CONTEXT: Before the world fell apart, your biggest concern was getting Hiromi Higuruma to answer your messages. Somewhere between courthouse hallways and coffee he never asked for, you fell in love with a man who believed justice had long since failed the innocent. Then came the day he passed judgment in a courtroom and disappeared without a trace. Refusing to let your story end without a goodbye, you walked away from everything you'd worked for to find the man you loved â no matter where that path led, even if it meant stepping into the Culling Games.
GENERAL WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI. Explicit/implied sexual content, canon-typical violence and gore, character death, injury, angst, strong language. Dirty talk, dry humping, cunnilingus, fingering, piv, unprotected sex, creampie, multiple orgasms, cum eating, manhandling. This fic follows canon events from the Culling Game and Shibuya arcs â spoilers ahead if you haven't caught up. Reader insert (she/her, fem-coded), afab.
AUTHORâS NOTES: Hi everyone! I'm very excited to share the first chapter of my first Higuruma fic. The story starts before he awakens his cursed energy, back when he's "just" a defense attorney and the reader is a public prosecutor going up against him in court. Right now, the reader can't see curses either, but she'll eventually gain the ability before he does, and from there the story will lead into the events of the Culling Game. I've spent quite a few days editing and writing this story, and organising the layout and presentation, so I'm hoping you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Feedback and comments genuinely make my day, so if you're enjoying it, let me know! Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the ride.
FEATURING: Hiromi Higuruma x Reader
Chapter 1: Exhibit A đŁČ. 15k words
Next Chapter / Masterlist / ao3
Every morning the marble corridors filled with the same steady rhythm.
Attorneys hurried between courtrooms, briefcases swinging at their sides, heels clicking sharp against polished stone. Clerks pushed trolleys stacked precariously with case files, wheels squeaking in protest with every turn. Judges passed through the halls with an air of practiced indifference, robes trailing behind them like they carried the weight of a hundred verdicts. By nine o'clock, the building was already alive, low murmurs bouncing off high ceilings, the muted shuffle of polished shoes, the occasional bark of laughter quickly swallowed by the solemnity of the space. Sunlight cut through the tall windows in long, dust-flecked columns, catching on brass fixtures and the gold lettering above the courtroom doors, and somewhere down one of the side corridors a photocopier hummed its tired, mechanical complaint.
For most people, it was simply another workday.
For Hiromi Higuruma, it was another battle.
He stepped through the courthouse entrance precisely twenty-two minutes before his first hearing, as he did every weekday. Dark suit, pressed without a single crease out of place, the fabric so crisp it looked as though it had never once touched a wrinkle in its life. Tie loosened just enough to suggest he hadn't slept much the night before, poring over files, most likely, though no one would dare ask.
There were faint shadows beneath his eyes that morning, more pronounced than usual, and the set of his jaw carried the particular tightness of a man running on coffee and stubbornness rather than rest. A leather briefcase hung from his hand, its corners worn smooth and pale from years of the same grip, the same weight, the same walk through these same doors. The handle had molded itself, over time, to the exact shape of his fingers.
The security guard at the entrance gave a small nod, the routine long since worn into muscle memory from all the mornings before it.
"Morning, Higuruma-san." His attention was split, half on the man passing through, half on the coffee cup he raised to his lips, steam curling faintly into the cool morning air.
"Good morning." Nothing more. Higuruma wasn't one for small talk, and by now, everyone in the building knew as much. He continued inside without breaking stride, dark eyes sweeping briefly over the familiar space, the same pillars rising toward a vaulted ceiling, the same portraits of long-retired judges lining the walls with their stern, painted expressions, the same faint smell of old paper and floor polish that never seemed to change no matter the season. His footsteps fell in the same unhurried, measured cadence they always did, the kind that made junior clerks scramble to get out of his way without quite knowing why they felt compelled to.
Everyone knew Hiromi Higuruma. Not because he sought attention, he actively avoided it, in fact, not because he had some reputation for theatrical courtroom victories. Quite the opposite. He'd become known for taking the cases no one else wanted. The ones everyone expected to lose. Cases where the evidence was buried under years of neglect, where every other attorney had already sat the client down and told them, gently or not, that there was nothing left to be done.
He read every file twice before touching it a third time. He annotated margins in small, precise handwriting that other attorneys joked looked more like a surgeon's notes than a lawyer's. He never raised his voice in court, not once, and yet somehow the room always seemed to quiet when he spoke, as though his measured tone demanded a kind of attention volume alone could never earn.
Higuruma took them anyway. Every time.
Some called him stubborn. Others called him idealistic. The older attorneys, the ones who'd watched a dozen bright-eyed lawyers burn out chasing lost causes, simply called him a fool.
He'd heard all three. None of them mattered.
His eyes caught a familiar figure standing beside one of the vending machines near the east corridor, half-shadowed beneath the glow of a flickering fluorescent light.
Shimizu, his colleague. She stood with one hand braced against her hip, elbow jutting out at an irritated angle, the other hand fishing through the depths of her bag for loose coins, her fingers brushing past pens and receipts and a half-eaten pack of mints. An expression of mild frustration had settled across her face, brows drawn together, lips pressed into a thin line, as the vending machine stubbornly refused to cooperate, its little red light blinking in what almost looked like mockery.
Higuruma adjusted his hold on the briefcase, the leather creaking faintly, and made his way over, his shoes clicking against the tile in that same unhurried rhythm.
She noticed him only when he came to a stop beside her, close enough that his shadow fell over the coin slot.
"Good morning," she said, finally managing to feed the coins into the machine with a triumphant little jab of her finger, before letting out a quiet sigh of relief that seemed disproportionate to the size of the victory.
"I thought I was running late." She had a tight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, clearly annoyed with herself, a faint flush of frustration still coloring her cheeks.
"I skipped breakfast again."
"Again." He said it flatly, not surprised in the least, the word carrying the weight of a hundred prior mornings just like this one. The machine whirred to life with a mechanical groan. A bottle of orange juice dropped into the collection tray with a dull thud that echoed faintly down the corridor. She bent to retrieve it, her ponytail slipping over one shoulder, and twisted the cap open with practiced ease before taking a long, grateful sip.
"Hm." The sound he made was low in his throat, noncommittal, the kind of reply that somehow managed to communicate an entire lecture without a single word of it being spoken.
He didn't sound convinced. The silence between them stretched, comfortable in the way only years of familiarity could make it, until it was interrupted by the sharp, sudden ping of a notification. Shimizu glanced down at her phone, her thumb swiping across the screen, and her expression shifted, brows lifting slightly.
"...Looks like our hearing's been officially delayed."
Higuruma looked over, his gaze sharpening with the faintest flicker of interest.
"It was supposed to start in twenty minutes."
She turned the screen toward him, tilting it so the light didn't glare across the display.
Courtroom Seven â Delayed. Estimated commencement: 11:30.
"I asked one of the clerks what happened." She shrugged, the motion loose and unbothered, though there was a flicker of curiosity in her eyes that betrayed her casual tone. "Apparently something's going on inside. They wouldn't tell me anything. Said it was confidential."
Higuruma stared at the screen for a moment longer than necessary, his eyes narrowing slightly as though trying to parse some hidden meaning from the pixels themselves, before letting out a quiet breath through his nose.
There was little point in questioning it.
If the court wasn't releasing information, they would simply have to wait.
They walked together in silence through the wide corridor, past clusters of murmuring attorneys and a bench where an elderly man sat clutching a folder to his chest like it might be torn from him, until they finally found an empty bench overlooking the courthouse lobby below. From here, the lobby stretched out beneath them in a wide marble bowl, sunlight pooling across the floor in long golden stripes. People drifted past in an endless stream, conversations blending together into little more than background noise, punctuated occasionally by the distant clang of the metal detector or the echo of someone's raised voice quickly hushed. For a while, neither of them spoke.
Shimizu unscrewed the cap from her drink again, turning it idly between her fingers.
"You were at the office until midnight."
Higuruma kept his eyes on the case file resting across his lap, thumb already tracing the edge of the first page.
She sighed, the sound heavy with the particular exasperation of someone who had had this exact argument more times than she could count.
"I know." She looked at him, her head tilting, a strand of hair falling loose from behind her ear. "Which is exactly my point."
Shimizu eventually reached into her briefcase and pulled out the case file resting inside, its edges slightly dog-eared from repeated handling, sticky notes bristling from three different sides like the quills of some small, colorful animal.
She flipped through the pages, the paper rustling softly.
Higuruma's gaze lowered to the file, his expression settling into the careful stillness it always took on whenever a case was mentioned, as though some internal switch had been flipped.
"I went through the prosecution's evidence this morning."
She paused, drawing the moment out, her eyes flicking up to gauge his reaction before continuing.
Not visibly. Higuruma rarely reacted in ways most people could notice. His expression remained as composed as ever, his posture unchanged, hands still folded loosely atop the file in his lap.
But Shimizu had worked with him long enough to recognize the slight shift in his focus, the way his eyes sharpened by some fraction of a degree, the way his breathing seemed to still for half a second longer than usual.
