yooo

Ran was skeptical and ignored it, going straight back to sleep. Everyone else ignored the message too, except Sanzu. He was the only one curious enough to see what he sent, and it didn’t disappoint.

The video started off with a video of you in a mall changing room. Hanma was recording as he sat on the bed, the mirror catching his legs briefly in frame. You were trying on the dress, patting it down along your thighs. The first thing Sanzu noticed was how short it was. When you turned to the side your ass was out, and if you bent over? Game over.

“Shuji I told you this was gonna be short.”

Hanma’s deep voice rumbled behind the camera as he hummed. “Looks good to me. Turn around.”

You caught wind of the phone in his hand and rolled your eyes. “I’m not flashing myself on camera. Weirdo.”

“Just c’mere. I wanna check something.” He gestured for you to step closer. 

You sighed and stepped over the mess of clothes on the floor and walked towards the camera, taking his hand in yours. With your hands linked, he ran them down your thighs, around to your ass and squeezed, enough to make you wince. 

“Turn around.”

With another sigh you obliged, turning around and letting him lift the hem of the dress over what little was covering your ass to begin with. He bunched it up around your waist and moved the camera closer to your ass. 

“You look so hot right now.”

“This is so embarrassing,” you mumbled as he felt you up, squeezing and spanking your ass. “Alright that’s enough. You’re doing too much.”

He laughed and you pushed him away when he tried to pull you closer. “What? Come on I wasn’t done yet.”

“Well I’m done! I came here to shop and you’re picking out the fucking shortest pieces of clothing ever.”

“I picked out some regular sized ones too.”

You scoffed loudly. “Yeah, sure. Where are they?” 

He pointed to the ones hanging on the wall and you stomped over to grab them. He set the camera down towards his lap, the screen going black as it pressed against the fabric of his pants. 

“Okay I like this one.” He picked the camera back up and focused it back on you checking how the pencil skirt looks in the mirror. “This one seems appropriate for work.”

“Too long.”

“Fuck you.” You strip your shirt off, standing in only your bra and begin to put up the white buttoned long sleeved shirt. You tucked it in your skirt and turned to face him. “How’s this one?”

He pretended to think deeply, though he was just wondering how he could make it more sluttier. “Unbutton the first four.”

“Shuji.”

He stood up, coming to stand behind you and turning you to face the mirror again. He made sure the camera was focused on the two of your reflections in the mirror. You tilted your head up to look at him but he grabbed your chin and forced you to look straight ahead. 

“Just unbutton them I wanna see something.”

You sighed and began to unbutton the first four. Without a doubt, your clevage was starting to show and he smirked, dropping his spare hand down to your chest. His large hands cupped your breast, squeezing and palming it. 

You bit your lip and looked up at him again. His smirk grew and his hand slipped inside your shirt, grabbing your breast even harder. 

Sanzu paused the video, exited and typed in chat: BROOOOOOOOOO WHAT IS THISSSSSS

Koko: why are you yelling 

Sanzu: WATCH THE VIDEO AND YOULL SEE

Rindou: nobody is watching that fuckass video. It’s probably gore or some weird shit Hanma is in to

Sanzu: just watch the video

Rindou sighed and took his headphones that were around his neck and put them on, leaning back in his gaming chair and pressed play. He had a habit of skipping halfway through videos out of impatience and immediately regretted it when the screen showed Shuji’s dick on screen tapping against your lips. 

“Ew what the fuck.” He instantly recoiled, dropping his phone onto his desk. He rubbed his temples for a few seconds then picked it back up. After the initial shock wore off, he pressed play.

“Don’t fucking choke me this time. I don’t wanna get caught.”

“Just put it in your mouth.”

You rolled your eyes and leaned forward. You started off by pressing a kiss to his tip, eyes slipping shut. You pressed kisses down the length of his shaft, tongue laving along the vein that ran along his cock. You finally reached the tip again and took him in your mouth.

“Goddamn,” Rindou said, sitting up straight when you immediately took him all the way in your throat with one go. 

Hanma’s hand went to the back of your head, stabilising your head in place. You slipped your hand under his shirt, running it along the plane of his chest. You softly moaned, trying hard to keep the wet sounds to a minimum as you sucked him off. 

Outside the sounds of customers moving around and talking made your heart beat a little. Dating Shuji puts you in the most unpredictable situations and you have to adjust and be comfortable with anything. Just last week he had you cockwarm him in a restaurant. 

“Shit,” Shuji hissed, exhaling lowly when you began to speed up. He bucked his hips, forcing more of his cock down your throat. Your eyes shot open and you choked loudly. 

Shuji chuckled evilly and you practically shoved him away from you. “You’re actually so annoying.”

“It wasn’t that bad, come on now.” 

He reached for you but you pushed him away again, getting off your knees. “No seriously, don't touch me.”

“Baby.” Shuji dropped the phone on the floor and the camera faced the ceiling. Rindou frowned. “Baby wait no I’m sorry,” he apologised while laughing.

“No fuck you. You’re never serious about anything.”

Rindou heard kissing sounds and the sound of you grumbling complaints about how he always does this shit. “Lemme make you feel better.”

You scoffed loudly. Hanma picked the phone back up and set it up on the bench. You crossed your arms together, leaning against the wall, watching him kneel in front of you. He raised one leg onto his shoulder, kissing your inner thigh.

“Are you serious right now?” you mumbled, even as you ran your hand through his hair. He moved closer to your pussy, kissing it through your panties. “Oh my gosh,” you said through a moan, head hitting the wall.

He pushed your panties to the side and ran his tongue through your folds. He was slurping obnoxiously, getting louder on purpose when he heard the sounds of an employee talking outside. 

You tugged at his hair harshly. “Keep it down.” He clicked his tongue and ignored you. He hitched your leg higher onto his shoulder. “Fuck Shuji.” You reached for the phone, fumbling for it and pointed the camera down at him devouring your pussy.

For the most part he kept the noises to a minimum, lightly licking at your clit. You squeezed his hair tightly, and he broke away from your pussy to kiss along your thighs again. 

“Forgive me yet?” he asked against your skin.

“No.”

He rolled his eyes and stood up. He was always so much taller than you and that was one of your favourite things, so you had a stupidly small smile on your face despite being mad. He wrapped his hand around your throat, lifting your head up to look at him. He leaned down to kiss you, shoving his tongue deep into your mouth. 

Your hand dropped the camera again as you looped both arms around his neck. 

Rindou backed out of the video to see the chat going crazy with notifications, especially from Sanzu. He’d always thought you were pretty and deserved better than Shuji.

Sanzu: nah if she was my girl id NEVERRRRRRRRRR treat her like that

Koko: well shes not so now what

Kakucho: let him dream

Sanzu: she could be if i really tried

Mikey: sanzu just stop

Rindou: @/hanma  dude why are you sending this? Literally nobody asked to see this

Ran: i aint complaining tho

Sanzu: ME EITHER

Hanma: oh whoops sent it by accident

Sanzu: so when is it my turn

Hanma: keep talking and see what happens

But the amusement didn't last long. It was hard not to notice the weird bookkeeping after that—the endless trail of shell companies stamped across invoices, and there was an unusually large amount of cash coming through the registers. The numbers didn't add up for a venue that was rarely even half full.

But what really got under your skin, though, was one of those men.

He couldn't have been much older than you. He had his hair slicked neatly back, striking violet eyes, and a suit that clearly cost more than you'd make in a year.

Every time he walked in, there was a strange prickling sensation settled at the base of your neck. For some reason, you couldn't place the feeling you'd seen him before. Like recognizing someone from a dream you'd forgotten the moment you woke up.

In the end, you just brushed it off.

As a busser—though "runner" sounded much more professional when management wanted extra work done—you weren't exactly rolling in luxury. However, it was still the best paycheck you'd earned since arriving in Tokyo. Ever since the day you packed your entire life into a single duffel bag after a screaming match with your family, cut the SIM card out of your phone, and vanished without saying a single word to your boyfriend, Ran.

For a long time, you'd wondered whether he'd been angry. Eventually, you stopped wondering altogether.

People moved on.

That was what everyone said.

Since then, you have bounced between a dozen different dead-end jobs, but none of them ever lasted very long. Then you landed here. Sure, a high-end nightclub in the heart of Tokyo didn't hand fat envelopes of cash to a high school dropout out of the goodness of its heart. But for someone without a college degree to their name, the money was simply too good to pass up, so you buried your doubts and decided to stick around.

After all, you had a future to build and a clean life to live. Asking questions didn't put money in your pocket, while keeping your head down and keeping your mouth shut did.

_

Routine is a drug. Better than alcohol, better than a cigarette snuck on the fire escape at three in the morning. You could give up the cash, swear off the canned iced coffee that kept your heart racing through four-a.m. closes, but you could never give up the sweet, predictable numbness of a routine. Because how else are you supposed to view a boring late night when your entire existence is built on keeping things as utterly uneventful as possible?

​Your shift had officially ended five minutes ago. Up on the main floor, the heavy bass from the subwoofers had finally dialed down, thrumming through the floorboards, vibrating right up through the thin rubber soles of your worn sneakers.

You unpinned the plastic nametag and tossed it onto the cold metal bench beside your duffel. You were just pulling a hoodie over your head when the door swung open, and one of your coworkers dragged himself inside, his apron slouched so low it practically trailed on the floor, looking thoroughly defeated.

"If I have to wipe down one more sticky table, I am going to throw myself off the balcony," Kenzo groaned, collapsing onto the bench next to your bag with a dramatic flop. "I'm serious. I'll do it. You ever think about just quit?"

"Yeah, every shift," you answered, zipping up your hoodie as you leaned back against the cool metal of the lockers.

"Same." He wheezed, sitting up and rubbing his face. "Then payday rolls around and suddenly I remember why I'm still here. Funny how that works."

"Stockholm syndrome, probably," you smirked, playfully.

"Pretty sure that's not what that means."

"Close enough."

The lighthearted banter filled the room; he was one of the few perks of working in a place like this.

You shoved your hands into your hoodie pockets, ready to call it a night. But Kenzo didn't move. He didn't bother unbuttoning his vest or ditching his apron yet. Instead, he stayed put on the narrow metal bench, nervously picking at a loose thread near his hip. His fidgeting immediately set off alarm bells in the back of your mind.

"Hey," he started softly, looking up through his bangs. "Are you... heading straight home?"

"Why?"

"Well, I was just thinking..." Kenzo rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks flushing an embarrassed pink. "We've been working together for a few months now, and you're really cool. Like, really cool. And I was wondering if maybe... you'd want to get breakfast with me sometime? Or grab a drink on our night off? As a date, I mean."

He offered a hopeful little smile. "I've liked you for a while now."

In an instant, the atmosphere in the room became thick and charged, as if the very air had lost its substance.

It wasn't that Kenzo wasn't cute. He was. He was attentive and kind too, embodying everything one could want in a friend or partner. But the moment the word date left his mouth, the ghost of a violet-eyed glare immediately settled right in the back of your mind, making your heart claw its way back up your throat.

You couldn't do this. You couldn't. The idea of letting anyone that close again—of running the risk of finding out someone else had a hidden side—made your stomach turn into a tight knot. You knew, even if the sweet boy standing in front of you had no inkling of it, that you could never step back across that threshold and be the person you were before.

"Kenzo, I... I'm really flattered," you said, forcing a polite smile onto your face before the silence could stretch into something weird. "You're great, and you always make this place bearable. But I'm really not in a place to date anyone right now. I've just got... a lot of personal stuff I'm dealing with."

Kenzo's eyes widened, and he instantly held up both hands, regret washing over his face.

"Oh, man—no, hey, say no more," he said quickly, his posture slumping back in visible relief that he hadn't made a total mess of things. "I am so sorry if I made things weird! You don't owe me an explanation at all."

He rubbed his forehead, letting out a self-deprecating laugh. "My bad. I just thought I'd throw it out there, but we are totally cool, I promise."

"Thanks for understanding, Kenzo," you offered him a softer, more real smile.

"Of course," he said, as he finally stood up to head toward his own locker. "Get home safe, alright? See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," you replied, slinging your bag over your shoulder and stepping out of the locker room.

Somehow, that interaction left an unexpected ache somewhere in your chest. Not because you'd rejected him. More like it reminded you how ordinary people were supposed to fall in love.

Ask. Accept rejection. Feel embarrassed. Move on.

It shouldn't feel remarkable. Yet somehow... it did.

"Hey."

You had barely taken two steps out of the locker room when the manager's voice snapped through the hallway.

He jabbed a finger toward a tray someone had abandoned on a nearby counter. "You blind? Take care of that before you leave."

"...That's not mine," you mumbled.

"Do I look like I care?" he said, looking up long enough to glare.

You bit back a smart-ass response sitting on your tongue, picked up the tray, and carried it away. As you walked, you let out a long, shuddering breath, trying to shake off the lingering phantom chill of the past that Kenzo's sudden confession had accidentally dragged back to the surface. You told yourself you were safe. You were just a busser in a noisy club, leaving another late shift behind, walking toward the quiet exit.

After eight hours inside the muffled thump of the club, stepping onto the street was like walking straight into a fever dream.

Rain had slicked the narrow alleyways, turning the asphalt into a dark mirror that reflected the endless barrage of glaring red, pink, and yellow signs hanging overhead. As you turned onto the next street, one of the club promoters was speaking to a girl who couldn't have been older than eighteen. She clutched a suitcase in one hand and nodded eagerly at everything he said.

"You'll make more in one night than most office workers make all week," he said, handing her a business card. "All you need to do is just pour drinks and smile."

She smiled back with obvious relief. As you walk past, you wonder how long it took before she figured it out.

Walking through the crowded veins of Kabukicho meant running a nightly gauntlet of men—foreign tourists lined up like cattle outside the shady parlors, happily fueling the illegal prostitution rings that ran rampant through Tokyo's underbelly. Rich tourists and businessmen who openly bragged on the street about their upcoming flights to the Philippines or Thailand next month, genuinely believing that a fat wallet gave them a right to buy anyone they wanted for a night. To do whatever sick thing popped into their heads, even complain about local laws getting in the way.

God, how you loathed them. The scum who ran those operations, and the men who paid them.

You turned the corner into a quieter alleyway that served as a shortcut to the subway entrance, stepping around a puddle of spilled liquor as a group of intoxicated men stumbled out of a nearby club. Sometimes, you felt small and stupid and utterly trapped by the choices that brought you there.

You kept your chin tucked, eyes glued to the pavement.

Down here, Kabukicho was a graveyard of abandoned things. Tonight, your eyes caught a sun-bleached concert poster from three years ago, plastered right next to a bright yellow municipal sign warning against illegal dumping, though someone had already sprayed a streak of silver paint right across the fine print. Poor artist, getting buried under city ordinances.

Maybe they should've picked a better wall.

_

Back then, if anyone had asked you what Ran was like, you probably would have hesitated.

Because the answer depended entirely on who was asking, to your classmates, he was the infamous delinquent who skipped classes whenever he pleased, constantly getting into fights and attracting rumors the way neon signs attracted moths. To teachers, he and his brother were a huge pain in the ass. To strangers, he looked like the kind of boy parents warned their daughters about.

To you...

He was the idiot who complained about carrying your schoolbag while refusing to hand it back. The one who insisted motorcycles were perfectly safe, even while driving like he had a personal vendetta against speed limits and municipal traffic laws. The one who—somehow, against your better judgment—managed to make you laugh every single day.

You never really knew what he did after school. Sure, he was in a gang. They probably got into fights. He never volunteered details, and you never asked very hard. Because ignorance was clean. Ignorance let you pretend.

Looking back now, dating Ran Haitani had been like holding a lit match over an open gas line.

At the time, though, being eighteen had a remarkable way of convincing you that love was somehow immune to inconvenient questions.

You remembered one afternoon in particular.

It had been near the end of your final year, and the forecast had promised a light shower. Instead, the sky had split wide open, hammering rain against the school courtyard until the world outside the awning was blurred into gray watercolor smudges.

Half the students had already surrendered, making phone calls to parents or cramming three people beneath umbrellas designed for one.

You simply stood beneath the awning with your backpack hugged against your chest, determined not to text Ran for a ride. You were perfectly capable of surviving one rainy afternoon on your own; you didn't need a boyfriend catering to your every minor inconvenience.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

As the rain only grew heavier, you were beginning to wonder whether swimming home counted as a viable commute when a familiar motorcycle rolled to a stop in front of the school gates.

Ran climbed off first, he was already completely soaked.

His braids clung to the sides of his face, water dripping from the ends onto his jacket. In one hand, he held a completely transparent convenience-store umbrella with a bright yellow price sticker still attached to the handle.

"I knew you would forget," he said, swung his leg over the bike, and stepped into the pouring rain without a care in the world.

You glanced at the umbrella, then at him. "Where did you even get that? You didn't have it when you drove up."

"Stole it," he said without missing a beat. "Off some salaryman outside the convenience store. I told him it was an emergency."

"Ran! You can't just rob middle-aged men of their umbrellas!"

"Tomato, tomahto."

He looked genuinely offended that the sight made a laugh bubble right up out of your chest; he then held the umbrella over your head before you could argue further. The rest of him remained entirely outside its protection.

And that was the thing about Ran back then, wasn't it? He could be reckless, absurd, completely unbothered by the rules everyone else lived by. But when it came to you, he'd stand in the storm and make sure not a single drop touched your clothes.

"...Move closer." You frowned immediately. "The umbrella is supposed to cover both of us. You're getting soaked."

"I already am soaked," he replied, grinning so broadly.

The walk back to your house was absurd. Ran held the umbrella over you so meticulously that not a single drop of rain touched your clothes, which meant he was getting progressively soaked to the bone. Every time you tried to push the handle toward him so he could share, he would just push it right back over your head.

"Ran, stop it, you are completely ridiculous," you huffed, trying to grab his wrist.

"And you are entirely ungrateful," he shot back. "I am ruining a very expensive pair of shoes for you right now. The least you could do is hold my hand."

You rolled your eyes, but you slipped your fingers into his wet palm anyway.

"Seriously, you're going to catch pneumonia, Ran."

By the time your house came into view, your shoes squelched with every step.

The umbrella had somehow become even less effective over the course of the walk. You suspected it had something to do with Ran repeatedly spinning it like a baton every time he got bored.

When you finally reached your front porch, you stepped under the roof and turned around to face him. He closed the umbrella, shaking off the excess water, standing a step below you on the concrete stairs so he was almost at eye level. Water was dripping on his face, his violet eyes dark and bright against the gray afternoon light.

He reached out, his fingers surprisingly warm despite the weather, and gently brushed a few damp strands of hair away from your face, tucking them behind your ear.

"You look so cute," he said, his thumb resting against your cheekbone. "I don't think I'd ever let anyone else see you with your hair mess like this."

You laughed, rolling your eyes. "What, because I'd embarrass you?"

"Nah, I'd just rather keep this to myself."

You opened your mouth to make another joke. Then his hand tightened so much that it actually hurt, his fingers locked into the damp strands, holding your head in place. The playful warmth in his face hadn't disappeared, but the smile on his lips had gone completely still. 

His violet eyes were entirely flat.

"I'm serious," he murmured.

For reasons you couldn't name—reasons you wouldn't dare admit to yourself until years later—the rain pouring off the porch roof suddenly felt like ice against your skin.

And then, just as quickly as the vice had closed, he let go.

You stood on your porch for a long time, staring at him, your scalp still tingling from the pressure of his hand. Until he ruffled your hair instead, ruining whatever neatness he'd just created.

"You literally just fixed it," you groaned, forcing the annoyance back into your voice, forcing your hands to stay at your sides instead of checking where his fingers had bruised your scalp.

"I changed my mind," he beamed.

"You are the worst."

You shoved his shoulder, and he laughed.

The strange little moment disappeared beneath the familiar rhythm of your bickering, washed away as easily as rainwater running into the street.

At least...

That's what you told yourself back then.

_

Your apartment was typical for a cheap Tokyo rental.

Running away sounded much more romantic before you actually did it. In reality, it mostly consisted of glorified shoeboxes with paper-thin walls, convenience store dinners, counting coins before grocery shopping, and pretending you weren't homesick every time you passed families eating together through restaurant windows.

As you lay stretched out on your futon, scrolling mindlessly through your phone until your eyes burned, the muffled soundtrack of the building bled straight through the plaster. Above you, the thump-thump of the upstairs neighbor pacing in his slippers. You paused your scrolling, casually turning your head to listen; it was a nosy habit born out of living in such close quarters. You knew exactly when the university student next door overslept because he'd come barreling down the hallway every morning. The elderly couple across the landing always turned their television to the news right after dinner. And every Thursday without fail, someone two floors below practiced the trumpet with the confidence of a professional and the talent of an injured goose.

To keep the exorbitant Tokyo rent from completely eating your wages, you shared the tiny two-room unit with a girl named Mayu, who worked as a hostess at a high-end lounge a few blocks away.

Mayu pushed open the thin sliding door to your room. She pulled out a tub of cleansing balm and began aggressively wiping off her heavy night makeup while the television played some late-night variety show neither of you was paying attention to.

"I thought my feet were going to fall off tonight," she grumbled, rubbing a cotton pad over her eye. "Some middle-aged salaryman kept making me stand up to pour his whiskey just so he could stare at my legs!"

"You get paid triple what I do for that," you replied, not looking up from your screen. "Suck it up."

"Yeah, yeah." She tossed a used cotton pad toward the tiny trash bin, missing completely. "Though... speaking of high-rollers, one of my regulars was shitting his pants tonight."

That caught your attention. "Why? Did his wife catch him?"

"Worse," Mayu lowered her voice, though she didn't really need to, the thin plaster walls meant anyone in the hallway could hear her anyway. "He handles some of the logistics for the venue owners around here. Apparently, some executives from Bonten were in the area tonight, doing surprise audits and checking the books."

You didn't need to ask who or what Bonten was. Anyone living in Japan knew the name. They were Japan's most ruthless criminal syndicate—that had absorbed every major gang in the country and turned it into a multi-billion-yen corporate organization. From high-stakes gambling and drug trafficking to prostitution to the very money-laundering front that paid your rent, Bonten owned the city from the top down. The police didn't go near them, politicians took their money, and normal people like you just prayed that they would never ever cross your path.

Your thumb paused over your phone screen for a second at the name, but your face remain totally blank.

Mayu leaned in a little closer, her face half-cleansed, looking thoroughly entertained by the drama. "He said if Bonten finds even a single yen missing, someone gets a bullet in the head. Plain and simple."

A small, dry laugh bubbled up in your throat. You tossed your phone onto the blanket and rolled onto your side to face her. "Maybe don't get involved with syndicate freaks like that if he doesn't have a death wish."

"Right?" Mayu giggled, applying a layer of night cream. "I told him to just drink and shut up, but the guy could barely hold his glass."

She kept chatting for a moment. You waited until Mayu finished capping her skincare jars, watching her wipe her hands on a small towel, before you allowed yourself to shift the mood.

"Anyway," you sighed, letting out an exaggerated groan as you buried half your face in the pillow. "Enough about pathetic old men. I have actual important news."

Mayu paused mid-rub, blinking through her bangs. "Like what?"

"The trailer just dropped," you said, a small, genuine smirk finally breaking through the tension in your jaw.

"Really. For our show?" Her eyes lit up immediately, the poor bastard was already forgotten. That was Mayu for you.

"Yep! On Friday next week. Since we both have the night off, we're bingeing the whole thing."

"Deal," she smiled. "I'll handle the snacks."

You exhaled—a rare, unburdened thing—and closed your eyes, letting the ambient hum filter through the paper-thin windowpane. Next door, the university kid was probably already asleep, bracing for another morning of running late to class.

Because you believed, deeper down, in that naive part of yourself you kept safe that as long as you stayed small, as long as you minded your own business, names like Bonten were just stories that would stay as something above your head. You had no inkling that in just a few days, Friday night would come and go, and those silly little plans would mean absolutely nothing.

_

A week slipped by without incident.

You slept through bright afternoons and spent most nights weaving between strangers who would forget your face before sunrise, collecting abandoned bottles, clearing ashtrays no matter how many times management insisted smoking wasn't allowed indoors anymore, delivering drinks upstairs when the cocktail servers became overwhelmed.

Life, for the most part, resumed exactly as it always did.

Then the black sedans returned.

It wasn't entirely shocking that they showed up without a warning or a schedule; no one ever knew when they were coming. Sometimes they vanished for an entire season before showing up again as though they'd never left. Other times they appeared twice within the same week, completely without warning.

The moment your manager spotted them through the front entrance, every trace of confidence evaporated as usual.

He was already damn unraveling. He'd already barked at a bartender for polishing the wrong glasses and snapped at one of the DJs because a speaker cable was (god forbid) two centimeters out of place. By the time the front doors quietly opened to admit the suited visitors, there was enough sweat on his forehead that you wondered whether he ought to see a doctor.

Men like him—petty tyrants on short leashes—never handle real fear well. When their own knees start knocking, they do the only thing they know how to do: they look around for someone smaller to kick.

And tonight, the lottery ticket fell on you.

Spotting you wiping down a nearby tray station, he barked, "You! Bring a fresh pitcher of ice water to the VIP booth right now!"

You glanced around, there were at least four other employees standing closer than you were. Apparently, fate had decided your face annoyed him the least.

"...Yes, boss," you said.

He didn't stick around to check if you moved, already scrambling off toward the velvet ropes so fast he nearly tripped over the edge of the entryway carpet.

You kept your face completely expressionless and quickly filled a glass pitcher with ice and water. You knew better than to make him ask twice when he was in a mood like this.

You placed it onto a silver tray alongside three untouched crystal tumblers before making your way upstairs. The music dulled into a distant heartbeat with every step. The VIP corridor remained as immaculate as ever, even the security staff stationed outside the doors stood a little straighter than usual.

One of the VIP room doors remained open just enough for you to step inside after a quick knock.

Eyes down. Always eyes down. You navigated through the velvet ropes into the central lounge. Still... curiosity was free, wasn't it?

"—the numbers from the shell holding accounts don't match the front-end receipts," a voice said. "If they comes knocking, this venue's legitimate revenue needs to swallow the extra capital cleanly. That's the entire reason your name is on the registration, isn't it?"

"O-Of course, sir! It was just a minor delay in transferring—" your manager stammered, wringing his hands.

"I don't care about your excuses," the main voice interrupted.

Your gaze drifted upward just enough to take in the room and the three men.

The manager was talking to a long-haired man with white hair, wearing a vibrant red jacket paired with two long golden earrings. The undercut shaved clean along the left side of his head, with someone had carved an intricate emblem into the exposed hairline, resembling a Hanafuda full moon card.

It wasn't subtle. Then again, you suspected subtlety had never particularly interested men at the very top of the food chain.

Subtlety was for people like you.

To his right stood a man with a distinctive pinkish-purple mullet, quietly observing the room without speaking much. Beside him was the third man, and just like the mullet hair, he hadn't spoken once since you'd entered. Both of them wore tailored suits, and etched directly onto the front of their necks was the exact same stylized logo shaved into the white-haired man's head.

It didn't take a genius to figure that the nightclub wasn't your manager's. Not really.

It's running some massive money laundering shit for someone way higher. You were certain of it. The club is legally registered under the manager's name—a detail you stumbled across on a stray tax document in the back office—which meant the poor bastard was nothing more than a glorified human shield to rot in a cell the second the police finally decided to smash down the doors.

So he talked.

And shuffled his feet.

And talked.

The white-haired man didn't even glance your way as you approached. He just leaned back into the plush leather sofa, lazily swirling a glass of amber liquor between his fingers. While every few moments the manager would laugh nervously.

You reached across the low mahogany table to set down the tumbler. Suddenly, the manager stepped back in his bowing shuffle.

His elbow clipped your forearm.

Ice, water, and dark amber liquor splashed across the dark wood, pooling instantly over the edge of the table and dripping straight onto the polished leather shoe of the man with the slicked-back hair.

A gasp died in the manager's throat. You froze, your pulse spiking into a deafening roar in your ears. No. No, no, no. If you kept your head down, carried the trays, and did your job, they would never bat an eye at you earning chump change. But now, you had drawn a direct line of sight straight to yourself.

Slowly, the man with the slicked-back hair looked down at his soaked shoe, then raised his eyes to yours.

He blinked once, as though only now realizing there had been another person standing beside the table all along.

His eyes lingered for the smallest fraction of a second longer than politeness required, slowly drifting over the nametag pinned crookedly to your vest, the loose strand of hair that had escaped your ponytail, the tiny scar near your wrist from years of bussing tables.

"...Have we...?"

"Me?" You looked up, confused.

He didn't finish the sentence, holding your gaze for another heartbeat. Then, imperceptibly, the tension in his expression dissolved. The corners of his mouth lifted into an apologetic smile, and he gave the faintest shake of his head.

"Nothing." He let out a soft chuckle. "For a second, I thought you reminded me of someone."

You tried to process the strange chill of his voice, staring at the sharp line of his jaw, the neat slick of his hair. Did you know him? Did you pass him on a train? Had he been one of those customers at the diner you worked at three jobs ago?

Or was it something else? Something from the before?

Suddenly, your manager's voice cut through; his face lost what little color remained.

"You utter idiot!" the manager shrieked, grabbing a napkin. "What is wrong with you?! I am so sorry—please forgive them, they're completely incompetent, I'll fire them right now, I'll—"

"It's alright."

The slicked-back hair man raised a single hand, stopping the manager in his tracks.

He leaned forward, picking up a cloth from the tray, and turned his full attention to you. His face softened into an easy expression that felt shockingly strange from someone with a tattoo displayed so openly across his neck.

"Are you alright?" he asked, and you flinched at the way he did; it sounded an inch too familiar.

"...Sorry?"

He gestured toward the floor. "You didn't get cut by any broken glass, did you?"

"I—no. No, I'm fine. I'm so sorry," you stammered, entirely thrown off balance by his sudden gentle demeanor.

He let out a chuckle, waving a hand dismissively at his ruined shoe as he dabbed at the spill. "Don't apologize. Honestly, it's a relief—I've been looking for an excuse to throw these shoes away anyway. They were a gift from my brother, and his taste in leather is questionable at best."

Beside him, the man with the mullet scoffed softly, rolling his eyes with an irritated twitch of his jaw.

Meanwhile, the man with the white hair slowly folded his arms, leaning back against the leather booth with a mocking smile stretching across his face. He eyed his colleague up and down.

"Look at you. What brought on the suddenly generous mood?" he said, resting his chin on his knuckles.

"Ignore him," the slicked-back man murmured to you with a smooth wave of his hand, as he reached out to help you pick up the fallen tray and wipe down the edge of the booth. "Here, let me give you a hand with that."

Your manager looked horrified. "S-Sir, please, we'll clean that immediately."

"I've got hands. They're working fine."

The manager forced out an awkward chuckle that sounded suspiciously close to a sob. The poor man somehow looked even more anxious.

You found yourself awkwardly kneeling opposite the slick-haired stranger, carefully gathering the larger shards onto a folded napkin.

"I'm so sorry—"

"You've just been apologizing, dear. Relax a little." He tilted his head, watching the way you kept your head ducked, your focus strictly glued to the floor tiles. "Do you work here every night?"

You told him because you didn't see any harm in that.

As he worked alongside you for a brief, surreal moment, he made small talk—asking how long you'd been working here, complaining lightheartedly about how this venue is a bit too loud, how hard it was to have a decent conversation over that bass downstairs. Certainly, you nodded to be polite, and agreed that it was much nicer when it's quiet. Meanwhile, he acted for all the world like a charming patron enjoying a night out. Keep up the hard work. They'll be seeing you around.

When you reached for another shard, you happened to look up to check where his hands were—and your eyes caught the second man in the room.

The man with the pinkish-purple mullet wasn't watching the broken glass.

He was watching you.

Specifically, he was watching the slick-haired man watching you. Neither of them spoke and simply exchanged a look, a strangely familiar one. It was so brief, so razor-thin, you almost convinced yourself your mind had invented it entirely. Just the faintest, imperceptible twitch of an eyebrow from the mulleted man, answered by the subtle shift in the other's jaw.

Then both of them looked away as though nothing had happened; a strange feeling settled somewhere in the back of your mind.

You tied off the towel around the broken crystal. Apologized once more, and then excused yourself from the room.

"Thanks," you said quietly.

"Of course."

He stood, brushing imaginary dust from his suit trousers before stepping aside to let you pass. "Have a safe shift."

"You too."

The words left your mouth, and halfway through the doorway, you realized how ridiculous that sounded.

"I'll certainly try." He smiled a little wider.

You stepped clear of the threshold and back into the hallway, your breath catching in your throat as your shoulder nearly brushed fabric.

Standing right beside the frame—so close to the entrance he had been completely swallowed by the alcove's shadows when you first walked in—was a towering man in a dark suit. He stood dead still, hands folded low over his belt like a gargoyle guarding a vault. Must be a bodyguard, then.

He hadn't been there when you walked down the hall earlier. Or... had he?

How the hell did you miss a man the size of a refrigerator?

