simple and incredibly dangerous
started in that breath.
A flutter.
A thread.
A beginning.
And the tiniest click of a café door
that would change everything