"The witness places the defendant near the scene at approximately 9:40 p.m." She tapped the page with one manicured nail, the sound crisp against the paper. "But the security footage from the convenience store across the street shows him entering at 9:32 and leaving at 9:38."
Higuruma looked over the document, his eyes scanning the timestamps twice, then a third time, as though willing them to rearrange themselves into some other configuration.
"Which the prosecution is arguing was enough time."
He was silent for a moment, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly, the muscle there ticking once before going still again.
"I think it's questionable."
Higuruma closed the file with a soft, decisive snap.
"Questionable is not the same as impossible."
She glanced at him, studying the side of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the faint furrow between his brows.
"But you think it matters."
He looked back toward the courthouse doors, his gaze distant, fixed on something far beyond the glass and brass and marble.
"It matters because that six minutes is where they decided they already knew the answer."
Shimizu watched him quietly, her orange juice forgotten in her hand. There it was. The reason he kept taking these cases. Not because he believed every defendant was innocent. Not because he thought the law was perfect. Because he hated when people stopped looking once they found an answer that was convenient.
"The prosecution believes the evidence is enough," she said, testing the words.
"The prosecution believes the evidence is enough to obtain a conviction."
A small silence followed, filled only by the distant murmur of the lobby below.
"You make those sound like different things."
The courthouse doors opened at the far end of the lobby, allowing a rush of cold morning air to spill inside, carrying with it the faint smell of rain and city streets. Higuruma's attention shifted briefly from the case file in his hands, more out of habit than genuine interest.
At first, he barely registered the newcomer.
There were always people entering and leaving the building. Attorneys arriving late for hearings, ties askew and hair windswept. Clients anxiously clutching paperwork to their chests like shields. Clerks moving between departments with the particular harried energy of people perpetually five minutes behind schedule.
You stood near the entrance, looking around the unfamiliar crowd as if searching for someone, your head turning this way and that, your eyes scanning the sea of dark suits and gray coats with an expression of determined focus.
Higuruma watched quietly as your eyes moved across the lobby, something in his chest tightening in a way he refused to examine too closely.
You looked different from the last time he had seen you outside of court. A crisp white blouse beneath a black blazer, the fabric fitted just enough to look sharp without sacrificing professionalism, a neat folder tucked against your side. A tight black pencil skirt that hugged your figure just right, falling to a length that was entirely appropriate and yet somehow still managed to draw the eye, and a pair of black heels that clicked against the marble with a confident, unhurried rhythm, accompanied by two coffees balanced carefully in your hands, steam rising from the small gap in each lid.
But the expression was the same.
Bright. Open. Utterly unguarded in a way that felt almost foreign in a building full of practiced composure.
For a moment, your eyes found his.
The noise of the courthouse seemed to fade around you both, the murmur of conversation, the click of heels, the distant hum of the photocopier, all of it dimming to a low, unimportant static.
Not the polite smile attorneys exchanged in passing, the kind that never quite reached the eyes. A genuine one, wide and unrestrained, the kind that crinkled at the corners of your eyes and seemed to light up every feature of your face at once. And before Higuruma could look away, trying to ignore your whole existence as if he wasn't even there, because he knew exactly what was comingâ
The entire lobby seemed to hear it. Your voice carried easily across the marble expanse, bright and unashamed, cutting clean through the low murmur of professional conversation.
Several people turned, heads swiveling with mild curiosity.
A few attorneys nearby exchanged knowing looks, the kind shared between colleagues who had long since stopped being surprised by this particular occurrence. Shimizu closed her eyes with a quiet sigh, already resigned to whatever was about to unfold.
Higuruma remained still, his spine straightening by some small, involuntary degree, though nothing else about his expression betrayed the sudden shift in his attention. You approached them with the same confidence you carried into every courtroom, your heels clicking a steady rhythm against the marble, weaving effortlessly between a pair of startled clerks, holding one of the coffees out in front of you like an offering.
Shimizu smiled despite herself and lifted a hand in greeting, the gesture warm and easy.
"Shimizu." Your smile widened further as you came to a stop in front of the bench, slightly breathless from the walk, a few strands of hair falling loose across your forehead.
You looked between them, your gaze flicking from Higuruma's carefully composed face to Shimizu's barely concealed amusement.
"I was worried I missed you both."
"You could have checked the hearing schedule," Higuruma said, his tone even, though there was the faintest edge of something else beneath it, something that might have been resignation, or might have been something closer to fondness he had no intention of admitting to.
"Then why were you worried?"
"Because schedules change." You said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, punctuating the statement with a small, deliberate shrug.
"And I haven't seen you in weeks." Your voice took on a whining edge at the end, drawn out just slightly for effect, your lower lip pushing out in the faintest suggestion of a pout.
Higuruma looked away, his gaze fixing on some distant point across the lobby.
Which, coming from him, was practically an admission that he understood.
You sat down beside him without waiting for an invitation, close enough that he had to adjust slightly to make room, shifting the case file from his lap to the space beside his hip, but you soon removed the distance he had created by shifting even closer, your shoulder brushing against his arm, your warmth radiating through the thin fabric of his shirt sleeve.
He looked down at you, one brow lifting fractionally.
"You are aware there was another seat available."
"I know." You said it cheerfully, entirely unbothered by the observation, already settling in as though the bench had been built specifically for this purpose.
"Because I brought you coffee."
You placed the cup in his hand, your fingers brushing briefly against his, warm from the paper cup, and the touch lingered perhaps half a second longer than strictly necessary.
"And because I wanted to talk to you."
Higuruma looked at the coffee, studying the little heart you, presumably, had drawn on the lid in permanent marker, before looking at you.
"Don't be silly," you said, sipping your own coffee, entirely unfazed, watching him over the rim of the cup with bright, knowing eyes.
The answer made him pause, if only for a moment.
It was the same thing he had told you countless times before, in countless variations, across countless mornings just like this one.
And somehow, you always returned it to him, word for word, as though it were some private joke only the two of you understood.
Shimizu watched the exchange over the rim of her own drink, hiding a smile behind the bottle, her eyes flicking between the two of you with poorly concealed delight.
Three years of you appearing wherever Higuruma happened to be, dragging him into conversations he never asked for, sitting closer than strictly necessary, bringing him coffee made exactly the way he liked it though he had never once told you how he liked it, as though you had simply memorized the details of him the way one memorizes the layout of a familiar room.
And somehow... he had never once actually told you to leave. Even when he pretended to be annoyed by your presence, even when he actively ignored you for whole stretches of conversation, staring resolutely at his case files as though you weren't there at all, you never left. You simply waited him out, patient as stone, until he inevitably relented, answering some question or offering some small scrap of conversation that you would seize upon like a prize.
Your free hand rested lightly against his arm as you looked between the two of them, curiosity brightening your expression, your thumb tracing an absent little pattern against the fabric of his sleeve.
"So," you said, glancing at the files in their hands, tilting your head to try and read the upside-down text, "what were you two talking about?"
"Nothing that concerns you."
The answer came immediately, clipped and final, though there was no real heat behind it. You blinked, mock offense flickering across your face for exactly one second. Then you laughed softly, the sound light and genuine, shaking your head.
"Right. Forget I even asked."
You took another sip from your coffee, entirely unbothered by the dismissal, and immediately changed direction, your eyes narrowing with sudden, playful accusation.
"Speaking of things you won't tell me..." His eyes shifted slightly towards you, a flicker of wariness entering his gaze, as though he already knew exactly where this was headed and was already regretting it.
"You've been ignoring my messages." You whined once again, your expression turning playful and exaggerated, and you leaned your upper body toward him, your shoulder pressing more firmly against his. He would have moved further away, putting some small buffer of distance between them, but on his right sat Shimizu, and so he had no space to retreat into, trapped neatly between the two of you like a man cornered in his own courtroom.
"I have been busy." He said it unphased, as always, as though this exact exchange happened on a near-daily basis, which, in fairness, it very nearly did.
"You have been avoiding them." You shook his arm gently, the motion more playful than accusatory, though there was a genuine thread of curiosity woven beneath the teasing, already knowing full well that he had, in fact, been actively ignoring you.
Shimizu quietly looked away, suddenly very interested in the label on her orange juice bottle. She had spent enough time around Higuruma to know that this was a conversation she probably shouldn't involve herself in, not unless she wanted to become collateral damage in whatever was about to unfold. You looked at him, your hand still resting on his arm, your grip tightening slightly, fingers curling just a fraction more firmly into the fabric of his sleeve.
The word seemed to hang in the air between you, heavier than the marble columns, heavier than the case files stacked between you, heavier than anything either of you had said all morning.
"And you ghosted me." You gave his arm a smack, more teasing than demanding, though there was a flicker of real vulnerability beneath the playful delivery, there and gone so quickly most people would have missed it entirely.
"You can't just ignore someone asking you out."
Higuruma glanced down at where your hand rested against his arm, at the way your fingers had curled into the fabric, before looking back up at your face, at the way your expression hovered somewhere between amusement and genuine hope.
Then he took another sip of his coffee.