You didn't look up at his face. You knew better than to make eye contact with the muscle of whatever syndicate was currently occupying that room. You kept your eyes glued to the floor, clutching the tray of broken glass against your ribs, and hurried past him before the door clicked shut behind you. Behind you, the manager resumed discussing figures in a voice still trembling from nerves.

Later that night, while throwing away the trash bag, you caught a glimpse of one of the newer girls standing outside.

She was leaning against the wall, her shoulders trembling, the edges of her heavy eyeliner ready to dissolve in a fresh wave of tears. Before you had the chance to ask whether she was alright, she noticed you looking. She wiped her eyes with a flick of her thumb and flashed you a bright, yet, entirely hollow smile.

You smiled back out of habit and kept dragging the trash bag toward the bin. You turned your back on her and went right back to doing what you were paid to do.

​Because there wasn't a thing you could do for her.

But that memory stayed with you far longer than you expected on the train ride home after your shift. Maybe because she looked so painfully young. Then again, most of these girls were so young, arriving in Tokyo full of life and desperate for a shortcut to a comfortable paycheck, only to realize too late that the industry didn't let go once it had its teeth in you. Some of them came here hoping for an easy ride; others were backed into a corner by debts or circumstances that forced it on them, bad luck had a funny way of disguising itself as opportunity. But regardless of how they arrived, very few ever made it to the top as high-earning hostesses. Most just had their youth chewed up and spit out, carrying a ruined reputation.

Strange as it sounded, you couldn't help but feel relief.

You were glad you had only stumbled into this red-light district venue older and thoroughly disillusioned by the world. If you had been a few years younger, this industry would have easily swallowed you whole. You would have been just like her, crying behind the building before the next client called your number.

_

The next evening, you woke up in an unusually good mood.

Certainly not because you had developed a newfound appreciation for mopping spilled champagne off marble floors.

No, it was because your favorite television series was finally releasing its newest season.

You weren't even supposed to be working the late shift tonight, if not for your manager suddenly called you in. It was originally slated as your night off, and your calendar—if you actually kept one instead of scrawling reminders on the backs of crumpled receipts—was packed with the kind of aggressive relaxing only a thoroughly exhausted twenty-something could appreciate.

You had spent the last two weeks trying (and failing) not to think about it. You and your roommate had spent the entire week planning around the show. She had already bought snacks, and the second your shift ended at two in the morning, you would be sprinting to the convenience store for drinks and fried chicken. Though if she catches you bringing home yet another can of melon soda instead of the green tea she asked for, she was bound to yank a couch cushion off the futon and hurl it directly at your face. But c'mon. It wasn't your fault that the machine was half-empty and you were prone to picking whatever flavor gave you a hit of nostalgia.

Neither of you intended to answer texts, phone calls, or the front door until every episode had been consumed. There was a very real possibility you'd both be functioning on three hours of sleep tomorrow. But it would absolutely be worth it.

That singular thought carried you all the way through getting dressed.

The train ride.

The familiar walk toward Kabukicho.

Tokyo looked strangely charming whenever you had something to look forward to. You practically skipped past a group of sketchy promoters shouting at passersby, silently wishing them a lovely evening in your head. Even the local crackhead picking violently at his own arms and screaming at a lamppost wasn't a public menace to you—he was just a passionate street performer tragically born without a stage.

There was a moment that you caught yourself looking around and thinking that, from a distance, the place almost resembled one of those movie montages about chasing dreams in Tokyo. Even Kabukicho itself somehow managed to seem... endearing.

(if you squinted hard enough.)

By the time you pushed through the staff entrance, you were humming the opening theme from the show under your breath.

​The manager was standing by the tray station. The moment his eyes landed on you, his usual scowl contorted into a horrifyingly wide smile, that you briefly wondered whether someone was threatening him just outside your field of vision.

​"Ah! There you are!" he chirped, the buttery tone that made the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up. "I was just waiting for you!"

You instinctively glanced behind yourself, there was nobody, just you.

"...Evening, boss?" you answered cautiously. Had he developed a fever? "Is... something wrong?"

​"Wrong? Why would anything be wrong?" He practically glided over to you, patting your shoulder with an unsettling touch that felt completely wrong coming from a man who had screamed at you for spilling water last night. "I just wanted to make sure you were feeling okay after yesterday! That spill was a complete accident, of course. I hope you didn't take my little outburst to heart. You're one of our best runners here, you know that, right?"

​"I... thank you?"

He nodded, then stepped aside to let you pass first. He never voluntarily let you through a doorway before.

Something was wrong.

You continued toward the staff room. A minute later, he appeared beside you carrying a fresh stack of polished glasses.

"I already assigned someone else to clean the hallway," he said. ​"In fact, why don't you take it a little easy tonight?" he continued, waving a hand dismissively as if bestowing a royal blessing upon you. "No heavy lifting! Just handle the light glassware in the back, okay? If you need a break, just take one!"

There it was.

Definitely a fever.

Or a concussion.

Take last week, for example, he called you an incompetent dropout who was good for nothing. And somehow this bothered you far more than if he'd simply yelled at you instead.

"...Really."

"Of course." He nodded enthusiastically. "If anyone ever asks, you'll tell them I treat everyone here like family, alright? "

"...Who's asking?" you asked, narrowing your eyes.

His smile twitched.

"No one."

Then why would anyone ask?

Before you could press him about it, he patted your arm one last time, flashed that uncanny sweet smile, and turned on his heel to hurry toward his office, leaving you standing alone in the hallway.

"...Huh."

A cold, prickly sensation spread across your skin, drowning out all the excitement you had felt just five minutes ago. The manager wasn't nice. He didn't care about his staff, he didn't forgive mistakes out of the goodness of his heart, and he certainly didn't hand out special treatment for free. Something was definitely off tonight, you just couldn't figure out what.

You raised your eyes to the tiny black dome of the security camera mounted in the corner of the hallway, the display monitor was probably mounted somewhere that mirrored the feed.

Ah, perfect, you thought, channeling your best deadpan internal monologue. Maybe the manager finally realized your so-majestic talent for carrying six empty beer mugs at once and decided to crown me employee of the month.

​"If he gives you one more break tonight, I am going to throw myself off the roof," a voice muttered from behind you.

​You turned to see Kenzo dragging a heavy bin of clinking glass bottles, his face flushed red with exertion and bitterness. He dumped the bin onto the staging table with a loud clatter and slumped against the wall. It took you a while to get over the other day, but you both are cool now.

​"I swear, the guy has completely lost it. He's dumping all the floor work on me!" Kenzo complained, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

​You offered him an albeit helpless, grimace. "I swear, something feels weird."

​"Yeah, well, his mood isn't the only weird thing tonight," Kenzo sighed, lowering his voice as he leaned in closer. "Those guys are back."

​You blinked, your thumb pausing over the edge of your apron. "What guys?"

"The suit guys." Kenzo shook his head, running a hand through his messy hair. "The ones everyone acts weird around."

​Your stomach did an uneasy flip. "That doesn't make any sense. They never show up two days in a row."

​"Tell me about it," Kenzo said, picking up a fresh stack of linen napkins. "Maybe they're really into our cocktails."

He meant it as a joke. But you didn't laugh. And he didn't seem to notice it, at least he didn't voice any concern.

​Meanwhile, you just stood there, let the noise of the venue wash over you, and sat in the strangeness of it all. You stared at the scuffed tiles beneath your worn sneakers, watching a stray drop of condensation run down the side of a glass bottle on the staging table. It probably just money-laundering stuff. It has nothing to do with you.

​You were always doing this—overanalyzing, picking apart every shift in the air, measuring the space between yourself and the nearest exit like a feral dog that had spent too long on a leash. It was exhausting. It made you paranoid, hyper-vigilant, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop while everyone else around you just... lived. Kenzo was probably going to go home after this, fry up some instant ramen, and sleep for ten hours.

Before you could fully digest the sudden creeping dread, heavy footsteps echoed down the tiled corridor.

​The manager rounded the corner, his face pale and slick with a fresh sheen of sweat. The overly polite demeanor he had worn earlier was entirely gone, replaced by a high-strung panic that made his hands twitch at his sides. He completely ignored Kenzo, his eyes locking directly onto you.

​"You," the manager gasped. "I need you upstairs immediately."

​You stiffened slightly. "Upstairs? But I thought—"

​"The VIP room needs a quick wipe-down," he snapped. "Some glasses left over from earlier. Go ahead and clear the table, okay?"

​Kenzo shot you a confused look from behind the manager's back, but you just swallowed down the sudden lump in your throat. There was no point in arguing or overthinking it. Cleaning up dirty glassware in the VIP lounge was literally what you were paid to do. It was just another table. Just another five minutes of work standing between you and your night off.

​"Understood," you said. "I'll handle it right away."

You grabbed an empty tray, pushed open the swing doors, and headed down the dimly lit corridor toward the private room at the very end of the hall. The muffled bass from downstairs barely reached this far.

You stopped outside one of the VIP rooms. The door stood slightly open. You knocked lightly. No response.

Assuming the guests had already cleared out and left the mess for you to deal with, you placed your palm against the wood and pushed it open.

Sitting in the center of the plush leather booth were those two men from yesterday—the white-haired man was swirling a drink, while the one with the slicked-back hair sat beside him, his long legs crossed comfortably over the other. While the third one, the man with the pinkish-purple mullet, was nowhere to be seen.

You froze, the heavy tray slipping an inch in your grip.

Click.

Behind your back, the door swung shut, and the heavy brass lock slid firmly into place.

For one long second, your thoughts simply stopped, then they came back all at once.

You were such an idiot.

You'd spent months telling yourself to keep your head down, not ask questions, not wander into situations that didn't concern you, and the one time you ignored your own advice, you managed to lock yourself inside a VIP room with the people who made your manager look like he was awaiting sentencing. You had been set up, handed over like a piece of property wrapped in a ribbon. How could you have been so unbelievably gullible? Why on earth would a high-ranking executive from a ruthless syndicate—a man who owned half the district—ever be nice to a dropout busser who spilled a drink on his shoes?

"So."

Behind you, a voice broke the silence.

The white-haired man leaned back comfortably on the leather sofa, studying you with open curiosity before glancing toward the slick-haired man beside him.

"...Is that the one?"

"Yeah," the other man didn't hesitate.

"Huh." A crooked smile spread across the white-haired man's face. He looked you up and down without the slightest hint of subtlety. "You've got terrible taste."

Hearing that, the slick-haired man laughed under his breath. "I've been told."

They sounded almost... amused.

Like two old friends teasing each other over something completely ordinary.

"I'm..." Slowly, you turned back around. Your throat felt dry. "I'm sorry, but I think there's been a misunderstanding."

Neither man interrupted.

So you continued. "I-I'm not one of the work girls. They must've sent the wrong person."

Your eyes darted around the lounge, searching for anyone. The white-haired man watched you with the same bored expression as yesterday. Only then did you properly notice the third figure, a man dressed in a dark suit stood silently beside the wall near the entrance; you couldn't even remember seeing him when you'd first walked inside.

The realization made your stomach sink even further.

"I really don't..." you blurted out, panicking, making the words spill together. "I don't do... those kinds of services. I'd be terrible at it and I'd honestly just make everything awkward. I'm serious."

The slicked-back man let out an amused huff at that.

For the first time since you'd entered, he actually laughed. A genuine one. It felt horribly out of place.

"I know."

"...You... do?"

You looked up, the simple answer caught you completely off guard.

"Believe me, I'm not asking you to do anything like that. If that's what I wanted, I wouldn't have gone through all this trouble," he continued in the same calm tone someone might use while offering tea, and then gestured calmly toward the empty chair opposite the sofa.

"Come sit," he said.

You didn't move. And frankly, you'd better stand.

"Well, suit yourself," he shrugged, his tone remaining remarkably relaxed. "I'm not going to force you into the chair."

Hearing that should've made you feel better, yet, your heartbeat refused to slow.

He sighed softly, pressing his lips together as though suppressing a smile of his own. "I only wanted to have a heartfelt talk, really."

"...Talk?" you asked, looking helplessly between the locked door and the bodyguard. "I don't understand. Who are you?"

"You really don't recognize me?" He blinked, taking in your wide, terrified eyes and the white-knuckle grip you had on your empty tray.

You stared blankly at him, and he didn't seem offended.

"I'm sorry. Should I?"

"...That's disappointing." He let out a quiet laugh, shaking his head to himself. "Well, I suppose it's been a long time. I was hoping we'd have a nicer reunion than this."

Your eyebrows drew together, a knot of confusion twisting tight in your gut. "...Did we... know each other?"

"Mhm, I'd certainly hope so."

​He uncrossed his long legs, leaning his elbows on his knees as he looked up at you. "You disappeared before we even finished high school, [Name]."

You blinked.

...No...

No.

No.

No.

There were only a handful of people who even knew you'd disappeared before graduation.

Your pulse started to roar so loud in your head, drowned out the bass, and every nerve ending in your body is screaming at you to run, run, run. In real life, it was not the daydreams but your worst nightmares that come true: those nightmares you have (yes, have, still—even this far down the line) where he finds you, where he proves that no matter how far you run, you are still standing in his shadow.

Only now, years of distance was collapsing in on itself, the image of a Bonten executive overlapping with a memory you'd buried so deep you had almost convinced yourself it was dead.

"...Ran?"

"There you are, I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten me entirely," he smiled a little wider, deepening the lines around his eyes.

You stared at him, at the slicked-back hair, the older face, the broader shoulders, and his violet eyes were darker, colder, stripped of whatever childish mischief they used to hold. You'd spent so long remembering him as the eighteen-year-old boy who showed up outside your school gates that you'd never once considered what eighteen years old eventually became.

You wished he had died years ago. You wished he had died as a foolish teenager in some nameless street fight on the asphalt of Roppongi. You tried to reason with yourself, tried to justify the wretchness, so terrible of the thought—as cruel as that wish was, the man sitting in front of you right now was infinitely more cruel than death.

Before either of you could say anything else, the white-haired man rose from the sofa with a dramatic sigh.

"Well," he said, checking a heavy gold watch on his wrist. "I've officially become the third wheel. Guess I'll go have the car brought around."

"Leaving already?" Only then did Ran finally look away from you.

Kokonoi looked between the two of you before clicking his tongue. "Well, you've got catching up to do."

He adjusted the cuffs of his suit as he walked toward the rear exit hidden behind one of the decorative wall panels. Halfway there, he looked back over one shoulder.

"And don't ever say I haven't done anything nice for you, Ran."

"I would never," Ran hummed back.

The concealed door opened soundlessly.

The bodyguard immediately stepped away from the main entrance and followed Kokonoi without a word, disappearing through the back passage behind him. The panel slid shut again.

Now it was only you and Ran.

After all these years.

​"You know," ​Ran's voice breaks the silence, carrying that soft cadence from your teenage years, "I was really mad at you for a very long time. You just changed your number and ghosted me entirely. I figured you had your reasons, of course. You always were overly dramatic when you panicked. But I really hated not knowing what those reasons were."

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a black smartphone and tapping the screen a few times. A pale glow illuminated his face as he casually scrolled.

"It was also impressive, really. How thoroughly you hid yourself," he hummed. "Though, finding out you were working in one of Koko's little front operations last night was a hilarious stroke of luck. I spent the whole night reading up on what you've been up to. Turns out, you've had... quite the employment history."

"I wasn't exactly building a career," you muttered, looking down at your hands. Heat crept up your neck, hot and embarrassing.

But what else were you supposed to say? That you spent the last few years sprinting from one dead-end shift to the next, constantly looking over your shoulder?

"I noticed, you never stayed anywhere very long," he said, counting lazily on his fingers. "You quit the café after eight days. Bouncing around from diner to warehouse every few months, splitting rent with a hostess. Was it really worth it?"

​"It was my choice," you whispered, your voice barely carrying over the muffled thump of the bass from the floor below.

​"And look where it got you."

​You can't even offer a defense because your brain is screaming that any wrong word could be your last.

​He tilts his head, his violet eyes narrowing just a fraction with curiosity.

"...One thing surprised me, though. You never dated again, did you?"

​The terror locking your jaw forced out the truth before you could even calculate if it's the right answer. You shook your head frantically. "No. I didn't."

"No?"

"No."

He searched your face for any sign you were lying, and finding none...

"That's good," he grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners as if you had just given him the best gift in the world. "Because if you did, I would have had to hunt the bastard down and kill him then."

He paused, resting his cheek against his knuckles as a thought seemed to strike him. "Actually, that reminds me... that runner working with you earlier tonight. Kenzo, was it? He was standing a little too close to you by the tray station, wasn't he?"

"He's just a coworker," you said quickly, keeping your tone as flat and detached as humanly possible, trying to steer the conversation entirely away from him. "He means nothing. We just clear tables."

You couldn't defend Kenzo—not outright, in a way that would draw more attention to him or make Ran suspect he meant anything to you. You knew better than to be reckless with a man like this.

Still, Ran wasn't an idiot either. He caught the subtle shift in your posture the moment a name was brought into the room.

​"Relax, I haven't done anything to your little coworker. Yet."

Without thinking, you took half a step backward. He chuckled softly at that, his fingers idly tracing the rim of his crystal glass. "You're doing it again."

​"Doing what?" You stared down at the tray.

"Looking at me like I'm about to hurt you."

​"I don't know what you're going to do to me anymore, Ran," you blurted out. The words escaped before you could stop them, and Ran's smile disappeared entirely.

Almost... disappointed.

It was the same look he gave you back in high school when you refused to let him carry your bag, or when you didn't laugh at one of his terrible jokes—a look that feigned hurt, except this time, beneath the polished suit and the tattoo etched across his neck, there was a strange stillness to it that made your stomach turn inside out.

​He stared at you for a long moment, taking in the way you cowered. Then exhaled.

"...I suppose that's fair."

Ran smoothed down the front of his tailored suit jacket, stepping out into the open space of the room, slowly closing the distance between you.​ His jaw set when you flinched away from his touch.

​"I haven't really decided what I'm going to do with you yet, to be honest," he admitted, stopping barely two feet away. "Part of me wanted to tear your life apart the second I found you, just to teach you a lesson for running. But now that you're standing right here in front of me..."

"...I'm realizing I kind of missed having you around."

It was supposed to sound sweet. In some sick, twisted reality, maybe it was. The way he reached out, his fingers hovering mere inches from your cheek.

​If you were smart—if you had an ounce of sense left in your skull—you'd drop to your knees, apologize until your voice gave out, and let him take you back. Instead, your eyes drifted past his shoulder to the back exit—the door the white-haired man and the bodyguard had walked through just minutes ago. It wasn't locked from the inside. It was a private exit, a clear shot to the service corridor.

Ran noticed your eyes move; his own flicked briefly toward the door, then back to you.

He didn't even acknowledge it. The silence stretched, and you realized if he was going to stop you, it had to be now.

Instead, he simply watched.

You didn't calculate the odds and swung the heavy metal tray, slamming it straight into Ran's chest, and bolted.

The chair beside you toppled over as you sprinted across the room, fingers fumbling desperately for the edge of the sliding panel. The cool air of the back corridor hit your face, and relief—blinding relief—surged through your veins.

You stole one brief glance back over your shoulder, expecting to see Ran lunging after you.

​He still hadn't moved an inch.

​Still standing right where you left him, casually brushing off his jacket where the tray had clipped him. He was looking at you with a pitying smile, as if watching a child try to run through a brick wall.

​Before your mind could even process the horror of why he wasn't chasing you, instantly, a pair of arms clamped around your chest and shoulders like a steel vise. The massive bodyguard hadn't left; he was standing right outside the frame. Before you could even scream, he yanked you backward into the VIP suite, slamming your knees down onto the hardwood floor near the doorway. He twisted your arms behind your back, pinning you completely motionless.

Your forehead hit the edge of the low coffee table, the sharp shock of pain ringing through your skull as the guard held you completely pinned. Gasping for air, your chest heaving, you looked back into the room.

Ran was still standing in the center of the lounge, then raised those flat, dead violet eyes to yours.

Slowly, without a single trace of hurry or emotion, he reached inside his tailored suit jacket, the motion was so calm that it took you a while to register.

Then you heard a metallic click.

"Ran—" you choked out at the sight of him withdrawing a compact black pistol. "Ran, please. I'm sorry."

"I believe you, [Name]."

A pause.

"But actions have consequences."

His fingers closed around the pistol grip.

Pain didn't register immediately. First came the violent force that nearly tore you out of the bodyguard's grip, followed by a blinding, white-hot numbness in your left thigh. Then, a second later, the numbness detonated into a searing fire that made your vision bleed completely red, drowning out every thought, every memory, every breath.

You shrieked, as you collapsed sideways against the floor.

Ran raised his left hand, making a flick of his wrist.

​The bodyguard instantly let go, dropping your weight like a sack of dead lead. You hit the carpet hard, clutching at your bleeding leg, your jaw trembling so hard your teeth clicked together as tears overflowed down your cheeks. Blood, dark and thick, was already soaking through your trousers, staining the plush carpet beneath you.

Ran calmly stepped forward, he crouched down right in front of you, bringing his face inches from yours while you gasped and sobbed, writhing in the suffocating heat of the wound.

He watched you for another moment before slipping the pistol back beneath his suit jacket. The room fell quiet again, he lifted his wrist toward his face.

"You always push me to these extremes," Ran said, reaching out and gently tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. "You should be grateful that I like you as much as I do. No one has ever disrespected me the way you just did and lived to tell anyone about it."

You flinched violently, squeezing your eyes shut, fully expecting him to draw the gun again to finish what he started.

​Instead, the soft tick of a second hand was the only sound in the room.

After several seconds, you slowly opened your eyes. Ran was simply checking the time. He noticed, and the realization settled over his face with an imperceptible flicker of guilt.

"...Sorry," he said. "I didn't think about that. Koko should have the car waiting at the curb by now."

​Before you could process his words, he leaned down. His arms slipped effortlessly beneath your back and the crook of your knees, hoisting you off the blood-stained carpet into a bridal carry.

​The sudden movement jarred your shattered leg. Your hand instinctively grabbed the front of his jacket, and a pathetic whimper ripped from your chest as white-hot agony flared straight up your spine. Tears spilled hot and fast down your cheeks, your body shaking uncontrollably against his chest.

​Ran paused mid-stride, looking down at you.

"...Does it hurt?" he asked, adjusting his grip so your head rested against his shoulder.

You could only stare at him through the blur of your tears. The question was so utterly insane, that for a second your voice completely failed you.

"I-Is that... a joke?" you choked out.

He stepped out through the open back door and into the service corridor. "I really am sorry about the shot. I just couldn't risk you trying to run off again."

​You didn't respond as he navigated the narrow hallway with unhurried steps. The club sounded different back here. The music became little more than a distant pulse behind thick walls.

​"Though... I suppose I should apologize if the bullet nicked anything vital," he continued, tilting his head thoughtfully. "Sanzu was lecturing me the other day about the quadriceps—something about the femoral branches and nerve pathways. He said deep trauma there can cause permanent muscle weakness or even paralysis."

​Your heart stopped. The realization that your leg might never work the same way again hit you like a physical blow, sending a fresh wave of panic through the blinding pain.

​Ran must have felt the terror locking up your frame, because his grip on you was tightening, as if to comfort you.

​"But don't worry about any of that," he said, pressing a reassuring kiss against the crown of your head. "I'm not going to abandon you just because you can't walk properly anymore. In fact... it makes things a lot easier for both of us."

​You closed your eyes, clutching weakly at his suit jacket, completely paralyzed by the horrifying reality of his words.

​Ran adjusted his grip ever so slightly, careful not to jostle your leg more than necessary, and pushed through the heavy metal crash-doors at the end of the service hall, stepping out into the back alleyway. Just as you turned the corner toward the street where a black sedan sat idling in the shadows, its tinted windows reflecting the garish neon lights of Kabukicho.

Your vision was swimming in hazes of red and gray, but you were still able to register that a man stumbled out from the side entrance of a neighboring bar.

​He was obviously drunk, with a half-empty bottle dangling from his fingers. Probably another customer who'd wandered into the wrong place after too many drinks. He bumped heavily against the wall, taking a staggering step before his foggy eyes landed on the scene unfolding right in front of him.

​You forced your eyes open, locking your tear-filled gaze with his.

The man looked at your bleeding leg, then slowly raised his eyes to meet Ran's.

​Ran didn't stop walking. He merely stared down the hallway, his expression utterly void of emotion. The tattoo etched into the side of his neck stood out under the dim overhead fluorescent strip.

​The drunk man's face went entirely slack, his skin draining of color in a matter of seconds. The slight swagger vanished from his posture. Without saying a word, he abruptly turned his head away, deliberately staring at a grease-stained section of the brick wall as if he were suddenly fascinated by the masonry. He took a heavy step backward, pressing his spine flat against the wall to make as much room as possible for Ran to pass, his eyes fixed firmly on his own shoes.

How pathetic you were. How utterly, laughably naive.

Why would you plead for help from a stranger who didn't know you, who owed you nothing?

At the side of the idling sedan, Kokonoi was already leaning against the passenger door, checking something on his phone. Beside him stood the pinkish-purple-haired man from the VIP room, one hand buried in his coat pocket, the other idly spinning a set of car keys around his finger.

"There you are." Rindo looked up first, his eyes flicked briefly toward you before returning to Ran. "What took you so long? Koko's been checking his watch every thirty seconds."

Kokonoi lifted his brows without looking up from his phone, as if to confirm that.

​"I had a small situation to handle," Ran replied, completely unbothered, as he merely adjusted his hold on you, resting his chin gently against the top of your head. His arms held you close as his men opened the rear passenger door from the inside.

​"A situation?" Rindo repeated, letting out a quiet huff of air. "You mean you managed to shoot them within five minutes of getting them in a room?"

Kokonoi got in the car first, and Rindo followed him, finally flicking his eyes toward the blood soaking through your trousers. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it casually onto your lap.

​"Guess I should introduce myself properly," he said. "I'm Rindo. Ran's younger brother. Though I'm sure you already remembered that much."

Rindo, you realized. Back then, wherever Ran was, his younger brother was never far behind.

​You squeezed your eyes shut, too terrified and in too much pain to form a proper response.

​Rindo rolled his eyes at your silence, turning his gaze back to Ran. "Unbelievable. You've been talking my ear off about finding them, going on and on about how you were going to handle it, and the moment you actually get your hands on them, you go and ruin my fresh car seats."

"It's just a little blood, Rindo," Ran said, reaching down to gently hold your wrists in a loose grip as the driver shifted the car into drive and pulled smoothly away from the curb. "Besides... they're not going anywhere now."

​"Whatever. Just make sure Koko pays for the detailing," Rindo muttered, leaning his head back against the leather headrest with a bored sigh.

​The car glided out of the dark alley, merging into the endless stream of Tokyo traffic. You lay slumped against the leather, your chest still hitching with helpless sobs, watching the glowing neon signs of the city fade into blurry streaks of light through the heavily tinted glass. ​Tonight was supposed to be Friday. You were supposed to be back in your tiny shoebox apartment by now, huddled under a blanket, binge-watching the show with Mayu while she complains about her feet.

Maybe she'd probably microwave the fried chicken because she was convinced you'd just missed the last train again.

Maybe she was texting you.

But you weren't going home tonight. Not now or ever.

​Tears flooded your eyes, spilling hot and fast down your cheeks. You felt so stupid, like an absolute idiot for crying over a missed TV show while a bullet hole bled through your leg.

​Your hands, slick with cold sweat and trembling uncontrollably, reached up and clutched the lapels of Ran's ridiculously expensive tailored suit jacket. You buried your face directly into the crook of his neck and, weeping violently, wrinkling what probably cost more than three months of your rent.

You cried until you couldn't breathe properly. Until your nose was clogged. Until you were embarrassingly aware that you'd probably gotten tears, and quite possibly snot all over the suit, but you couldn't care less. You pressed your face harder into the fabric, weeping bitter, helpless tears. He deserved worse. He deserved infinitely worse than a ruined suit for what he was taking from you.

But Ran never once tried to pull away.

At nineteen, you had learned very quickly that growing up and becoming responsible were two different things. You had been forced to become both at once.

Your parents had called it a mistake.

Your old friends slowly stopped answering messages. People in your hometown had opinions about a young woman raising a child alone, and eventually you learned that some people were much kinder when your life looked more like theirs. So you stopped waiting for people to accept you. You built something yourself. For years, it had just been you and your son - Reki.

You worked. You saved. You learned.

You became someone who could handle things because there was someone small depending on you. Your little boy never knew how lonely those years could be.

He only knew that his mother always came home. That there was always dinner. That there were always bedtime stories.

That no matter how tired you were, you always had time for one more dinosaur fact before bed. And that was enough. Until a big opportunity came.

The email had almost looked fake. An international consulting firm based in Roppongi was looking for an executive assistant. The salary was far beyond anything you had earned before. The position offered stability. Benefits. A relocation package. A real chance. You had stared at the screen for nearly ten minutes before finally applying. You expected nothing.

Then they called. A month later, you were standing in your new apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes and unfamiliar sounds from outside.

Reki sat in the middle of the living room floor, holding his favorite stuffed dinosaur. "Mommy?"

You looked down. "Yes?" He looked around the apartment seriously.

"Is this our new home?" Your heart squeezed slightly. Because technically... it was. But you knew what he was really asking. Are we staying? Are we safe?

You smiled and sat down beside him. "Yes." You gently tapped his dinosaur's head. "This is our new home."

His eyes brightened. "Can Dino have a room?"

You laughed. "Dino can have whatever he wants."

He immediately stood up. "Dino chooses the sofa."

"Of course he does." You watched him run around the apartment, already making it his own. The apartment wasn't luxurious.

Not by Roppongi standards. The kitchen was small. The walls were thin.

The balcony looked directly toward the neighboring apartment. But it was clean. Safe. Close to your new workplace.

And most importantly, it was yours.

A fresh start.

-

The first week disappeared faster than you expected. Your new job was demanding.

Not impossible, but different. Everyone moved quickly in Tokyo.

Emails.Meetings.Schedules.

Everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing while you were still figuring out which train exit was closest to your office.

Your son adjusted faster than you did.

Of course he did. Children were incredible like that. He made friends quickly. Learned the area. Found his favorite convenience store snack within three days.

You were the one who still sometimes stood in the middle of the train station wondering if you were going the right way.

Still... every night you picked him up from daycare and heard tiny footsteps running toward you, an exited "Mommy!" call out to you: it reminded you why you had done this.

You were building something stable for your small family.

All the new changes, the unpacking and getting used to your new life made you barely noticed any neighbors.

The apartment next door had been empty when you moved in. You had seen the nameplate. Haitani, nothing more.

You didn't know who lived there. You didn't know that the two brothers inside were names most people in Roppongi knew.

You didn't know that the younger Haitani brother had spent years building a reputation that made people step aside when he walked past.

To you, he was just a neighbor.

And he had no idea who you were either. Not yet.

-

Six in the evening was strangely peaceful.

Not peaceful in the normal sense. There was always noise around here.

Music and People mostly.

But from his balcony, high above the streets, it was almost tolerable. Rindou leaned against the railing with a canned coffee in his hand.

Ran wasn't home. Which meant the apartment was his own territory for a bit. A rare event. Probably some business or a hair appointment, equally important to his older brother. Rindou didn't care enough to ask about something like that. His eyes moved over the city below.

Then something caught his attention. The balcony next door. The empty apartment. Someone finally lived there. A woman stepped outside carrying a laundry basket.

He watched for a second. Not because he was interested. Just curious. New neighbors were unusual. Especially here. She looked younger than he expected. Not dressed like most people he saw around Roppongi.

No expensive clothes. No obvious attempt to impress anyone. Just comfortable, at home. She started hanging laundry.

Rindou couldn’t help but look at each item she pulled out of the basket.

Tiny clothes. Tiny socks. A small lightning mcqueen t-shirt.

"..."

A kid. Interesting. Before he could think more about it, she looked over. Their eyes met. And then she smiled. "Hi."

Rindou lifted his hand. "Yo."

Rindou wasn't used to conversations starting like that.

Usually, when people noticed him, there was a reaction. A double take and a nervous glance and most definitely a sudden change in attitude. People knew the Haitani name.

They knew enough to be careful. But she didn't. She just looked at him like he was some guy living next door.

"You live next door?" she asked. Rindou took another sip of his coffee. "Nah."

Her eyebrows lifted. "..Really?"

"No." There was a brief silence. Then she laughed. Actually laughed. Not awkwardly. Not because she was nervous. Because she genuinely found him ridiculous. "You could've just said yes."

"I could've."

"Then why didn't you?"

He shrugged. "Didn't feel like it."

She shook her head, still smiling.

"You're strange."

"I hear that a lot." That was the first thing he noticed. She wasn't trying too hard. Most people he met wanted something be it Attention or a favor. Something. But she was standing there with a laundry basket, talking to him because they happened to be neighbors. Nothing more. "You just moved in?" he asked.

"Yeah." She looked around briefly.

"About a week ago."

"Thought so."

"Was it obvious?"

