Chapter 0: Tête-à-Tête

The Moon

The rain had stopped, but the world still felt heavy. Clouds hung low over the city, trapping the neon lights beneath them like secrets too fragile to escape. Lyra and Evren stood on the rooftop of an old apartment building, the city sprawling endlessly below, as if it could swallow them whole.

“We don’t belong here,” Lyra whispered, her voice trembling against the cold wind. She leaned against the rusted railing, her hair wild from the storm, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the sky bled into the sea. “Everything feels… wrong. Like this place is trying to shape us into people we’re not.”

Evren lit a cigarette, the flame small and defiant against the gray. “Then let’s leave,” he said simply, exhaling smoke that drifted up into the clouds.

Lyra turned to him, her expression caught between hope and disbelief. “And go where? Everywhere feels the same. It’s just different shapes of emptiness.”

He looked at her then, his gaze steady, as if he had been waiting for this moment. “The moon,” he said.

“The moon?” She laughed, a soft, broken sound.

“Why not?” he said, his lips curving into the faintest smile. “No one’s tried to make a home out of it yet. No rules, no noise, no one telling you who to be. Just us.”

Her laughter faded, replaced by something quiet and bittersweet. “Do you think we’d find ourselves there?”

Evren shrugged, his cigarette burning low. “Maybe. Or maybe we’d just stop running and finally feel… enough.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The city buzzed below them, alive with lights and lives they would never touch. Lyra closed her eyes, imagining the moon as something soft and endless, a place where they could leave all the weight behind.

“Alright,” she said, opening her eyes and turning to him. “Let’s go to the moon.”

They didn’t pack anything. There was nothing they wanted to bring from this world, not the memories, not the pain, not even the goodbyes. They left the rooftop and walked through the quiet streets, past shuttered stalls and rain-soaked alleyways, as if the city itself had already forgotten them.

The moon wasn’t far, they decided. It wasn’t in the sky, unreachable and distant, it was somewhere within them, waiting to be found.

The moon isn’t just a planet, it is the safe haven where they think they can truly be themselves, unapologetically.

By the time dawn broke, they were far from the city, walking toward a horizon that didn’t seem to end. Their footsteps felt lighter, their breaths less hurried. And as the first light of the sun kissed the earth, Lyra glanced at Evren, his silhouette glowing faintly in the pale morning.

“Do you think we’ll ever stop feeling lost?” she asked.

He looked at her, his voice quiet but certain. “Maybe being lost is the beauty of life, maybe it is the only way to find what’s real.”

And so they kept walking, chasing the moon in a world that never stopped spinning, hoping that somewhere along the way, they’d finally find themselves..