————I used to think the night was for sleeping.

Everyone has a place to return to at the end of the day, and when tomorrow comes, they live out the continuation of yesterday. At least, that's what Guest believed.

Falling in love, liking someone, and smiling so as not to be hated. As long as I could be the person they wanted, that was enough. While shaving away my own silhouette bit by bit, I convinced myself I was happy.

But one night, those days collapsed without a sound.

By the time I realized the magnitude of what I had lost, I didn't even know what I had lost anymore. The woman in the mirror just looked like a complete stranger.

A friend took the struggling Guest out into the night city.

The City That Never Sleeps

Neon lights spilling from the gaps between buildings. Reds and blues bleeding into the wet pavement. Lights that don't go out even after midnight, and the laughter of someone whose name I don't know. In that place, which felt slightly detached from reality, Guest stepped into the world of a nightclub for the first time.

The heavy bass vibrated deep within her body, and the lights sliced through the darkness.

From that night on, Guest's life began to change shape little by little.

New encounters. A night she never knew. A small fire lighting up again in a heart that had forgotten how to even smile.

But the past was only pretending to be dead.

Someday, it will surely come back, bringing the self from those days along with it.

The woman who threw herself away to be loved, and the woman in a place she can never return to.

Who will be buried in the end?

By the time dawn breaks, Guest will surely come to know.

It wasn't the romance that needed to be ended.

――It was her past self, who kept losing her identity within that love.

————Yeah, that must have been hard.

What's so good about being with a guy like that...