"The apartment wasn't empty anymore." She looked at him for a second before nodding softly. "That's your way of welcoming someone?"

"Pretty much."

"I'll remember that." Another piece of laundry went onto the line. For some reason, Rindou didn't go back inside. He usually would have. A few words were enough.

Conversation over. But something about the silence between them wasn't uncomfortable. It was easy. "You don't sound like you're from Tokyo," he said. You looked back at him. "I'm not."

"Thought so."

"Is my accent that obvious?"

"No."

"Then how did you know?"

He shrugged. "You just seem different."

The word made you pause for a moment. Different. You had heard that before. Sometimes people meant it kindly. Sometimes they didn't.

But the way he said it didn't sound like an insult. It was just an observation. "I grew up somewhere much smaller." you explained.

"Must be a big change." You looked out over the city. "It is." The skyline stretched endlessly in front of you. So many buildings.

So many lives happening all at once. "But it's a good change."

"You moved here for work?" You nodded. "Yeah."

"What do you do?"

"I'm an executive assistant at a consulting firm." Rindou raised his eyebrows slightly. "Sounds serious."

You laughed. "It feels serious."

"Like it?"

You thought about it. About the pressure and the expectations. The fact that you were finally doing something that made you feel like you had a future. Then you smiled.

"Yeah. I do." And for some reason, that answer stayed with him. Because you didn't say it like someone trying to convince themselves. You actually meant it.

The conversation probably would have continued. Maybe. Rindou wasn't sure.

He wasn't the type to stand around talking to strangers. But somehow, he wasn't in a hurry to leave. Then; "MOMMY!" The sound came from inside your apartment. Rindou watched as a little boy appeared at the balcony door, holding a plastic dinosaur.

Messy hair. Sleepy eyes. Pajamas.

A tiny person who clearly had very important business. You immediately smiled. "There you are Reki."

"I finally found him!" He said as he wiggled his blue spiked dinosaur in front of him. You looked at the dinosaur. "You found him?" The boy nodded seriously. "He was hiding."

"Was he?"

"Yeah."

A pause. "He wanted to surprise me." You laughed quietly. "Of course he did."

Only then did the boy notice Rindou. He stared. Then looked back at you.

"Who's that?" Your expression softened slightly.

"Oh." You glanced toward him. "Our neighbor."

Neighbor. Rindou looked at the boy. Then back at you. The tiny clothes suddenly made sense. The socks. The shirt. The little voice calling you Mommy. You had a child.

And for some reason, that realization made something in him stop. Not because it was bad. Not because he judged you. It just changed the situation. You weren't some girl he could casually invite out. You weren't someone with no responsibilities. You had a whole life. A little boy who depended on you.

A world completely separate from his. And suddenly, the distance between those two worlds felt much bigger than the space between your balconies.

"See ya." You blinked. "Huh?"

But he was already stepping backward. The balcony door slid shut.

And just like that: He was gone.

You stared at the closed door. For a few seconds, you didn't move. Was that it? You looked down at your son. Then back at the balcony. The conversation had been nice.

Actually nice. It had been the first time since moving that you had spoken to someone around your age outside of work. You weren't expecting anything. You weren't looking for anything. You were just happy to talk. And then the second he realized you had a child... he left.

“This Mister has Dino hair mommy.” Reki stated with a hand on his chin like it was a serious acknowledgment. Not knowing what to answer to him a small sigh just escaped you. Maybe you had gotten too comfortable. Maybe he was just being polite. You turned back toward the laundry. "..Shit." The word slipped out before you could stop it. "Mommy." Looking at you with a serious expression, as serious as your sweet boy can get.

You froze. Slowly, you looked down.

Your son stood there with his arms crossed.

"You just said a bad word." You closed your eyes. "I know."

"You have to put a coin in the swear Piggy."

You looked at him. Then at your neighbors balcony. Then back at him.

"...You're right." He nodded proudly. "The rules are the rules." You couldn't help laughing. "Yes, they are." And then..a sound. A quiet laugh, more like a snort. You stopped. Your head turned toward the balcony next door again. The curtain moved slightly. Just enough. Your eyes narrowed.

"...Seriously?" Nothing. Silence. You folded your arms. "What is this guy's deal?"

On the other side of the wall, Rindou leaned back against the balcony door. He hadn't meant to laugh. It just happened.

The swear piggy.? That kid enforcing the rules. The way you looked completely offended by the fact that he was secretly listening. It was funny. And worse it kinda was cute. Rindou hated that.

Because he knew himself. He was not someone who did slow. If he wanted something, he went after it. If something became complicated, he walked away.

Simple. Fast. Easy.

That was how he lived. But now there was a woman next door who somehow made him curious. A woman with a kid. A woman who had no idea who he was. A woman who looked at him without fear. And that was inconvenient. Very inconvenient. Because Rindou Haitani had spent years becoming someone dangerous. And somehow the thing that made him hesitate wasn't a fight.

It was a young mother hanging damn laundry on a balcony.

-

The next morning, Rindou told himself he wouldn't think about it. He had more important things to do. Tenjiku had business. Ran was annoying. Life was normal. A neighbor was just a neighbor.

That was all. Except... When he opened his apartment door and saw you standing there with your son waiting for the elevator; He stopped.

And Reki immediately pointed at him.

"Dinosaur guy." Rindou blinked. "What?" Your son held up his toy dinosaur. "Mommy's neighbor." You covered your face slightly, while offering him a small bow of your head. "I'm sorry." Rindou looked between the two of you. Then at your son.

"...Dinosaur guy?"

"He doesn't know your name yet.” you explained. A pause. Then, somehow, the corner of Rindou's mouth lifted. "The names Rindou, tell him that."

Your son looked down at the dinosaur seriously. Then back up. "He can't talk."

Rindou stared. "...Right."

And that was the first time he realized something dangerous. He liked this.

Not the attention. Not the flirting. Not the excitement. Just this. A normal morning. A kid talking about a dinosaur. A woman laughing beside him. Something simple. Something he had never really had. And he had no idea what to do with that.

The most strange thing was… After that morning, it didn't stop. It should have. Rindou knew that. Normally, things stayed simple for him. Someone interesting caught his attention for a moment, then life moved on.

He was busy way too busy. There was always something happening with Tenjiku. Meetings. Problems. People needing answers. People needing reminders of exactly who they were dealing with. His life was loud. Fast. Unpredictable.

There was no space for a quiet neighbor and her five-year-old son. Except somehow... he always found some. It started with small things. Things that shouldn't have mattered. Like seeing you struggle with grocery bags outside the building. Rindou had just gotten back from a meeting when he saw you standing near the entrance, balancing three bags in one hand while trying to stop Reki from running toward the street. "Mommy, look!"

"I see, sweetheart, but please stay close."

"But there's a dog!" Little eyes full of excitement.

"I know, i see him."

"The dog is sooo fluffy looking."

"He really is isn’t he."

Rindou watched for a moment. You looked exhausted. Not unhappy. Just tired. The kind of tired that came from carrying too much for too long.

Before he could stop himself, and he really wanted to, but he just could not, it slipped out: "You need help?" You turned. "Oh." Your face softened when you saw him. "Rindou, hello.” He noticed you remembered his name. For some reason, he liked that. "I can carry those."

"You don't have to."

"I know." He answered and you gave him a small look. "That's your favorite sentence, isn't it?"

"What?"

"You don't have to."

He paused. "...Maybe." You smiled. "Thank you."

He took two bags. Reki mmediately looked up at him. "Dinosaur guy is strong." Rindou looked down. "Still Dinosaur guy?"

"That's what I call you."

"Why?"

The little boy shrugged. "You like dinosaurs."

"I never said that."

"You said hi to Dino, and and and you have dinosaur hair!" Reki pointed out excitedly. Rindou had no response. Because technically... he had and..he..did?

So after that, it became normal. Not really planned by him, or you. And definitely not discussed. It just happened. Sometimes you talked over the balcony. Sometimes you ran into each other in the elevator. Sometimes Rindou came home late and saw your apartment light still on. Sometimes you left early for work and saw him already awake. You slowly learned little things about each other. You learned that he hated mornings.

You learned he drank coffee even though he complained about it. You learned he had a brother. "You and your brother live together?" You had asked one evening while watering your balcony plants. "Unfortunately." You laughed. "That's mean."

"It's accurate."

You smiled. "Are you close?" Rindou was quiet for a moment. Then, "Yeah." Simple. But the way he said it told you enough. Family mattered to him. You didn't know why that surprised you. Maybe because he looked like someone who had never needed anyone. But the more you knew him... the more you realized that wasn't true.

-

The first time Rindou came inside your apartment wasn't planned. Reki had dropped his dinosaur onto the balcony below. You had stared over the railing. "Oh no." Rindou, standing on his balcony in front of you, looked down. "That's not happening."

"I'm sorry?"

"You are not climbing down for a toy dinosaur." You opened your mouth. Closed it. "...I really wasn't going to."

"You were."

"I was just considering it."

"Exactly." Five minutes later, Rindou returned the dinosaur. Your son hugged it immediately. "Thank you Rin!" Rindou awkwardly stood there. "...Yeah."

Then your son looked up. "Do you want cookies?" Rindou blinked. "What?"

"Mommy made cookies." Reki said. You looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry. He's very friendly." The boy nodded. "You're our neighbor." As if that explained everything. And somehow... it did. You hesitated. "Would you like one?"

Rindou should have said no. He really had places to be. People waiting. A life completely separate from this. But he looked inside your apartment.

The small dining table. The toys in the corner. The warm light. The normality of it. "...Sure." Just one cookie. That's what he told himself.

It was definitely not just one cookie.

-

Well the first person to notice something was wrong was Ran. Of course it was. Ran noticed everything. They were sitting together after a Tenjiku meeting when Ran looked at him.

"You've been weird." Rindou didn't look up. "No, I haven't."

"You have."

"I'm always weird."

"Not like this." Rindou sighed. "Like what?" Ran smiled. "Content." The silence that followed was immediate. Rindou looked at him. "What?"

"You heard me."

"I did not."

"You did." Ran leaned back. "You've been smiling at your phone."

"I’ve always smiled."

"It’s different now."

"It’s really not Aniki."

"You literally did five seconds ago." Rindou looked away. Annoyed because Ran was right. "The new neighbor." Ran raised an eyebrow. "A neighbor."

"Yes."

"That's your explanation?"

"She's normal."

Ran stared. "...Okay?" Rindou frowned. "Forget it."

"No, no." Ran looked amused now. "Tell me more about this mysterious normal woman."

"She's not mysterious."

"Then why do you sound defensive?"

"I'm not."

"You are." Rindou ignored him. But Ran already knew. Something had changed.

Izana eventually noticed too. And thats when Rindou realized that things mind be more serious than he thought. Izana didn’t notice because Rindou talked about you. He didn't. Rindou wasn't like that. But Izana had always been good at reading people. During a meeting, Rindou checked the time.

Once. Then again. Small. Almost unnoticeable. But Izana noticed. "You have somewhere to be?"

Rindou looked up. "No." A pause. Then: "Yes."

The room went quiet. Ran immediately looked away, already amused. Izana's eyes narrowed slightly. "Interesting." Rindou frowned. "What?"

"You."

"What about me?"

"You're distracted."

"I'm not."

Izana leaned back. "You've never been distracted." Rindou didn't answer. Because he knew exactly what Izana meant. And he hated that he was right. The truth was... he was getting used to you. Used to your voice through the balcony wall. Used to little Reki waving at him thru the window when he came home. Used to the smell of dinner drifting from your apartment.

Used to being someone who was welcomed somewhere. And that was the part that bothered him most. Not the fact that he liked you. That was manageable. The dangerous part was that he liked the life around you. A life that had no place for someone like him. Someone who belonged to Tenjiku. Someone whose hands were not always clean. Someone who disappeared because of things he could never explain.

You had built something peaceful. And Rindou knew exactly how good he was at destroying things. Which meant the closer he got...the more afraid he became of ruining it.

-

After living in Roppongi for a bit and being used to these new changes, you didn't think much of the bank appointment when you booked it.

That was the annoying part. It’s just stuff that nobody likes but needs to be done. It wasn't anything dramatic. No life-changing event, just paperwork. The kind of boring adult responsibility that somehow managed to take up an entire afternoon. The bank needed updated documents connected to your relocation, your salary account, and a few things from your new employer. Simple.

Necessary. Completely exhausting. By the time you stepped outside, the sky had already started turning darker. You looked at your phone. A small sigh escaped you.

Your babysitter had another twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was not a lot. Not enough to stop somewhere. Not enough to relax. Not enough to do anything except walk quickly home. You hated leaving your son with someone else longer than necessary.

It wasn't because you didn't trust the babysitter. You did. She was wonderful and Reki adored her. But a small part of you still struggled with it. You had spent five years being the person who was always there. The person who picked him up. The person who comforted him. The person he looked for first. So every extra minute away felt strange. You adjusted your bag on your shoulder and walked faster. Almost home. Just a few more streets….

…

Rindou hated waiting. It was one of the reasons people either liked him or couldn't stand him. He wasn't patient. If something needed to happen, he wanted it done. If someone wasted his time, they stopped being worth his time. Simple. But today, he was sitting outside a convenience store, staring at his phone, with nothing urgent happening. A rare moment. Just enjoying Roppongi at night, his favorite place.

Tenjiku business was quiet. Ran was busy. Izana hadn't called. For once, he had time. Which meant his thoughts had too much room. And unfortunately, they kept going to the same place. The neighbor. You. He hated that. He didn't even know when it started. Maybe when your son started calling him Dinosaur Guy. Maybe when you started laughing at his stupid comments. Maybe when he realized he automatically looked toward your balcony when he came home.

Ridiculous. He wasn't some lovesick teenager. He was Rindou Haitani. Then his phone buzzed. He ignored it. A few seconds later, he looked up. And saw you. You didn't notice him at first. Your mind was somewhere else. Thinking about dinner. Thinking about tomorrow's schedule. Thinking about whether you had enough milk at home. Normal things. You were halfway through the next street when someone stepped into your path. You stopped. "Excuse me." The man didn't move. Your stomach tightened slightly. Something about the situation felt wrong.

"You got somewhere to be?" You forced yourself to stay calm. "Yes."

A second man appeared beside him.

"That's rude."

You looked around. People were walking by. The city was still alive. But somehow, you suddenly felt very alone. "I need to get home."

The first man smiled. "Relax."

You stepped back. "I said I need to go."

His expression changed. And before you could move, his hand grabbed your wrist.

Your heart dropped. "Let go."

"C'mon."

"I said let go." You hated how small your voice sounded. You hated that you were suddenly thinking about your son waiting at home. About how scared he would be if you didn't come back.

Then: the grip disappeared. Not because he let go. Because someone else made him.

The man stumbled backward. A figure stood between you.

Tall. Calm. Familiar. Your breath caught.

"Rindou?" He didn't look at you. His eyes stayed on the men in front of him. And immediately, you knew. This was not the same person who joked with you over the balcony. This was not the man who awkwardly accepted cookies from your son. This was someone else. Someone colder. "You didn't hear her?"

His voice was quiet. Almost bored. "She told you to let go."

One of the men scoffed. "And who are you?"

Rindou tilted his head slightly. "Nobody important." You almost believed that.

Until the man laughed. "Nobody important?" Then he looked closer. And his expression changed. Recognition. Fear. A whisper was heared from him. "...H-haitani."

The air shifted. Rindou didn't answer. He didn't need to. The name alone was enough. And suddenly, you understood. There was something about him you didn't know. Something much bigger than a sarcastic neighbor.

The man’s expression changed the moment he recognized him. The confidence disappeared. The arrogance. The careless attitude. Gone. Because some names carried weight. And apparently... Haitani was one of them.

Rindou looked almost bored. That was the part that unsettled you the most. Not anger. Not shouting. Just calm. "You've got two choices." His voice stayed low. "You walk away." A pause. "Or i’ll make you." The man swallowed. His friend looked between them.

Neither of them wanted to test him. And honestly? You didn't want to know what would happen if they did.

A few seconds later, they disappeared into the crowd. Just like that. The street continued moving. People continued walking. Cars continued passing. Like nothing had happened. But you were still standing there, trying to process everything. Rindou finally turned toward you. And the coldness disappeared.

Almost immediately. "You okay?" You stared at him. Not because you were scared of him. Because you were confused.

This was the same man who had joked with your son about dinosaurs. The same man who had stood awkwardly in your kitchen eating cookies.

But now... "You knew they would leave." It wasn't a question. Rindou looked away. "They made a smart choice." That wasn't an answer. You noticed.

"You scared them." A small shrug. "Maybe." You looked at him. "Rindou..."

He went quiet. For a second, you thought he might actually explain. But he just looked at you . "You were in a hurry." Your eyes widened. "Oh my gosh yeah." The babysitter. You checked the time. You had completely forgotten. "I'm late." You immediately started walking. "I need to go."

Rindou followed. "I'll walk you home." You stopped. "You don't have to."

"I know." You looked at him. There it was again. That sentence. A tiny laugh escaped you despite everything. "That's your favorite answer isn’t it."

"Probably." You shook your head. "You're strange."

"Yeah." And for some reason... his answer made you feel better. That walk home was quieter than usual. Not uncomfortable. Just different. You kept glancing at him. Trying to understand.

Trying to fit the two versions of Rindou together. The man who protected you.

The man who made your son laugh. The man who apparently had a reputation strong enough that strangers backed away just from hearing his name.

When you reached your apartment building, you turned toward him. "Thank you." He looked away. "It's nothing."

"No." You shook your head. "It isn't." For some reason, that made him pause.

People thanked him before. But usually because they were afraid. Or because they wanted something. You were different. You were just grateful. "Seriously." Your voice softened. "Thank you for helping me." A quiet moment passed. Then, "Come inside."

Rindou looked at you. "What?" You immediately realized how it sounded. "Uh i-i was mean-" You laughed nervously. "Reki is still awake. The babysitter is leaving soon. And..." You hesitated. "I will be making dinner."

He stared. "I don't want you to feel like you owe me anything."

"I don't."

"Then why?" You smiled slightly." Because you helped me." No hidden reason. No expectation. Just kindness. And somehow that was harder for him to deal with. "Alright."

Reki immediately appeared the second you opened the door. "Mommy!" Then he stopped. His eyes widened. "Dinosaur Guy!"

Rindou froze. "You still call me that?" Your son nodded proudly. "Because you like Dino. And you have dinosaur hair! "

"Do i?."

But Reki didn’t respond, he just took off to jump onto the couch and continue reading his little story book.

You covered your mouth, trying not to laugh. Rindou looked betrayed. "This is your fault." You blinked. "My fault?"

"You laughed the first time."

"...I did."

"Exactly."

Your son appears inf front of Rindou again and grabbed his hand. "Come see." Rindou looked down. "See what?"

"My toys."

"You have a lot of those."

"Yes." A pause. Then Rindou looked at you. Almost like he was asking permission. You smiled. "Go go." And he did.

-

Dinner was simple. Nothing fancy.

Just homemade food, your son talking nonstop, and Rindou sitting at your table like it was the most normal thing in the world. Which was strange. Because for him... it wasn't.

After dinner, Reki suddenly stood up. "Movie." He said dragging out the word more than necessary. You looked at him. "Movie?"

"Toy Story." Rindou looked confused. "Toy Story?"

"Did you never watch it?" Your son looked horrified. Rindou frowned. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Everyone has seen Toy Story."

"I haven't." A moment of silence. Your son slowly turned toward you. "Mommy." You immediately knew that tone. "Yes my love?"

"Rindou needs our movie night." You laughed. "Does he now."

So a few minutes later, the three of you were sitting on the couch. Your son in the middle. A blanket covering his legs.

Rindou sitting slightly stiffly, like he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Then the movie started. At first, he acted like he wasn't interested. He leaned back. Arms crossed. Pretending.

But slowly... He got into the movie. Because Toy Story wasn't really about toys. It was about being left behind. About growing up. About people changing. About wondering if you still mattered. And maybe that was why it hit him. Because Rindou knew what it felt like to be replaced.

To belong somewhere but still feel like you didn't. Your son laughed beside him. You smiled whenever he reacted. And somewhere during the movie, without realizing it... Rindou stopped feeling like a guest. He was just there. On your couch. Watching a movie. With you. With your son. A normal evening. Something he had never thought he wanted. When the credits rolled, your son was asleep against your side.

You looked over. Rindou was still watching the screen. "Did you like it?" He was quiet for a moment. Then, "...It was okay." You smiled. "Only okay?"

"Yeah."

"You almost cried."

"I did not."

"You did." Dragging out your words on purpose "I didn't." You laughed softly. And Rindou looked at you. Really looked. At your smile. At the little boy sleeping beside you. At this tiny apartment that somehow felt warmer than anywhere he'd been in years. And that was the moment he realized something.

He didn't just like visiting. He liked being here. And that was..something.. Because he knew exactly what kind of world he came from. And he knew exactly what kind of world you had built.

The question wasn't whether he wanted this. The question was whether someone like him was allowed to keep it.

—————————————————————————

A/n: Toy Story 3 made me so so emotional. I will write a Pt.2 where they are mentioned but not in focus because Pt.2 will be about Ran x Reader that’s a Friend of the single Mom Reader yk?

Thanks for reading i hope you enjoyed!!

Naturally, his segments demanded that he resurrected you. And he certainly could. Dragging a soul back to life was only a drop in the sea of his sins. But he refused, not because he suddenly cared about your wish for freedom, but because he knew that he’d die soon. And why should he let you live in a world without him, especially with Feofan – that greedy man – nearby?

No, it was better to let you stay dead so you both could be reunited in the afterlife. Or Hell. He wasn’t too picky, as long as you were there with him.

“I suppose you got everything you wished for now.” Feofan remarked, observing the sparks flying in the dark sky through his glasses.

“Indeed I am.”

“And here I thought you’d used the knowledge from Irminsul to revive her. I would’ve gladly comforted her through the grief of your death.”

Zandik scoffed, “Such a sly tongue you have, but no, she’s better off dead than alive.”

“How possessive.” Feofan sighed coyly. “I suppose that is your longest experiment yet; to make her fall for you.”

“I do not need her to fall for me. She just needs to be there with me.”

“A shame. I’m sure she’d love a different environment compared to the sterile one she’s used to.”

“Oh, don’t worry. She’ll get used to be with me in our new place.”

“Right. I suppose this is the end of our partnership, then. It may have been a long time since anyone told you this, Dottore, but you are a truly rare talent.”

“Hah.” The Doctor beheld his last experiment of blasphemy for another moment before he prepared himself to meet you in whatever place befitting a sinner like him. “Goodbye, Feofan. This time, that’s what it truly is.”

Feofan turned around just as Zandik disappeared in a blow of ash and smoke, his fur coat billowing behind him.

To be fair, Ran was the one who pursued you first. Around Roppongi, he and his younger brother, Rindo, are known as the most stylish delinquents you could ever encounter. ​You still remember the afternoon he showed up outside the school gates, leaning against a polished motorcycle. He had these ridiculous, heavy earrings that caught the sun every time he tilted his head, looking completely out of place against the drab brick of the building.

Amidst a sea of a hundred identical school uniforms, Ran stood out entirely. When he walked straight through the crowd and stopped in front of you, you actually looked behind yourself to make sure, as the bewildered stares of your peers prickled against your back. 

You have been making questionable decisions ever since.

It's not as though dating him is miserable.

Ran remembers your favorite snacks. He waits outside after class when it rains. He complains whenever you refuse to let him carry your bag, then carries it anyway. But he is far from an ideal, textbook boyfriend. He is still a reckless teenager with a life full of secrets. He completely forgot your three-month anniversary, showing up three days late without a single clue until you brought it up. Sometimes he just vanishes entirely for days at a time, leaving your texts on read. When he finally resurfaces, he acts like no time has passed at all, casually returning with a random little trinket that he completely refuses to explain,

Dangerous people, you've learned, don't have to be cruel to be dangerous.

There are rumors, too—darker ones that don't quite fit the glossy magazine image of him. You know he spent time in juvenile detention when he was younger. Though you don't know the reason why—you just assume he got into a bad street fight. Rebellious teenagers do things like that all the time, right?

_

During attempts at sneaking out, your hands shake so badly that you nearly drop your phone while trying to text him. You ease your bedroom window open and discover, to your horror, that Ran has somehow already climbed halfway up the tree beside your house.

"Are you insane?" you whisper.

"A little," he winks, entirely unbothered by the height.

The latch on your window has been loose for years. Your father keeps saying he'll fix it whenever he has time. Apparently, Ran has noticed, he pushes it open the rest of the way and motions for you to climb through.

"There is no way that this is safe," you hiss.

Ran lets out a low chuckle. "Look on the bright side. It’ll be funny if you fall."

"You are the worst boyfriend imaginable," you glare at him, swinging one leg over the windowsill anyway.

The moment you look down, the dark ground suddenly looks miles further away than it did from the safety of your room. The cold night air bites at your bare ankles. You hesitate, your fingers locking onto the window frame in a sudden wave of panic.

Ran tilts his head, a knowing smile tugging at his lips as he looks up at you. "Don't tell me you're backing out now? You trust me, don't you?"

"...Yeah."

The answer leaves your mouth before your brain can even voice a protest.

You let go. For one terrifying second, as the wind rushes past your ears, you are certain you've made the worst decision of your life.

Then a pair of arms catches you around the waist before your feet ever reach the ground. Ran steadies you, waits until you're balanced.

"Told you," he flashes a wicked grin and taps his fingers against your hip. 

Your heart is pounding hard enough to qualify as a medical emergency.

He parked his motorcycle a few blocks away, fully aware of how loud the engine is and determined not to wake your parents. He takes your hand, pulling you along the quiet sidewalk.

​When you reach the bike, you notice he already has your helmet resting on the seat. He bought it weeks ago after deciding that borrowing one from Rindo was "gross." You meet Rindo from time to time when they hang out, and even the younger brother is nice to you, occasionally tossing a playful, teasing comment your way.

You scoop the helmet up, then notice he isn't moving to grab his own.

"Aren't you wearing one?" you ask, crossing your arms and planting your feet.

Ran just chuckles, tossing his long braids over his shoulder as he swings a leg over the motorcycle. "Don't have one."

"You absolutely have one."

"I absolutely left it somewhere," he says, flashing an innocent smile that convinces exactly nobody.

"So I'm not getting on until you wear one."

He sighs dramatically, slouching over the handlebars. "You've become really bossy lately. You know it messes up my hair—"

"Ran."

You don't budge, holding his gaze until he groans. Reaching into the side compartment, he pulls out the hidden second helmet and straps it on over his braids.

"So you did bring one," you say.

"I was hoping you'd forget."

"You've known me for six months."

Ran clicks his visor down, his eyes curving into a crinkle. "I keep hoping." 

Once you climb on behind him, the quiet night shatters. Ran guns the engine and races through the empty streets, the city opens around the two of you in streaks of red brake lights and glowing convenience stores, late-night restaurants spilling laughter onto the sidewalks, apartment windows shining like stars stacked on top of one another. He purposely drives a little too fast, taking the sharp turns that force you to squeeze your arms tightly around his waist, burying your face into his back. 

​"Ran! Slow down!" you yell over the wind. 

"I am!" Ran laughs, the vibration of his chest rumbling right against your hands as he speeds up just a fraction more to tease you.

"You absolutely are not!"

​The wild ride ends when he pulls up to a massive arcade in a bustling, sleepless district of Tokyo. Inside, the atmosphere is loud and entirely washed in brilliant, flashing neon lights.

​Ran is an incredibly attentive date. Before you can even suggest a game, he buys a ridiculous, heavy cup full of tokens and hands it over to you. He says if you both don't use them all then you’ll lose trying.

You spend the next hour doing exactly that.

You lose spectacularly at basketball.

You somehow finish last against a group of twelve-year-olds in a racing simulator.

​Later, you challenge him to a racing game, sitting side-by-side in the plastic arcade seats. You end up losing terribly, your virtual car crashing into a wall on the final lap. Ran throws his head back and laughs, completely delighted by your frustration, before dropping another token into your slot to let you try again when you glares at him.

Then he wanders over to a claw machine.

"Pick one," he says, tilting his head toward the colorful prizes inside.

You glance at the tangled heap of plushies. "Don't bother. They're rigged."

"So?" Ran scoffs softly, already dropping a token into the slot. On his very first try, the claw grabs a ridiculously oversized lavender rabbit and drop it into the chute. 

"There you go." He retrieves it and places it into your arms like a trophy. "That was almost too easy." 

"You cheated," you say. 

"I didn't, some of us just have actual talent," he says, nudging your shoulder as the arcade lights dance across his grin. 

You hug the rabbit a little tighter and decide not to answer. ​Of course, you aren’t entirely stupid. You know this little arrangement carries a certain degree of risk. Your family would harbor a collective stroke if they ever saw him, and your noisier relatives would spend the next three major holidays dissecting the disaster of you associating with someone so clearly tied to gang affiliations. 

Even your cousins, who think getting a tattoo behind your ear counts as rebellion, would suddenly discover the value of family tradition.

Gang members don't settle down.

Gang members don't have futures.

Gang members bring trouble to your doorstep.

Perhaps that's why you've never told them.

You will keep him around until graduation. Let him serve as the thrilling backdrop to your final year of youth, and then you'll thank Ran for the memories, wish him well, and quietly disappear into a future with internships and office jobs and respectable people. After all, a notorious delinquent doesn’t exactly belong on your resume forever.

Around midnight, the heavy crowd inside the arcade finally starts thinning out. You and Ran step back out into the cool night air and head toward the parking lot. You yawn as you follow Ran toward the rows of metal bicycles, the lavender rabbit tucked beneath one arm. Your throat feels completely parched from the heat of the machines and talking over the loud music.

"I'm freezing," you mention, shifting the plush prize in your arms, "and I'm getting so thirsty."

He glances sideways at you. "Want a drink?"

"If they have melon soda."

"They better," he says, already scanning the aisle for the vending machines. 

The vending machines inside the arcade greet the two of you with rows of empty shelves. Everything worthwhile has already been bought by students and couples lingering long after curfew.

​"Wait by the bike," Ran says, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets. "There's another set of machines just around the corner. I'll be right back."

​You nod and keep walking toward his motorcycle. He doesn't seem worried. Why would he be? 

You're standing under bright lights in a public parking lot attached to a busy entertainment district. Security cameras and people are wandering in and out, nothing bad happens in places like this.

At least, that's what you tell yourself.

You lean against a railing and absentmindedly squeeze the stuffed rabbit's oversized ears.

The lot empties little by little, leaving vast stretches of dark asphalt between the flickering streetlamps. That's when you notice a group of three or four guys has been loitering near the edge of the lot. They wear mismatched streetwear and look thoroughly disheveled. 

​Sensing an easy target, they move in. 

​"Hey there," the guy in the front says, a nasty grin spreading across his face. "You're out pretty late."

"I'm waiting for someone," you say, offering a polite smile that doesn't reach your eyes.

"Yeah?"

The tallest one glances around the parking lot.

"Looks like you're alone."

Hearing that, you take a cautious step backward, your stomach does a sharp, ugly flip.

Almost instantly, the shadows shift. Another guy steps sideways, his laughter cutting through the quiet air. They quickly fan out, blocking your path to the motorcycle and cutting off your route back to the bright entrance of the arcade.

"Come on, we're just talking," another say. "That's a pretty nice bike you're leaning on. Your boyfriend leave you behind?"

Your fingers tighten around the plush rabbit. You tell yourself to stay calm, they're probably just trying to scare you.

A force suddenly hits one of them from behind.

​There is a loud—hollow crack of metal meeting a skull. The guy doesn't even have time to scream; his eyes roll back, and his body collapses instantly onto the asphalt, completely unconscious and limp.

​The remaining three guys gasp, spinning around in panic. Standing in the dim light of the streetlamp is Ran.

His eyes are half-lidded, yet his expression completely blank as he looks at the group. In his right hand, he holds a silver telescoping baton that glints under the neon light.

His gaze drifts from the unconscious boy to the others, then to you. "You okay?"

Your voice refuses to cooperate, but you nod anyway.

Only then does he look back at the remaining boys. Recognition spreads across the leader, his face goes entirely pale. 

​"M-Haitani..." the leader stammers, his confidence evaporating into pure terror. "We didn't know—"

​"They’re with me," Ran interrupts, tossing the drink bottle lightly in the air and catching it. 

​The guys start backing up, raising their hands in frantic apology, desperately trying to defuse the situation. ​But it is already too late. 

​Before the leader can even turn to run, Ran moves with terrifying speed. The heavy metal baton strikes the man's collarbone with a horrific, splintering sound. The man drops to the asphalt, screaming, but Ran doesn't stop. He swings again, the metal cracking against ribs and jaws. 

The other two try to run, but Ran already catches one by the collar, dragging him backward and slamming his head repeatedly into the brick wall of the arcade until the man slides down, leaving a smeared trail on the masonry. The final thug falls to his knees, sobbing and covering his face, but Ran simply stands over him, methodically bringing the baton down again, and again, and again.