Exactly how he liked it. Bitter, no sugar, a splash of milk, precisely the ratio he had never once told you and yet you had somehow gotten exactly right, down to the degree.
The fact that he continued drinking it was answer enough, a small, silent concession in a war he refused to admit he was fighting. You narrowed your eyes, watching him over the rim of your own cup.
"Are you seriously just going to drink your coffee?"
He hummed in reply, a low, noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, trying valiantly not to engage with whatever this was, his eyes fixed pointedly on some invisible point across the lobby.
Shimizu covered her mouth, pretending to cough, her shoulders shaking with poorly suppressed laughter.
Because, somehow, Higuruma could dismantle arguments in courtrooms full of people, could unravel the prosecution's entire timeline with six careful minutes of doubt, could stare down judges twice his age without so much as blinking, but was completely, utterly incapable of handling one persistent woman sitting three inches away from him with a coffee in her hand.
"You know," Shimizu said carefully, choosing her words with the precision of someone stepping onto thin ice, "I believe she was asking about the date."
Higuruma looked at her, a warning flickering briefly in his gaze.
Another pause, stretching thin and taut between the three of you.
Shimizu sighed, long and theatrical.
Before Higuruma could respond, if he had even intended to respond at all, the announcement speakers crackled to life overhead, the sound sharp and sudden against the low murmur of the lobby.
"Courtroom Seven. The hearing scheduled for 11:30 will now commence. All parties are requested to proceed inside."
The timing was almost suspicious.
You looked up at the ceiling, as though you might find some higher power responsible for the timing staring back down at you.
"...The court just saved you." You said it with a note of genuine disappointment, your shoulders slumping slightly, clearly having enjoyed the exchange far too much to let it go so easily, and you felt, for one fleeting moment, as though you might actually have gotten an answer out of him this time, if only the universe had given you thirty more seconds.
You looked back at him; your gaze lingered a moment longer than casual conversation required.
"You didn't give me an answer." You moved away from him, finally, your hand brushing against his where it rested on his lap, the touch light and fleeting, before getting up and throwing away your half-finished coffee, the cup landing in the bin with a soft, hollow thud.
Shimizu looked between them, already knowing this conversation would not end here, not by a long shot.
He stood, collecting his files, tucking them beneath his arm with practiced efficiency.
His eyes moved to Shimizu, sharp and pointed.
"I don't recall asking for your opinion."
"No, but you clearly need it."
You laughed quietly, the sound warm and fond, watching the two of them with open amusement.
Higuruma ignored both of you, adjusting his tie before turning toward the courtroom, his expression settling back into its usual composed neutrality, though something about the set of his shoulders remained just slightly less rigid than before. The two of you followed behind him, talking amongst yourselves in a tone he couldn't quite hear, your voices dropping into a low, conspiratorial murmur. He assumed you were talking about him, judging by the occasional giggle and the faint mention of his name catching his ear, but he ignored it, focusing instead on the weight of the case file beneath his arm and the six minutes that would decide the Tanaka case. You and Shimizu soon separated as you reached the courtroom, Shimizu peeling off toward the gallery, you lingering a moment longer at the doors before offering him one last look, unreadable and warm all at once, before you, too, disappeared into the crowd.
Courtroom Seven smelled the way it always did, faintly of varnish and old paper, of the particular sterile chill that came from air conditioning running just slightly too cold for comfort. Rows of polished wooden benches stretched back toward the gallery doors, worn smooth by decades of nervous hands and restless feet. Sunlight filtered weakly through high, frosted windows set near the ceiling, casting pale, rectangular patches across the floor that did nothing to soften the room's severity. The judge's bench sat elevated at the front, dark wood gleaming under the recessed lighting, flanked by the flags that stood sentinel in every courtroom in the building, their fabric hanging still in the windowless air.
Higuruma set his briefcase down at the defense table with a quiet, deliberate click, the sound crisp in a room that had not yet filled with the murmur of onlookers. He began arranging his files with the same practiced efficiency he brought to everything, corners aligned, tabs color-coded, the security footage printouts slotted precisely where his fingers would find them without needing to look.
He did not need to look up to know who had just walked in.
He felt it before he saw you, the shift in the air, the faint, familiar cadence of your heels against the floor, a rhythm entirely different from anyone else's, quicker, lighter, more sure of itself than it had any right to be given how early it still was.
Your voice had changed the moment you crossed the threshold into the courtroom, the playful warmth from the lobby folded away and tucked somewhere out of sight, replaced by something crisper, more controlled, though the corner of your mouth still betrayed you, still curved with the faintest trace of amusement as you looked at him.
He glanced up. You stood at the prosecution's table, setting down your own briefcase, your blazer buttoned now, your folder squared neatly at the edge of the table, every trace of the woman who had shoved a coffee into his hand twenty minutes earlier folded beneath the posture of a prosecutor preparing to argue a man's guilt in front of a judge.
No honorific. He never used one with you, not since the second case you'd opposed each other on, three years ago, when you had walked straight up to him after losing and told him, with an infuriating smile, that you were looking forward to beating him next time. You had not, in fact, beaten him next time. Or the time after that. It hadn't stopped you from smiling regardless.
"You look surprised to see me," you said, not looking at him, arranging your own documents with the same precision he used, though your stack was thinner, sharper, built for speed rather than exhaustive weight.
"You didn't check the case file."
"I checked the case file." He set his pen down, aligning it with the edge of his legal pad. "I assumed the delay meant a different prosecutor had been assigned."
"That is not the word I would use."
You finally looked at him then, something bright and challenging flickering behind your eyes, though your mouth remained carefully composed, professional, the smile from the lobby buried somewhere just beneath the surface, waiting.
"What word would you use?"
Higuruma held your gaze for a moment longer than the exchange strictly required.
That earned him the smile after all, small and fleeting, gone as quickly as it appeared, swallowed the instant the bailiff's voice rang out from the side door.
"All rise. The Honorable Judge Watanabe presiding."
The room shifted at once, chairs scraping softly against the floor, the low murmur of the gallery, which had filled behind you without either of you quite noticing, rising and falling in a single collective breath as everyone stood.
Judge Watanabe entered with the unhurried gait of a man who had presided over this courtroom for the better part of two decades, his robes settling around him as he took his seat, reading glasses already perched low on his nose, a stack of files at his elbow that he did not look at.
The gallery obeyed in a soft rustle of fabric and creaking wood.
"We're here on the matter of the State versus Tanaka," Watanabe said, his voice flat with the particular fatigue of a man who had recited the same opening a thousand times. "Preliminary motions. Ms. Y/N, I understand the prosecution is opposing the defense's motion to suppress the witness testimony."
"That's correct, Your Honor." You rose smoothly, buttoning your blazer as you stood, your voice carrying easily across the room, warm but firm, every trace of playfulness gone from it now, replaced by something sharper, more deliberate. "The witness's account is both credible and consistent. The defense's objection rests entirely on a six-minute window in the timeline that, respectfully, proves nothing."
"Proves nothing," Higuruma repeated, not standing yet, his voice quiet, almost conversational, though it cut clean through the room regardless. "Or proves precisely the opposite of what the prosecution needs it to prove."
Watanabe's eyes flicked between you both over the rim of his glasses, the faintest suggestion of weariness in the set of his mouth, the look of a man who had watched this particular pair face off enough times to know exactly how the next twenty minutes would go.
"Mr. Higuruma. You'll get your turn."
"Apologies, Your Honor." He did not sound especially apologetic. He rose, buttoning his own jacket with the same unhurried precision, and the room, you included, seemed to still slightly at the sight, the way a room does when it senses the temperature is about to shift.
"The witness places the defendant at the scene of the altercation at approximately 9:40 p.m.," you said, turning slightly to address the judge directly, though your voice was pitched to carry to the defense table as well, to Higuruma, to the low, waiting rustle of the gallery behind you. "That places him with more than enough time to have committed the assault and left before police arrived at 9:52."
"The witness places him near the scene," Higuruma said, still seated, one hand resting flat against the case file in front of him. "Not at it. The store's security footage, timestamped and unaltered, places my client entering a convenience store two blocks away at 9:32 and exiting at 9:38."
"A two-block walk that takes, generously, ninety seconds," you countered, not missing a beat, turning fully toward him now, your chin lifting slightly, a spark of something almost eager kindling behind your eyes, the look of a woman who genuinely relished this, who had been waiting all morning for exactly this moment. "Which leaves your client with a comfortable window to reach the scene by 9:40, precisely when the witness places him there."
"A witness who," Higuruma said, finally rising, unhurried, his chair scraping back with a low, deliberate sound, "by her own statement to police, admitted she was, and I quote, pretty sure it was around 9:40. Not certain. Pretty sure."
"Eyewitness estimates are inherently imprecise, Your Honor, that doesn't make them inadmissibleâ"
"It makes them insufficient to override a timestamped, unaltered video record," Higuruma said, his tone never rising, never sharpening into anything so crude as anger, and that, more than any raised voice ever could have, seemed to land harder in the quiet room. "The prosecution is asking this court to trust a witness's impression of a clock over a camera's record of one."
