Most people her age talked in noisy groups,
laughing too loud, scrolling too fast, existing in constant movement. But Mizu
Aoki?
She preferred the kind of quiet you could only hear with your heart.
Mizu was twenty years old, a college student
more in name than spirit. Her textbooks remained buried under sketchbooks and
novels. Her professors knew her as the girl who sat near the window and asked
nothing, said nothing, and vanished the moment class was over. But there was
one place she always showed up for — even if it meant bunking every lecture of
the day.
A hidden patch of land just beyond the college
gates. A place where grass grew tall, flowers bloomed freely, and animals
wandered as if no humans existed.
No signs. No benches. No garbage bins. No
selfies.
Just silence.
Most people didn't even know it was there.
Maybe it didn't want to be found. Maybe it only let in people who listened more
than they spoke.
Mizu first discovered it during her first year
of college. Everyone else had been crowding the canteen. She'd been following a
butterfly.
That's how she lived — following small, quiet
things.
Since then, she came almost every day with her
sketchbook and a book. She would lie in the grass, letting the wind flip the
pages of her latest fantasy novel while her pencil danced across paper. Her
drawings were soft, thoughtful. Sometimes, they were animals. Sometimes, they
were monsters she imagined from other worlds. And sometimes… she didn't even
realize she was drawing herself — only sadder, braver, or lonelier than she
looked in real life.
That afternoon, the sky was brushed with soft
clouds, and the air smelled like wet grass. Mizu sat cross-legged under a tree
that bent slightly toward her like it wanted to protect her.
Her fingers were smudged with graphite as she
shaded the fur of a small fox she'd seen earlier. Its eyes were too big, and
she didn't mind.
A small squirrel ran past, pausing just enough
to sniff her bag before disappearing into the bushes.
Mizu smiled faintly. "You're
welcome," she whispered, though the squirrel was already gone.
Then she heard it.
The low clink of a bell.
She turned, expecting to see another animal.
But instead, there was… nothing. Just grass and flowers and wind. And then,
right near the edge of her vision, a flicker of white moved.
She stood slowly, stepping toward it. Behind
the tree was a narrow path she'd never noticed before, half-covered by ivy. At
the very base of the path, sitting quietly and watching her, was a cat.
It wasn't just any cat.
Its fur was mostly snow white, soft and
glowing in the sunlight. But on its head was a small patch of brown, and on its
back — markings in brown and black shaped eerily like a cat curled into a ball.
A cat… with a cat on its back.
It tilted its head at her.
And the bell rang again — not from a collar,
but something around its neck that looked like a thin thread of gold, almost
invisible unless you looked closely.
Mizu crouched, her voice barely above a
whisper. "Are you lost?"
The cat didn't meow. It walked up to her and
sat down, placing its paw gently on her sketchbook as if saying, Draw me.
So she did.
That night, she stayed up late sketching the
cat again and again, its markings, its glow, its eyes — deep and endless like
they carried pieces of stars.
As the clock ticked past midnight, her fingers
stilled.
Something strange had happened while she was
drawing. Her lines weren't just lines. They felt… alive. The last sketch she
finished had a strange shimmer under the light.
She blinked. It was gone.
Maybe she was just tired.
She closed her sketchbook, placed it beside
the bed, and reached for the book she'd picked up from the old library earlier
that week — a strange, thick novel with a worn-out spine and a title that
barely made sense: Find Peace in the World.
The old woman who ran the library had looked
at her strangely when she bought it. "No one reads that anymore," she had said.
"It's just old paper."
But Mizu had felt drawn to it, the way she was
drawn to quiet paths and forgotten corners.
Now, curled in bed with her blanket pulled to
her chin, she opened the first page.
If you're holding this book, it's because the
world has already tried to steal your peace.
But don't worry. You still have time to find it.
Her eyes widened. The letters shimmered
faintly — like magic.
She kept reading.
Outside her window, the wind whispered through
the leaves.
And somewhere, in a world not quite real but
not quite imaginary either, the white cat with a cat-shaped mark on her back
watched the moon rise — waiting.
Waiting for the girl who would one day protect
the silence.
[End of Chapter 1]