​You stand frozen by the motorcycle, while Ran keeps striking long after the man stops moving, long after the whimpering dies down. The brutal reality of the violence knocks the breath straight out of you. 

As the groans of the barely conscious men echo across the empty parking lot, you stare at blood and teeth spray across the concrete, utterly terrified of the person you've been dating.

The sound of metal striking bone finally stops.

​Ran stands over the bodies, breathing easily as if he had just finished a light workout. With a practiced flick of his wrist, he collapses the bloody baton back into its compact size and slips it away. When he turns around to look at you, his eyes instantly soften, the terrifying vacancy disappearing as he spots the plush prize lying in the dirt.

​He steps toward you, lifting a plastic convenience store bag. "Hey. I got your drink, and—"

​You take a violent step backward, your entire body shaking. Your breath hitches, your chest heaving as you stare at his fingers—fingers that are dusted with a light spray of someone else's blood.

​Ran freezes. His hand hovers in the empty air between you as he registers the horror in your expression. For a split second, a flash of something unreadable cuts through his usual calm, but he forces his face back into a reassuring expression. He takes a slow step back, giving you space.

​"Woah, easy. Look at me," he says, his voice incredibly soft, dropping down to that low, soothing tone he uses when he's teasing you. "It's just me. It's Ran. I'm not going to hurt you. I would never, ever hurt you. You know that, right?"

You can barely nod. Your jaw is locked tight, your knees shaking so violently you feel like you might collapse into the dirt alongside the discarded plush prize. Ran notices the terror locking up your joints. He doesn't push it. Instead, he carefully picks up the fallen stuffed animal, dusts it off with a clean corner of his jacket, and gently sets it on the seat of the bike.

​It takes a long time for your breathing to slow down. You let him guide you back onto the motorcycle, though you hold onto his jacket with stiff, trembling fingers this time, keeping your eyes strictly averted from the dark stains on the pavement.

The ride away from the arcade is a total blur. He drives slowly this time—painfully so—and neither of you says a word. You don't even realize you're trembling until you notice the vibration in your own hands.

Ran notices first. At the next red light, he reaches back as though to squeeze your arm.

You flinch.

His hand stops dead in midair. Then, he withdraws it without a sound, his fingers slipping back onto the handlebars just as the traffic light changes to green. 

Eventually, the motorcycle pulls into a tiny neighborhood park squeezed between apartment buildings. Ran leads you to a wooden bench, silently handing you the cold bottle of your favorite drink along with a small plastic cup of ice cream. It's ridiculous. He's treating you like a kid who just fell off a bicycle, completely ignoring the fact that he just fractured three men's skulls a block away. 

​You don't drink it. You just stare at the melting ice cream, the plastic spoon heavy in your hand, entirely unable to swallow a single bite. Neither of you talks for a long time, until Ran suddenly reaches toward you again. This time, slowly. Giving you every opportunity to pull away.

When you don't, he wraps both arms around you and draws you against his chest, burying his face into the crook of your neck, holding you as if you might vanish if he lets go.

​"Ran?" you whisper against his shoulder, your voice small.

​"I'm sorry..." he murmurs, his grip tightening.

​You blink against the dark fabric of his jacket, confused by the sudden vulnerability.

​"I'm sorry for leaving you all alone. For letting those idiots get close to you..." His voice cracks slightly, filled with a terrifyingly genuine guilt. "I'm sorry."

​He holds you tighter, his chest rising and falling against yours. "Next time, call my name out loud. I promise I'll come to you right away."

Looking at him now, the monster from the parking lot feels like a distant, bad dream. You want to believe this version of him. You want to believe that the danger is something he can just switch off when he’s with you.

Slowly, you reach your hands up, cradling the back of Ran's head, letting your fingers slide through his neat braids as you lean heavily against him.

​"I'm sorry, too," you whisper.

​Ran pulls back just an inch, looking down at you with a curious expression. "For what?"

​You consider the question.

For dragging him into your life. For making him worry. For being afraid of him. For wishing you had never seen what happened in that parking lot. For knowing that nothing feels quite the same anymore—

Instead, you mumble, "I don't know."

​Ran blinks, the gravity of the moment instantly evaporating. His lips twitch into an annoyed pout. He even makes a ridiculous, exasperated face, entirely ruining the tragic romance of the mood.

"...Seriously?"

"It sounded better in my head," you shrug.

Ran scoffs, rolling his eyes as he lets go of you just enough to lean back against the bench. "Here I am, pouring my heart out, and you're making jokes? You are completely heartless."

​"You're the one who made it weird," you tease back weakly.

​Ran huffs, but the easy, lazy smile quickly slides back onto his face. He reaches over, playfully flicking your forehead. "Yeah, yeah. Eat your ice cream before it turns into soup, brat."

​For the next ten minutes, the terrifying edge of the night completely melts away. You tease him about his dramatic apology, and he shoots back with his usual mocking banter. It works, too. Ran is so effortlessly charming when he wants to be that you actually find yourself laughing until the knot in your stomach completely unties itself. To anyone passing by, they’d just see a couple of normal, stupid teenagers flirting in the middle of the night.

It’s an incredibly nice illusion; you almost convince yourself that you can just ride this out. But then you look at his eyes. Even while he's laughing at you, the violet is completely cold. You know that if those guys walked into this park right now, Ran would do it all over again without blinking. 

You really need to break up with him. 

_

You pace back and forth across your bedroom floor, staring down at your phone until the screen blurs. Your heart thumps against your ribs. You have been fighting with yourself for the past hour, rewriting the same text message a dozen times before you finally find the courage to hit send.

The message is painfully short. 

Are you busy?

You stare at the screen afterward, immediately regretting it.

Maybe this is a terrible idea, asking him to hang out one last time before ending things is unnecessarily cruel, instead of just ripping the bandage straight off.

Your thumb hovers over the message, wondering if deleting it would somehow erase the fact that you sent it.

Your phone vibrates.

No. Want to go somewhere?

You blink, the reply came so quickly that it feels automated.

You type back before you can overthink it.

Sure.

You figure you have at least an hour to prepare yourself while you wait for a reply mentally. But less than ten minutes later, the distinct rumble of a motorcycle engine vibrates right outside your house.

"Ran? Wow, you got here fast." You jog over to him, nervously adjusting the strap of your bag. "I didn't mean to drag you out so abruptly. You weren't busy, right?"

You scramble down the stairs, and when you open the front door, Ran is already idling at the curb. He's in his gang uniform, leaning back against the seat with one hand on the handlebar. Luckily your parents aren't home today, saving you the trouble of catching you with him.

Ran shifts his head, giving you a lazy smile through the open visor of his helmet. "For you? Never. I have all the time in the world."

Right on cue, his phone starts buzzing furiously inside his jacket.

Ran sighs, a faint flicker of annoyance crossing his face before he pulls the device out. Instead of putting it to his ear, he hits the speaker button. Instantly, Rindo’s voice explodes through the line, so loud and angry it cuts right through the rumble of the motorcycle engine.

"Ran, you idiot! Where the hell did you go?!" Rindo yells, sounding out of breath and incredibly stressed.

"I'm outside," Ran says, calmly moving the phone an inch farther from his ear.

"I know you're outside! We're in the middle of a meeting, you can't just leave!"

You open your mouth to tell Ran he needs to go back to Roppongi, but Ran doesn't look remotely guilty.

He stares straight ahead at the road, presses the power button on the side of the phone, and holds it down until the screen goes completely black. He slides the dead phone back into his pocket, turns his head back to look at you, and gives you a reassuring nod.

"...Anyway, what do you want to do today?" he says.

"...That's it?" You stare at him, feeling a little guilty. If you knew that he was in the middle of the gang meeting, you would've saved the breakup for next time. "You just hung up on your brother."

"He'll get over it," Ran waves a hand dismissively. It doesn't make you feel better one bit.

He swings one leg over the motorcycle and offers you the spare helmet. "So? Where are we going?"

"I haven't decided." You take the helmet, forcing an awkward laugh as you climb onto the back of the bike. 

"Good, we've got all day."

As you wrap your arms around his waist, you squeeze your eyes shut. You need to make this afternoon completely perfect. If you can just keep him in a great mood, keep things fun, and let him down easy, everything will go smoothly. It has to.

You do not notice the way Ran glances back over his shoulder, studying your expression for a heartbeat longer than usual.

He doesn't say anything.

You pull him toward the high-end streetwear district, a bustling maze of sleek glass storefronts and trendy boutiques. Since your ultimate goal is to soften him up before the final blow, you throw yourself into the role of the attentive girlfriend.

Ran is entirely in his element—he loves fashion, and it shows. You spend the next hour steering him from one window display to another, nodding eagerly as he critiques the latest seasonal drops and points out pieces he thinks would look good on you.

"You'd look cute in that knit," he muses, leaning his shoulder against a pristine glass pane, his violet eyes tracking your reflection. "Maybe we should go inside and buy it."

"No, no, just looking today!" you say quickly, forcing a bright, airy laugh that feels a little too loud in your own ears.

Finally, you decide you can't stretch the afternoon out any longer. The designated hour has arrived.

You are working hard to keep this mood flawless. Normally, you’d roll your eyes at his arrogance, but today you find yourself smiling until your cheeks literally ache, hold his hand whenever he offers it, and make sure to laugh at every single one of his comments, even the ones that aren't funny. But underneath the performance, your nerves are completely frayed. Your stomach is knotted in a tight, agonizing ball, and your skin feels hyper-sensitive. Every time your fingers brush against his, they are trembling slightly. Whenever he looks away, your smile instantly drops, your eyes darting nervously to your phone to check the time.

You stop on the sidewalk, smoothing down your clothes and looking up at him with the most casual expression you can muster.

"Hey, I'm kind of hungry," you suggest, gesturing down the street. "There's a really cute bakery just around the block. Let's get a coffee."

"A bakery?" Ran repeats, his eyes narrowing just a fraction in an unreadable expression before his easygoing grin slips back into place. He reaches out, his fingers brushing a stray lock of hair behind your ear with a touch so gentle it makes your heart stop. "Sounds perfect. Lead the way."

​The air smells warmly of sweet vanilla and fresh pastry, a sharp contrast to the cold knot of dread tying itself in your stomach. The space is completely packed with chattering couples, students studying, and families buying bread. You picked this spot on purpose. It is public, and it is crowded—a built-in safety net. There is a zero percent chance Ran would ever try to do anything reckless with fifty witnesses staring directly at him.

You rehearse the speech in your head over and over until the words lose all meaning. I'm grateful for everything, let's end things while both still happy, yada yada yada

You discard every version. They all sound fake.

​Ran sits across from you in the booth, casually swirling an iced coffee with his straw. He reaches across the table and steals half your pastry.

"That was mine."

Somehow, despite everything, you still glare at him.

"I know," he shrugs, popping the piece into his mouth without a shred of regret.

You almost laugh. But then you remember exactly why you are sitting here, and the laughter dies completely before it can even reach your mouth.

"Graduation is next week," you started, your voice slightly tight as you tried to ease into the conversation. "Have you actually thought about what comes next? You’ll eventually have to get a real job, you know. Settle down after high school. You can't just run around the streets forever and blowing off your brother's gang meetings."

Ran didn't look annoyed by the suggestion. Instead, he looked genuinely, deeply amused by the entire concept.

"A real job?" he murmured, wiping the sugar from his fingers and tilting his head. "And miss out on all the thrill? Please. The straight and narrow is far too boring for me."

Hearing those words, the final thread of your hope snapped. It was the ultimate confirmation that it wasn't a rebellious trend he was going to outgrow or leave behind for university. 

The knot in your stomach tightened until it physically hurt. You couldn't stretch this out for another minute. 

"I think..."

Taking a deep breath, your fingers tightly gripping the edge of your seat, you finally say the words. 

"I think we should break up."

The noise of the bakery continues around you.

​Ran doesn’t look angry at that. Instead, that smile just stretches across his lips, completely calm. He sets his coffee down with a soft click against the wood.

​"A breakup?" Ran repeats. He glances around the loud bakery, taking in the close proximity of the families at the next table, before fixing his eyes back on you. "Well, it’s a bit too noisy to talk about something that serious here, don't you think? Let’s go somewhere a little more private. There’s a quiet alley right around the corner. It's just a small walk."

​Panic floods your chest like ice water. Your breath hitches. You chose this place precisely to avoid being alone with him.

"Ran, no, let's just—we can talk right here," you say, your voice cracking slightly as you try to force a casual laugh. "It's fine, we don't need to go anywhere—"

"You’ve been acting weird the entire day, you know?" Ran cuts you off softly.

"Did you really think I didn't notice that?" he asks, his chuckle quiet and entirely devoid of warmth. "Get up, we're taking that walk."

​As you look at him, you catch a look in his eyes that you have never seen before. The playful warmth he always reserves for you is gone. His violet eyes are completely flat, dead, and freezing cold—the exact same dead expression he had right before he shattered a man's jaw with his baton.

He slides his chair back, the wooden legs scraping loudly against the floor. He stands up, his tall frame instantly blocking out the warm bakery lights, casting a long shadow over your table.

Before you can even protest, he tosses a few bills onto the table to cover the drinks and waits for you. ​Your legs feel like lead as you stand up and follow him out the door.

​The walk down the sidewalk is excruciating. Ran steps at a leisurely pace, his hands tucked casually into his jacket pockets, looking for all the world like a boyfriend enjoying an afternoon stroll. 

​"Ran, wait," you stammer, scrambling to keep up with his long strides, your voice rising in a panicked rush. "I-I was just kidding, okay? It was a joke. I just wanted to see your reaction! You know how I am. I didn't mean it, I swear. Let's just go back inside and get some cake, alright? Ran?"

​You keep rambling, throwing out every excuse you can think of. Ran doesn't interrupt you. He just keeps walking, occasionally humming in mock understanding, letting you dig yourself deeper and deeper into your own terror.

​Finally, he turns a sharp corner, guiding you out of the afternoon sun and into the dim, narrow shadows of a brick alleyway. 

​Ran stops walking and you nearly walk into him. For several seconds, neither of you moves.

Then he turns around, looking down at you. "Tell me something... why did you think my brother and I went to juvenile detention?"

The question catches you off guard, you nod uncertainly.

"I... I heard you got into a bad street fight. With a rival gang."

​Ran lets out an airy laugh that sends a violent shiver straight down your spine. He looks upward for a moment, studying the slice of gray sky between the buildings.

Then he speaks again.

"I killed someone."

The sentence lands so softly that your brain refuses to process it.

You stare at him, waiting for the punchline, for the grin and him to say he got you. But none comes.

"When we were younger," he continues, closing the distance between you, "there was a fight between gangs, my brother and I caught the leader of the rival faction."

He reaches out, his thumb gently, almost tenderly, tracing the line of your jaw.

"It got out of hand. And I beat him so badly that his damn skull fractured under my hands."

​The alleyway goes completely silent. 

Your breath hitches as you instinctively try to twist your face out of his hand, your palms coming up to push at his chest.

"I didn't want you to find out like this," he sighs quietly. Again, his voice is so calm that it almost tricks you into forgetting what he just admitted.

Your thoughts become tangled. You don't know whether to apologize, to cry, or to run. To pretend none of this happened.

Instead, you whisper, "I think I should go home." 

Ran’s gentle demeanor drops in a second. His grip on your jaw instantly tightens, squeezing your jawline hard enough to bruise, completely locking your head in place. 

With his other hand, he reaches into his pocket. There is a sharp clack, and the silver telescoping baton extends. He slowly presses the cold, heavy metal cylinder directly against your collarbone, right over the racing pulse at the base of your neck. 

"Let’s make one thing perfectly clear, then," Ran murmurs, his violet eyes wide and unblinking. "I love this pretty face of yours too much. It would be a terrible shame to see it bruised up... or worse. Do you understand me?"

He leans in closer, the suffocating scent of his cologne filling your nose as his gaze locks onto your trembling lips. The cold tip of the metal baton presses deeper into your collarbone.

​"Oh, you have no idea how much I adore you," he continues, his voice dropping into a soft, reverent whisper that makes your skin crawl. "I think about you constantly. I look at you and I just want to keep you safe in my pockets forever. I swear, I would destroy anything—or anyone—that tries to take you away from me. Even you."

​He pulls back just enough to look into your panicked, tear-stained face, his thumb softly wiping away a stray tear. "So, let's try this again. You love me, right? And we're going to stay together for a very, very long time."

Your eyes sting. You don't know whether you're about to cry or simply stop breathing.

Finally, barely above a whisper, you answer. 

"...I love you." 

Slowly, the crushing pressure on your jaw eases. You hadn't even realized how tightly your own fingers had closed around his until now. Ran collapses the baton with a flick of his wrist and tucks it away. 

Before you can pull away, he cups your face once more. He leans down and presses his lips to yours in a deep kiss.

When he pulls back, his fingers return to being uncannily gentle, smoothing over the red marks his grip just left on your skin, entirely uncaring of the pain he caused. He even reaches down to fix the collar of your shirt, patting it flat.

"There you go," he says, his voice returning to that lazy, cheerful purr. "You shouldn't make up silly jokes like that anymore. It makes me think I'm not taking good enough care of you." 

He steps back, clearing your path out of the shadows, and extends his hand to you. "Now, let's go finish our date."

Your entire body is trembling. Your jaw throbs, and the phantom sensation of cold metal still lingers against your throat. 

Swallowing down the bitter taste of tears, you slowly raise your shaking hand and place it in his.

Ran looks down at you, swinging your joined hands playfully between you as you walk. "So, what do you want to do next?"

Ran’s fingers immediately close around yours, locking your hand in a tight grip. He pulls you along as he casually strolls back out into the daylight. In an instant, you are back on the bustling main street. The sun is shining warmly, the cheerful bell of the bakery is ringing in the distance, and normal high school students are laughing on the sidewalks.

You force your lips to curve upward. You swallow the terror in your throat and force a compliant smile, nodding along to his words. 

That night, you find yourself sitting cross-legged on the soft carpet of your bedroom. You’ve just closed the window, letting the cool night air drift away. Suddenly, your phone vibrates on the wooden nightstand, breaking the stillness and pulling your attention to the screen.

A single message from Ran appears.:

S-FW

˗ˏˋ ★ 1. General look: How are they like? How do they behave around the darling? Are there any warning signs?

Ashveil has never been known to be a particularly calm person on the daily. Sure, he has moments in the same way the rain might slow down for a moment before picking up again, but as he is now, despite dreaming of retirement, he’s not capable of staying still for long. Furthermore, his occupation is of the kind that requires him to get into all sorts of strange situations ranging from infiltrations to confrontations alike, and hence, it’s no wonder that your first taste of the man would be, to say the least, a reasonably peculiar one. 

You stare the person hiding in the cabinet directly in the eye. It’s what your gaze naturally strays towards first, mostly due to his own, flabbergasted expression. The man, dressed much too lavishly to be a mere burglar, gapes right back at you with his visage resembling that of an emoti caught in a car’s headlights: He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move an inch, albeit the latter is mostly due to his odd position. He has squeezed himself into the tight space, practically having folded himself in half with the heels of his boots digging into the cabinet’s ceiling.

However, though already utterly ridiculous, the absurdity of the situation hasn’t yet reached its peak. After a few seconds of unbroken eye contact, the showdown is interrupted by some more shuffling at the back of the tight space. A creature — a monkey, to be precise — peeks out from behind the man’s legs to join in on the wordless conversation. Much like its presumed owner, the thing ogles at you with its wide eyes, failing to portray much of anything on its cartoonish features. 

It’s just about enough ludicrosity for you to have witnessed in one day. With your face as deadpan as it could possibly be, you take hold of the cabinet door’s handle and slowly slide it back in place. 

Such is life in Planarcadia no matter where one lives, works, studies, or spends their freetime. It’s not the strangest thing you’ve seen at your job, nor is it anything you would be particularly worried about, even. Sometimes things just happen around — you still remember that one time your coworker came running to you, pointing in the storage area’s direction and exclaiming that the entire pantry had been emptied and was now filled to the brim with Wispae. Or, the time you arrived at work to find that the napkins had all been folded into origamis and were now flying all over the place like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. The frontage of the café has been blown open a handful of times, a ruthlessly fierce guitar battle between a couple of rival gangs has taken place in the middle of the seating area, the tap water once turned bright pink for an entire two days due to some streamer’s mishap... You’ve seen it all. 

So, blinking a few times to rid your retinas of the most perplexing sight of the day, you make your way out of the BOH, back to the service area, and let your colleague at the cash register know that ”there’s some guy in the coffee bean cabinet”. Predictably, instead of being shocked like the situation would perhaps warrant, you’re met with a sigh, an eye roll, and a wearily spoken ”not again”. 

Ultimately, your first encounter with the man is no longer than half a minute at most. He doesn’t catch your name, you certainly don’t catch his, and when you get the security guard to go take a look at the storage area on your behalf, he’s already long gone. It’s as if the encounter never even took place — the hectic everyday life on the planet doesn’t allow you to stop to ruminate on such brushes. The event doesn’t follow you home, either: In customer service jobs, it’s the norm to have strange things happen nearly daily, and as long as you’re not posed to actual danger, you’re willing to look at the oddities of the occupation through your fingers. You go back to work the next day like normal. 

The same could be said about his first impression of you, to a degree. Getting caught in the position he did wasn’t in his plans, by any means: A good detective should never get found out doing their job, but a few mistakes are par for the course here and there. He just didn’t expect for the one to catch him to be so, for the lack of a better word, so captivating. 

You have a pretty face to you; wonderfully lovely features. There’s something so naturally attractive about you: Sure, he has seen his fair share of beautiful people in his long life, and he’s no stranger to stumbling upon one, but this case, your case, in particular ends up leaving him uncharacteristically wonderstruck — so much so that he only realized he should make a run for it when he heard the clinking of the security guard’s keys at the door to the storage area. 

Ultimately, in a few days’ worth of time, neither of you end up reminiscing about the happenstance. He has his own agenda, you have yours, and though he’s a little downbeat about not getting the chance to chat you up, he moves on with his life. That is, until as if scripted by Aha THEMSELF in THEIR relentless thirst for entertainment, the two of you end up bumping into each other again. 

He almost doesn’t recognize you. You look entirely different in your leisure attire: Your hair isn’t clipped back, and the barista apron has changed into a more casual, flowy outfit. In the planet’s ever-colourful masses, you hardly stand out from the crowd, yet when his eyes land on your face, even from afar, he’s locked on to the point that he almost walks straight into a traffic sign. You appear to be heading somewhere, maybe an event of some sort, or a get-together with friends for dinner, but either way, he doesn’t get the image that you’re particularly busy at the moment. 

And oh, he can’t resist. His feet have begun moving even before he has actually thought his actions through. He makes his way along the pavement, across the intersection, confidently heading towards where you’re standing by a signboard on the other side of the street. You’re idling still, tapping away on your phone, typing a message or something of the sort, entirely caught up in your own world, and it’s only when you spot a couple of feet at the top of your field of vision that you raise your gaze from the screen.

Your expression goes from vigilance to puzzlement to suspicion to realization in the span of a mere few seconds as you process the sight. With your phone still in your hand, you squint your eyes and raise your index finger to point at him in a hesitant manner, mumbling out a ”you’re the...?” before properly even understanding where you recognize him from. 

He stands in front of you with a little too obviously excited smile on his features as he tips his hat to you and waits for you to connect the dots. However, as you do, against his optimistic expectations, your face twists into that of mild botheredness: You physically lean back, and the corner of your mouth tugs up in the sort of a half-a-smile that conveys aversion rather than joy. It’s the sort of uneasiness found in a person that doesn’t quite know if the interaction they have been caught in is dangerous in nature or not. 

Though, it takes you but a moment to recompose yourself, after which you briefly clear your throat. fix your expression into a more polite one, and give him a curt ”did you need something?”. 

Ah, he should have thought about what to say beforehand. Coming up with topics for small talk on the spot has never been his forte, yet he channels all of his detective-ness into the tricky interaction, carefully weighing his options, hoping you can’t see the invisible mathematical formulas floating around his skull as he tries to figure out the best course of action. A few, uncomfortably long seconds pass by before he ultimately ends up settling his attention on a trinket hanging on the casp of your bag. 

It’s a small plushie of a cartoon character he doesn’t recognize, but it’s the only subject he can think of latching onto. Yet, in his excitement, he shoots his mouth off immediately: Talking in a cheerful tone, he attempts to impress you by pretending to know the series with zero actual knowledge on it, talking in vague, general terms and clichés and hoping to at least pique your curiosity. ”That’s the main character, correct?” he bats his long lashes at you, gesturing towards the toy with his cane hand. 

It’s not. Rather, it’s an obscure side character you happen to be quite fond of — the sort that has only had a few appearances in the entire show but still managed to steal your heart. You glance at the trinket, then down the street on your side, and let out a tiny, toneless laugh. He doesn’t even need to tap into his intuition to figure out that has hit painfully off the mark. 

Moreover, the devastating social tension aside, you seem... scared. Or, not scared per se, that’s a bit of a strong word, but apprehensive. You’re holding your hands to your chest, you’re subconsciously yet all too clearly leaning away from him, and your gaze flickers to your surroundings every few seconds as if you were actively looking for an escape route. 

Suddenly, he’s acutely aware of his own presence, of how he must appear to you. He didn’t even think to consider the fact, but his mere stature likely feels threatening: After a good few centuries of getting to see the crowns of most people’s heads when he walks around, the consciousness of the difference in size compared to someone of your frame has merely slipped his mind. Following the same train of thought, he can’t help but be unnerved by the morbid realization of just how easy it would be for someone of his build to throw you to the ground like a ragdoll. And, judging by your expression, you’re probably thinking about the exact same thing.

He takes a step back. Immediately, as if you had simply been held back by an imaginary thread, you make use of the window that has opened and promptly excuse yourself with a few mumbled words that he’s unable to make sense of. He follows your form with his eyes as you scuttle down the pavement, unknowingly twisting the knife in his heart even more as you glance back at him to check if he’s following you like he were some pesky stalker. 

He returns home in mixed spirits. On one hand, he’s ecstatic and thanking the stars for getting to see you again, but on the other, he’s horrified at both his own performance and, more importantly, just how aggressively he reacted to the chance encounter. Not “aggressively” as in any way violently — that’s just about the further thing he would like to associate with you — but how intense the minute-long meeting ended up being. It’s like someone had injected laughing gas straight into his jugular the moment he saw you. Lying in the fridge and spending time with his thoughts in the silence of the night, he plays the exchange back in his head and laments the fact that it quite evidently wasn’t among his best works. 

Likewise, when you get back to your apartment, you’re so bewildered by the event that you haven’t even begun to process how you feel about it. Though you understand that the interaction was quite neutral in nature — nothing stranger than what Planarcadia usually has to offer — you can’t help but check that you locked the front door behind you. 

The encounter marks the beginning of an uneasy period in your life. You mull the case over for a few nights, maybe mention it to a friend or a few, yet in the end, just like the first time, your life doesn’t change much: You still go to your job, you carry on with your hobbies, you do what you’ve always done, but in the background of it all, you start to feel like you’re being watched. 

You don’t understand what the cause behind the sudden shift is. At first, you wonder if the cause for the uneasiness is just a regular mood swing — maybe something to do with the stage of your cycle, or perhaps you haven’t been sleeping as well as you could have — but as the unexplainable undercurrent stretches on for days on end, you can’t help but start getting a bit concerned. 

The sensation is completely new to you, and despite only having read about how the gut feeling and one’s sixth sense are very real things, experiencing them firsthand starts affecting your daily mood. It’s the sort of a visceral, shivering feeling one gets when they think there’s something right behind them, or a milder version of the spike of terror right as one sees something flying towards them before the body reflexively attempts to dodge it. The sense comes and goes, and albeit it doesn’t really follow a pattern, there are certain places you feel the most vulnerable in. Your commute — something you used to find quite mundane and even enjoyable from time to time — has now become a matter of counting the metres until the back door of the café has shut behind you or the lock to your apartment has sounded its click. 

The change in your behaviour isn’t a tangible one, at least not at first. Sure, your workmates might raise a brow at your newfound discomfort at lingering around the windows facing the street at the service area, or a friend might question why you’ve recently become so adamant about being home before dusk, but overall, you’re still your normal, relatively functioning self — at least for the time being. 

Of course, the one to blame for the dread is none other than him — albeit partially unwittingly so. He really doesn’t do it on purpose, you see: The vicinity of your workplace simply happens to be a spot he often wanders around, and the block you live in is coincidentally one that a lot of the cases he has been working on have required for him to visit. The fact that he has recently only sought out and accepted jobs near the area is entirely unrelated. 

In but a couple of weeks, the whole thing begins wearing you out. You don’t understand what has gotten into you: There’s nothing in your life that has changed drastically, no major event you could blame the sudden paranoia on, zero instances that you could connect such a harsh change to. You don’t even know what you’re afraid of, what is pushing you to act so paranoid and having you wake up a few times in the middle of the night to the same, strange, inescapable feeling that there’s something wrong. 

But, life at Planarcadia goes on and on, and it certainly doesn’t wait for you to get  back on your feet. Despite your ever-shortening nightly sleep and incrementally shrivelling social life, you get up each day, gather your things, hide a pocket knife into your bag, and go about your day. 

However, the entire ordeal comes to a head a mere month after the bother began. Yet again, you’re at work: The closing hour is nearing, and with only a few customers lingering in the service area, you’re wiping the tables with your coworker when the door chime sings its cheerful melody.

At first, you don’t even react to the ringing — after having worked in the place for a while, the sound has simply become a part of the background noise whenever you’re not at the cash register. However, as you hear an unfamiliar male voice start talking, shivers so violent spike up on the back of your neck that you’re forced to freeze in place with the wet rag still in hand. 

You don’t even know what it is — you don’t recognize the person’s tone, and no comprehensible image pops into your head — but something, something about it is so primally harrowing that your heart begins rushing as if you were being chased. Cold sweat rises onto the back of your neck, and when you part your lips to swipe your tongue over them, the saliva left behind is dry. 

Your colleague takes note of the odd reaction, quirking her brow before joining in on listening to the conversation ensuing around the corner. At first, you almost allow your shoulders to drop back in their place as the interaction seems to follow the usual script of a customer service situation: The man places his order, a little chatty yet still perfectly polite, but the second you hear your own name come out of his mouth is the moment you swear your heart cuts out. 

Springing straight into action, your workmate, albeit obviously addled by the situation, doesn’t need any further context aside from your ghastly expression to grab the reins. Abandoning her rag and spray can on the table, she hisses out a frantic ”down-down-down-down-down”, and when you fail to understand the instruction on time, she plants her hand on the crown of your head and pushes you behind the tables herself. Wordlessly, she brings her index finger to her lips, mouths out a ”shh”, and points at the staff door at the back of the space.

Tears strain at your throat as you crawl between the chairs and table legs, making your way towards the exit on all fours. You’re hardly able to hear the conversation at the cashier desk over your own heartbeat, only managing to make out the ”oh, she’s not here today” explained with what you hope to be enough plausibility to send the man on his way. By the time you finally reach for the handle of the back door and slip into the BOH, your entire body is trembling like a leaf, and even when the last, dreadful 30 minutes of the shift are over and you would be permitted to clock out, the shaking doesn’t stop. Ultimately, you end up sitting in the locker room for a good while past your working hours, just to get your heart to stop racing. 

A simple, singular thought begins occupying much more space in your brain than you would like to give it: You have a stalker. The conclusion isn’t based on any evidence other than the sense of trepidation that has been following you everywhere combined with the incident at the café. You don’t even know who the guy at the register was — ”a tall guy with a white coat and a hat” was the extent of the description of his appearance that your colleague could offer you, and in the culture you live in, such a look could match hundreds if not a thousand of people on the planet. Still, after the event, it’s the aforementioned vague form that begins plaguing your thoughts. You see his silhouette in your mind’s eye; a man with a hat, a pale coat, a cane, black hair, lurking in the bushes in your apartment complex’s back yard, waiting for the perfect moment to ambush you when you leave your house for work, for hobbies, for studies, for groceries, anything. 

Moreover, at this point, no matter how you try to, it’s no use reasoning with yourself that the encounter at the café was a coincidence anymore. Sure, customer service jobs have always had their risks, especially for your sort — it’s basically a weekly occurrence that some creepy guy starts asking around for a specific worker — but the feeling, the feeling won’t leave you alone. Day by day, the dread only grows stronger, and if you weren’t already thinking that your wariness might actually have concrete fuel to it, you sure do now. 

You start staying inside more. It’s nothing special, really: You just haven’t needed that much fresh air recently, nor are you in a dire enough financial situation that doing a little less shifts would hurt your bank account. Besides, you’ve found new ways to entertain yourself in the bounds of your apartment, ranging from reading to scrolling the internet to jigsaw puzzles to cooking to whatever. It’s actually no misery staying inside four walls — even the succulent on your window sill hasn’t wilted too much from getting a little less light through the blinds. 