"The prosecution is asking this court to recognize that six minutes is not an alibi, Mr. Higuruma, it's a gap. And gaps get filled by evidence, not by the defense's insistence that reasonable doubt exists simply because they've said the word 'insufficient' enough times."
There was a beat of silence. Somewhere in the gallery, someone shifted in their seat, the wood creaking softly.
Higuruma looked at you for a long moment; something almost like admiration flickered, buried and quickly smothered, beneath the flat composure of his expression. You were good. You had always been good, sharper than most attorneys twice your age, and it was, infuriatingly, one of the things he found himself unable to stop noticing about you, in the courtroom and well outside of it.
"With respect," he said finally, quiet and even, "the prosecution's entire theory of this case depends on the six minutes being enough. Everything else, the motive, the supposed prior altercation between my client and the alleged victim, none of it holds without those six minutes doing an enormous amount of work. And the moment the state has to lean that heavily on a witness's uncertain estimate to make its timeline function, that is not evidence, Your Honor. That is a story the prosecution has decided is true and is now working backward to support."
"That's an accusation, not an argument," you said, and for the first time, there was a flicker of real heat behind your words, quick and sharp, though it never once slipped into anything unprofessional. "The defense doesn't get to dismiss a witness's testimony simply because it's inconvenient."
"I'm not dismissing it. I'm asking this court to weigh it accurately." Higuruma's gaze shifted, briefly, deliberately, to the judge. "Your Honor, the defense renews its motion to suppress the witness's testimony as it pertains specifically to the disputed timeline, on the grounds that its imprecision creates a substantial and unaddressed conflict with physical evidence already accepted by this court."
Watanabe exhaled slowly through his nose, removing his glasses to rub briefly at the bridge of it, the universal gesture of a man who had been doing this job for far too long to find any of it exciting anymore.
"The prosecution maintains that witness testimony regarding approximate timing is standard, admissible evidence in this jurisdiction, and that any inconsistency with the video footage is a matter for the jury to weigh, not grounds for suppression at this stage." You said it crisply, without hesitation, though your eyes flicked, just once, toward Higuruma, something unreadable passing behind them, something that might have been frustration, or might have been the particular thrill of an argument you were enjoying more than you probably should have.
"Noted." Watanabe glanced between you both, his expression unreadable. "The court will take the motion under advisement. We'll reconvene at two o'clock with a ruling. Anything further?"
"No, Your Honor," Higuruma said.
"No, Your Honor," you echoed, a beat behind him.
"Then we're adjourned until two." The gavel came down once, sharp and final, and the room exhaled as a single body, chairs scraping, papers shuffling, the low murmur of conversation rising immediately in the gallery behind you.
Higuruma remained standing at the defense table a moment longer than necessary, gathering his files with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything, though his eyes tracked, almost involuntarily, your movement across the room.
You were still there too, snapping your briefcase shut, and when you looked up, you found him already watching you, and neither of you looked away.
You crossed the room without hesitation, weaving between the emptying benches, your heels clicking that same familiar rhythm, and came to a stop on the other side of the defense table, close enough that he had to tip his head slightly to meet your eyes.
"Pretty sure," you said, a small, wry smile tugging at your mouth. "You're going to make me regret ever putting that phrase in a police report for the rest of my career."
"You're insufferable in there, you know that?"
"You told me I was good this morning."
"I told you the timeline was weak. That's different from telling you you're good." But there was no bite in it, just that same warm, easy amusement from the lobby creeping back in now that the judge's robes and the weight of the gallery had gone, replaced by something looser, more familiar. You leaned one hip against the edge of his table, entirely too comfortable for a woman who had just spent the last twenty minutes arguing against him in front of a judge. "For the record, I still think you're wrong."
"You're allowed to think that."
You studied him for a moment, head tilting slightly, a strand of hair slipping loose again, and Higuruma found his eyes drawn to it before he caught himself and looked, deliberately, back down at his files.
"You know," you said, your voice dropping slightly, losing some of its courtroom polish, softening into something more private, meant only for the narrow space between you, "I don't do this because I enjoy losing to you."
"I do it because I actually believe the system can work. That it's supposed to work. That if people like me stop showing up and fighting for it from the inside, all that's left in the building is people like you, standing outside it, saying it's broken." You said it lightly, almost teasingly, but there was something honest threaded underneath, something you rarely let show quite this plainly.
Higuruma closed his briefcase, the latch clicking softly, and considered you for a long moment.
"And I do this," he said, quiet, even, "because I've watched the system decide who deserves a defense and who doesn't, long before anyone hears a single piece of evidence. I don't think it works, Y/N. I think it works for people who already have everything, and grinds down everyone else. I take these cases because someone has to be the last person standing between a broken process and a person who never had a chance inside it."
You were quiet for a moment, something soft and unguarded flickering behind your eyes, and for once, you didn't have a quick response waiting.
"That's the most you've ever said to me about why you do this."
A small laugh escaped you, genuine and warm, and some of the seriousness that had settled over the space between you eased, loosened, the way it always seemed to whenever you decided you'd let a moment sit for exactly as long as it needed to and not a second longer.
"For what it's worth," you said, straightening, adjusting the strap of your bag over your shoulder, "I don't think you're wrong that the system fails people. I just think giving up on fixing it from the inside is how it stays broken."
"I haven't given up on anything."
"No," you agreed, a slow smile spreading across your face, warm and a little too knowing. "You haven't."
You turned to go, then paused, glancing back at him over your shoulder, and Higuruma had the distinct, unwelcome sense that whatever came out of your mouth next was going to be a problem.
"Two o'clock," you said. "Try not to gloat too hard when Watanabe rules in your favor."
"You get this insufferable little quiet satisfaction that's honestly worse than gloating."
"It's an accurate one." You threw his own earlier words back at him with obvious relish, grinning now, unrepentant, already walking backward toward the gallery doors. "Lunch, by the way. You still owe me an answer, and I'm not above ambushing you in the cafeteria."
"I'm aware you're not above that."
"Good. Then you know what's coming."
You disappeared through the doors before he could formulate a response, which was, he suspected, entirely the point.
Higuruma stood alone at the defense table for a long moment, the courtroom emptying around him, sunlight shifting faintly through the high windows, and found himself, not for the first time, staring at the doors you'd just walked through with an expression he was glad no one was left in the room to see.
The courthouse cafeteria at midday was a different thing entirely from the marble hush of the corridors above. Trays clattered against the counter, the espresso machine hissed and spat in intervals, and the low buzz of conversation from a dozen different tables blended into something almost comforting in its ordinariness, a small pocket of the building where nobody was arguing anyone's guilt or innocence, at least not out loud.
Higuruma had claimed a corner table by the window, the kind he always gravitated toward, close enough to the wall that no one could sit behind him, far enough from the counter that the noise dulled into background static rather than something that picked at his concentration. Shimizu sat across from him, a half-eaten katsu sandwich in one hand, the Tanaka file spread open beside her tray, corners weighted down with a salt shaker and her phone.
"You barely touched your food," she said, not looking up from the page she was scanning.
"You moved it around your plate. That's different from eating."
He didn't answer, which she had long since learned to interpret as agreement he had no intention of voicing aloud.
"You're distracted," she added, glancing up now, studying him with the particular scrutiny of someone who had shared a table with this man enough times to know the difference between his working silence and his other silence.
"I'm thinking about the ruling."
"You're thinking about the six minutes."
"That is what the ruling concerns."
"Mm." Shimizu took another bite of her sandwich, chewing slowly, watching him.Â
The cafeteria door swung open, and Higuruma didn't need to look up to know who it was. He felt it the same way he had in the courtroom that morning, some small, involuntary shift in his attention that he had never quite managed to train out of himself no matter how many times he told himself it was inconvenient.
"There you are." Your voice carried easily across the room, warm and unbothered by the fact that half the tables nearby glanced up at the sound of it. You were still in your blazer, though you'd shed the folder somewhere along the way, one holding your lunch as you crossed toward their table with the same unhurried confidence you carried everywhere.
"I was looking for you," you said to Shimizu, though your eyes had already drifted, unmistakably, to the man seated across from her.
"Mm-hm," Shimizu said, not remotely convinced, and not bothering to hide it.
"I was." You pulled out the empty chair beside Higuruma without waiting to be invited, setting your tray down, a bowl of soup and a small container of rice, and settled in as though you'd been meant to sit there all along. "I wanted to ask if you'd looked over the Fujita filing yet. It's due by end of day and I remembered you said you'd take a pass at it."
"I have it half-marked up." Shimizu tapped the folder beside her tray. "I'll finish it after lunch."
"Perfect." You smiled, satisfied, and turned your attention fully to Higuruma now, who had gone very still in the particular way he did whenever he sensed an ambush closing in around him and had already resigned himself to enduring it. "How's the sandwich?"
"I don't have a sandwich."
"How's the not-eating, then."
"Riveting." You popped the lid off your rice container, stirring it idly with your chopsticks, though your eyes stayed on him, bright and assessing. "You were very good this morning, by the way. Insufferable, but good."
