Updated Apr 15, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 7: The Photo
Keiko
Keiko stares at the photo she’s about to send to BookwormNightOwl—her hands wrapped around a coffee cup with the Seattle sunset reflecting in the window behind it—and feels the kind of nervous anticipation she hasn’t experienced since she was sixteen and passing notes to her crush in calculus class.
They’ve been talking for three weeks now, escalating from text messages to phone calls to this moment where he asked if she’d be comfortable sharing a photo—”nothing identifying, just something that feels like you”—and Keiko’s spent the last hour trying to capture an image that reveals enough to feel vulnerable but not enough to connect SunnyDayDreamer to her real identity.
She hits send before she can overthink it, her heart doing something ridiculous as she watches the delivered notification appear, and then she’s waiting with her phone clutched in her hand like a lifeline, wondering if this is the moment that breaks the spell they’ve built in words and voice and late-night confessions.
The response comes faster than she expected, and it’s not a message but a photo: his hands—strong and elegant with long fingers and a dusting of dark hair on his forearms—resting on an open book, and Keiko finds herself staring at the image with an intensity that’s probably embarrassing, cataloging details like she’s studying for an exam.
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Your hands are beautiful. Artist hands. Do you paint?*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *No, but my mother wanted me to. I was always too impatient for art. Yours are… nice. Very nice. I have a thing for hands and this is not helping my ability to maintain appropriate boundaries.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Boundaries are overrated. Also, I’m currently staring at your photo like a creep so we’re even on the inappropriate front.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *What are you noticing? In the photo?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *The way you hold the cup—careful but not tentative. The sunset in the window. The fact that your nails are perfectly manicured which suggests you care about details. The ring on your right hand that looks like it might be a family heirloom. The way the light hits your skin and makes me wish I could see your face.*
Keiko looks down at her grandmother’s ring—simple silver band with a small jade stone—and feels something tight in her chest because he noticed, because of course he noticed, because BookwormNightOwl sees things that most people miss.
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *It was my grandmother’s. She gave it to me before she died and told me to wear it until I found someone worth giving it to. I’ve been wearing it for eight years.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *That’s beautiful. And sad. Do you think you’ll ever find that person?*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *I don’t know. I’m scared I’m too difficult to love. Too competitive, too focused on work, too good at being alone. What if I meet someone perfect and I’m too broken to let them in?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Then they’re not perfect for you. The right person won’t need you to be less difficult or less competitive or less anything. They’ll love you because of those things, not despite them.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *How do you always know exactly what to say?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Practice. Also, I’m saying what I wish someone would say to me. I’m scared of the same things—that I’m too much or not enough, that I’ve spent so long performing success that I don’t know how to just be myself.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *What if we’re both disasters?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Then we’ll be disasters together. I’m starting to think being a disaster with you sounds better than being perfect alone.*
Keiko sets her phone down and picks up her wine glass with shaking hands, because this is getting too real too fast, because she’s falling for someone she’s never met, because BookwormNightOwl—Declan, her mind supplies unhelpfully—is saying things that make her want to believe in possibilities she gave up on years ago.
Declan.
She still hasn’t asked his last name, hasn’t pushed for details that might confirm or deny the growing suspicion that BookwormNightOwl could possibly be Declan O’Sullivan, because part of her doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to ruin this perfect thing with the reality that the man making her feel seen and understood might also be the man who makes her want to commit professional murder on a daily basis.
It’s been two weeks since the conference panel where she and O’Sullivan spent ninety minutes verbally sparring in front of an audience that definitely noticed the tension between them, and she’s still thinking about the moment on the balcony when he stood too close and said something about the line between hatred and attraction being thinner than they’d like to admit.
She’s still thinking about the way her pulse kicked up when he complimented her arguments, and the way he looked at her like she was a puzzle he wanted to solve, and the uncomfortable reality that maybe she’s attracted to both versions of Declan even if one of them makes her want to scream into pillows.
Her phone buzzes with another message:
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Can I ask you something potentially invasive?*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *Always.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *What’s the thing about yourself that you hide from everyone? The part you think would make people leave if they knew?*
Keiko stares at the message for a long moment, wine forgotten, because nobody’s ever asked her that before—not directly, not with the kind of genuine curiosity that suggests he actually wants to know instead of just making conversation.
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *I’m mean. Not all the time, but when I’m threatened or scared or feel like I need to win, I go for the throat. I say things designed to hurt, I compete like it’s life or death, I crush people who get in my way. And the worst part is that I’m good at it. Really good. Sometimes I think the Ice Queen everyone sees at work is more real than the person I pretend to be when I’m trying to be likeable.*
She hits send and immediately wants to take it back, because who admits that, who confesses to being the villain in their own story, who voluntarily reveals the parts of themselves that prove they’re not worth loving?