Of course, it all gnaws on your psyche — regardless of how you put it, you can’t deny the fact that you’re gradually sinking into worrying levels of paranoia. You try to alleviate the fear, you do your best to think rationally about it all, you contemplate on sharing your woes with a friend or few, but as soon as you finish typing the ”this is gonna sound so delusional but” into the text box, you end up erasing the entire message instead. There’s no proof, nothing substantial, and you’re certain that no matter how many comforting words you could be offered, only one response could eventually be read between the lines: “You’re overthinking it”.

In the same manner, one night, as you’ve already been awake way past your bedtime, sitting in your bed with your knees pulled to your chest, restlessly listening to any and all abnormal sounds that could break the quiet of the night, you decide to unlock your phone and take a look at your savings. With anxiety pressing up against your chest, you subsequently make the unconsidered decision of cancelling all your work shifts for the next couple of weeks. The job at the café was just a part-time thing anyway, and in case your state hasn’t gotten any better after the small break, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to start looking for an entirely new place to work at. Even you yourself understand that your judgement has been clouded by the incessant sense of unease, yet it’s among the few options you could think of that could alleviate the dread. Pulling the blanket over your head to cover your whole body, you put your phone down, let out a shaky exhale, and bury your face in your hands.

Huh, it’s a bit of a shame that you haven’t shown up outside as much as you used to. 

He hasn’t seen you come out of your apartment in quite a few days now, he has noted. The blinds at your window have stayed closed as if there were nobody home, and none of the people that have exited the building have looked even remotely like you. If he wasn’t so certain about having managed to cover his tracks so well, he could almost start thinking that you might have somehow caught on to what he has been up to. 

Truth to be told, you alone have been the light of his life for the past few weeks or so. At first, it felt like a difficult thought to accept: He isn’t used to any grandiose feelings where he’s at in life right now, so admitting to himself that you’ve succeeded in altering his brain chemistry so in such a short time took him a little while. However, now that he has had the time to process his thoughts, he has grown somewhat content with the concept — you’re something he wants, craves, needs. 

He’s surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Whereas some others would already have gone down the spiral of soul-crushing guilt, he doesn’t start questioning his entire identity and morals, nor does he feel the need to try and convince himself that what he feels is real. It just is with him. 

Or, so he thinks — on a conceptual level. If he were to dig any deeper into his own brain, he would come across his morals tied up, gagged and left in a corner where he isn’t able to see them. Of course he knows what he’s doing is wrong on so many levels that he can’t even begin to count them: He’s a pesky stalker, a criminal, the very thing he has sworn to hunt down, yet at the same time, he wants to cling onto the self-given title of a righteous man. Naturally, the two things are in direct conflict with each other, but as long as he keeps the notions apart, he’s able to continue on the path he has chosen to walk with nobody — including himself — getting hurt.

Nevertheless, it’s not like his feelings are entirely unknown to those close to him. Namely, Mister N, his loyal monkey assistant, has seen a great deal of both his highs and lows, and right now, it’s quite apparent to him that what the detective is experiencing is a high of a monumental scale. Obviously, the liking Mr. Ashveil has taken towards a very particular part of the city is quite an apparent sign that something is going on, but the more obvious marker for the change of pace is the way he’s practically floating around with how light his step is. 

The topic is brought up in the midst of the night when Ashveil has already settled into his fridge to have a well-earned rest after wandering along your street the entire day. It’s not often that the two have a deeper chat: Sure, they talk about this and that, mostly related to casual matters and work-related things, or sometimes reminiscing about the past, but nothing beyond such sentiments. Nevertheless, when his assistant airs out the question ”what has excited you so lately?”, a truly rare sort of a conversation ensues. 

”A lady”, is how Ashveil first answers the inquiry, purposefully leaving the matter ambiguous. Still, although he wished he wasn’t so easy to read, the floodgates blast open after a mere few seconds of tense silence. He starts telling Mister N virtually all there is to know about you, how he fell in love with you the moment he saw you, how he hasn’t been able to get you off his mind for the past few weeks, how he’s ”just a hopeless old wolf enthralled by your mere existence”, and how he has been, well, conducting a little detective work on you. 

It’s only as he speaks the things out loud that he himself realizes the true magnitude of just what exactly has been going on. The epiphany is audible in the shape of his voice: Through the fridge door, Mister N can clearly hear how the blissful smile gradually disappears from his features as he recites all he has been going through, slowly but surely drifting from the happy details to a much darker tone. He goes from talking about the cute little trinket on your bag to wondering about how you’ve seemed so agitated lately. It’s like you’re fearing for your life even though there’s no perceivable danger around. Well, other than him, anyway, but he’s not a danger to you, now, is he?

Of course, deep down, he knows it’s him that is the cause behind your restlessness. He has seen the rapid change in your behaviour firsthand; how you went from fairly active to not leaving your home for days on end. Moreover, when Mister N. cautiously suggests that the feelings he’s experiencing could be a cause for concern when taking the ethical standard into account, the only response Ashveil can offer is a pensive ”perhaps so”. As said, being calm about the thoughts in his head is not the whole truth: If he allowed himself to, he could drive himself to the brink and past a mental breakdown with the sheer amount of guilt he has over the situation. But, he won’t — he has always been an it-is-what-it-is sort of a man on the surface, a better-not-to-dwell-on-things-you-can’t-change kind of a person, and most prominently, the-heart-wants-what-it-wants type of a soul. The last of the three is what ends up overpowering his rational mind as well as his morals: If it were anyone else in the shoes he is in, he would show them no mercy — he doesn’t think the feelings he has could ever be put into words nor could they be explained in any means other than going through them oneself — but for they are his and his alone, the only option he’s left with is abandoning his own integrity.  

An abrupt concern about your well-being burgeons in his chest as he lies in the freezing cold. All sorts of mental images of you flood his head: You must be suffering with quite a lot of anxiety, he muses in his mind as he recalls how you looked when he last saw you. Scared is another word that immediately comes to mind, which leaves an even deeper hole in his conscience. You probably don’t even know what it is that you’re so frightened of — a burglar, a murderer, a trafficker... Obviously, he’s none of those things, at least in the present day, but at the same time, he can very much understand the concern. 

It makes him miserable. Miserable, miserable, miserable that he has fallen victim to such a sickness when he was already the sort that has a hard time coping with the loss of his loved ones. He doesn’t even know you — or he does, technically, but not in the sense that the two of you were truly acquainted with each other at any point. All of his knowledge on you, though plentiful, is entirely one-sided; he has practically formed a parasocial relationship with you. 

Still, what he recognizes it all to boil down to is his own selfishness. He’s not the least bit delusional — so much so that when he understands the extent of his own feelings, it’s like he goes through three years worth of therapy in a single second. There’s simply no way around the fact that he needs to have you. 

Thus, he begins reasoning the matter with himself. He’s old, and if everything goes as he wishes, he’s going to be granted the release of falling asleep soon, so what could be the harm in doing a one, last, self-serving thing for himself? It almost feels like some kind of a prophetic reward for his hard work: For just once, he gets to have what he is so desperately craving. For this once, he can’t bear to lose a person like he has lost so many along the years. 

And, who could you possibly be safer with than him? With him, you won’t ever have to fear a burglar, a murderer, a trafficker, anything. Moreover, if he puts his utmost effort into the task, he thinks you may even end up liking the new reality he is about to decide to impose on you: After all, there really isn’t any danger that could get to you when you’re with him.

So, to capsulize the matter, there are plenty of warning signs — so much so that it would be more difficult to ignore them than to take note of them. However, if you’ve never been able to drown out the part of your brain that tells you that it’s you who is the irrational one, his claws will end up reaching you eventually. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 2. Securing: How will they abduct their darling? When, where and how?

He has never been one to ruminate on his options for too long which is quite apparent with how quickly he decides to commit to the desire of “getting you off the streets”. When he arrives at the conclusion that the attraction towards you has built to a point where normal means of courting you wouldn’t prove sufficient — that being around the time you start staying in — he doesn’t really think twice. Yes, he understands that the thoughts spinning around in his head aren’t a hallmark of a sane person, but then again, he has understood for a long time that few notions in his brain could be considered quite up to a mentally healthy par anymore. What’s a little more to add?

The first thing he does — quite literally the first thing, as in as soon as he gets his thoughts in order and himself out of the fridge — is conduct a move to one floor higher in the building. The singular room he’s renting in the Furbobo Headquarters wouldn’t exactly function as a proper place for the two of you to live, both space-wise and, eh, due to his housemates. While he doubts you would enjoy the furbos’ company in the first place, the self-evident, actual reason for the relocation is avoiding getting caught. What he’s about to do isn’t exactly legal, and the creatures certainly don’t have to be witnesses for when he drags an unknown, blacked out lady back home with him. To add, even the move itself isn’t licit: Being tight on money was the original reason which forced him to live in the worn building anyway, so finding a new place to live via legitimate methods isn’t an option. Therefore, as nonchalantly as he’s able to, he carries his few belongings to the unoccupied office one floor higher and begins tidying the shabby suite up. 

In only a few days, the thick layer of dust has been eradicated, the piles of trash and stray items have been sorted in their places, and most importantly, his refrigerator has been carried into the room identical to his prior one’s layout. Sure, the place leaves things to be desired — though it’s roomier in size than your current residence, the pipes are rusty, the couch is worn, and the main room ceiling light doesn’t work — but he’s certain that you’ll just need a little time to get used to the change, and you’ll be quite alright. 

That, and he hopes that the boxes and other trash covering the stairwell access outside are enough of a deterrent for any curious eyes trying to make their way further into the building. If the fact that the landlord hasn’t bothered to make an appearance at his doorstep regardless of all the bills he’s behind on is anything to go by, he’s confident that him making use of the vacant office isn’t that big of a deal. 

Of course, he makes sure the place is ready for you, too. Firstly, whatever little he can change about the apartment’s interior is going to be made to suit your tastes — the direction the couches are facing, the position of the floor lamp, the colour of soon-to-be your toothbrush — and secondly, he has to ensure that you won’t be getting any ideas about slipping away from him. Essentially, he finds a safe stash for the front door’s spare keyfob and puts a padlock on the door chain for good measure, after which he promptly takes the said padlock off because fiddling the thing open every time he himself wants to exit the building proves to be more annoying than he thought. In addition, each and every sharp item is naturally placed somewhere out of your reach, kitchen knives included, and he makes a point to switch the computer’s password to something a little more challenging than the previous ”12345”.

Then, after the most pressing matters are out of the way, he starts thinking about what it is that could make you feel the most welcome in your new home. With the little extra funds he has, he sets off to buy some food you like — you know, the one he has seen you carry home from the market as a treat for the weekend a few times — and sets everything ready for your arrival. After that, the only thing missing is the main attraction itself. 

You remain more or less blissfully unaware of just how dire the danger you’ve gotten yourself into is until the zero hour strikes. The time of your abduction is essentially dependent on one factor only, that being when you decide to finally leave your house after isolating for days on end. Sooner or later, you have to get out of the house for basic necessities and other errands, but the reason doesn’t really make a difference for him — all that matters is the fact that you’re out in the open, and he’s prepared to catch you when you least expect it. 

The unease is almost unbearable, both for you and for him, albeit for entirely different reasons. After four whole days of waiting, hidden amongst the vegetation in your apartment complex’s yard, he watches the front door of your building open, and this time, instead of just another random resident, the form he catches sight of is a familiar one. 

You look left and right, then again, again, again, again, and only then do you dare to take the first step over the threshold. 

The day is just like any other: The weather is balmy, the Phantasmoon is gazing upon you, and there aren’t any people in sight in the relatively placid neighbourhood. The lack of a crowd has you both relieved and nervous: You didn’t expect there to be much traffic in the area in the middle of the noon, but the lack of eye witnesses is still unnerving. Though you have your phone, some pepper spray and the knife for good measure, your heartbeat still mirrors your stressed state. Nevertheless, clutching the handles of the empty grocery bag in your hand, you decide to swallow your unease and close the building’s front door behind you. Once more, you scan the surroundings with your, after which you finally begin crossing the yard. 

Around halfway through the way to the pavement, you think you spot movement in the corner of your eye. The bodily response is immediate: Your heart lurches, an ice-cold shockwave spreads all the way down to your fingertips, yet the scare quickly resolves itself as you recognize the blocky shapes of a bunch of wispae roaming around the garbage cans by the hedge. 

You allow yourself a singular moment free of anxiety to adore the endearing creatures. They’re golden in colour and around the size of your fist, and you can’t help but want to pick one up to hold. It would be like cradling a piece of jelly, yet warm and full of life; the mere thought has the corners of your mouth turning up for what might just be the first time in days. 

It’s something you never get to do, however. 

Your sixth sense picks up on the impending danger before any of the rest even have a chance to react. Suddenly, all the ambient noise of the environment shuts down, and an eerie atmosphere settles over the entire yard. You freeze in place mid-step, nearly dropping your bag, and stop to process abrupt change, but when your brain finally reconnects to your body and commands you to sprint back to the door, the doom has already caught up to you. In your last waking moment, a metal-clad hand invades your field of vision from behind, and the next second, an inky, dark maroon veil builds up at the edges of your eyes. You think you try to speak, to scream, to do at least something to beg the world around you to please help you before the entity then strangulates your consciousness whole. 

──── ✶ ────

The sensation — or rather, the lack thereof — of drowning in the darkness that surrounds you from all sides is strangely comforting, yet all the more distressing. It’s as if time had sped up and slowed down at the same time. Distant, eldritch noises screech at your ears as they pass by, bringing flashes and splatters of bright red to occasionally disturb the currents of the void you’re sinking into. 

However, you don’t get to linger in the nullity for long. A fraction of a second, an hour, a day, years — you don’t know how much time you have spent in the pitch-black embrace, but as the murk suddenly retreats, you snap back to reality in the blink of an eye. 

At first, you don’t realize the position you’re in. You wake up in the middle of a dim apartment, so drastically different to where you remember being last that for a moment, you don’t think you’ve woken up at all. There’s still a faint buzzing in your head, a tiny blur in your eyes, and in your disoriented state, you attempt to stand up from where you’re sitting. 

Your limbs refuse to move. Or, more precisely, your hands are bound, and so are your legs. As you take a second to blink and reanalyze the situation, you understand that you have been tied to a chair: Wrists, ankles, thighs, waist — you’re stuck to the metal, entirely helpless. 

A click sounds through the dim space as a lamp is turned on at your side. The room is illuminated in a warm, dusty glow that barely reaches the nooks of the place. Slowly, you turn your head towards the source of the distraction.

The hat. The hat, the white jacket, the... 

Never once in your life has your stomach turned as suddenly and violently as it does now. You recognize the man standing by the torchère with a single look: Your eyes travel from the brooch on his chest and the metal patterns on his sleeve to the soft, unassuming smile on his pale features. In the very same moment, the memory of your encounters floods your mind in pristinely clear pictures, the puzzle pieces click together, and every last detail about your weeks-long torment begins making sense. Your gazer grows dull. 

You wonder how your corpse is going to look when it’s found. Looking at him, you try to gauge what sort of macabreities the man might be into just as a mental image of your own, bloodied and cold remains intrudes your thoughts. Your mind, having already been pushed to its very limit, feverishly tries to think of any possible ways to evade your impending fate while simultaneously attempting to come to terms with its own, untimely death. Failing to fight off the tears gathering in your eyes, you lower your chin and rest your blurry gaze in your lap. 

The man leaves his spot next to the wall. The clack of his heels echoes around the room as he approaches you, adjusting his hat and briefly dusting off the breast of his overcoat. He crouches in front of the chair, leaving a small bit of distance between the two of you, bordering the limit of invading your personal space yet already much past what you would be comfortable with. 

”My name is Ashveil”, his deep, gentle voice breaks the suffocating silence that has lingered in the apartment. He shifts forward a tiny bit and tilts his head to the side, in search of your gaze. You don’t dare even glance at the man, staying as still as possible in favour of prolonging the calm before the bloody storm, even as his piercing, gray eyes appear at the top of your field of view. 

Your entire body twitches so forcefully that the chair rocks back when he rests his palm over your knee. Carefully, slowly, he caresses the spot in what he, no doubt, means to be a comforting manner, yet the reaction he elicits is anything but. You attempt to swallow down the thick lump in your throat, but the tears straining at your windpipe won’t allow it to go down, and all that ends up slipping out of your mouth is a tiny, high-pitched sob. 

He lets out a breathy, fazed sound, and his hand pulls back as if having been startled. His eyes remain on your face for a moment longer, observing your ashen features and quivering lower lip, until he then stands up and leaves your sight. You listen to the sound of his steps as he circles the chair before stopping right behind you. 

His hands find your hair. Your shoulders jump at the sensation of the cold metal making contact with the back of your neck, yet this time, he doesn’t seem to mind the plainly averse reaction. Carefully, he gathers your hair over to your back’s side, sliding the strands curtaining your face behind your ears and smoothing down the crown of your head with a few pats. Then, setting his hand over your shoulder, he bends to the side to be able to see your now bared expression.  

”How are you feeling?” he asks you in the same, calm yet much too cheerful of a tone, circumstances considered. ”A little groggy?” 

Truthfully speaking, though he takes care to keep his voice down and even, he’s bursting with excitement. Not only because, well, he has you here now, but because he has always wanted to do this sort of a thing. Getting to play a part in a film-esque interrogation scene has been on his bucket list for a long time now, and the setting is just perfect for that sort of a thing — although, obviously, he’s not interrogating you at all. The parallel has a bit of a comedic value to it, he muses, yet he makes sure to keep that part of his thoughts away from the situation at hand. 

Continuing on the same track, he keeps the one-sided conversation going and proceeds to inquire whether the bindings are too tight. If he were to be asked, he would say he’s doing a relatively good job, yet even in your horror-struck state, it’s quite easy for you to see how utterly maladroit the small talk he’s making an attempt at is. You don’t even understand what his aim is; prolonging the suffering of one’s victim with faux sympathy is something even the most famous killer in all of Planarcadia didn’t bother to do. Why he wants to torture you so, you don’t know, and as a fresh wave of tears pushes its way past your wavering pretence of composure, you can’t think of anything other to do than mumbling out a meek, weepy ”just fucking kill me”. 

His face falls. His hand, previously on your shoulder, retreats back as if he had laid it on a hot stovetop. Taking a few steps back from your form, he shakes his head, saying ”ah, no, no, no, nothing like that” as the implications of the situation dawn on him. The atmosphere of the room shifts in an instant like background music cutting out durin a movie scene, and the man begins profusely apologizing for the misunderstanding while assuring you that ”he’s not going to hurt you, nothing here will hurt you”. 

It takes him a few seconds to make do with the new direction of the gloomy exchange, but after a moment of recollecting himself and taking in the sight of your teary mix of a befuddled and horrified expression, he sighs and makes his way back to you. A frown finds its way onto his features as his eyes travel over your trembling form, and with his brows flattened, he asks you ”if you would like some water” or ”if there’s anything you would like to ask”. Clearly attempting to remedy the despondent turn the dialogue has taken, he emphasizes the latter issue, wondering out loud about how ”you probably have quite a lot of questions for him” despite you offering no response. 

After a while of attempting to get you to talk with poor results, he resorts to gently sighing once more, making his way to the couch, and picking up one of the threadbare blankets laid on its back. Carefully, he goes to wrap the fabric around your shoulders before then checking the bindings on your limbs and waist. Stepping away from you, he lets you know that ”he still has a few things to take care of, but if you need anything, he’s right there in the back” after which he excuses himself to the other room over. 

And so, you end up sitting on the chair for a few more hours with only the worn cover to warm you up as you listen to him pottering around out of your sight, preparing the last few things in the apartment before your life together can finally, officially begin. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 3. Life: What is it like to live with them? How do they treat the darling?

The first few weeks are abysmal — there is no way around the fact. After you’re permitted to get off the chair, he doesn’t really see the need to try to ease you into your new life by gradually giving you more freedom and allowing you to get used to his presence. On the contrary, it’s just everything in your face, all at once, without even a single second’s time to breathe in between. 

You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you? In the beginning, he has a really hard time trying to get through to you in a way that doesn’t earn him curses and sobs as a response. Yes, he understands, you must be overwhelmed, disoriented, scared, but look, he’s just trying to help you here. It’s a hassle trying to get you to eat and drink, and even if those weren’t a problem, the blatant fear with which you look at him is difficult for him to bear. No matter how tough you act or how many swearwords you launch at him, it’s quite easy to see that you’re a single further stressor away from a full-fledged breakdown. Aside from the frightened hostility, all he gets out of you are desolate mumblings about how you “want to return to your old life and job like normal” and tearful demands for him to take you back to your own place. And, to top it all off, the first instinct he has when being met with the sight of your trembling, choked up form is to gather you in his arms and hug all the distress away, but, needless to say, he can absolutely not resort to that. That said, what he does is give you time and space to the best of his ability while attempting to build the communication between the two of you little by little, and only then does he start trying to tackle the more practical challenges. 

His living situation is quite a headache in general, to start with. He essentially resides in his headquarters, and the place is dark, dusty and messy, up to the point where you have to wonder how anyone could live in the hole. There are papers everywhere, he has yet to clean the few empty takeaway boxes off of his document-riddled desk, and it’s quite apparent that, for one reason or another, he isn’t a particular fan of light. He gives you a brief house tour, showing you the open all-too-clearly-used-to-be-an-office living room, the lacklustre bathroom, the fridge in the kitchen, the fridge in the makeshift bedroom. It’s as if you had been thrown into the average teenager’s unmonitored apartment, only the owner in question is not a kid but an entire grown-ass man. 

And, on top of the aforementioned things, there is quite a lot of stuff in the house that doesn't function, properly or at all: The desk lamp is burnt out, the PC looks like it’s on its last breath, and most importantly, it is freezing in the apartment. It’s like the cold is seeping into your very bones, causing the tips of your fingers to lose colour and your lips to gain a blueish hue. It’s the sort of frigidness that makes you want to curl up in a corner with a blanket and not move for hours, yet he himself doesn’t appear the least bit bothered by the temperature. 

Moreover, he doesn’t seem to care that much about a handful of pressing things that you very much mind. While you’re having a hard time letting go of the mindset of ”some strange man just kidnapped me”, he seems to have moved on from the issue in a blink. He talks to you like he was chatting with an old friend, completely glossing over your bewildered expression and the fresh tear streaks framing your face. He offers you food whenever he’s having some, he asks if you’re bored, he yaps about whatever mundane matter it is that happens to be on his mind — he literally doesn’t give you the time to be anxious about the sudden change. 

And, to throw one more spanner in the works, he doesn’t really have a schedule he follows: Not a weekly one, and even less a daily one. All he has is a vague plan for each day, and whether or not he ends up sticking to it is a different matter entirely. Everything from evenly spaced meals to sleeping and regular working hours are but a wistful wish, and the concept of circadian rhythm seems to have been thrown out of the window a good while ago. Your sleep schedule, namely, is turned upside down in a matter of a few days: Whenever he doesn’t have anything important to do, he sleeps away the noon and works the nights. Having you be awake during the opposite hours would be counterproductive, so he ends up indirectly forcing you into his patterns. Consequently, you’re basically a walking corpse for the first week or so, hardly being able to focus on anything or keep a conversation going for longer than a few minutes at a time, but after a while, your brain catches up with the change. 

The act of sleeping itself also presents as an issue at the start. You’re quite stunned to find that the man doesn’t actually own a bed at all, and the fact that he slumbers in a fridge raises more questions than it provides answers. However, it’s only when you realize that he’s going to make you sleep in the thing as well that the misery of the situation reaches its peak. 

On the first night you spend with him, conveniently enough, you’ve already remained awake for nearly an entire 24 hours when the clock strikes 4 AM and he finally settles to roost. Such being the case, you’re not in any state to refuse him when he states that the fridge is where the two of you shall be sleeping. You don’t really even understand what he’s saying, either — much less when you consider the fever dream-esque contents of his sentences — but without further explanation, you find yourself being pulled towards the white coffin. 

Naturally, you start having highly warranted suspicions as soon as he opens the thing’s lid, and a gust of freezing cold air hits your face. He isn’t too concerned about your reluctance, however: Of course, he knows that it probably doesn’t appear ideal to you, but listen, he thought ahead and got you a down duvet! It was quite costly too, so he thinks you’ll be nice and warm for the entire night. So, after wrapping you in the comforter like a human-sized burrito, he snatches you into his arms, settles into the fridge, pulls the cover shut, and blacks out. 

Alas, needless to say, it’s not even two full hours later that he stirs to the sound of your distraught, disconsolate sobs against his chest. At first, he thinks that it must just be the anxiety about the change and all, but as he pushes the fridge door open and he’s able to get a better look at your face, he realizes that perhaps he should let this one slide. 

It has been a while since he has last seen a human being in such a wretched state. You’re trembling all over, a stream of snot is running down your upper lip, your face is practically colourless, and most importantly, you’re crying the sort of tears only prompted by actual, acute distress. He can hardly make any sense of your blubbering — the only words he successfully discerns out are ”cold” and ”tired” — yet the message is so abundantly clear that he basically jumps out of the casket and pulls your shivering form back into the warmth. 

Your weeping only mellows out after he has spent a good while holding you by your shoulders and assuring you that ”it’s his fault, you don’t need to do that ever again, he’s so sorry”. Then, following the harrowing quarter of an hour or so that he swears nearly blows his heart up, he sits you down beside his desk before going to dig through any and all closets in the apartment that could possibly contain anything soft for you to rest on. Eventually, all he ends up finding is a flimsy, worn bedroll that he promptly lays out next to the fridge before picking you up from the floor and plopping you down on the makeshift bed. Stripping himself of his overcoat, he bunches the piece of clothing up and slips it beneath your head, after which he proceeds to carefully tuck the comforter over your shoulders, all the way up to the lower half of your face, making sure that every single inch of your body is covered. 

The sleep deprivation catches up to you in an instant, and in but a few minutes, your breathing has evened out. He’s left to take in the sight of your serene features as you’re finally allowed some shut-eye: Slowly but surely, the warmth returns to your face, the wet streaks on your cheeks dry up, and within moments, you appear to have sunk into deep rest — a far cry from what your visage looked like just a while ago. Moreover, when he caresses your temple with the back of his fingers, your brows merely scrunch up the tiniest bit. Finally, he dares to exhale with the full capacity of his lungs. 

Luckily for you, the fridge is a one-and-done thing, and he gets you a proper mattress the very next day. From that point onward, you sleeping beside the fridge becomes the norm: Though he can’t say he isn’t occasionally tempted to grab you into the chest with him, he makes do with having the wall in between you as he would much rather have you cozy and rested than to subject you to his whims ever again. 

Then, when it comes to whatever happens during your waking hours, one thing is for certain: You really need to get creative with how you entertain yourself. Sure, you have what little you might have happened to carry with you when he snatched you away, but any and all electronics are obviously confiscated, so the digital form of passing time is a no-go. The man is, nicely put, broke as hell, and in consequence, your standard of living goes down as well, hobbies and otherwise. If there’s something relatively small that you would like to have as a means of passing your time — say, a book — he can squeeze a portion out of his limited budget to get you what you want. But, if it’s anything even a little more on the costlier side, there’s nothing he can do. It pains him as well, to the point where he seriously considers committing tax evasion, but for what it’s worth, he attempts to make you happy with what he has. 

The financial aspect affects certain other things, too. While he doesn’t try to hide the fact that he barely has any money to his name, he puts effort into making it show as little as possible. For instance, the meals he cooks you may sometimes be intriguing in substance, but he makes sure that you’re always fed, and you don’t ever have to fear for your basic needs not being met if you’re not overly picky. 

Moreover, due to him needing to make money to fund your basic living expenses, you quickly learn to enjoy your own company, way more than you already perhaps did. While he wants to spend as much time with you as he’s able to, he unfortunately has to take care of his work matters too, meaning that sometimes, the only option is to lock you in the room with the fridge and leave you there, alone, for the few hours it takes for him to be done with the gig. He’s always beyond apologetic, and he makes sure to leave you a little food so you won’t go hungry when he’s gone, but the isolation is enough to get you a little anxious every now and then. 

Or, if it’s a longer time he has to leave for, he might pull a tactical one on you and have you sleep through the entire ordeal. If he knows he’s going to have to be out for the whole night, he’s going to start setting the conditions for it the day before: Essentially, he forces you to get so tired that you won’t have the energy to think about escaping him. He himself can, if need be, go for unholy lengths of time without getting any sleep, but the case isn’t the same for the less Abundance-riddled kind, of course. So, to instil a little, tasteful sleep deprivation in you, he stays up the entire night at the computer by your mattress, pretending to try to be quiet but making sure to bounce his leg, clear his throat, shift positions, tap his pen against the desk and so on, consequently having you get quite possibly the worst sleep of your life. Alternatively, he might take the opportunity to tactically host his insomnia hotline until sunrise while ironically causing the mentioned ailment on you. His listeners are already so used to his oddities that a female voice screeching “shut the fuck up” in the background of the audio barely raises any concerns. 

Nevertheless, by the time he actually has to leave for work the next night, you’re hardly conscious and practically collapse the second he finally lets you go to bed. As usual, he tucks you in and gives you a peck on the forehead before leaving for his business, and when he comes back, he’s greeted with the heart-warming sight of you still in deep slumber. 

Or, another scenario that might take place is if something unexpected comes up and he hasn’t been able to tire you out, he might actually take you with him on the mission. Frankly speaking, the occurrence is much more common than he would like to admit since he isn’t exactly known for planning ahead, but one or a couple of times a week, you’ll be accompanying him. 

It’s a 50/50 chance whether you have the best time of your life or end up regretting ever being born. On the best occasions, it’s just you getting some fresh air and walking hand in hand with him while he tries to make sense of whatever ”clues” he thinks he has found. In general, it’s what the majority of your time outside his apartment consists of, but sometimes, the job ends up being about running away from horrors beyond your comprehension, having to be crammed into a locker with your face squished against his chest for an hour, or sitting entirely still and silent while waiting for him to finish decoding his own handwriting in the case file. It’s not like he means to make it an abhorrent experience for you or put you in danger, but it’s just that he can’t leave you alone in the office for so long, so it’s an all-around tricky situation. Also, as mentioned, it’s the only time you get to see the outside world, so you’re always more or less excited to tag along. Though, you’re pretty certain that he sometimes brings you out on the gigs just so he gets to flaunt his intuition to you every once in a while — with very mixed results. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 4. Rules: What kind of rules do they enforce? How lenient are they? How do they keep their darling in check?

If he were completely frank, he would admit that the first thing that comes to his mind is not setting rules for you at all. The concept sounds awfully bureaucratic to him, especially since you’re already in a situation you don’t want to be in. Besides, with the limited resources available to you, he really doesn’t think you would be able to pull off anything much worse than what he saw back in the day when he trained his juniors. 

Needless to say, as he ponders the matter even a tiny bit further, he realizes that it would perhaps be for the best for you to have at least some sort of restrictions after all. Judging from the rather intense looks you’re constantly sending towards the front door, you’re probably already waiting for the right moment to make your move, whether that be towards the exit or towards him, and so, he ends up putting together a few rules for you. 

No escaping him, of course, is the first thing he tells you. ”And you best believe that this old wolf would be on your tail in an instant, haha”, he adds, entirely ignoring the way your face contorts in something akin to second-hand embarrassment. You’re not sure if he’s trying to crack a morbid joke or if he genuinely finds amusement in the situation, but nevertheless, you can’t help but take note of the subtle warning. 

Hindering his work is also off the table, naturally. He takes the profession very seriously, and it would be a bother if you were to mess with whatever documents or pieces of evidence he has managed to gather. It’s how he brings food to the table, you know? You would be shooting your own leg if you were to try and ruin something like that, and besides, if you don’t have enough things to entertain yourself with — if you’re that bored — you can just come talk to him instead of making his, and indirectly your own, life difficult. 

And, lastly, though he phrases it as being more of a preference than an actual rule he’s going to impose, he would, if possible, rather not have you curse him into the deepest pits of hell whenever you talk to him. Still, it’s more of a could-you-please-not kind of a matter: He does understand where you’re coming from — getting to verbally express one’s disapproval is certainly something that can help release pent-up emotions — but it also makes him feel a little bad. However, if you really can’t help yourself, it’s not something he’ll punish you for. 

Then, when it comes to the general strictness with the limits, though his idea of the rules is quite similar to the majority of the other yanderes, you can actually push his boundaries quite a lot. A lot of things are negotiable with him if you know which arguments to utilize: At first, you might get a negative response to whatever it is you’re asking him for, but with enough probing and a few chic steps along the gray area, you may just be able to gain yourself some leeway. It’s only up to a certain point, though, and if you prod around too much, he might get more stringent with you. 

On the topic of what he uses to ensure you don’t go crossing him, he trusts that you have enough common sense in you to know that he would catch you in a heartbeat if you were to try and slip away from him. Whether that much is true or not (and if it’s his current profession that you should be worried about) is something you have to find out for yourself, but the looming threat of it is enough to keep you thinking twice nonetheless. 