"You've said that already."
Shimizu, for her part, had gone entirely silent, eating her sandwich with the studied focus of a woman who had decided, quite deliberately, not to involve herself in whatever was about to happen at this table, though the corner of her mouth kept twitching in a way that suggested she was enjoying it regardless.
The three of you ate like that for a while, or rather, you and Shimizu ate, and Higuruma pushed rice around his plate with his chopsticks in a way that fooled no one, the conversation drifting between the Fujita filing and an unrelated case Shimizu was juggling and a complaint about the espresso machine's tendency to scald anyone brave enough to use it before ten a.m. It was, for a while, almost comfortable, the three of you tucked into your corner table while the cafeteria churned on around you, and Higuruma found himself, against his better judgment, relaxing by some small, grudging degree.
Then Shimizu's phone buzzed against the table, the screen lighting up, and she glanced down at it, her brows lifting slightly.
"That's Fujita's office. They want the filing early." She was already standing, gathering her tray, sliding the case file into her bag with practiced efficiency. "I'm going to use the restroom and answer this."
"You just sat down," you said, though there was something knowing in the way you said it, something that suggested you weren't remotely surprised.
"I was sitting for twenty minutes. That's a full lunch by courthouse standards." Shimizu slung her bag over her shoulder, glancing briefly at Higuruma, and something passed behind her eyes, quick and pointed, gone before he could fully read it. "Behave, the both of you."
"We are always behaved," Higuruma said flatly.
"That's exactly what concerns me." Shimizu was already walking away, lifting a hand in a lazy wave without looking back, disappearing into the crowd near the counter and then out through the cafeteria doors, leaving an empty chair and a considerably quieter table in her wake.
Higuruma became aware, almost immediately, of precisely how quiet it had gotten.
You didn't say anything at first. You simply resumed eating, unhurried, stirring your rice, and for a moment he allowed himself to believe the conversation might stay exactly where it had been, harmless and easy, nothing more than lunch.
Then he felt it. The light, deliberate press of something against his shin beneath the table, the smooth, cool edge of a heel dragging slowly up the length of his leg, and he went rigid, his chopsticks pausing halfway to his mouth.
You were watching him over the rim of your water glass, entirely unbothered, your expression the picture of innocence, as though your foot were not, in fact, currently tracing an idle, deliberate line along his calf beneath the table.
"Something wrong?" you asked, all false sweetness, taking a slow sip of your water.
"You are aware there are people at the next table."
"They're not looking at your leg, Higuruma." Your heel pressed slightly higher, and he felt the warmth crawl up the back of his neck despite every effort to remain composed, his jaw tightening, his grip on his chopsticks going white-knuckled. "Relax."
"I would relax if you stopped."
"I could." You tilted your head, considering. "But you're much more interesting like this."
"Flustered." You said the word with obvious delight, drawing it out, watching the faint, betraying color that had crept along the tips of his ears. "It's rare. I like it."
"So is ignoring a woman's messages for two weeks, and yet." You shrugged, unrepentant, though you did finally withdraw your foot, and Higuruma exhaled a breath he hadn't quite realized he'd been holding, some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders even as the warmth remained stubbornly present at the back of his neck. "There's this restaurant," you said, seamlessly, as though the previous thirty seconds hadn't happened at all, "near the river. Small place, family-run, they do this grilled fish that's genuinely the best in the city. I've been wanting to try it for months, and I refuse to go alone, because eating alone at a restaurant that romantic feels tragic, and I refuse to be tragic."
"I fail to see how this concerns me."
"It concerns you because you're going to come with me." You said it simply, as though the matter had already been settled, as though there had never been any real question of it at all. "Friday. Seven o'clock."
"You always have work." You threw his own line back at him, the same one Shimizu had used that very morning, and he wondered, with some resignation, whether the two of you had simply absorbed each other's arguments through sheer proximity over the years. "You can have work and still eat dinner, Higuruma. Even you require food. I've seen it happen, on the rare occasion you actually finish a plate."
He said nothing, staring down at his own untouched rice, and you watched him with the patient, unhurried expression of a woman who had learned, over three years, exactly how long his silences tended to run before they broke.
"It's not a courtroom," you added, quieter now, some of the teasing edge softening into something more sincere. "There's no ruling. No motion to argue. Just dinner. Just you and me, for once, without a case file between us."
Higuruma looked up at you, and for a moment, something in his expression shifted, some careful wall lowering by a fraction, enough that you caught it, enough that your breath caught slightly in your chest at the sight of it, rare as it was.
"Friday. Seven o'clock." He said it flatly, already looking back down at his plate, picking his chopsticks back up as though the matter were entirely unremarkable, though the tips of his ears had not yet lost their color. "If only to stop you from ambushing me in cafeterias."
"That's not a very romantic reason to say yes."
"It is the only reason I'm offering."
But you were smiling, wide and unguarded, the kind of smile that had nothing performative left in it at all, and Higuruma found himself, despite every instinct telling him not to, unable to look away from it for several seconds longer than strictly necessary.
Courtroom Seven filled again at two o'clock, the gallery restless with the particular low hum of people who had spent their lunch hour speculating about a ruling none of them had any real stake in. Higuruma sat at the defense table, his files arranged with the same precision as that morning, though something in his posture had loosened, almost imperceptibly, some tension bled out of his shoulders that hadn't been there before. Across the room, you sat at the prosecution's table, and when your eyes met briefly across the aisle, there was no trace of the courtroom's usual formality in the look, just a small, private thing that belonged to the two of you alone.
The room stood as one, the familiar rustle of fabric and creaking wood, and Judge Watanabe entered, settling into his seat with the same unhurried gravity as always, his glasses catching the light as he glanced down at the file in front of him.
"Be seated." The gallery obeyed. "This court has reviewed the defense's motion to suppress the witness testimony in the matter of the State versus Tanaka, along with the arguments presented by both parties this morning."
Higuruma's hand rested flat against the table, still, composed, though something in his chest had gone taut, waiting.
"The court finds," Watanabe continued, his voice carrying the flat, practiced cadence of a man who had delivered thousands of rulings and felt the weight of perhaps a tenth of them, "that while the discrepancy between the witness's estimated timeline and the security footage is a legitimate point of contest, it does not rise to the level required to suppress the testimony outright. The inconsistency, and its implications, are matters properly weighed by a jury, not grounds for exclusion at this stage. The motion is denied."
The gavel came down once, sharp and final, and the sound seemed to Higuruma louder than it had any right to be, ringing out across a room that had gone, for just a moment, entirely silent around him.
Across the aisle, you did not smile, not immediately, your expression carefully composed, professional, though he caught the small, controlled exhale of relief that passed through you, the faint loosening of your shoulders.
"Anything further?" Watanabe asked, glancing between the two tables.
"No, Your Honor," you said.
Higuruma said nothing for a moment, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on the file in front of him, on the timestamped photograph of a convenience store entrance that had, apparently, meant nothing at all in the end.
"No, Your Honor," he said finally, the words clipped, controlled.
"Then we're adjourned. Trial date will be set through the clerk's office." The gavel came down a second time, and the courtroom exhaled, the gallery rising in a wave of murmured conversation and shuffling papers.
Higuruma remained seated a moment longer than necessary, staring at the file, at the six minutes that had, in the end, changed nothing at all. When he finally rose, gathering his things with movements that had lost all their earlier fluidity, sharp and clipped instead, you were already crossing the room toward him, your own files tucked beneath your arm.
"You know that testimony is wrong." He didn't look up at you, still arranging his files, though his hands had gone tense, precise motions turning suddenly rigid. "You know the timeline doesn't hold. You said it yourself this morning. The timeline is weak."
"I said it was questionable. I never said it was wrong." Your voice had lost its warmth now too, some of the courtroom's formality bleeding back into it, though there was something else beneath it, something careful, watching him. "The judge agreed it's a matter for the jury. That's not a failure of the system, Higuruma, that's the system working exactly as it's supposed to. Both sides get to make their case, and twelve people decide."
"Twelve people who will hear a witness say 'pretty sure' and fill in the rest with whatever story the prosecution hands them, because that's easier than sitting with doubt." His voice had not risen, it never rose, but there was an edge to it now that hadn't been there in the courtroom, something rawer, less controlled. "You know what happens to men like Tanaka in front of a jury with a story that's easier to believe than the truth. You've seen it happen. I've seen it happen."
"That's not fair." Something flashed behind your eyes now, hurt threading quickly into something sharper. "I don't build a case on stories that are easier to believe. I build it on evidence I genuinely think supports the charge. You don't get to stand there and imply I don't care whether the outcome is just, just because I disagree with you about what the evidence shows."
"I'm not implying anything. I'm telling you what I've watched happen to people like him, over and over, because good, well-meaning prosecutors decided a six-minute gap was close enough." He finally looked at you, and his eyes were hard in a way you had rarely seen them, the softness from the cafeteria entirely gone, replaced by something colder, more distant. "You call it working from the inside. I've started to wonder if it's just a more comfortable way of saying you've made peace with how many people the inside is allowed to fail."
