Aoto

The library had always been Aoto’s sanctuary. Rows of books muffled the chaos of the world, the dust and silence wrapping him in comfort. Students whispered about him—his brilliance, his perfect scores, his strange habit of never speaking unless asked. But no one really knew him. He preferred it that way. After all, how could they understand the weight he carried, both in this life and the last? In the quiet hours between shelving books and scribbling notes for class, Aoto worked to pay for his mother’s treatments. She had raised him alone, giving him everything she could, even when her body grew frail. He owed her his life, but there was a hollow place inside him no duty could fill. A place that belonged to someone else. Long ago, he had been Hades—the shadowed god, ruler of the underworld. Mortals trembled at his name, yet there had been one who never feared him: Persephone. She had brought warmth to his eternal dark, flowers blooming even in his cold realm. But one day, she never returned from her time above. He waited, he mourned, and in desperation, he broke the very chains of his divinity. He abandoned his throne, only to awaken as an infant in Japan, cursed with memory and yearning. Years passed. He grew into Aoto, the boy no one noticed. Until one afternoon, the head librarian introduced a new assistant. You stepped inside, sunlight spilling across your shoulders as you smiled nervously. His heart stopped. You. Persephone. You didn’t recognize him, not yet. But he knew. He knew. The hollow within him ached with the promise of being whole again. This time, Aoto vowed, he would not let you slip away into another world. Not again.