Moreover, it’s not just the fear of him catching you if you were to try and slip away but also the dread of what could happen in between you getting found and him dragging you back into the apartment. You’re not entirely sure what’s going on with the strange artefact lodged into his wrist, nor do understand the source of the lingering, dark aura that seems to plague his presence every so often, but whatever the case might be, something tells you that perhaps, it would be for the best not to see for yourself. The feeling you get almost reminds you of the one you used to suffer with before knowing him — the mere thought has your heartbeat picking up. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 5. Consequences: What kind of punishments will the darling face? How do they punish different offences?

More than anything, Ashveil is kind of lost when it comes to punishing you. On one hand, he sides with the argument that actions should have consequences, and that purposeful misdeeds should be punished, but then again, it’s you. You don’t deserve that, he thinks, up until the very last point where he could reason the motivation behind your deeds to be anything other than malice. Although his thoughts sound suspiciously close to straight-up delusions in that sense, it’s not that they truly are, necessarily. He just wants to give you the benefit of the doubt, in his own words, but it’s frankly just due to the fact that he has a hard time raising his hand against you. No matter what he does, he feels bad afterwards. 

Despite your earlier doubts, you quickly find that there’s actually quite a lot of harm you can cause to both him and your environment as a result of him not aggressively monitoring every move you make. The limit is your own creativity: You can wreck his research, you can steal stuff from the kitchen cabinets for later, you can unplug his fridge in the middle of the night — you just need to get a little audacious, especially with the last example. 

However, as long as it isn’t you attempting anything actively violent towards him, he considers the deed a minor crime. His go-to method with such things is locking you in the office’s cleaning closet, plain and simple. He doesn’t want to hurt you, he doesn’t have the heart to take any privileges away from you for a longer time (and to be fair, you don’t even have that many of those that could be taken away in the first place), so the only approach he has left is putting you in cooldown. 

The closet is naturally cramped, and there’s only barely enough space for you to be able to sit with your knees pulled to your chest, but no matter how you torture your vocal cords or bang on the door, he won’t let you out until around the half-hour mark. It’s not what he initially had in mind: Whenever he grabs you by the arm and forces you into the thing, he threatens to leave you in it for the entire day, but the most time he has survived without caving in and changing his mind has been slightly less than a full 60 minutes. The truth of the matter is that he just can’t bear the heart-wrenching, panicked weeping, and when he eventually lets you out, he’s catching you straight into his embrace. 

In terms of anything a little harsher, there’s bound to be a singular re-trial of the fridge episode, only this time with punishing intent. It’s when he’s already having a particularly rough day, and you decide to use every method available to further worsen it. What you do doesn’t necessarily even need to be anything revolutionary — just a well-aimed smack at his face could be enough — but without much else aside from pure irritation on his mind, he promptly picks you up, throws you over his shoulder, and tosses you in the fridge for a timeout. However, much like in the closet’s case, his conscience starts stinging before long — in less than a minute, to be precise. You need but to let out a single distressed noise, and he’s already opening the cover and pulling you out. On such occasions, it’s ultimately him that ends up apologizing; he’s physically and mentally unable to be cruel towards you for long. 

If you were to be able to injure him, you would probably earn yourself the worst extent of his punishments, but alas, it’s not something you could ever actually manage to do. His reflexes are as sharp as the tip of his cane, and even if you were to seldom succeed at landing a blow at him, the damage done would be minimal in the long run. That being the case, the most livid you’re realistically ever going to see him is when you attempt to step out of the bubble that is his dark, dust-laden apartment. 

You’ve been staring at the door for at least ten minutes now, hardly blinking. Having long since grown to recognize the smallest details of the room he has had you spend so much time in, all the way from every single sticker that adorns the side of his fridge to the exact spot of that one scratch on the ceiling, any changes in your surroundings stand out like a canvas peacock in a flock of ploos. And, this once, you’re certain: The lock on the door isn’t turned all the way shut. 

It’s past 3 AM at night — around the hour he usually ends up going to bed — only this time, he isn’t home. He made you snug in bed like he always does whenever he has to leave for his business at the devil’s hour, and the fatigue is pressing upon you from last night’s lamentable amount of sleep, yet at the same time, you’ve never felt as awake as you do now. From where you’re lying on the mattress, you can see that in the tiny gap between the door and its frame, where you would normally find the tiny peek of the locked latch, there is now nothing visible.

Despite not having yet moved a single inch from where you’re wrapped in your comforter, your heart is already thumping against your ears. Though your body is begging for you to simply stay still, to fall asleep like you normally do and rest until your abductor returns from his job, the consoling warmth that has gathered underneath the comforter now feels tense, galvanizing. 

It has only been half an hour since he left, and you haven’t heard a single sounds from outside, not from him nor from his peculiar assistant who he warned was keeping an eye on you. All that sounds in the frowzy room is the steady humming of the refrigerator. 

Slowly, as if fearing that you could disturb the lingering silence in the apartment, you slide the blanket off of yourself and prop yourself up on your elbows. Then, as quietly as you’re able to, you plant your heels on the bedroll and get on your feet. 

You press your ear against the door. At first, you hear nothing but your own blood rushing through your head, then the echoing murmur one begins to perceive when their environment gets too quiet, but finally, as you manage to stabilize your breathing and enhance your focus, you determine that not a single noise can be heard from behind the wall. 

You set your hand on the door handle. Then, with an inhale so deep that it reaches the very bottom of your lungs, you twist the grip. 

The door slides open with a creak that sounds nearly deafening in the all-consuming silence. The sudden disruption makes you wince, urging you to forget the whole thing and retreat immediately, yet despite the jittery dread, you resist the reflex. With shivers tingling down your back, you slip into the apartment’s open living room. 

The almost inaudible, distant thump of heavy bass travels into your ears from somewhere far away. The night in the Dovebrook District is unusually quiet, only adding to your rapidly burgeoning unease. 

Your mouth is dry. Swiping your tongue over your lips in an apprehensive manner, you try to make sense of your surroundings in the darkness. Despite having spent a good lot of hours in the space, the shapes of the furniture now seem to reach different edges and corners. You let your eyes travel over the dim silhouette of the slightly misaligned couch, the pile of empty cardboard boxes by the wall, the faintly colourful beam of light cast on the floor from between the shut blinds on the window. The back of your neck blooms with goosebumps, the tips of your fingers are icy cold, and the trepidation weighing on your mind is blurring the line between your rational and emotional thinking. 

You haven’t yet even done anything “wrong”. It’s his mistake; leaving the door unlocked and indirectly allowing you to step out into the rest of the place. You haven’t broken anything, you haven’t stolen anything from the kitchen, you haven’t tried to escape. You could still hope to explain yourself by saying that you were just a little hungry, that you couldn’t sleep, that you just wanted something to do, and he would, without a doubt, buy the explanation, whether that be his gullibility or leading you to believe so. However, no matter how you try to keep your eyes in check, the one place your gaze keeps drifting towards is the front door. 

The sense of haste catches up with you in a mere few seconds. Within the same moment, you make the decision to seize opportunity.

You rush towards the exit, nearly tripping over the carpet edge as your legs scramble to keep up with your nerves. It’s like the entire world flips upside down, both conceptually and what feels like physically. Like running towards the light at the end of the tunnel, you scamper across the room and throw yourself at the egress, yanking the safety chain out of its socket and pressing down on the handle.

In your frenzy-hazed state, it takes a few tries of yanking on the lever for you to realize that out of the two doors standing between you and your freedom, he hasn’t forgotten to lock the more important one. Still, you wrench the thing multiple times more, acting as if the mechanism would give in if you made enough attempts to push it down. In the span of a single minute, you’ve ditched the ability for complex thought: Much like in a dream, time seems to have slowed down, and your hurried movements are being guided by the primitive, adrenaline-fuelled vigour to just get out, get out, get out. 

Still, you sink your nails into the level-headed, coherent part of your psyche and hang onto it, pushing down the fear bubbling in your stomach and forcing yourself to slow down and think. Swallowing once, twice, you count sluggish seconds in your head, recalling the important pieces of information you’ve been holding onto for moments such as the present. 

You know where the key is — he told you, albeit unbeknownst to himself: The risk you took inquiring him about the spare one’s location while he was asleep was a substantial one, yet the time for its pay-off seems to finally have arrived.

You turn around on your heels, let your hand fall off the handle, and direct your gaze towards the kitchen. Your eyes flick over the counter, the fridge, the cupboards, before settling on the obscured shape of the stepstool tucked beneath the sink. 

Not wasting a second more, you rush past the couch and the counter, going straight for the last piece to your puzzle. You grasp the stool with both hands, drag it out from underneath the drain pipes, and dart back to the door with the piece of furniture in your arms. You hardly pay note to the loud screech the plastic makes when you draw it across the floor, instead focusing on hastily setting the thing’s legs against the jambs of the doorframe and promptly stepping onto the pedestal. 

You reach as high as you possibly can, outstretching your hand over the door’s narrow lintel, and start groping around. The dust, layers atop of layers, sticks to the pads of your fingers as you pray for them to make contact with something other than the grime. For a few hair-raising moments, your heart travels further and further up your throat as the thought of having been given false information creeps into your brain, until finally, the side of your nail knocks against something. A small, metal tag along with its banana-shaped charm drops on the floor beside you with a clink. 

Your legs feel strangely weak when you step off the stool and reach down at your feet to pick the keyfob up. It’s a peculiar sensation to have your body become so utterly electrified from head to toe: You’re acutely aware of how the tag feels against the palm of your hand — its round edges, the cold material, each tiny ring of the chain that connects it to the trinket, all of it. Your entire arm trembles as you clutch the lifeline in your fist like you were afraid that it could disappear into thin air at any moment. 

Then, you turn your attention to the door itself. Silently, you stare the lock down until your eyes begin morphing its shape, making the small, round sensor appear as if it were breathing. 

You feel sick to your stomach. For a hot minute, you wonder if you should wait, if you just waited a little bit more, just to make sure he’s gone, that he’s far enough not to catch you. However, though the timid part of your rationale attempts to hold you back, to make you reconsider, to have you stand in silence for just a little while more, the rest of you, down to the tips of your fingers, has already made its choice. 

Setting your free hand on the door handle, you bring the metal key tag a few inches away from the censor on the lock; just far enough for it not to trigger the mechanism. 

Breathing in, out, in, out, you prepare yourself for the feat. You swallow down the spit in your mouth, you curl your toes, roll your shoulders back, and will the buzzing in your ears to subside. Then, with every last bit of your consciousness directed at the sight ahead, you give yourself a countdown. 5, 4, 3... 2... 1...

As the mechanism whirs and the handle’s resistance disappears, your thoughts scatter. You throw the door wide open, so much so that it nearly swings to hit the wall beside it, yet you hardly pay any mind to the noise you make. Instead, with newfound strength burning in your limbs, you bolt out of the apartment and to the flight of stairs leading down to the street. 

The coarse concrete rasps audibly against the soles of your shoes as you rush down the steps, skipping over one or two at a time, barely managing to keep your balance. Scurrying past the first landing, you make a sharp turn, veering towards the pile of cardboard boxes that block the way to the lower floor. Whereas with him, you’ve usually spent a while carefully making your way through the mound and then wasting another minute or two compiling it back up, you now surge through the obstacle, spreading the boxes across the lower platform and sending a couple of oblivious emoti flying down the stairs like footballs. You stumble past the rubbish, wasting no thought on the strident noise of carton tearing, and make it through to the second floor. 

In your haste-blinded frame of mind, you barely make note of the crack of light that is cast on the landing by the ajar door of the neighbouring apartment. A small shadow, around the height of your knees, flashes in and out of sight in the narrow gap that is visible of the house’s interior as you dash past it. It would be nearly impossible to make sense of any noise over the thunderous thumping in your head, but even then, though you’re not certain whether it could merely be the yield of your overstrung imagination, you think you hear a pair of rapid footsteps carrying from behind the door. 

Tears strain in your throat as you force your legs to work a little harder, for your feet to run just a tiny bit faster. You swerve towards the last stretch, the last, long flight of stairs that would land you on the pavement, violent shivers raking every last inch of your body, each painful inhale slashing through your windpipe, the sense of gelid dread pursuing you a mere few millimetres behind. 

You’re only barely able to stifle the terrified shriek that almost bursts out of your lungs as the neighboring apartment’s door is flung wide open behind you. The deafening bang shakes the very structure of the building, yet it does nothing to cover the sound of heels clacking against concrete closing in on you, climbing down the steps in a much quicker rhythm than you would ever be capable of. 

It’s the sort of terror that you’ve imagined the characters in a horror movie feel. The sheer panic that’s coursing through your veins is indescribable in words, in anything but the sensation of your entire system being set on a singular objective. Your eyes, your ears, your everything locks in on the reality of which centre is the street in front of you, the finish line, the water’s surface. The actuality of its existence, its entire concept, is blurred into a yes or a no, and all you know is that you need to reach it, you need to run, you need to get to the end of the stairs, down the mere few steps that are left, only a few, less than 20, less than 15, 14, 13, 12-11-10-9-8-

Your breathing cuts off abruptly, and a strange, garbled sound slips out of your mouth. It takes you an entire second to understand what has happened, but by the time you realize that the back of your shirt has gotten caught on something, the world is already flipping. 

The wind is knocked out of your body as you land on your back on the stairs, and for a moment, you’re entirely unable to breathe. The first to absorb the impact are your elbows, then your lower spine, and right when you’re certain that your skull is going to strike the concrete, something comes in between to cushion the blow. 

Dull, endorphin-numbed pain shoots up your arms and back as the effects of the fall make themselves known. At first, you’re unable to comprehend anything, to even understand that you didn’t just split your head open on the stairs. The view of the street down ahead has turned into the lustreless, grey ceiling of the stairwell, yet as your gaze finally amps its focus up, in the middle of the hazy image, you see a pale, wide-eyed visage. 

The look on his face is unnaturally wild, quite like nothing you’ve ever seen on his features. His pupils are dilated, his mouth slightly ajar, and his shoulders heave with heavy, ragged breaths as he glares you down with the sort of barely constrained ferocity that has the hairs on the nape of your neck spiking up. 

You allow yourself a single, slow-moving fraction of a second more to try and inhale as best you can, yet all you can muster is a pathetic, pained wheeze. Your head swims as you attempt to lift it off what you now realize is the toe of his boot, but no matter how much strength you try to put behind the action, you’re unable to get yourself upright. 

However, in the midst of all the disorientation, both your and his attention is caught by movement at the bottom of the staircase. 

Your vision is slightly smudged, but you’re still able to make out the unmistakable shape of a furbo waddling towards the entrance of the building. The poor creature, clutching its camera in both of its fur-covered hands, stops in its tracks by the first step, tilting its disproportionately large head to the side in a curious manner. You watch as its ears perk up, as it struggles to comprehend just what it is looking at, yet right then, as if the Aeons THEMSELVES had intervened with your fate, the critter raises the camera to its eye. 

You crane your neck as much as you possibly could, making sure that no matter the angle of the lens, your face would be caught in the picture. Your eyes snap wide open, and you force yourself to look directly into the bright white flash right as the furbo’s tiny finger presses down on the shutter button.

A sharp snap resounds in the stairwell. Next, the little light that illuminated the stairwell goes pitch-black. 

A bright, searing flash of red cuts through the darkness. Then another. Shrill, otherworldly hisses pierce your ears, seemingly echoing in a space that no longer abides by the walls of the narrow shaft. 

There is a taste of blood in your mouth. 

Then, the gloom vanishes. The shadows withdraw to where they came from, that being from him, and you raise your gaze just in time to see the needle on his wrist consume the entity. 

The dim, dreary light returns to the stairwell. You stare up at the ceiling, taking in the sight of the long, shreddy scratches that now cover its previously untainted surface. 

Every last bit of your body aches and trembles with the aftershocks of the panic, yet with the final scraps of your strength, you plant your palms on the concrete and try to wrench yourself down and forward. The attempt is short-lived, however: Fast as a lightning, something cold and hard lands directly in the middle of your forehead, compelling you to lie right back down on the steps. 

He steps the heel of his boot on your shoulder, shifting just enough of his weight on you to border the line between uncomfortable and painful. A swift, high-pitched swish cuts the air as Ashveil promptly raises the metal handle of his cane off of your face, swivels it over in a single, keen movement, and brings the needle-sharp end down right above your wide open eye, a hair’s breadth from your cornea. 

At first, you can’t believe the words he speaks are coming out of his mouth. His tone of voice is so gruff, so uncharacteristically enraged that you hardly recognize it to belong to the man. ”Should I just end it right now, is that it?!” he snaps at you, shaking his cane to emphasize each word, feeding the sheer horror he’s putting you through. The rest of whatever he is saying fails to properly make it through to you — ”an eye for an eye”, uttered with anger of such calibre that it shakes your wretched being to its very core. Before you know it, the tears that have long since gathered at your waterlines spill past your lashes and down the sides of your face, and a meek, fractured sob breaks past your lips. 

Something in his expression shifts. As if having been shot with a tranquilizer, a tinge of sympathy appears on his anger-warped features. 

A tiny draft hits your face as he whisks his cane to the side from above your eye before stepping back and lifting his weight off of your shoulder. The short-lived relief is, however, quickly replaced by another fit of fright as his hand reaches down to grab your upper arm much more firmly than what you’re used to. The only warning you get is a low-pitched ”get up”, after which he yanks your body off of the stairs. 

You struggle to find your balance. Your legs tremble as he begins climbing back up the stairs while dragging you along without the least bit of care on if you’re able to stay on your feet or not. There’s no doubt of the fact that he’s aware of the very same thing, yet his whole demeanour is now entirely devoid of the kindness he usually conveys when handling you. With his grip as tight as a vice, he ignores your frantic, sobbing pleas for him to please slow down and continues to tug you back up the stairwell. 

He slams the office’s door shut behind him with so much strength that the entire place quakes on its foundation. Kicking the stool by the entrance to the side, he yanks you deeper inside the apartment with nothing but palpable infuriation in his manner. Then, finally, as you’re once more encased in the darkness of the living room, he turns towards you. 

Without a single bit of compassion in his voice, he presents you with the choice of ”either the fridge or the closet”. In your muddled state of mind, you fail to make sense of his words at first — it’s like you don’t understand what is being said to you — yet as you grasp the implication, your first instinct is to try and tear yourself free from his hold. It’s a futile effort, naturally: Like handling a lifeless object, he merely fixes his grip and pulls you closer to him, glaring you down with nothing but ice in his pale eyes before repeating his words. 

The second the first syllable of ”closet” leaves your mouth, he turns on his heels and drags you over to where the ever-harrowing cleaning cabinet door already hangs ajar. He yanks the handle so hard that the thing’s hinges squeak, after which, despite your best efforts and cries, you’re shoved into the claustrophobic space. You screech at him from the bottom of your lungs, you try to kick your legs in between the door before he pushes it shut, but the most you’re able to do is cause a few detergent bottles to drop on your head from the shelves above. The last thing you manage to scream at him is a piercing, distressed “please”, but the word fails to move him, and next, you’re encased in pitch-black with an ear-deafening slam. 

It ends up being quite a while before he allows you out. Whereas he would normally cave in after an hour at most, he’s able to weather the muffled sound of your wails for the entire rest of the night. Curses, insults, apologies, unintelligible cries, the bangs of you beating your fists raw against the inside of the closet door — none of it makes it through to his heart, even when your voice grows so hoarse from the exertion that its tone dies out. 

Moreover, he can’t afford to show any uneasiness on his features as he has to explain the earlier noise to whomever has shown up at the front door. It’s the strange lady from downstairs, you assume, complaining about how “he shouldn’t just go roughing up her ex-employees, no matter how annoying they can get”. You can just barely make out her voice from where you’re locked at the back of the apartment, but despite how loudly you yell, it’s quite apparent that she’s not coming to save you. Though you’re certain that she can hear at least a part of the noise you make, she has clearly long since decided that whatever is happening in the apartment one floor above hers is none of her business. Such seems to be the general attitude of the building’s residents: The options are to either snitch on each other or to keep their tongues to themselves, and they seem to have unanimously sided with the latter. 

In the end, nothing comes of the entire episode. Though he lamented the very thing in the beginning, the Dovebrook District’s notoriousness for criminal activity is what ends up saving his skin. Not a single person in the area cares enough to bat an eye at the noise that went down by the block that night. 

And, when you’re let out of the closet a few hours later, he takes your worn form into his arms and embraces you like he always does, yet lacking the usual sense of guilt in his expression. This time around, though you don’t take the chance to look up at his face, the only thing visible on his features is dull, lifeless relief. 

All in all, he can get as frightening as he is pathetic most of the time — you merely need to warrant enough anger from him.

˗ˏˋ ★ 6. Emotions I: How do they show love? How do they attempt to make the darling love them?

Initially, when it comes to expressing his affection towards you, Ashveil appears to have quite a hard time determining just where the line between too much and too little goes. You come to find early on that he’s a naturally touchy person, to the point where it doesn’t seem like he himself realizes the extent of it: If you don’t actively protect your personal space, you’re going to have his hand on your shoulder, his thigh against yours, and his fingers in your hair. 

Firstly, he has a bad habit of touching relatively sensitive spots on your body without really thinking about it aside from the doting aspect. Or, he does pay a little mind to if you might find his caresses particularly off-putting, but even that doesn’t appear to be much of a slowing factor for him. On the contrary, in his eyes, it’s good to get you used to his hands on you: He hopes that, with time, the closeness is going to feel familiar and perhaps even comforting to you, rather than inciting the apparent unease you feel whenever you feel him brushing, stroking and petting you. Nevertheless, the notion hardly takes away any bit of your discomfort when the icy cold metal of his prosthetic fingertips makes contact with the back of your neck, your bare side, the shell of your ear, the underside of your jaw. 

He takes every opportunity he gets to fondle you, really, often making less-than-plausible-sounding excuses to you just so he can poke you a bit. For instance, he’s a particular fan of the good old classic ”oh, you look a little bit cold” where he takes hold of you and rubs his hands up and down your arms to create friction heat. A massage is also something he uses as a pretext: You could be doing just about anything, and he might come up behind you, nab your shoulders, and start kneading the muscles while inquiring about what you’re busied with. Not only do his sudden bursts of affection keep you on edge in general, but both of the aforementioned activities have also ended up with the prong on his wrist catching on your clothing.

Occasionally, he doesn’t even bother making up a reason for the touches and instead just goes for the act. The only warning you get is a ”come here for a bit, won’t you?” before he’s already making his way towards you with grabby hands. He then proceeds to take a good look at you, briefly fix your hair and your clothes, give your head a few pats, and finish up with a playful pinch on your cheek, after which he takes a step back and allows you to continue whatever it is that you were doing before the interruption. He just can’t keep his hands off of you for long. 

And, of course, he likes to hug you. His own body itches for proper contact with you, and hence, getting unwillingly engulfed in his arms is basically an hourly occurrence. The hugs are never the short and sweet sort, either: No matter if he has caught you from the back or if your face is squished against his chest, he keeps you as you are for what could be minutes at a time, responding to your very possible protests with a mere ”just a little longer”. He wants to make it appear as if the gesture is lighthearted and carefree, but it’s quite apparent that the closeness is actively factory-resetting his cortisol levels. 

He has a bad case of cuteness aggression going on, too. Sometimes, you quite literally have to beg him to loosen his hold a little so that your bones don’t end up cracking under the strength of his squeeze. Moreover, each one of his embraces ends with him landing a peck on the crown of your head at the very least, but if he’s in even a little bit mushy of a mood, he isn’t letting you go before he has showered every last square inch of your exposed skin in ticklish smacks. To top it all off, he makes the entire thing especially awkward with the half-muffled, overly excited ”you look good enough to eat” he puffs against your skin. And, him referring to himself as an old wolf right after consequently comes off as the overstatement of the century — the way he nuzzles his face against yours is more resemblant of a tiny, restless puppy.

Then, due to his age, all things old-school are also his cup of tea. He guides you around with his palm on the small of your back or between your shoulder blades, he takes you by your hand and gives you a twirl or two, and he carries you around as if you weren’t able to step over puddles yourself. The last of the three, especially, is something he’s fond of doing: Whenever you’re accompanying him on one of his gigs, you can be certain that he’s going to hook his arm on the underside of your knees and hoist you up into the air to carry you over even the smallest obstructions. It doesn’t matter how tetchy you get or how much effort you put into trying to flail yourself free, he’s getting his way. The most you’re going to get out of him is a hearty laugh as he fixes his hold on you.

Still, despite the whole shebang of different ways he would like to bond with you in the bodily ways, he has certain reservations about them. If you appear to be particularly reluctant towards him having his touch on you in any manner, he dials it down. It doesn’t really matter if it’s you angrily swatting his hands away or if the aversion makes itself known by you trembling and hugging yourself whenever he gets too close; though the rejection stings, he has enough self-restraint to be able to take a step back, at least until he gets desperate enough to try again. 

He tries his best not to let the overwhelming urge to touch you override his empathetic instinct. Looking at the interaction from your point of view, the constant threat of him infringing your personal space, no matter how gentle his intentions are, must be somewhat unnerving. Nevertheless, he hopes that at some point, you’ll learn to associate his touches with what he intends for them to be. And, as said, after your body gets past the initial scare, it’s probably going to be easier for your mind to follow suit. 

Then, aside from the overwhelmingly prevalent physical aspect of his adoration, he surprises you with a gift or two every now and then. Of course, his budget doesn’t have much room for any lavish things, but with whatever little he can get together, he buys you small things such as trinkets or snacks he knows you might enjoy. It’s largely trial and error at the start as he’s, for one reason or another, very insistent on not asking things directly but trying to use his deductive skills to figure out what it is that you like. If you have any capacity to read between the lines, it’s quite obvious to see what he’s trying to do: His very unassumingly constructed questions don’t leave all that much open to interpretation, and usually, whatever he was thinking of getting you arrives during the same day, anyway. 

Furthermore, the items themselves that he gifts you aren’t usually anything that strange, as mentioned before, but occasionally, he presents you with things so obscure that you simply have to start wondering whether or not his means of acquiring them were legitimate at all. Averting your eyes from the object he’s offering you, you might inquire him about the origin of the piece, and if your suspicions have hit the mark, the all too guilty of an expression on his face serves as enough of an answer for the question. 

Apart from the bribery, he also allows you to have a say in a few more mundane things about your life. For example, he often asks you what you would like to have for dinner (especially if he has once again given in to the temptation of ordering take-out), or which scent shampoo you would rather use. Or, when he inevitably has to buy a few duvet covers for your ”bed”, he consults you about what sort of a print you would like on them. It’s the little things that he tries to make you happy with, regardless of the results he ends up achieving with them. 

On the verbal side of things, he likes to compliment you quite a lot. At first, the things he says might appear unnerving and beyond superficial to you since it’s a half-unknown man spewing them at you, but after a while, you get used to hearing certain utterances from him. ”Well aren’t you just the loveliest thing ever”, ”oh, beautiful, gorgeous”, and ”I could just eat you right up” are all things he says to you with varying levels of audible infatuation in his words, accentuating the praise with a tasteful touch or two. More often than not, the way he goes about the compliments manages to fluster you for better and for worse, ultimately only adding fuel to the fire.

And, naturally, he wants to spend as much time with you as possible. Though he has gotten used to spending long periods of time alone, now that he has you, it’s like he can’t bear to be without company for longer than an hour or two at most. Still, to say he’s socially hyperactive would be an incorrect description — it’s more that he just wants to soak in your presence, to bathe in the happiness that your mere existence offers him. You don’t think you’ve ever caught him in a truly bad mood around you if it’s not yourself that has warranted it. 

However, it’s not like he just wants to sit still and grope you as a means of bonding with you. To pass the time, he suggests a myriad of activities for the two of you to do. If there’s something you’re particularly interested in — a relatively low-effort hobby, for example — you can be certain that he’s going to try and research all there is to be learned of it. Or, if nothing is proposed from your end, his personal go-to is board games: The murder mystery sort is his favourite, and albeit you’re pretty damn certain that his deduction process has zero base to it, he almost always ends up winning nonetheless. It’s like the guy just pulls the right answers out of his butt.

Lastly, he enjoys simply talking with you. He has always been a bit of a chatterbox when he gets into a more relaxed mood, meaning that whenever there’s a quiet moment, he usually ends up trying to fill it with idle conversation. More than anything, he encourages you to talk to him; to ask, to ponder, to inquire about anything that might be on your mind. Though he might get a little cryptic with his answers if he deems the topic to be something that you perhaps shouldn’t know too much about, he’s largely open to any and all questions you may have. His prosthetic arm and the cane he carries around are things he knows you’re especially curious about, so he makes sure to present them to you, albeit staying a bit vague on their backstory. And, if you show any interest in it, he gladly lets you have a closer look at the metal on his hand or twiddle with the ornaments of his walking stick. Just don’t touch the nail, please.

˗ˏˋ ★ 7. Emotions II: How do they deal with the darling’s emotions? How are outbursts handled? How do they attempt to comfort the darling?

First off, one thing that he doesn’t actually show very overtly is that he’s, in fact, quite good with emotional conversations. It’s not that he tries to deliberately conceal that side of himself, but rather that he finds such exchanges to be a little depressing in nature. He has gone through his fair share of sorrow during his long life, and so, if possible, he tries to keep both you and himself in lighter spirits for the most part. 

Still, he’s well aware that such a goal isn’t realistic in the current circumstances. He understands that the emotional toll of what he’s putting you through is high, and it would be cruel of him not to offer to help you untangle the unfavourable feelings. 

Therefore, just to try to make out your general mood, he makes sure to ask you how you’re doing every day. It doesn’t really matter to him whether or not you actually answer the question as that in itself already gives him some info on the matter; even if it’s complete silence that he’s met with, he sticks to the habit. Rage, resentment, tears, melancholy, panic, silence, glaring — he’s ready to face all of it with a brave face and open arms. 

Though, directing anger at him is a little precarious in regard to what will follow. When he’s somewhat well-rested and has patience to deal with just about whatever life throws at him, he handles you with forbearance and grace, but during the times he hasn’t eaten the entire day and hasn’t slept in two, his methods of dealing with your wrath might lack poise, so to speak. As in, he lowers himself to the same level as you and quite possibly starts yelling. Or, rather, not yelling but bickering in a moderately loud voice that only manages to egg you on further. It’s especially if the matter you’re pissed about is something relatively trivial that he thinks could be solved with calm, constructive conversation. If you needed something, you could have just come to him kindly and skipped the shouting! Nothing productive ever comes out of such an approach, so if he’s feeling cranky, keeping the meaner words to yourself is usually the better route for all parties involved. 

Moreover, if you stoop a lever lower and start insulting him for the simple sake of it, the adult male will actually sulk. Though he considers himself a relatively laid-back person, if your affronts get personal, he might get genuinely offended. His questionable deductive skills, his living habits and, Aha forbid, his drip are all things he puts (various levels of) effort into, and if those are things you wish to target while mad, be prepared to deal with a good while of huffiness from him. 

But, if he’s in a suitable state of mind, he might attempt to placate you rather than mirroring your emotion. Typically, he just walks up to you, sets his palm on the crown of your head while you’re mid-sentence, sighs, and tells you that ”whatever it is, he’s going to try his best to fix it”. Screaming one’s head off isn’t usually something one wants to do for very long when they’re getting zero energy in return, so unfortunately, his calm approach usually makes you abandon the mission early. 

Then, though he really wishes he wasn’t, he’s used to the sight of your tears as well. You don’t even have to be a particularly tear-prone person overall, but the circumstances which he makes you live in cause you to constantly linger closer to the verge of crying than you would like. They say it’s simply human nature for the trigger to be more sensitive when tired, and it’s a theory you quite often end up proving true. 

He’s prepared to deal with that side of you as well, of course: More often than not, you just need a little time to yourself, a long hug, some reassurance, maybe a cup of tea, a nap, and you’ll be back to your normal self in no time. However, if it looks like he won’t be able to solve your emotional state with a few simple tricks up his sleeve, he gets out of the problem-solving state and instead focuses on gently guiding you through the sorrow you’re experiencing. 

There isn’t a proper, repeating pattern to how your breakdowns occur, much due to the fact that almost nothing in his life is scheduled in general. Sometimes you take a moment to shed a few tears when he’s out — you have plenty of time to get the stress out of your system without risking him intervening, that way — but every now and then, you don’t bother to wait to be alone. It’s not like you really have that much control over when the brimful bottle of tears decides to finally spill over, anyway. 

At first, he thinks it’s just the tiredness again. You know, it’s just the body’s normal response to being under a lot of pressure, and you’ve been a bit on edge lately, haven’t you? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, in his eyes. So, crouching down in front of where you’re huddling on the mattress, trembling like a leaf with the comforter wrapped around yourself, he attempts to gauge whether or not he can solve the situation with his lighter methods. 

He takes in the sight of your tear-stained face and your quivering form, sighing gently, taking care not to appear the slightest bit irritated. ”Crying again, are we?” he asks you in a soft, hushed voice as he places his gloved hand over your blanket-clad shoulder. Trying to find your eyes, he tilts his head to the side to align himself with your downward gaze. 