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Thank you for trusting me with that.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *For what it’s worth—I don’t think being competitive or fierce or even mean sometimes makes you a bad person. It makes you human. And I’d rather be with someone who’s honestly difficult than someone who pretends to be easy.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Also, I’m the same way. I get ruthless when I feel threatened. I’ve said terrible things to competitors just to win. I’ve sacrificed relationships for professional success. I’m not proud of it, but I’m also not going to pretend I’m something I’m not.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *What if we’re both terrible people?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Then at least we’re terrible honestly. I’ll take genuine and flawed over perfect and fake any day.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *I had a fight with someone at work this week. A competitor. We were on a panel together and I eviscerated his arguments in front of three hundred people and I felt GOOD about it. Like genuinely pleased that I’d won. What does that say about me?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *That you’re competitive and you like winning. That’s not a character flaw, that’s just who you are. Though I have to ask—was he an asshole? Because if he was an asshole, he probably deserved it.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *He’s… complicated. Brilliant but arrogant. Charming but infuriating. He makes me want to win more than I’ve ever wanted anything, which is saying something because I’m a pretty competitive person generally.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Sounds like he gets under your skin.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *He does. I hate it. I hate that I can’t stop thinking about our arguments, that I prepare for meetings with him like I’m going to war, that I care about beating him more than I should. It’s exhausting.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *I have someone like that. A woman at a competing company who drives me absolutely insane. She’s brilliant and beautiful and every time we interact I feel like I’m in a battle I’m not sure I want to win.*
Keiko’s heart stops for a second, because that description is too familiar, because what are the odds that they both have workplace nemeses who make them feel the exact same way, because the universe wouldn’t be cruel enough to make BookwormNightOwl and Declan O’Sullivan the same person.
Would it?
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *What’s her name? Your competitor?*
There’s a pause long enough that Keiko starts to panic, wondering if she pushed too far, if asking for identifying details breaks the unspoken rules of their anonymous connection.
**BookwormNightOwl:** *I’d rather not say. Is that okay? I like that we have this space that’s separate from work and real life. Where we can be honest without the weight of professional identities.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *Of course. I get it. I like that too.*
She does get it, and she’s also relieved, because if he’d said Keiko Tanaka, she’s not sure what she would have done with that information, how she would have processed the reality that the man she’s falling for is also the man she considers her professional enemy.
They talk for another two hours—about childhood dreams and adult disappointments, about the difference between who they thought they’d be and who they actually are, about whether it’s possible to change fundamental parts of yourself or if you’re stuck being the person you’ve always been.
And the entire time, Keiko is hyperaware of the photo on her screen, of his hands that she’s now memorized in embarrassing detail, of the fact that she wants to know what those hands would feel like touching her face, holding her close, proving that this connection is real and not just something they’ve built in pixels and wifi signals.
**BookwormNightOwl:** *I want to meet you. In person. Is that crazy?*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *Maybe. Probably. Yes.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *But you want to anyway?*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *Yes. But I’m scared. What if reality doesn’t live up to this? What if we meet and the magic disappears?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *What if it doesn’t? What if it’s even better in person?*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *That’s terrifying in a completely different way.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *I know. But I’m tired of being scared. I’m tired of choosing safe over real. And this—whatever this is we’re building—feels more real than anything I’ve had in years.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *Can I think about it? The meeting thing?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Of course. No pressure. I’ll wait as long as you need.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Though for the record—I’m already imagining what you look like, how you sound in person, what it would be like to make you laugh face to face instead of through a screen.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *You already know what I sound like. We talk on the phone almost every night.*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *It’s not the same. On the phone you’re careful, measured. I want to see what you’re like when you’re not performing. When you’re just… you.*
**SunnyDayDreamer:** *What if you don’t like the real me?*
**BookwormNightOwl:** *Impossible. I already know the real you. I’ve seen your fierce and your vulnerable and your silly and your sad. Whatever face you put on those qualities doesn’t change who you are underneath.*
Keiko falls asleep that night with her phone on the pillow next to her and the photo of his hands still on her screen, and she dreams about finding out that BookwormNightOwl is someone she already knows—someone she already hates—and having to choose between the connection they’ve built and the professional rivalry that defines so much of her identity.
In the dream, she chooses wrong.
She just doesn’t know which choice is the wrong one.
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