The words landed harder than either of you expected, and for a moment, you simply stared at him, something flickering across your face, quick and wounded, before you caught it, before your expression smoothed back into something more composed, more guarded.
"Wow." Your voice was quiet now, quieter than he'd ever heard it, none of its usual warmth or teasing left in it at all. "Okay."
"No, I heard you." You adjusted the files under your arm, your movements stiff, controlled. "You think I've made peace with failing people. Noted." You turned, already walking, and there was none of the easy confidence from the lobby left in your stride now, just something clipped and hurried. "I have to get back to my office."
But you were already gone, the courtroom doors swinging shut behind you, and Higuruma stood alone at the defense table for a long moment, his hands braced against the wood, the weight of what he'd said settling slowly, heavily, into his chest.
He told himself, standing there, that he had meant every word. That the timeline was weak, that the ruling was wrong, that men like Tanaka lost far too often to stories that were easier to believe than doubt. He told himself all of it was true.
He did not, that afternoon, examine too closely why the look on your face as you walked away had settled into his chest like a stone he would carry for considerably longer than he expected.
He told himself he would call you that evening. He didn't. He told himself he would send something the next morning, some small, careful acknowledgment that he'd spoken out of frustration and not entirely meant it the way it had landed, but the morning came and went, buried under an emergency filing for another client, and by the time he looked up from his desk it was already dark outside, and the moment had somehow slipped past him the way moments like that always seemed to, quietly, without announcing themselves, until they were simply gone.
Wednesday, your message arrived. Still on for Friday?
He read it twice, his thumb hovering over the screen, and then set the phone face-down on his desk and returned to the file in front of him, telling himself he would answer it once he'd finished the paragraph he was reading. He did not finish the paragraph. He did not answer the message.
Thursday, nothing came from you at all, and he told himself that was for the best.
Friday arrived, and he sat in his office until well past nine, the city outside his window sliding into that particular blue-black hour when the last of the offices around him went dark one by one, and he did not go to the restaurant near the river, and he did not send a message explaining why, and somewhere across the city, he knew, without needing to be told, that a table was sitting empty.
He told himself, that night, that it was better this way. That whatever had been building between the two of you for three years was a complication neither of you could afford, not really, not with a courtroom between you every other week, not with a fight still sitting raw and unresolved in his chest. He told himself a great many things that night, and none of them made the stone in his chest any lighter.
You didn't call him again after that first message went unanswered.
You told yourself, that Friday, sitting alone in your apartment with a candle you'd lit for absolutely no reason burning low on the counter and a dress you'd changed out of an hour after putting it on, that this was simply confirmation of something you should have already known. That three years of coffee and courtroom banter, in the end, meant considerably less to him than it had come to mean to you. You ate reheated leftovers standing at the counter instead of the grilled fish you'd been talking about for months, and you told yourself it didn't matter, and you didn't quite believe yourself, not that night, and not for a long time after.
The days blurred together after that, one into the next, work the only thing steady enough to hold onto. You buried yourself in it the way you always did when something hurt too much to examine directly, filing motions, prepping witnesses, staying at the office later than you needed to simply because your apartment had started to feel too quiet, too full of a silence that had a very specific shape now, the shape of a phone that never lit up with his name.
You told yourself you didn't care anymore. You told yourself that on a loop, some mornings, brushing your teeth and staring at your own tired reflection, and some mornings you almost believed it.
The police station on Fourth Street smelled the way it always did, like burnt coffee and old carpet and the particular institutional exhaustion that seemed to live in the walls of every government building in the city. You'd spent the better part of the afternoon there, collecting a signed statement from a witness in an unrelated case, and your heels ached from standing at the counter for the better part of an hour while a records clerk moved through the process with all the urgency of a man who had never once in his career felt rushed by anything.
"Here you go." The clerk finally slid the file across the counter, and you gathered it up, tucking it beneath your arm, already exhausted and ready to be anywhere else.
You made your way toward the exit, weaving past a cluster of uniformed officers near the front desk, and one of them, a younger one, fell into step just close enough to be noticeable, his smile a shade too practiced.
"Long day?" he asked, glancing at the file under your arm with more interest in you than in it. "I could grab you a coffee, if you've got a minute. Break room's not bad, for a police station."
"I'm actually in a hurry," you said, already moving past him, and you meant it as a polite deflection, nothing more, but the words had barely left your mouth when you saw him.
Higuruma, stepping out through the station's front doors ahead of you, briefcase in hand, tie loosened, his profile sharp and familiar even from behind, and something in your chest seized violently at the sight of him, three weeks of unanswered messages and unspoken hurt rising up all at once, hot and sudden.
"Sorry," you said to the officer, already moving, "I have to go."
You didn't wait to hear his response. You pushed through the station's doors after Higuruma, your heels striking hard and fast against the pavement outside, an undignified, uneven rhythm that would have embarrassed you on any other day, and called out before you'd fully decided to.
He stopped. You watched his shoulders go rigid, in a stillness that meant he'd recognized your voice immediately and had, in that same instant, considered simply continuing to walk. He didn't. He turned, slowly, and his expression was carefully, deliberately blank in a way that made the anger in your chest flare hotter rather than cooler.
"Don't." You closed the distance between you quickly, your voice already shaking with something you'd been swallowing for three weeks. "Don't just say my name like that. Like nothing happened."
"I have a hearing to prepare for."
"You have had three weeks to answer a text message." Your voice cracked on the last word, and you hated it, hated how quickly the anger gave way to something rawer underneath, something that felt dangerously close to tears you refused to let fall in the middle of a police station parking lot. "I sat at home Friday night. Alone. In a dress I bought for a dinner you agreed to and then decided wasn't worth telling me you weren't coming to."
Higuruma's jaw tightened, his eyes flicking briefly away from yours, something that might have been guilt passing quickly across his face before it was smoothed back into that same careful neutrality.
"I never confirmed it was a date."
The words landed like a slap, and you felt your whole body go cold with something sharper than anger now.
"It was dinner." His voice was clipped, controlled, though there was an edge fraying at the corners of it, something that sounded less like conviction and more like a man reaching for the nearest available wall to hide behind. "You suggested it as a way to stop pestering me in the cafeteria. I said yes to end the conversation."
You felt something in your chest crack clean open, and before you'd fully processed the motion, you'd closed the last of the distance between you, your hand shoving hard against his chest, backing him into the brick wall of the alley beside the station's parking lot, your heels unsteady beneath you but your grip solid, furious.
"That's a lie," you said, low and shaking. "You don't get to stand there and rewrite three years into something convenient just because you're too much of a coward to admit you hurt me and didn't know how to fix it."
Higuruma's back met the brick with a soft thud, and for a moment he simply stared down at you, something flickering behind his eyes that wasn't quite anger, wasn't quite anything you could name, and his jaw worked once before he spoke, his voice lower now, rougher.
"Then look me in the eye and tell me you meant what you just said."
He didn't answer. The silence stretched, taut and furious, and you felt your pulse hammering, your breath coming fast and uneven from the run and the fury and three weeks of a hurt you'd been carrying alone, and you were close enough now, close enough that you could see the exhaustion carved deep beneath his eyes, could smell the faint, clean scent of him, something like cedar and old paper, close enough that some small, mortifying part of you registered the way his gaze had gone distant, unfocused, fixed somewhere just past your face.
"You know what," you said, breathing hard, "maybe we should just settle this the old-fashioned way. Fist to fist. Since apparently words are too complicated for you."
He didn't answer that either.
"Higuruma." You snapped your fingers once in front of his face, sharp and irritated. "Are you even listening to me?"
His eyes came back into focus slowly, something flustered and caught crossing his features, the tips of his ears going faintly red in a way that had nothing to do with the cold evening air, and it was only then, following the direction his gaze had briefly wandered, that you realized exactly how close the two of you had ended up, your chest pressed against his in the heat of the argument, barely any space left between you at all.
"Were you seriously just staring atâ" You didn't finish the sentence, mortification and fury tangling together, and you pinched his arm hard, hard enough to make him flinch and finally, properly, meet your eyes.
"I wasn'tâ" he started, and for the first time in the entire conversation, his composure cracked fully, something almost boyish and entirely unfamiliar flickering across his face, caught between guilt and something he clearly hadn't intended to let show.
"You absolutely were." You should have stepped back. You knew you should have stepped back, put the sensible, professional distance between you that three years of courtroom decorum had trained into you, and instead you found yourself stepping closer instead, some reckless, furious, aching part of you refusing to let this be the version of the conversation that ended in silence again.
"Y/N," he said, low, a warning and something else entirely tangled together in the single syllable of your name, and his hands had come up without either of you quite deciding it, resting lightly, uncertainly, at your waist, not pulling you closer, not pushing you away, simply there, as though he didn't trust himself to decide which one he wanted more.
The alley was quiet around you, the distant hum of the station's parking lot lights the only sound, and for a long, suspended moment, neither of you moved, the argument still hanging unfinished in the air between you, tangled up now with something else entirely, something that had been building for three years and three weeks of silence and one bruised, aching apology neither of you had managed to say out loud yet.