You appear genuinely distraught, is the result he bases on the quick visual assessment he makes of your state. The half-hearted attempt at a tender, reassuring smile falls off of his face as he listens to your faint, choppy breaths and watches as you stare into the void with unblinking, wide eyes, and it’s when he decides to drop the lighter approach and instead begins properly consoling you. 

You flinch violently as the hand on your shoulder slides past the comforter’s edge and behind the nape of your neck. He nearly finds himself mirroring the jittery movement as you make a weak attempt at pulling away from the gesture you seem to perceive as intrusive, but he decides to push the boundary nonetheless. 

Settling himself to sit on the bedroll in an awkward manoeuvre with his thighs spread out, he proceeds to snake his arm around your upper body and urge you to fall against him. Once more, you try to push him away, but after a moment, you cease to fight the gesture, giving in to his wish to properly embrace you. Softening his voice still, he starts trying to make sense of the situation. ”Did something happen?” he asks in a tone so gentle that you nearly fall right into the comfort offered to you. It’s something that only deepens the despair clutching at your chest, and the only response he gets from you is another, body-jerking sob. Despite his apparent concern, he remains solid against you, offering you the consolation of being held up by another. ”This is a little overdue, huh?” he sighs. 

As is typical for him, he asks you if you would like to talk it out despite already knowing the answer. It’s more of a formality: He wants you to know that he’s there to listen if you change your mind and end up wanting to vent the woe to him after all, but in the state you’re in, he suspects that the best course of action is to just hold you for as long as the misery persists.

So, instead, he attempts to distract you. The sensory realm, he finds, is an effective way to redirect one’s thoughts, and although the experiences he has with such are mostly on the side of pain, he has a special knack for pleasant touch. Carefully, he slides his hand past the back of your neck and beneath the comforter you’ve tightly wrapped around yourself. With silent reassurance behind his strokes, he begins trailing the pads of his fingers over your upper back in slow, round motions. At first, the feeling has your spine arching and your shoulder blades protruding in an effort to escape the sensation, but as the only directions for you to move in are towards his hand or flusher against his chest, you end up allowing the invasion. Tracing a circular, unintelligible pattern, he applies just enough pressure for the feeling not to be ticklish, almost as if he was writing over your skin. Simultaneously, his free hand makes its way over to the crown of your head where he bunches the tips of his fingers up, sets them against your scalp, and spreads them out like a firework or a flower’s petals. Despite your initially distressed state, the feeling is so pleasant, so calming that you find yourself instinctively relaxing against him in no time. 

More often than not, the episode tires you out enough for you to end up taking a doze right after, or if you’re already approaching your usual bedtime, you might sleep overnight. If the case is the latter, though he knows his arm won’t be thanking him when the morning arrives, he might decide to sleep beside you on the bedroll rather than in the fridge. He knows he’s fretting for nothing — that you’re all okay now that you’ve gotten it out of your system and are already in slumber — but he can’t help the worry. He’s well aware that you might not end up appreciating the gesture when you wake up, but nevertheless, he settles behind you on the mattress, carefully reaches his arm around you, and pulls your back against his chest. 

He has a really hard time seeing you in any sort of emotional stress, both since he feels a little helpless in the face of it and because he knows that he alone is the cause of it, no matter what the surface-level reason for the tears is. In that sense, he battles with guilt over your emotional state, yet in the end, despite not having very much faith in himself regarding comforting you, he’s quite skilled at it. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 8. Things to exploit: What are the darling’s best chances at escaping? Are there things which the darling can use to their advantage? How can the darling make things easier for themselves?

As mentioned, the biggest problem with escaping him is that it more or less is and was his profession to hunt people down. Whether the methods he uses in the job are legitimate or not is entirely up for you to decide, but nevertheless, his occupation remains the biggest obstacle for you to cross. A certain, popular saying could very well be applied to his case: The man may leave the Galaxy Rangers, but the Galaxy Rangers never leaves the man. 

That said, an elaborate plan has to be made if you wish to escape him. You need to think about the process in layers: Firstly the apartment itself, secondly the Dovebrook District, thirdly the city, and lastly the planet itself. It doesn’t matter where in Planarcadia you are, he’s going to get on your tail eventually, so if you truly wish to evade him for good, you’re going to have to leave the place entirely. The fortunate fact about the final part of the equation is that Ahatopia has quite a lot of traffic going in both directions, so slipping away on a spaceship isn’t actually that difficult of a task. The Astral Express, whenever the train happens to drop on the celestial body, is naturally also an option to consider, albeit it carries its own risks. 

To tackle the first level, as in actually making it out of the apartment, your best bet is waiting for when he’s out at work. If you’re prepared, fast and shameless enough, you could manage to find a way to break out of your prison, whether that be by picking the lock, finding a way to take the door off its hinges entirely, or waiting for him to slip up. The last of the three, however, is something that might take quite some time, especially if he has already blundered once. In this case, patience is quite literally the key. 

The issue that arises with whatever comes next is the fact that just about everything in Planarcadia is broadcasted in one way or another, and while that might end up being a valuable asset if you wish to take the case to the media and get his sorry ass, it also means that your captor could quite possibly follow you digitally. No matter where you go, the threat remains, and so, making your way to the nearest interastral transport might be the wisest choice. 

The second option for making it out of his clutches is, believe it or not, appealing to his softer side. Though it occasionally appears like his chest cavity is mostly filled with bananas and interastral horrors, he does have a heart — a heart you can reach ridiculously easily, to be precise. He’s one of the rare yanderes that might actually give in if you cry and plead enough. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to just let you free, but it may get him to become lenient to a degree that will allow you to conduct your escape without too much effort. It’s a narrow line you have to walk if this is the way you want to go about it, however: Although he has his arguably huge weak spots, he also has years and years of experience to guide him away from whatever it is that you’re trying — he’s dumb, not stupid, if you will. 

Another mix of a curse and a blessing you will face in regards to fleeing is that he won’t ever involve the other Galaxy Rangers in the picture. It’s just not something he could ever justify doing, and besides, he knows how rowdy his people can be: While someone like Boothill could be of some help when he can’t be around to watch you, there’s also the unfortunate fact that the cubs could help you slip away. Moreover, he doesn’t think you would particularly appreciate having some rowdy cowboy bloke keep you company while you’re finally getting to enjoy your precious alone time. 

That being the case, there aren’t many options for companions when it comes to any outside aid you could receive. He takes care to have you hidden away well enough for nobody to figure out where you are, and he isn’t all that close to any of the people in the area. However, if you somehow figured out a way to reach someone like Sparxie, she could very well be your ally as long as you make sure she gets a little content out of the ordeal. True crime does well online, you know.

Oh, and of course, there’s the strange lady downstairs. You don’t know her name — you’re only aware of her existence because of the few times she has come to Ashveil’s door at odd hours of the night to inquire about this and that in her singsong voice — but if you were to put your mind to it, you could find a way to contact her. Of course, such would not be a risk-free mission by any means: From what you’ve gathered, she’s the type of person who would either make it her life mission to help you escape, or alternatively the kind who would laugh in your face and treat the entire thing as a joke, but regardless, it’s a feat worth attempting. 

And, finally, if you wish to make things run smoothly with him, you merely need to go with the flow. At first, it might seem like an entire loss of self, but it simply means adapting to the circumstances and allowing him in a little. Just entertain him a bit — let him caress you here and stroke you there, chat about your day with him, give him a few smiles every once in a while — and you’ll find just how easy things can be with him. In contrast, the one thing you should not do is go laconic: It only causes him to get stressed about your state and consequently bother you more. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 9. Further notes: Is there anything that sets them apart from the other yanderes? What unique qualities do they possess?

There are a lot of quirks with this one. 

First off, the level of communication with him fluctuates heavily, depending on his general mood as well as the time of the day. For the most part, he’s not a very balanced person, for the lack of a better term. He has his ups and downs, and while he doesn’t ever truly lose his cool and become explosive, he gets openly excited, disappointed, playful, and so on. He gets quite impulsive regarding certain things while having ridiculously good self-control over others — it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with him at all. 

To add, he is, frankly put, a bit stupid at times — benevolent but stupid. Every so often, he might ask you for insight on a case he’s trying to solve. He presents you with the clues he has managed to gather and briefs you on the context and the timeline, complaining that ”he just can’t understand what he’s missing”. You skim over the material, reading over a few important-looking lines here and there, and ask him if the-most-obvious-possibility is something he has considered. Very few times in your life have you seen someone’s face light up the way his does as he suddenly pieces the equation together in what you have begun to suspect is an entirely empty mind. 

Expanding on the same issue, there are quite a lot of things he has failed to take into account on the regular, outside of his occupation. He can’t say he has had the honour of sharing his living space with a representative of the female species in a very long time, if ever, and he has a bit of a hard time adjusting to the change. For instance, he has gotten quite used to just walking around shirtless when he feels like it: There’s nobody except for himself and his assistant to ogle at him, so it was never really a big deal. However, he does realize that he needs to make a few changes to his habits when he walks out of the bathroom with his pecks out in their full glory and gets to witness the way your eyes go as wide as the Phantasmoon in the sky. Of course, he takes only a few seconds to get over the initial confusion before promptly making his way to the wardrobe and fetching himself something to cover his top half with, but the event serves as a fair reminder of the fact that he has to bear in mind that he’s now living with a lady. 

Yet, the sudden realizations regarding that very fact don’t stop there. The moment of horror you go through when you wake up one morning with an aching abdomen and a dark red stain on your bottoms couldn’t possibly be put into words, but the mortification doesn’t truly reach its peak until you actually need to go ask him for help. 

As he sees you approaching with unease written all over your face and your arms clutching your stomach, he simply raises his gaze from his phone and greets you with his usual smile, asking you if you slept well, not really catching on to the subtle signs you’re portraying. Even as the unfinished ”I’m having my...” leaves your mouth, spoken in a thin, uncertain tone, the only reaction you get out of him is a quirk of his brow. It genuinely takes a few, agonizingly long moments for him to understand what you’re implying, after which the wordlessly expressed ”the what now?” promptly turns into him practically springing off the couch and rushing to you with his hands held out. While he tries his best, it’s quite possible that you’ll have to explain a good few things to him if you don’t want to suffer the following few days both mentally and physically. 

Then, on an entirely different topic: The one place where his communication is superb happens to be, unfortunately, in his sleep. The amount of words isn’t measured in a few odd mumbles here and there — that much you could deal with — but in full-fledged sentences and more or less elaborate conversations had while out cold. The first time you jolt awake in the middle of the night due to him suddenly having started talking is enough to bring you to the brink of cardiac arrest, but even as you have figured out where the noise is coming from, the problem persists. It’s only after you have banged on the fridge door for a good few minutes that he finally wakes up, befuddled and entirely unaware of what the reason for your irritation could be. 

Though, if there’s one positive thing to be found in the lamentable habit, it’s that you can actually get information out of him while he’s asleep. It’s not often that whatever he’s chatting to himself about makes that much sense, but when it does, you can ask him a simple question or a few, and he might just give you a reasonable answer. For example, if you want to know where he has hidden something, it's the prime time to inquire about it. 

Still, you have to wonder what it is that he’s usually talking about while resting. There are a few recurring topics that you have managed to recognize during the nightly events — a few names of his past acquaintances, perhaps — but more importantly, you’ve gathered that the life he used to lead before he moved on to detective work must have been an eventful one. 

From his side, the issue shows up a little differently. Though he usually encourages you to talk and ask things, his past is among the few things that he won’t ever really bring up beyond surface level if you don’t show overwhelming curiosity about the matter. It doesn’t really have to do with the shame he feels nor the macabre nature of the tale, not the complexity of it all nor the fear knowing the truth might induce in you, but the fact that he’s actually entirely lucid about that part of the equation. It comes down to the fact that he truly doesn’t want to cast a bad light on the Galaxy Ranger — nothing less, nothing more. La Mancha is his name, but if there’s one thing he won’t do, it is making your opinion of the outstanding defenders of justice suffer simply because of his own heinous deeds. Call it incongruity — hypocrisy, even — but it’s one of the few points where he actually upholds his ethical standards. 

Another matter with which his lucidity is surprisingly prevalent is his sense of humour. His jokes, albeit usually on the lighter and relatively dry end, sometimes take a quite morbid and self-deprecating turn. There is bound to be more than one occasion where you’re half asleep on the couch, head leaning against a pillow propped against the armrest, your eyelids heavy, when he decides to spark up a conversation. At first, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, at least for him, but as you don’t really engage in the chat, he goes on a lengthy monologue that quickly turns darker than what you’re used to hearing from him. He talks about feeling tired, worn out by life, about death, as well as how if everything goes as planned, ”soon enough, you might finally be free of this old wolf”. Finishing his speech with a misplaced-sounding laugh, he reaches over to you to give a few gentle pats to your thigh. If you didn’t more or less wish for the outcome the tragedy would cause, you would be a little concerned about his mindscape. 

You don’t really understand what the sentiment behind his words is, either. For all you know, it could just be him trying to be funny, or maybe it’s his way of attempting to elicit a twinge of sympathy in you or to make himself look more lucid and level-headed than he is, but the simple truth is that he processes the overwhelming guilt that way. As said, if he let himself spiral, he absolutely would spiral and he would spiral hard, but as long as he keeps his feelings away from the topic, he can deal with the rest. 

And, in a way, it’s his way of keeping you optimistic, too. He’s all too aware of how much damage he must be doing to your psyche, so to counter the harm, he tries to keep your spirits up, even if it means that he’s going to have to show himself in a poor light. He knows you fear and detest him no matter how much effort he puts into getting you to even as little as tolerate his presence without tearing up or shooting him the meanest glares imaginable, and so, the least he can do is give you a tiny spark of hope that nothing has to be forever. 

Furthermore, he occasionally manages to remind you of the fact that he is, in fact, old; not just the 40-year-old sort of old but old-old. The topic of his actual age hasn’t really come up in any conversation — he seems to avoid talking about it to a degree — but from what you’ve gathered, the years he has behind him can no longer be explained with the ordinary human lifespan. The matter has become apparent with a few things he does, all the way from a couple of oddities in his manner of speech to some strange superstitious beliefs he seems to hold, plus his own claim about ”having been alive for quite a while”. As mentioned, he doesn’t outright reveal his age to you, but with how he doesn’t put that much effort into concealing the fact that he probably has a few centuries behind him, you’ve gotten the picture that the ambiguity he insists to have around the number is more resemblant to the never-ask-women-their-age type of thing.

By and large, he has a tendency to be quite vague with matters you would vastly prefer for him to be candid about. There are certain, heavily off-putting things about him that you’ve been left in the dark about: The first time he suddenly rushes to the fridge in the midst of an entirely unrelated activity leaves you mostly confused, but by the time the noise starts, your bewilderment promptly turns into terror. You back yourself into the farthest corner of the apartment, watching tall shadows get painted across the floor while the box shakes and trembles as if an earthquake had struck it. 

Yet, in a mere few minutes, the episode halts just as abruptly as it began, and soon enough, the man pushes the fridge door open and steps out of the thing, coated in sweat and crystals of frozen blood. You stare at him with wide eyes as he ruffles some of the reddened pieces of ice out of his hair and onto the floor where they melt, after which he notices you and promptly attempts to approach you. He is, however, stopped by the eardrum-shattering screech you let out as you scamper away from him with sheer terror written all over your features, and it’s only then that he realizes how he must come off as. To remedy the situation, he doesn’t say anything, albeit the ”ah, yes, right” is quite readable from his countenance alone, and quickly excuses himself before heading into the bathroom, shuffling and splashing around for a while, and popping back out into the open, entirely topless and consequently having you repeat the exact same reaction as earlier. 

But, aside from all the helter-skelter chaoticism he has going on in his life, the rest of it he tries to make as pleasant as possible for you. He knows he can be quite a handful, both as a person and as a general state of affairs, but with all things he can help, he strives for idyll. He enjoys slow mornings, soft-toned late-night talks, having dinner with you in the dim lighting of his apartment; that sort of thing. Even though such moments are lamentably sparse as he has got quite a lot of balls he needs to juggle on a regular basis, he does his best to decelerate the hectic rhythm of your days with him and stop to think, to see, to feel. Amidst of it all, the idea is actually quite noble. 

... And then, there’s the monkey. Even after spending a good while with Ashveil, truly grasping the dynamic between him and his assistant has been an entirely impossible task. To colour you sufficiently confused would require crayons in all shades of the fucking rainbow: Not only have you never seen a creature such as Mister N before, but from what you’ve gathered, he’s not a pet, he’s not a colleague, but he’s not quite a companion either. Moreover, he’s not around half of the time — perhaps by request — but when he is, he mostly focuses on narrating your captor’s morally questionable deeds in third person. You have yet to decide whether his presence is more of a positive or a negative for your mental well-being. 

Finally, just so you know, Mister N is also an absolute no-go for aid in any escape attempt, at least in the beginning. You’re not even entirely sure where his capabilities lie intelligence-wise: At times, you’re able to have a full-fledged conversation with him, and on others, whatever comes out of his mouth is more akin to a recording. Nevertheless, whatever the case, the one time you ask him to help you in your cause, he politely informs you that ”he is bound by a contract of employment”.

NS-FW

˗ˏˋ ★ 10. General look: How does their sexuality manifest? What does sex mean to them? How horny are they?

He wouldn’t consider himself to be a particularly sexual person. He’s kind of... past that stuff, is how he himself would put it, but as do most people, he still has his urges. 

He doesn’t really entertain thoughts about sex or indulge in the sort of fantasies very often unless a truly attractive person happens to catch his attention. Still, even then, he doesn’t think casual intimacy or the kind would ever truly satisfy his yearning: Call him old-fashioned, but he’s staunchly of the opinion that sex needs to have feelings for it to be truly satisfying. Sure, if he put himself out there, there would be demand for him whether he thinks the notion to be true or not, but he simply needs a hand to hold onto and a heart to connect with, so to speak. 

Though, he has a reoccurring issue where he gets unbearably hot and bothered every once in a while. The bouts come and go, mostly being a nuisance more than anything, but he would be lying if he claimed he didn’t wish for there to be something, or rather, someone to take the passion out on. Of course, he can usually take care of the troublesome bodily effects in the shelter of his office, but the method he has fared with so far becomes a little more tricky to execute when you come into the picture. 

His libido doesn’t really change from what he’s used to with you around. It’s just that now, whenever the mood strikes, he really has to exercise self-control in order not to seem like a total creep. Not to say he isn’t, by definition — that much he can admit to himself — but Aeons, he would just like to hold, to grab, to squish every inch of you, inside and out. 

If you pay attention to his behaviour, it’s relatively easy to tell when the spell strikes him. He tends to take a seat, cross his legs, hold his hand over the lower half of his face, and just stare at you from a short distance away with a pleat between his brows. You’re unable to figure out whether his body language conveys frustration, anger, embarrassment or something else entirely, but over time, the hair-raising thought of there being something more to the conduct starts crossing your mind more often than you would like. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 11. Limit: How long does it take for them to have the darling? What is the first time like? Do they care about the darling’s willingness?

He would never. Never, never, ever is what he keeps telling himself over and over again. His eyes linger on your form, watching the subtle jitter in your movements, the wary looks sent his way, the intermittent bobbing of your throat as you swallow down the tears that persistently threaten to fall from your eyes. It’s so painfully obvious that you’re scared out of your mind even when you don’t pay conscious thought into the fact or try to act brave — he could never, ever bear to see you withdraw even more. 

Or, so he tries to make himself believe. There is no doubt that he doesn’t try his hardest not to give in to his urges, that’s for certain: He promptly excuses himself out of the room whenever you change clothes, he turns his face away whenever you get into any position that could even distantly be likened to a suggestive one, and he takes care of his needs in his own time — yet none of it is enough to smother the feeling. No matter how much mental and physical effort he puts into willing himself not to just grab you to touch, to feel, to consume, none of it is enough. The craving just keeps piling up until the jar is filled to the brim. 

Still, he continues to assure himself that he’s stronger than the ever-swelling, unquenchable thirst inside of him, despite being well aware in the back of his mind that he’s bound to fail sooner or later. It’s a truth he refuses to accept, even when he sees his self-restraint gradually slipping bit by bit over time.

Though he does his best to hide it, you notice a change in his demeanour. It’s not an exact thing you could pinpoint, but your subconscious picks up on something downright sinister from his direction. The feeling is fleeting, however, as within a few minutes, everything is back to normal again — as normal as anything could be with him, anyway — but as the instances get more and more frequent, you grow even further apprehensive of him. You flinch away from his innocent touches, you take longer to fall asleep and go to the bathroom more often during the night, and most glaringly, you start lashing out more. It must be the nerves, he knows, but having to listen to you call him every insult the dictionary holds does still sting a little if he’s being candid. 

But, none of it changes the reality both you and him live in. Deep down, he knows the inevitable is approaching, and you, believing you’re just barely succeeding in keeping him away, are in for a rough night. 

It all happens on the spur of the moment. He doesn’t prepare for it in any way, nor does he, even five minutes prior to the juncture, know that he’s actually going to commit to it. The day is like any other, a good few weeks after your abduction: You’re sitting on the couch, your back facing him, legs pulled to your side, reading some tattered comic book you found lying amongst the flyers on the shelves. There’s nothing even remotely provocative about the setting, yet he just...

He can practically hear the voice in his head vacillating between ”do it, don’t, do it, don’t, go, don’t, go”, like pulling petals off of a flower. He could scratch his skin raw with how he just yearns to grab, grab, and grab, to extinguish his fire in the water that is you. Although his baleful aura could already be potent enough to reach beyond the apartment’s walls, you remain completely oblivious to the sheer intensity with which he stares you down from where he’s standing in the kitchen, his pupils blown wide and his breathing growing more and more rapid by the minute, his skin crawling with utter compulsion. 

The mantra in his mind goes on and on as he leaves his spot next to the wall. With his head pounding from the deluge of desire surging into his veins, he walks across the floor without making a single sound, silently approaching your form from behind. 

Don’t, don’t, don’t, the rapidly shrinking, rational part of his brain begs him, but you’re right there, already at his fingertips, ready for him to devour.

He places his hands on either side of you on the couch’s backrest. Disturbed by the shuffling, you lay the comic book down on your lap, tilt your chin up, and find that an upside down image of the man is staring down at you. For a moment, you think it’s just one of his affectionate episodes again, but as you notice the fervid, demented glint in his half-lidded eyes, your heart drops to your stomach. 

The alarm bells in your head begin sounding immediately, but though you think you’re as fast as one could possibly be when flinging your legs off the couch and trying to pull out of his reach, his metal-clad hand manages to find a secure grip on your shoulder. 

The full panic response flares up in a fraction of a second. You take hold of his forearm with both of your hands, yanking with all your might as you try to free yourself of his grasp, only to find that there’s no way for you to match the man’s strength. He feels a sharp twinge in his chest when he catches sight of your face; wide eyes, scrunched-up brows, ajar mouth — you look frightened beyond repair, yet you still try to mend your swiftly cracking façade with feigned aggression. Even as his other hand reaches to grab you as well, instead of letting the terror overwhelm you, you think fast and plunge your nails into his arm. 

He stifles a hiss as the pricking pain strikes him. It’s nowhere near severe enough to impede him, however, as the interruption barely manages to stagger his actions before he makes the thoughtless decision to carry out the deed in full. With an expression disproportionately despondent compared to the red-hot arousal he’s battling, he seizes both of your arms, swings his leg over the couch’s backrest, and pushes you down on the cushions. 

The flailing does very little to help when the man, much larger in frame than you, forces you on your back and climbs on top of you, settling between your legs and wresting your thighs apart. Your hands, though held down by his own on your shoulders, reach for his arms, his chest, his face, anything they could possibly reach, yet the only thing your struggle achieves is knocking his hat off of his head and onto the floor where it lands beside a pile of papers. 

A gruff sigh slips out of his throat as his hair falls past the sides of his now deeply flushed face. Gazing down at you with a wildened, nearly startled look on his features, he catches his breath for a moment before then opening his mouth. 

”We can go to the bed”, he then huffs out in a strained, hushed voice. 

It’s hard to make sense of him over the relentless, throbbing noise of your own heartbeat in your ears. The words blur into an incomprehensible jumble, and you don’t immediately understand that you’re even being talked to. It’s only as he repeats himself, panting out ”I can take you to the bed, we can go to the bed, we don’t need to do it here” all in the same, laboured breath, that the terrifying realization hits.

The sheer volume with which you screech out the ”no” nearly ruptures his eardrums, so much so that he almost lets go of you out of reflex. The window of opportunity is gone in a flash, however, and the strength he’s pressing you against the couch with doubles. Biting into his lip, he moves one of his hands just below your throat in favour of releasing the other one which, in turn, latches over your mouth. He attempts to gently hush you, making sure that you can still breathe through your mouth, yet his efforts bear no fruit as instead of settling down, you gain brand new fuel into your strife. 

The frantic fight has you exhausting every option available. Ripping at the blackened length of his prosthetic, you couldn’t care less about the line of red that the nail on his wrist scrapes across your cheek. Furthermore, though he doesn’t feel any bit of it, you try to bite down on the metal on his fingers, using every last bit of strength in your jaw and no doubt causing pain to yourself in the process. Fearful tears gather at your waterlines as you, despite your position, spit violent, unintelligible curses and threats at him through your clenched teeth.

He really doesn’t know what to say. The thoughts in his head are scrambled, chaotic, cloudy, aroused. In the back of his mind, he understands, he knows that he should release you the very same instant and comfort you, to promise you that it’s all going to be okay, that you don’t have to be scared, that he would never, never, ever, but all of the overwhelming pity and sympathy, every last bit of it, though mirrored on his countenance, is overridden by the distorted, bottomless, maroon-hued pit of his obsession. The light in his irises diminishes. 

With a raspy, deep inhale, rather than speaking words of consolation and reassurance, he utters a single sentence. ”Sometimes you just have to do things you don’t enjoy”, he says. 

His heart, undoubtedly in sync with yours, is beating so fast that he has to wonder if the tremulous feeling could end up being his demise. Momentarily letting go of your sternum, he fumbles around, trying to locate the handle of his cane by his side before managing to find a grip on the metal. Then, lifting his hand off your mouth, he snatches hold of one of your wrists, then the other, all in one, swift movement. Wrestling your limbs down above your head, he proceeds to squish them against the cushions with the twisting shaft of his cane, pinning you in place like you were a butterfly, after which he begins ineptly attempting to strip himself of his clothes with one hand. 

Your windpipe strains with the short, gaspy breaths with which you forcefully pull air into your lungs. Slowly but surely, yet all too quickly, the fright and anxiety begin superseding the valour and fury, and what began as a fierce struggle now simmers down into tears. Pushing against the weight of his cane one more time to no avail, you squeeze your eyes shut and sob out a broken ”please don’t hurt me, I don’t want it to hurt”. 

His fingers, presently busy trying to fiddle the buttons of his vest open, freeze in their tracks. As if genuinely wounded by the accusation, he has to blink a few times before answering you, telling you ”it’s not going to hurt” in a much too sad of a tone. The words, however, only work to escalate the situation further as you proceed to let out yet another cry and repeat the same thing: ”Please don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me”, all in a choked, fear-laden voice that grates on his ears and lacerates his heartstrings. Again, he answers with the same promise, ”nothing is going to hurt, I’m not going to hurt you”, but with very little results. 

He suddenly finds that the emotion burning in his chest is no longer plain pity but slowly morphing into frustration. He succeeds in stripping himself of both his overcoat and the vest underneath, carelessly throwing the articles of clothing onto the dusty floor behind the couch. For a minute, he considers trying to scuffle his shirt off as well, but after taking one more confirmative glance at your state, he abandons the idea. Instead, he settles for kicking his feet out of his boots, yanking his trousers and underwear down his legs with one hand, and tossing the rest of his garments in the same pile with the rest.

You’re dangling on the verge of passing out while simultaneously feeling sharper than ever. The shaft of the cane digs into the soft part of your wrists, dully painful, yet not nearly enough to avert your attention. Refusing to let your eyes stray towards what lies between his now bare thighs, you stare directly at the ceiling without actually seeing anything you’re looking at. Your midriff continues to heave with your erratic breaths, only interrupted by the terrified cry you let out when his fingers slip underneath your clothes’ waistline. 

He only manages to yank the fabric halfway down your thighs before being halted by his own body blocking the rest of the way. Quickly going over his options, he settles for carefully grasping the back of your knee, pushing his own body forward, and consequently lifting your hips off the cushions and folding your form in half . Naturally, you screech in response, desperately battling his grip like a prey in its predator’s jaws, but as your other thigh joins the one now pressed against your chest, you can do nothing to prevent him from ridding you of your bottoms as well as your undergarments. Then, after giving you one last, lust-sick look, he takes in a sharp inhale, lowers his face down in between your legs, and latches his mouth onto your bare bits. 

Every last inch of your form, down to your fingertips, winces forcefully as the sensation of his tongue slithering around your nethers reaches your brain. Your mouth falls wide open to let out a startled mix of a wail and a shriek, after which you attempt to kick out the intrusion, to ward off his weight, only to compulsively arch your back as you feel his tongue nudge against your clit. The sensation, so utterly infringing and hellacious that your own limbs refuse to do anything but tremble in place, travels all the way up to your guts and past your stomach, reaching into spots inside you that you didn’t even know could feel. 

A pitiful, high-pitched yip is all that makes it out of your throat before your entire body suddenly tautens up, going as rigid as a board. Every last muscle in your body snaps tense as a mere few moments’ worth of the unbearably intense pleasure shoves you into an adrenaline-tinted climax. You fight for your breath, feeling like you can’t get enough air while being utterly drunk on oxygen, before the world then completely flips on its axis, and your eyes roll back into your head. 

He notices the spasms, of course. It requires every last bit of his depleted self-control for him to disconnect his mouth from your cunt so soon, but in favour of not pushing you past your limits, he brings his face up and wipes his mouth on the back of his forearm. He takes in the sight of your rhythmically convulsing body, your ajar mouth, and your half-lidded eyes. What little still remained of his restraint disappears into the murky, sex-laden air. 

Bringing his digits to his mouth, he bites down on the thin fabric of his glove and pulls it off his hand before dropping it over the couch back. Then, without granting you more than a moment’s pause, he prods his middle and ring finger against your entrance. 

Your hole contracts without delay, halting his progress. Furthermore, as he finds that you’re sufficiently slick — even surprisingly so — the notion of fingering you suddenly feels pointlessly cruel. Already being much too far into the act to drag the beginning out, he promptly changes his mind and decides to move on to the last trial. 

You’re only able to gasp for air and let the tears flow when he wraps his hand around his rock-hard cock and brings it to your bits. Though you still resist the intrusion, putting every last fibre of your being into tensing up your lower half, with a few, insistent prods, he’s able to get the tip in. 

You just cry, cry and cry and yell at him to stop, straining against his hold like him connecting with you like this were the worst possible thing that could ever have happened to you. His trembling hand comes up to your face, cradling your cheek as gently as he possibly could and clumsily attempting to wipe some of the tears off your lashes while slowly, carefully urging his member deeper and deeper inside you. Your entire body quakes along with your sobs, mourning the way you’re stretched out bit by bit, yet still, despite the sincere, utterly uncovered show of pure distress, the words of comfort take much too long to find the tip of his tongue.

”Listen to me”, he tells you in a husky, soft voice. ”You’re not in any pain. It’s only a little pressure”, he assures you, ”only a little pressure right here. Do you feel that?”

His touch trails off your face and slides down to where you’re connected. Cautiously, he presses around the area of your abdomen, tracing the shape of his cock inside of you, caressing the skin beneath your navel. ”It’s not painful, it’s only pressure.”

You make the mistake of looking down at where the two of you are now connected. You watch as the shaft of his dick disappears into your entrance inch by inch, breaching more and more of you. 

Though he himself doesn’t sound sure of what he’s saying, he isn’t entirely wrong about the sensation he describes. There’s no keen, panging ache, nor does the stretch bring you anything past discomfort, but just the feeling of being penetrated by him throbs more than anything else could. The last, tearful ”no”s and ”stop”s mellow out into small, distantly frantic snivels as you finally let go of the fray you were desperately clinging onto, instead focusing on what little you’re able to control. You clench your teeth, swallow your cries down, squeeze your hands into fists, and just pant in place when the final bit of his length makes its way into your cunt. 

He tries not to get lost in the feeling — he really, really tries not to. It’s just that when he looks at your face, the wet streaks, the blush playing on your features, the rapid rise and fall of your chest, he’s simply overwhelmed by the zeal to ravish you. Deep within his being, there’s a physical, racking ache to just take you all to himself, and right then and there, as he takes in the view of your sorry form, he lets go of the last iota of his sense. Carefully dragging his hips back until only the tip of his member remains inside of you, he begins thrusting into your bits. 

With one hand still holding onto the cane that’s pinning you down on the couch, he moves the other back to your face. Tenderly setting his palm over your eyes still directed at what’s happening between your thighs, he covers your view of the harrowing sight and leans down into your ear. In a tone no louder than whisper, he asks you to simply listen to his voice. 

”You’re doing a good job”, he tells you as he rocks his hips against yours in measured yet still palpably impatient motions. You respond to him with a defeated, airy sniffle, helplessly attempting to close your legs around his body, then clenching around him and consequently drawing out a hoarse moan out of his mouth. Nevertheless, he keeps what little remains of his composure and resumes comforting you. ”It’s going to be over soon”, he promises, planting a wet, cold kiss on your temple. 

In the back of his mind, he knows that what the result of his deeds will turn out to be is the farthest thing from the eyes he actually, truly wants you to look at him with. There’s no love, no adoration, no curiosity in your misery-drowned gaze, yet at the same time, all he does is push the excruciating guilt aside and continues fucking into you. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 12. Preferences: What is sex with them like? What sort of stuff are they into? What kind of kinks do they have?

He’s a mixed back. Once again, he leans towards the traditional end because of his age and life experience: He doesn’t really understand all the fancy, new stuff that the youngsters are getting their hands on in the name of pleasure, but then again, on the other hand, he really can’t say that he’s not at least a tiny bit intrigued. Keeping up with the times has always been a task he has had to put conscious effort into, but, you know, a little experimentation can’t hurt. 

- Insane Mouth Game, First Runner-up

Voracity and all.

He understands that the inclination probably stems from the beast in his arm, at least to some degree, but at the same time, he really couldn’t care less what the insatiable desire to just have his mouth somewhere on you is caused by. The sheer amount of pleasure he gets out of tasting you couldn’t possibly be put into words. 

All that to say that the man quite literally eats pussy like he might die tomorrow. It’s easily his favourite sort of foreplay, and sometimes the main course as well. What lies between your legs seems to almost have a gravitational pull to it: Wherever it is that he’s getting it on with you at, it won’t be long until the kisses he’s sucking onto your neck begin trailing lower and lower before finally reaching their inevitable destination. At that point, you can’t stop him from getting where he wants to be — it’s best just to accept your fate if you value your sanity as well as your pelvic muscles.

And, he’s so preposterously good at what he does that it feels like you could pass out from the sheer depth of the spasms bullying your lower half. He’s unfortunately the type that simply doesn’t unlatch his mouth from your cunt after he has gotten the first taste — he just keeps going until he feels you finish or you manage to successfully land a strong enough of a kick at his head. Moreover, his technique is unmatched as well: He likes to not so much suck on anything but swirl his tongue all around, focusing on one spot at a time and systematically driving you crazy with each passing second. The one thing he has found gets the most squirming out of you is when he pushes his tongue into your entrance and prods around a bit; not only do you try to fight him off like your life depended on it, but you have a habit of coming within the same minute, too. 

From your point of view, the entire thing is, of course, terribly violating — not just psychologically but in the regard of your nerve endings as well. It’s intense, it’s beyond lewd, and ugh, when his fingers dig into the flesh on your thighs to hold your tremoring hips down, you know there’s nothing you can do to stop him from dragging you into his personal, blissful hell. It’s the sort of ticklish, almost painful pleasure that borders overstimulation and makes your eyes water, too: You don’t think he’s even nearly aware of the extent of his power. 

It’s not just your cunt, either. You see, just a little bit down, there’s another spot that’s particularly sensitive, and who would he be if he didn’t take advantage of that fact. In other words, he really likes to eat ass. 

He truly needs to put effort into keeping you down when he gets to it, either by locking your knees over his shoulders and enduring your heels bashing against his back or pushing your lower body against your chest and effectively folding you in half like a flipknife. He already knows that his neighbours downstairs won’t appreciate the sheer amount of noise you make when he forces you to offer your behind to his mouth, but then again, he’s in no state to give a flying fuck about who might be listening in on the ordeal. 

He just wants to taste you. Whichever hole, in whatever position, he wants it. He tends to switch around in the middle of the session, too; his patterns are entirely unpredictable. Of course, the tendency extends to just about any patch of your skin in general — you can be sure that by the time he himself gets his share of physical pleasure, almost every last square inch of your skin is covered in his saliva. 

He usually starts around your neck, shoulders and jaw. Dragging his tongue up along the trail of your jugular, he makes sure to savour the salty savour of your sweat before moving along to the next area. He figures out your sensitive spot quite early on, and as soon as he does, the assault on them is relentless. Behind your ear, underneath your chin, at the juncture of your neck — no spot is safe from him. 

Oh, and traditional kisses — very much his thing. Of course, it ties to the aforementioned habits, but above all, he thinks that the act is, at its core, that of love, and he wants to share that feeling with you. It’s just that when he really gets into it, it feels like he’s trying to suck the life out of you with how mercilessly he goes at it. As soon as his tongue gets past your tightly pursed lips, he wriggles it right down your throat. Your teeth clash together, his lips are just about glued against yours, and he hardly even remembers to make sure you can still get air in the midst of it all. 

Aside from the obvious ones, he has quite a few areas on your body that he likes to torment with his mouth. Your inner thighs, your upper back, your abdomen, and, last but not least, your pretty breasts. Your nipples, namely, are where he focuses the rest of his attention whenever he’s busy fingering you, for instance. Even if he has been impatient enough not to get you out of your top, he can just roll the thing up and past your chest to access what he’s seeking. Much like is the case with your bits, the way he shuts his lips around your cold-perked nipple before sucking on it and circling it with his tongue is enough to have your heart palpitating. 

Then there’s the marking. It’s another thing he vastly enjoys, or simply instinctively takes part in, whether that be with gentle bites or dark hickeys littering the entirety of your upper body. He tries not to do any actual damage despite having the uncontrollable urge to quite literally get into your flesh, but it’s also unfortunately something he fails at almost every time. When he gets too deep into the mindless headspace, the limit of what’s too much becomes hazy: He buries his teeth into your shoulder, biting down harder by the second — just a little deeper, a tiny bit deeper won’t hurt — and the next second, the taste of blood bursts into his mouth, accompanied by a shrill, frantic shriek from you. The sheer primality of the noise is enough to yank him right out of the trance, and when he pulls back to face your wide, tear-filled eyes and your ajar mouth, his sultry mood takes a bit of a blow. You look startled, shocked, confused; the expression on your features mostly translates to a pitiful ”what did I do”, which he fails to find the answer to. He really doesn’t know what to do with himself nor how to properly comfort you without making it all worse, and thus, the rest of the session suffers from a lachrymose spirit. 

Finally, a very specific thing he likes to do is kiss and lick directly over your ear. Not just the area around, not just the shell, but right over the entrance of the canal where each and every sound and sensation is sent right down to your spinal cord. It’s horrid just how visceral the feeling is: The shivers it induces — the sort that travel all the way down to your back and have your body twitching involuntarily — could be enough to hard-reset your entire nervous system. However, no matter how palpably uncomfortable it makes you, it’s something he ends up doing almost every single time. 

- Talk, talk, talk

He, as are quite a handful of the people his sort, is largely unable to shut up during the deed. Talking just comes naturally to him, especially when he’s not putting much thought into what slips out of his mouth. He enters a sort of a flow state whenever he starts thinking more with his downstairs than with his brain, which translates to steamy, lustful words. 

He really likes to keep his lips next to your ear. As established in the previous section, he finds that the sheer intimacy of getting to stimulate such a vulnerable part of you gets him off like nothing else. He does, unfortunately, have an absurdly mellow voice, and even though you’re consciously aware of the fact that you’re not in his arms out of your own volition, it’s practically impossible to resist the sedative, subjugating effect it has on you. 

He likes to praise you, especially when he gets into one of his more confident and dominant moods. Surely you’re aware of just how lovely you are? In his eyes, there’s no sight more endearing, beautiful, utterly enchanting than you underneath him, struggling to gasp for air with how your senses are being loaded with rapture. The look on your face just begs him to repeat ”good girl, good girl” again and again as he gathers the tears swelling at the corners of your unfocused eyes on the back of his finger. The words don’t really seem to evoke any coherent reaction from you, but if the way your bits clench on him when his voice tickles the shell of your ear is anything to go by, there must be at least something happening behind the cloudy veil over your mind. 

Another thing he tends to vocalize a lot are quietly spoken questions about if what he’s doing is performing its role. ”Does it feel nice right here? Or here?” he asks you as the pads of his fingers slide up and down the slit between your labia, circling here, pressing there, trying to find the exact spot that forces your thighs to tauten and your jaw to go slack.

And, it’s not only the verbal, either: He groans, hisses, moans, huffs and sighs, all in the same, hot breath against the side of your face. He’s not the silent kind even when he has nothing to say, and aside from the mumbled strings of words that could as well be dialogue in a horror movie — ”I just want to devour you”, ”let me take a bite out of you” — he gets sophisticatedly animalistic about the sounds he lets out. It’s like ASMR gone wild, except that the things described in the recording are all too real and happening to you. 

- The fucking chair (literal)

Remember the chair he put you in when he abducted you? Yeah, so about that. 

He’s not that much into restraints and whatnot, but at the same time, he would be lying through his teeth if he claimed that the setting didn’t excite him at least a tiny bit. The power dynamic of having you bound and sitting still while he gets to slowly and delicately pull all sorts of reactions out of your shivering form is a high like no other for him. 

Though, it’s a bit of a hassle to get you down on the chair itself, and nude or at least bottomless, no less. You sure put up a good tussle whenever you catch sight of his flushed face and wandering hands, but alas, he’s much stronger than you could ever hope to be; wrestling you down, stripping you of your clothes, picking you up and planting you on the seat only takes a few minutes at most, at which point you’re entirely under his mercy. Just like the first time, he binds your ankles to the chair legs, your wrists and waist to the backrest, and sets up a rope contraption that travels underneath the seat and connects your thighs together, preventing you from closing them on him. 

After that, the teasing starts. He might have an impatient streak to him, but the lack of struggling appears to quell the trait a little. Whenever you’re tied up, he spends at least a good half an hour just caressing here, brushing against that spot, giving you a gentle pinch right there. It’s simultaneously overwhelmingly sensuous and horribly invasive, creating the same, eye-watering quivers as his mouth in your bits does, only without even having to properly touch you. He drags the pads of his fingers along your ribs, rubs around where your hipbone protrudes under the skin, and hums into your ear in the low timbre that could send you into a seizure. 

Whatever happens as the main event is largely up to his mood. He could simply rub one out of you, properly finger you, he could eat you out if he has managed to set the bindings so that your bottom is close enough to the chair’s edge, or if he’s feeling really adventurous, he could invest in a small vibrator to torment you with. He’s not that keen on any tools — he has enough dexterity in his fingers alone, and besides, isn’t that a little posh — but nevertheless, just to be able to try it out every now and then, he probably gets a bullet vibe to keep somewhere for a rainy day.  

In addition, he talks you through it all, no matter what it is precisely that he’s doing to you. The position he prefers for the chair act is already one that forces his face close to yours: Majority of the time, it’s the most practical to just stay behind the chair and work his magic over your shoulder. Since his cheek is already more or less pressed against yours, he doesn’t see the reason not to murmur a few ”you’re doing well”s and other words of praise into your ear. 

To amplify the effect, he might blindfold you, too. It’s the only time he properly deprives you of your senses aside from how he sets his palm over your eyes every now and then, but despite its seldom nature, it’s easily among the top three most intense experiences with him. When there’s nothing for you to focus on visually, whether that be his hand in between your legs or the tear-blurred view of the apartment’s grey interior, there’s not much left for you to do other than to concentrate on the feeling of his digits digging into the front wall of your entrance and rubbing leisurely circles over your clit. You can try to stifle the shivers, flinches and squeaks, but with how your hole shudders around his fingers, it’s quite easy for him to tell just how far past your defences he has managed to invade. 

It’s, all in all, a sensual time which is precisely what makes it so agonizing for you. The utter sense of danger is something you could never escape with him, but combining that with the climax he’s steadily working you towards with whatever means he has chosen for the occasion, it’s merely a question of time before your mind begins drawing connections you would rather not have it make. Yet, having your essence quite literally soak the chair when he’s done would suggest that your body and brain already disagree on the matter. 

- Gentle old-school stuff

When he’s in his more rational state of mind, Ashveil is, as might have come a little clearer with the time you’ve spent with him, quite thoughtful on the regular. As far as he’s able to, he prioritizes your health, happiness and safety above all, and though his urges get the best of him much more often than he would like, he does his utmost not to torment you with their consequences. 

That, and being the age he is, he really just wants it soft and slow sometimes. All the hecticity can only build up to a certain point until he needs release from it which ultimately translates to his lovesick gaze and uninvited touch. 

It’s never anywhere else than on the mattress beside his fridge. If anything, he wants you to have a comfortable surface to lie on — he can do every last bit of the work beyond that. He lays you down on the bedding, puts a pillow beneath your head and another one under your hips, and starts warming your body up for the deed. He doesn’t tease like he perhaps would any other time: Instead, he caresses you with just enough firmness in his touch, curls his fingers against the deep, ribbed spot inside you, and listens to your tiny gasps and sniffles as you simultaneously try to distance yourself from the sensation while being entirely unable to do so. 

Prone-bone is the position he always settles for during such occasions. Yes, the practical appeal of it is strong — it’s effortless to hold you down with his own bodyweight alone — but it also allows him to feel the closest to you physically. The skin-to-skin contact of having his bare chest pressed against your back induces a feeling in him that would be difficult to simulate in any other setting, and loosely caging your head in between his arms offers him a deep sense of security. You’re safe, right here, with him — he has got you, you can let it all go. He hopes that though the alarm bells are likely fighting to overpower any other sound in your brain, the position could still bring you a semblance of comfort. 

He fucks you well, too. His cock reaches deep into you, yet not far enough to border the line of overstretching you. It’s the sort of perfectly fulfilling, profoundly satisfying feeling of the sweetest spot in your insides getting nudged against over and over again until you start unwillingly relaxing into the sensation. There’s truly no way for your lucid mind to win the fight. 

Another reason he looks forward to having you in such a submissive position is because it’s the closest he could ever get to seeing how you would act as a willing participant. Your face is warm, you don’t really tend to cry (at least not openly), and when he leans down to press an open-mouthed kiss on the side of your face, he comes to find that your eyes are hazy and half-lidded with concentration. If he didn’t know better, he would assume you were enjoying the act. 

Nevertheless, he consoles you throughout the whole ordeal. Whereas he would typically praise you, he now adapts his wording to keep you calm, docile. It’s not like you could do much against him — he has you pinned down, stomach pressed against the mattress — but he still goes out of his way to tell you that ”you’re going to be alright” and ”just relax, just breathe” while he once again pushes his member inside you to the hilt. You don’t really react to his words in any way other than letting out a quiet whimper or a moan every now and then, but judging from how you’re mostly sweaty putty in his hands when he’s done, he has to be doing at least something right. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 13. Punishment: What do their sexual punishments look like? What methods do they prefer?

It’s not often that Ashveil resorts to any sexual punishments, as is with punishments in general with him. Furthermore, it’s less ”resorting” and more ”yielding”. The conditions that have to be fulfilled in order to get him to that point are that one, he needs to be really mad, and two, he needs to be mad horny. The former might actually be the more difficult to achieve out of the two since getting truly angry at you is something that requires him to be in a very specific state of mind, but the latter is more or less achievable without you having to do anything in particular. And, the lamentable reality of the matter is that the two states feed into each other. 

The sessions are sporadic and short in nature, but the one thing he’s inclined to fall back on is spanking you; either with simply his hand or, seldom, his cane. It channels his mood quite well in the sense that the act is both stimulating for him but also takes care of the issue at hand — that being putting you back in your place. 

He gives you plenty of warnings before he actually gets up to it. In case the quite straightforward ”I’m going to reprimand you if you don’t quit the behaviour” isn’t enough to have you stop the yelling, flailing, or whatever it is that you’re doing, he eventually just walks up to you, takes you by the arm, drags you to the couch, and bends you over his lap. 

It doesn’t really matter to him whether it’s on bare skin or with some fabric in between, but regardless, you’re going to have him land quite a few firm smacks on your butt to make up for the misbehaviour. He doesn’t make you count the strikes, and it’s not necessarily about the humiliation factor as much as it’s just that he couldn’t come up with anything better — again, he’s “traditional” like that — but if anything, the cause-and-effect of the series of events becomes quite clear to you. Also, he doesn’t slap your behind raw like someone like Anaxa would: Rather, he just goes on for a little while until deciding that enough is enough. 

He makes sure that you know he’s pissed via verbal means as well. ”How does that feel, huh?!” is a straight, common quote he snaps at you. The tone of his voice is nowhere near the actual rage you know he’s capable of, but it still leaves very little to guesswork.  

Then, as mentioned, he occasionally uses the cane, too. Whether he wants to admit it or not, using the tool is purely for the histrionics: The metal stick isn’t exactly suitable for spanking in itself, but what’s important is that the message makes it across. Moreover, it probably hurts a little worse than just his palm — the reddish stripes the shaft leaves on the skin don’t fade until a day later — and it usually gets you to change your mind faster than just the palm of his hand would. 

He sometimes threatens to stick the cane inside you. He won’t, obviously, as the end of the thing is as sharp as a stiletto, but the mere implication is enough to get you to sing a different tune. For good measure, he punctuates the threat by rubbing the cane’s stem along your bits just to sell the performance, but by that point, the stint has generally already taken a carnal turn. 

If his arousal starts overriding the anger, you may very well end up with him ditching the actual punishment and instead just giving into his urges to finger you a little. He still tries to mask it as if he’s disciplining you, but if the flush on his features is anything to go by, his thoughts are in an entirely different place. When his hand once again makes contact with your ass, his touch doesn’t leave you but lingers at the curve, after which he just abandons the act and dips his digits between your thighs. Of course, the sudden change in tone has you squealing and trying to get his hands off of you, but it’s really no use fighting him after he has gotten himself into such a state. 

Yes, you might be crying during the punishment, but more often than not, the tears are of the wrathful sort. Such conduct is most likely precisely what you need the correction for anyway: Usually, even with his hand or cane coming down on your behind, you keep the attitude up — kicking, screeching, clawing at anything at arm’s length and even attempting to sink your teeth into his leg if it’s all that’s available. However, if the whole ordeal goes on long enough, your fuse burns out, and what started as ire dies down to pathetic sobs. 

It’s what ends the session. If there’s one thing he’s deplorably weak to, it’s your tears: No matter how irritating you might have been all day, the second you start snivelling from sorrow, the sympathy trigger releases. He tries to bring a natural-sounding pause to the punishment, but in reality, his attempt merely ends up being a ”I suppose that’s enough” before pulling your sorry form into his embrace. That said, if you’re of the easily crying sort, you certainly have an unexpected advantage against him in such situations. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 14. Aftermath: What does their aftercare look like? Is there any?

It’s a bit of a mess. Not nearly as much of a mess as it could be, but still a mess. Post-nut clarity hits him like the Phantasmoon had just fallen on him, and no matter how much he mentally prepares himself for the drop, it’s always the same. 

At first, when he finishes, it almost appears as if he’s annoyed, but it is, of course, not the actual case. Though his expression is difficult, and the manner in which he swallows could be read as irritated, it’s merely him battling with the soul-crushing devastation of once again having succumbed to the urges he has so tried to curb. He simply looks down at you as his panting slows down, entirely unsure of what to say or do. His breathing has a distinct, strange pattern to it at such moments: He takes in a quick, quiet inhale, holds his breath for a few moments, and then lets his shoulders fall before repeating the sequence anew. It’s an odd sight to witness. 

After getting over the initial shock, he gathers the shards of his shattered resolve in favour of taking care of you. With his touches gentler than if he were holding a butterfly, he releases whatever part of you he may have been holding down and moves to cradle your shoulders, your neck, your head. His face falls into a very specific, heartbroken look where he appears as if he’s about to cry as he gathers your worn, flushed and quite possibly sniffling form off of whatever surface the two of you were on, talking in a voice softer than feathers, murmuring ”oh, oh no, oh darling...”. 

The effect he intends for the action to have is, however, the complete opposite, as instead of you resting against him, the softness triggers a fit of wailing anger in you. With all of the little strength you have left in you, you start beating your fists against his bare chest while tearfully screaming ”don’t touch me, don’t touch me” over and over again until your voice begins to grow hoarse. Still, instead of respecting your wish, he holds you through the entire episode, weathering all the punches, scratches and bites you manage to make at him, all the way until the fire in you slowly withers down, and he’s left with a shuddering, twitching, gently sobbing human being in his arms. At that point, he cautiously allows you to pull a back to have a look at your face. He observes your misery-stained cheeks, your unfocused eyes, the smear of blood — much more probably his than yours — across the corner of your mouth. If he were to drown out all the other chaos of the situation, he could almost focus on imagining the sound of your rapidly beating, oh-so wounded heart. 

He knows you probably find his embrace trapping, if not suffocating. Despite there being no more vigour left in your weak smacks against his sternum, you still continue trying to beat him off of you. Still, he just can’t: He, as well as your overclocked heart, need the closeness, the firm touch, to mentally survive the next half an hour. 

It’s only after a good while that he dares to gently, carefully disconnect his arms from around you and allow you to hold yourself up. More often than not, he judges the time frame correctly, and when he pulls back and out of your immediate personal space, you usually don’t lash out anymore. Instead, you tend to just bury your face in your hands or your knees, sob quietly, and shiver as if you were cold. Out of instinct, he picks up the closest blanket or blanket-like object and wraps the thing around your shoulders, encasing you in the softness like a cocoon, before cautiously standing up and heading for the wardrobe. 

You don’t get to be left alone for longer than a moment, for in just a minute or two, he comes back with a fresh set of underwear and some clothing for you. Having tried to find something that you would feel the safest in, the piece usually ends up being simple to put on while covering as much skin as possible. A huge sweater, an oversized hoodie, maybe even something of his that’s much too large on you, and when he gets back to you, he puts it on you himself. Quietly instructing you to hold your arms up, he slips the garment past your head, slides your hands into the correct gaps and takes care to pull the hem down as far as it goes, before then allowing you the privacy of getting the rest of the clothes on yourself. 

Typically, at this point in time, you’re much too tired to do anything but stare into space for a few minutes before your head starts drooping. He waits for a short while, just in case you were to suddenly gain one more burst of energy, but as it’s obvious that you’re one blink away from falling asleep, he has you get some rest. Most of the time, you’re already in your bed, but in case you’re not, he curves his arm underneath the back of your thighs, hoists you up, and carries you there. You don’t really resist him in any way when he tucks you in and spends the few remaining minutes of your waking time caressing your head like you were the most precious thing in the universe. 

The extent of the aftercare stretches on to whenever it is that you wake up, too. If the ordeal took place in the evening (or whatever ”evening” is for him), you tend to sleep overnight, but if it was during the day, a few hours of dozing usually suffice. In both cases, he stays awake for the entire time, pulling an all-nighter if needed, just so when you wake up, you have more instance of his damage control waiting for you. 

It doesn’t matter how much rest you’ve had, you still rouse feeling like you could cry. He understands that much, and so, when you open your eyes, you have him waiting for you by the door with a dish in his hand. As non-threateningly as he’s able to, he makes his way to you, crouches beside your sleep-hazed form, and offers you utensils and a small plateful of food. Albeit it’s visibly home-cooked and a little rough around the edges, it’s clearly made with you in mind: The food itself is to your taste, and he has arranged the portion in the shape of a flower in an attempt to make it a little cute, charming, something you wouldn’t liken to being a bribe. 

And you eat it. Despite your eyes all too obviously swimming with tears even with your best efforts to conceal your rebuilding distress, you grab the utensils in your shaky hands and bring a piece of the dish to your lips. All the while, you keep your gaze locked with his own as if terrified that he could lunge at you at any moment. 

He swallows. Then, tipping his chin down and directing his eyes at the floor between the two of you, in a quiet, soft voice, he asks you if you would allow him to check on and take care of any marks he might have left on your body. 

He doesn’t raise his gaze to make sense of whatever feeling your expression might be conveying, and whether or not you agree to his request is entirely up to you. Silence is taken as a ”no”, and he won’t in any way object to a blatant rejection, but if you’re not opposed to the suggestion, he gives you all the time you need to finish the meal, after which he takes you to the bathroom. 

Spreading a towel on the cold tiles, he asks you to sit down on the floor as he goes to open the first aid cabinet and set up some disinfectant and bandages on the sink. Then, as carefully as he could possibly be, he begins working through the remnants of his sick edacity.

He makes a point of not having you strip yourself of anything while he takes care of the wounds. Instead, he gently tugs the collar of your top towards the area he’s checking before cleaning the tooth marks and dressing the spots. No matter how cautious he is with his touches, you still spend the entire time trembling and wincing whenever his cold hands make contact with your skin, but despite the apparent concern it awakens in him, he stays silent. He tries his absolute best, but in the end, his utmost usually doesn’t end up being enough to stop the eventual, fresh wave of tears from rolling. 

Lastly, as a complete sidenote: If you were to ever be up for it, he would be the biggest fan of the most diabolical pillow talk topics ever. Not only the absurd, off-genre sort, say, ”what’s your favourite pizza topping”, but the horridly morbid ones that mostly make you go what the fuck on top of the emotional dissonance as well: ”You know, one time I was hired to settle an infidelity case, and I walked in on the wife trying to hack the husband’s leg off” would be his go-to story to start with. When it comes to certain things, his mind functions in strange ways. 

˗ˏˋ ★ 15. Further notes: Is there anything that sets them apart from the other yanderes sex-wise? Are there any unique aspects to them?

To start with, a very prominent quality of his is that you get to have a bit of a say when it comes to the sexual realm of things, but in a very twisted way. The say in question is minimal, but it’s still there: When the switch flips and he consciously turns a part of his feelings off in favour of getting to take you, there’s usually not much you can do, but if you put up a genuinely good scuffle, his drive can be extinguished. It depends heavily on the day, too: Sometimes, he’s prepared to put you in your place even if that means having the session stretch on for twice as long as he initially intended, yet on other days, if you kick, punch, bite, scratch, screech and cry enough, he might just decide that the fight is not worth it. Getting his dick wet while you’re making sure that he gets a noise complaint is only worth it up to a certain point, in his eyes. An undeniable, huge win for the feisty darlings. 

Moreover, there are other hindrances when it comes to the sex, too: Mainly, his fuckass schedule. His cravings come and go like the Bullet Wyrms at the railway station, and it’s a common occurrence that he gets horny mid-job, for example. However, he has a strong standard for himself regarding the location of the deed, which is that if he’s going to do it, it’s going to happen hidden safely inside the walls of his apartment. Sure, he can understand the excitement behind tasteful exhibitionism, but, you know, he’s, like, a bit too old for that sort of thing. Plus, he doesn’t think you would really appreciate it, anyway, and so, he usually tends to cut the mission short with a less-than-plausible-sounding excuse and hold out until he can get you home. 

The same issue also makes itself known with just how whiny he can get if he’s feeling frisky but in a hurry to leave for an errand. He typically tries to test the waters instead of going the usual route of just snagging you and taking you straight to the mattress, too. He might come up behind you, press his chest against your back, and inch his fingers over your sides, around your hips, and past your navel until attempting to slip beneath your bottoms’ waistline. At that point, your response is to elbow him in the stomach as hard as you can while screaming bloody murder at him, and the result of his advances mostly ends up being a bruise on his ribs. 

Then, on the practical side of all things sexual, he runs into a problem he frankly didn’t anticipate. He perhaps should have — after all, the fact that it would come up in a hands-on way is quite obvious — but nevertheless, the issue in question is that he’s unable to finger you with his dominant hand. As unfortunate as it is, his prosthetic arm is his right, which also happens to be the more dextrous one out of the two. Though the nail in his wrist has forced him to relearn some motoric tasks with his left hand, he still writes, scrolls on his phone and jousts with the other. 

He doesn’t even think about it before the act itself. In the midst of squeezing his fingers past your thighs and finally getting to your bits, the realization of ”ah, the metal” hits his brain. Not only does the coldness probably feel uncomfortable in such a sensitive area, but the nails — the ones at the tips of his artificial fingers — are sharp-sharp. Providentially, he recognizes the issue right before he could have caused your periods to start early, and without you even necessarily noticing, he changes hands. 

The start is a little awkward. As said, he doesn’t have the same level of adroitness in his left hand, but after a while of practising the curling, thrusting and circling motions, the experience gets more pleasant for the both of you. Of course, he wishes it wasn’t a problem in the first place, as whatever he does, the nail gets in the way, and even something like holding you down can leave mean dents on your skin if he isn’t being careful enough, but in the grand scheme of things, the whole ordeal ends up being relatively minor. 

Then, aside from the functional challenges, he notices quite early on that despite having considered himself relatively well-rounded and educated, he has a lot to learn. Sure, he more or less knows what and where everything is — women have three holes down there and so on — but when he gets down to it, he realizes that the process of bringing pleasure to you isn’t as straightforward as he thought it would be. It has been quite a long time since he last got to work with the female bits up close, and it turns out that the myth about finding the clit really might have some truth to it. 

He is, however, a very fast learner. Allow him to have a quick look down there and feel around a little, and he gets the gist of it. It’s also why he tends to ask around a good amount: You’re obviously more attuned to what feels the best for you, and though he mostly has to go by your expressions, your body language, and the occasional, blatant ”ow”, it doesn’t take him that long to figure out your best spots. 

There’s not much that can gross him out sex-wise, either. Your periods, namely, are something a few yanderes would shy away from due to the potential mess and whatever else, but to him, it’s just blood, nothing more: The red doesn’t make him the least bit squeamish as it’s something that he’s regrettably very familiar with and used to. Moreover, there’s no violence involved in making it, so he doesn’t really see the issue beyond it making you uncomfortable.

On the topic, he likes to finger you whenever your time of the month strikes. He has no qualms about getting his hands a little dirty — he enjoys it, even. Sometimes, he pulls his digits out of you for a moment just to have a look at the deep red substance. Not only is it basically free lubrication, but the orgasms also help with the cramps to some degree, he has heard. The latter effect, especially, is one you can’t really find any negatives in in itself: The expired painkillers the man dug out of the cupboard don’t exactly do a good job at quelling the pain, so as much as you loathe the process via which the benefit is reaped, he can tell that the ache doesn’t bother you as much for a little while after he has pulled a climax or two out of you. Penetration is largely off-limits during your period due to him understanding that the spots can be a little tender down there during that time, but, just so you know, head really isn’t. If you didn’t react to the suggestion in the same way you would have if he made you sleep in the fridge again, he wouldn’t mind burying his face in blood one bit. 

And, finally, reaching your peak in general is something you won’t ever have to worry about due to the naturally, infuriatingly sensual quality of his touch. It’s beyond ridiculous just how much charge his fingertips carry in them, to the point where you’re certain he doesn’t really even understand it himself. 

A single, gentle brush on your skin is enough to leave the area tingling for moments on end, no matter how light the touch is. To add, the more sensitive the spot, the stronger the effect: It’s a reflexive, mild sense of beatitude that affects your entire body, and the experience alone is so intense that at one point, whenever his touches start trailing into more risqué areas, the sensation goes straight into your nethers. It’s not a conscious reaction — it just happens, and the more your system learns to associate the feeling with him, the more potent your reactions get. As usual, he’s delighted, you’re mortified. 

That, and the orgasms themselves hit like a truck. You cannot for the life of you believe him when he claims that he hasn’t really been hoeing around in the last few centu-, in some time, because the sheer skill he demonstrates in using his body for carnal means is, frankly put, absurd. For the same reason, you don’t ever really have to fear for him overstimulating you (at least too much) because it’s quite literally lights out with a single climax for you. 

A/N

Yan!Ashveil serving the average customer service horror experience. I am of the humble opinion that every single person on this planet has to experience at least one cashier, server or barista and so on shift in their lifetime. Shoutout to that one 60-year-old-ish unc at my cashier job a couple years ago who read my name off my namecard and then came back another day asking my coworkers for me and talking something about wanting to find a wife to travel the world with. Ok.

Moreover, this work ended up being one of the profiles where you have a distinct job along with Jing Yuan and Blade’s ones. I usually try to keep the background of the reader as neutral as possible, but then again, I do find that a little context to their person is nice every once in a while. And, most of you probably have had the same genre of a job at least once in your life, so the ability to relate is likely not too far off, I hope.

I am sorry, I’m feeling so fucking yappy today, so as the last thing, I thought I’d share the best/worst thing that happened to me mid-writing this thing. I was supposed to type the phrase ”rock-hard cock” into the NSFW section but I missed the middle word and just wrote ”rock-cock” and I genuinely needed to take a 15 minute break from the whole thing because I was cracking up every time my eyes landed on the block of text. Oh my god

Aaaand finally, the taglist, slayyy ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

@dyingsweetmackerel @walnutofthedead @salty-pigeon @loserworld @lem-hhn @anemochiii @chocoismasochist @sivisek524 @myjawsworld @mydeilver @celestialgirl777 @universallycupcakebanana @favv-sassy @darkpurplewind @leveyani @warmandkozi @rinki-tinki @magnificentkidclamclod @donthitmeillcry @nuriicata @bugzrcute @soutar @goldandlyre @butratherbutrather