He stared down at you while you looked up at him, his hand firm on your waist giving it a small squeeze without truly thinking about his actions. This was the closest you have ever been to each other, and you already felt intoxicated by the heat of his body and the faint, clean scent of him. His eyes moved past your eyes, where he held your gaze, to your lips. You waited for him to make the first move because if he did, it would only confirm that he wants you as much as you want him.
The air between you is thick, charged with three years of unsaid things and three weeks of angry silence. His thumb moved in a slow, deliberate circle against the fabric of your blazer, the pressure a silent confession. His gaze lingered on your mouth, his own lips parting slightly, and the practiced blankness of his expression finally shatters completely, replaced by a raw, unguarded want that makes your breath catch.
He doesn't ask. He doesn't apologize. He simply closes the last whisper of distance, his mouth meeting yours with a quiet, desperate urgency that feels like a dam breaking. The kiss is not gentle. It is an answer, a surrender, and a claim all at once, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of your head as he deepens the contact, swallowing the sharp, surprised sound you make.
You taste the faint bitterness of coffee and the salt of the evening air, but mostly you taste him, a flavor you've imagined in the quiet moments of your professional life until it became a haunting. Higuruma makes a sound, a low, wounded noise that vibrates deep in his throat. It's not a groan of dominance, but a sigh of relief.Â
His hands, which had been resting uncertainly at your waist, slide inward, pulling you flush against him. He doesn't slam you against the opposite wall as he moves away from it, instead, he guides you back with a gentle, almost reverent pressure until your shoulders now are the ones which meet the brick. He followed you, pressing his body into yours, not to pin you, but to anchor himself.
He kissed you with a heartbreaking tenderness, his tongue sweeping against yours in a slow, searching rhythm. He is treating you as if you are something fragile, something he is afraid might vanish if he presses too hard, yet he cannot stop himself from wanting more. His breath hot and ragged against your skin, hitching every time you moan softly into his mouth.
Your hands wander with a trembling curiosity. You don't clutch, you explore. Your fingers slide up his chest, feeling the frantic, drumming beat of his heart through the fabric of his shirt, a heart that is racing just as fast as yours. You move your hands up to his neck, your fingers tangling in the short hairs at the nape of his head, gently pulling him closer, wanting to erase every single millimeter of space between you.
A soft, guttural hum vibrates in Higuruma's chest. He shifts his weight, his leg sliding between yours with a slow, tentative friction. He doesn't force it; he just leans into you, letting the heat of his arousal press gently against your thigh. The sensation is a slow burn, a radiating warmth that makes your stomach flip and your breath hitch.
As the kiss deepens, becoming wetter and more desperate, Higuruma's hands begin to roam. One hand stays at the small of your back, rubbing soothing circles into your skin through your clothes, while the other slides down. It's a slow journey, his palm skimming the curve of your hip before finally cupping the swell of your backside.
He doesn't squeeze with aggression; instead, he kneads the flesh of your ass with a soft, possessive rhythm. His fingers sink into you, pulling you closer, hoisting you up just enough so that you can feel the heavy, pulsing length of him against your pelvis. It is a gentle pressure, a slow grind that feels like a question and an answer all at once. You whimper, the sound muffled by his lips, and he responds by nipping softly at your lower lip, a tiny spark of heat in the middle of the softness.
He breaks the kiss just enough to press his forehead against yours. His eyes are closed, his lashes damp, and his voice is a broken whisper, stripped of every ounce of courtroom decorum. "I've wanted... I've wanted this for so long," he breathes, his voice trembling.Â
 He captures your lips again, the kiss becoming deeper, more fluid, more lost. It is a messy tangle of breath and longing, the kind of kiss that happens when two people stop thinking and start feeling. His hand continues to stroke and squeeze your backside, a tender, rhythmic motion that makes you feel cherished and desired in equal measure.
Then, the silence of the alley is interrupted.
A sharp, digital ringtone slices through the air, a jarring contrast to the intimacy of the moment. Higuruma stiffens. The sound is like a physical blow, pulling him back from the edge. He doesn't pull away instantly, he lingers, his lips brushing yours one last time in a ghostly, lingering caress. He rests his cheek against yours for a second, his eyes closing tightly as if he's trying to hold onto the feeling of you.
Then, with a slow, pained exhale, he steps back.
The cold air rushes in to fill the space where he had been, leaving you feeling suddenly exposed and shivering. You blink, your lips swollen and tingling, your chest heaving. Higuruma looks at you, really looks at you, and for the first time, the mask is completely gone. He looks devastated to be leaving you.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the phone, the screen illuminating his tired features. He doesn't say anything for a long moment, his gaze drifting from your eyes to your mouth, a flicker of longing crossing his face.
"I have to take this," he says softly. The measured tone is back, but it's fragile, cracking under the weight of the adrenaline and the affection. He doesn't touch you again as he turns to walk away toward the light of the parking lot. He leaves you there, pressed against the brick wall, your skin still humming from his touch and your heart aching with the sudden, quiet loneliness of the alley.
You waited outside the station longer than you meant to, leaning back against the cool brick where he'd had you pinned only minutes before, one hand pressed absently to your own mouth as though you could hold the shape of the kiss there a little longer if you just didn't let it go.
Your phone was in your other hand, though you weren't really looking at it. You were looking at nothing, actually, or rather you were looking at everything and seeing none of it, the parking lot, the flickering security light over the station's side entrance, the two officers walking past with their radios crackling static, all of it dissolved into soft, unimportant background while your mind replayed, on an endless, helpless loop, the feeling of his hands finally settling at your waist instead of hovering, the low, rough sound he'd made against your mouth right before his phone had started buzzing insistently in his jacket pocket.
You thought about his hands. Not just where they'd been, but the shape of them, long fingers, precise, the same hands that annotated case files in small, careful handwriting now suddenly, thrillingly clumsy against you, as though for once in his life Hiromi Higuruma hadn't known exactly what he was doing.
You thought about his mouth. You'd wondered, more than once over the last three years, in moments you were mildly ashamed of, what it would be like, whether a man who measured every word so carefully in court would kiss the same way, deliberate, controlled, or whether all that restraint would simply break the second it was given permission. It had been the second one. It had been searching and a little desperate and entirely, gratifyingly undone, and the memory of it sent a fresh, warm shiver down through your chest even now, standing alone in a police station parking lot with your lipstick almost certainly smudged.
You thought about his face. The sharp, serious lines of it that made him look older than he was in the courtroom, and the way all of that severity had simply dissolved in the alley, his brow furrowed not with concentration but with something rawer, something helpless, his usually flawless composure cracking open just enough to let you see, for one unguarded moment, exactly how much he wanted you.
You were still thinking about all of it, your fingers pressed lightly to your lips, when you heard his footsteps rounding the corner of the building, unhurried as always, and you startled slightly, dropping your hand, heat rushing embarrassingly to your face as though he might somehow be able to read exactly what you'd been standing here thinking about for the last five minutes.
"Sorry." He was tucking his phone back into his jacket pocket, his expression already smoothing back into something more composed, though you caught the faint, telltale color still lingering at the tips of his ears. "That took longer than I expected."
"Fine. A filing issue." He glanced at you, something flickering briefly behind his eyes, some small, uncertain question he didn't quite voice. "I have to go to the office."
"Now." A faint, apologetic tightness pulled at the corner of his mouth. "I'm sorry. I know we hadn'tâ"
He blinked, clearly not having anticipated that particular response, and you pressed on before he could find a polite, professional reason to say no, some old instinct from three years of chasing him refusing to let this particular door close before you'd even tried it.
"I'm done for the day. Witness statement's filed, and I don't have anything until tomorrow morning." You tilted your head slightly, a small, hopeful smile tugging at your mouth. "I could keep you company. Unless that's inappropriate somehow, givenâ" you gestured vaguely between the two of you, the alley, the kiss, everything unspoken and thrilling still hanging in the air, "âwhatever this is now."
Something in his expression softened, the careful blankness giving way to something warmer, something almost shy in a way that made your chest ache pleasantly.
"It's not inappropriate." He said it quietly, and then, after a beat, added, "I'd like that."
The walk to his office took eleven minutes, you knew because you counted them, each one deliberately, greedily, savoring the fact that you were walking beside Higuruma on a public street with absolutely no case file, no courtroom, no professional pretense standing between you.
You'd looped your arm through his without quite asking, the way you always did, except this time, instead of the polite, resigned tolerance he usually offered, he simply let you, his elbow bending slightly to accommodate the hold, and something about the easy, unprotesting way he did it made your chest go warm and a little dizzy.
"You're quiet," you said, glancing up at him as you walked, your heels clicking a rhythm slightly faster than his measured stride, forcing you to lengthen your steps to keep pace.
"About the fact that you're currently holding onto my arm like you're worried I'll disappear if you let go."
Your face went hot, and you opened your mouth to offer some defensive, deflecting retort, and then decided, somewhat recklessly, against it.
"Maybe I am a little worried about that." You said it lightly, teasingly, though there was a thread of real honesty beneath it, three years of watching him retreat into silence whenever things got close enough to matter. "You do have a habit of vanishing when things get complicated between us."
He was quiet for a moment, his jaw tightening slightly, and you worried, briefly, that you'd pushed too far too soon, ruined the fragile, unfamiliar warmth of the walk with too much truth too early.
"I'm aware of that habit," he said finally, his voice low, careful. "I'm trying not to indulge it today."
You looked up at him, something soft and hopeful blooming in your chest, and decided, generously, to let the moment breathe rather than pushing further, tightening your grip on his arm instead, your hand sliding slightly further along the firm, solid line of his bicep through the fabric of his blazer.
He really did have good arms, you thought, entirely without permission from the more dignified parts of your brain. You'd noticed it before, in an abstract, professionally repressed sort of way, the way his sleeves fit just a little too well when he rolled them up during long hearings, but walking this close, your shoulder brushing his, your chest very nearly pressed against the solid line of muscle beneath his sleeve with every other step, you found yourself considerably less able to keep the observation abstract.
"You're staring," he said, not looking at you, though the corner of his mouth had twitched, something almost smug threatening the edges of his usual composure.
"You've been staring at my arm for the last thirty seconds."
"I have been admiring the general vicinity of your arm," you corrected, entirely unashamed, tipping your chin up with as much dignity as you could muster while your face burned. "There's a difference."
"Yes. Staring implies I'm doing it discreetly. I am doing this quite openly, which makes it appreciation, not staring."
That earned you a low, quiet huff of something that was almost, almost a laugh, and you counted it as a victory, tightening your hold on his arm just slightly, your shoulder pressing more firmly against his as you walked, some shy, giddy warmth spreading through your chest at how easily, how naturally, this had all started to feel, after three years of careful distance and stolen half-moments on courthouse benches.
"So," you said, filling the comfortable silence that followed, because you had never in your life been able to sit quietly in a good mood without narrating some part of it out loud, "tell me something. Something not about a case."
"I don't know. Anything. What do you do when you're not working?"
He considered the question with the same careful seriousness he gave everything, his brow furrowing slightly, and you found the sight of it, a man visibly troubleshooting the question of his own hobbies as though it were a legal motion, absurdly endearing.
"Case files don't count."
"I'm aware they don't count." A faint, dry note crept into his voice, and you grinned, delighted. "I read novels. Mostly older ones. I have a specific fondness for detective fiction, which I recognize is somewhat on the nose for a man in my profession."
"It's extremely adorable. Higuruma, courtroom terror, unwinds at night with a good murder mystery." You bumped your shoulder lightly against his, delighted at the faint, betraying color creeping back into his ears. "What else?"
"I run. In the mornings, when I have time, which is rarely."
"Of course you do." You could picture it easily, entirely too easily, and filed the image away for later, private consideration. "What about music? Do you have taste, or is it silence and the sound of your own superior legal reasoning?"
"I'm not proving anything to you on a public street."
"I prefer strategic," he said, and there it was again, that faint, reluctant almost-smile, and you found yourself grinning back at him so widely your cheeks ached, three years of careful, guarded banter finally tipping over into something that felt, for the first time, entirely unguarded on both sides.
His office building looked exactly as unremarkable from the outside as you remembered it looking the handful of times you'd passed it over the years, never quite finding a reason good enough to actually go inside, and something in your chest fluttered nervously as he held the door for you, his hand settling briefly, warm and steady, at the small of your back as you stepped through ahead of him.
The narrow stairwell smelled faintly of old carpet and coffee, and by the time you reached the second floor, you could already hear the low, distinctive click of someone typing rapidly, the particular rhythm of a person working through a deadline with visible irritation.
"Shimizu's here," Higuruma said, mostly to himself, and something in his tone suggested this was, on balance, an inconvenience he hadn't fully prepared for.
You stepped through the office door just behind him, still faintly breathless from the stairs, your hand still loosely curled around his forearm out of sheer habit, and Shimizu looked up from her desk mid-sentence, her fingers stilling on the keyboard, her eyes moving, with unmistakable, deliberate slowness, from Higuruma's face to your hand on his arm to your own, faintly flushed face.
A long, telling silence followed.
"...Weren't you," Shimizu said finally, leaning back in her chair, her expression settling into something between amusement and open suspicion, "the one complaining, extensively, about being ignored for three weeks?"
Your face went instantly, furiously warm, and you released Higuruma's arm a half-second too late to look casual about it.
"I distinctly remember a message," Shimizu continued, entirely unbothered, folding her arms as she surveyed the two of you with the particular relish of a woman who had clearly been waiting for exactly this development, "asking whether he was, and I quote, 'okay,' which we both know meant something else entirely. And now here you are, walking in arm in arm looking likeâ" she gestured vaguely at the two of you, "âthat. What, precisely, did I miss?"
"Nothing," Higuruma said flatly, already moving past her toward his own desk, setting his briefcase down with slightly more force than strictly necessary.
"That is not a convincing nothing."
"I'm just saying." She held up both hands in mock surrender, though the grin on her face suggested she had absolutely no intention of dropping the subject entirely, merely tabling it for the moment. "Three weeks of radio silence, and now you two are holding hands in the doorway. Forgive me for finding that narratively inconsistent."
"We were not holding hands," you said, with as much dignity as you could scrape together, sinking gratefully into the chair beside Higuruma's desk if only to escape the line of Shimizu's gaze. "I was holding his arm. There's a difference."
"Sure," Shimizu said, entirely unconvinced, already turning back to her own screen, though you caught the small, satisfied curve of her mouth as she did, the look of a woman filing away a very juicy piece of information for later, more thorough interrogation. "Behave, you two. I have actual work to finish."
"We are always behaved," Higuruma said, settling into his chair, already reaching for the file he'd apparently come here for in the first place, and you caught Shimizu's soft, disbelieving snort from across the room, though she didn't look up again.
The office was quiet after that, filled mostly with the soft, steady rhythm of Higuruma's pen against paper and the occasional clatter of Shimizu's keyboard, and you found yourself, after a few minutes of aimlessly scrolling through your phone, dragging your chair a little closer to his desk, close enough that you could watch him work without straining your neck to see.
He didn't seem to mind. He glanced up once, registered the new proximity with the faintest, questioning lift of one brow, and then simply returned to his file without comment, which you decided, generously, to interpret as tacit approval.
"What are you working on?" you asked, propping your chin in your hand, watching the small, precise movements of his pen across the page.
"A filing for a client's bail hearing tomorrow." He didn't look up, though his voice had settled into something easier now, less clipped than it had been outside the station. "The prosecution is arguing flight risk. I disagree."
"Naturally," he echoed, the faintest thread of dry amusement in it, and you grinned, delighted at how easily this had all started to feel, ordinary and warm in a way that made the ache of the last three weeks feel very far away.
You let the silence settle for a while after that, content simply to watch him, the careful, focused line of his brow, the way his jaw tightened slightly whenever he crossed something out and rewrote it, the small, unconscious habit he had of tapping his pen twice against the desk whenever he paused to think. You'd never had the luxury of watching him work like this before, unhurried, uninterrupted, without a courtroom or a deadline crowding the space between you, and you found yourself cataloguing all of it greedily, filing it away the way you had filed away the shape of his hands and the sound he'd made against your mouth in the alley.
"You're staring again," he said, several minutes later, not looking up from the page.
"There is nothing admirable about a man filling out a continuance motion."
"You'd be surprised." You reached out, unable to resist any longer, and let your hand settle lightly against his back, tracing a slow, idle line along his shoulder blade through the fabric of his shirt. He went briefly still beneath the touch, his pen pausing mid-stroke, though he didn't pull away, didn't ask you to stop, simply resumed writing a moment later, his shoulders a fraction less rigid than before.
"You should take a break," you said, your hand still moving slowly against his back, some warm, indulgent part of you enjoying far too much the small, betraying tension in his shoulders whenever your fingers pressed just slightly harder against a particular knot of muscle near his spine.
"You've been staring at the same paragraph for the last four minutes."
"You have. I've been watching." You let your hand slide a little higher, your fingers working gently at the base of his neck now, and felt, with no small amount of satisfaction, the low, quiet sound that nearly escaped him before he caught it, his jaw tightening, his pen going still against the page entirely this time.
"That is not helping my concentration."
"That's the point," you said sweetly, undeterred, your fingers continuing their slow, deliberate work against the tension gathered there. "Take a break, Higuruma. Five minutes. The bail motion will still be here."
It was the same low, noncommittal sound he always made when he had absolutely no intention of doing what you'd just asked, and you huffed a soft, exasperated laugh, though you didn't stop, your hand still moving in slow, patient circles against his back, content, for now, simply to sit beside him in the quiet, ordinary warmth of an office that smelled like old paper and coffee, with Shimizu's occasional pointed glances the only reminder that the rest of the world still existed at all outside the small, fragile, thrilling new thing sitting quietly between the two of you.
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