M.B.Rubenstein's storys and Art.

Most people who met your father for the first time thought he looked too tired to be anybody’s parent.

They would glance at Shota Aizawa’s messy black hair, his half-lidded eyes, the permanent exhaustion in his face, and the capture scarf always hanging nearby, and they would assume he was too stern, too quiet, too rough around the edges to handle a small child.

Those people had clearly never seen him tucking a blanket around your feet after you fell asleep on the couch.

They had never seen the way he kept the hallway light dim at night because you said bright lights hurt your eyes when you first woke up.

They had never seen him stop mid-sentence, kneel without complaint, and patiently tie the laces you’d somehow untied for the third time in ten minutes.

And they definitely had never heard the soft, automatic way his voice changed whenever you tugged on his shirt and called, “Daddy.”

You were only five, and from the moment you learned how to toddle after him, it had become obvious to everyone around you that you were your father’s daughter.

You liked quiet more than noise.

You squinted at bright sunlight and preferred shady spots under trees.

“Because you’re old?”m

You stared at people with unnerving seriousness for a child your age, like you were trying to solve them.

And unfortunately, you had also inherited his habit of refusing to admit when something hurt until it became impossible to ignore.

It started on an ordinary afternoon.

Your father had the day off from patrol, which mostly meant he was grading papers at the kitchen table in black sweats while pretending he wasn’t taking a break. You were sitting on the floor nearby with crayons, drawing a cat that looked more like a fuzzy potato with whiskers.

Hizashi Yamada was sprawled across the couch, far too loud and energetic for the peaceful atmosphere of the apartment.

“Little listener!” he announced, pointing dramatically at your drawing. “That cat has artistic soul!”

You grinned. “It’s Mr. Sprinkles.”

“It is a masterpiece,” Hizashi declared. “A revolutionary statement on the nature of feline beauty!”

Your father didn’t look up from his grading. “It’s upside down.”

“That is because true art transcends orientation, Shota!”

You giggled so hard you nearly dropped your crayon.

Hizashi was your favorite kind of chaos. Where your father was quiet shadows and dry comments, Uncle Hizashi was sunlight with a volume knob broken clean off. He always came into the apartment like a storm of laughter and sound, and somehow it never felt too loud when he was there.

At least, not until that day.

At first it was small.

A sting behind your eyes.

You blinked hard and rubbed one with the back of your hand.

Your father’s head lifted immediately.

“Don’t rub,” he said.

You pouted. “It itches.”

“Use your words properly.”

“It stings,” you corrected, rubbing again anyway.

In one smooth motion, he was out of his chair and crouched in front of you. He gently caught your wrist before you could press harder against your eye.

“Both of them?” he asked.

You nodded.

He frowned a little. Not the scary teacher frown, but the thinking one. “Since when?”

You shrugged. “A little bit.”

“That means longer than you should’ve said something.”

Hizashi leaned over the couch dramatically. “Oh no. Is the tiny gremlin finally mutating into Shota for real?”

Your father sent him a flat stare.

“What?” Hizashi said. “You know I’m right. She already has your judging-eyes.”

“I do not,” you protested.

“You do,” both men said at the same time.

You crossed your arms. “Daddy has grumpy eyes. I have pretty eyes.”

That actually made the corner of your father’s mouth twitch.

“Fair,” Hizashi said solemnly.

Your father reached up and brushed your bangs back from your forehead, studying your face. His fingers were cool, calloused, careful. “Any headache?”

You thought about it. “No.”

“Blurry vision?

“No.”

“Dizziness?”

You shook your head.

He hummed and stood. “You’ve been staring at the paper too long. Blink more.”

“That’s boring.”

“Yes,” he said. “Do it anyway.”

He moved into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. You drank because when your father used that particular voice, it was less a suggestion and more a law of nature.

You went back to your drawing. Hizashi was talking again, telling some ridiculous story about a student who had mistaken his lecture mic for school equipment and nearly walked off with it. You were listening, giggling in the right places, adding whiskers to Mr. Sprinkles.

Then Hizashi’s voice cut out.

Just—gone.

One second he was laughing, hands flying as he talked, and the next his mouth was still moving but no amplified sound came out. Not even the low vibration of his Quirk. Silence dropped over the room so suddenly it felt wrong.

Hizashi blinked.

Your father froze.

You looked up, startled, and your eyes met Uncle Hizashi’s.

For one strange second, the air around you felt tight. Your eyes burned sharply, like someone had thrown sand into them. Your scalp tingled. A few strands of your hair lifted.

Then you blinked.

Sound crashed back into the room.

“—and THAT is why I said the building’s acoustics were a crime against radio!” Hizashi finished, then stopped and slapped a hand over his mouth. His sunglasses tilted down his nose. “...Shota.”

Your father was already moving.

He dropped to one knee in front of you so quickly his papers fluttered off the table. His hands didn’t touch you right away, but hovered near your shoulders, ready.

“Y/N,” he said, voice low and sharp in a way that meant he was focused. “Look at me.”

Your eyes were watering now. “Daddy, it hurts.”

“I know.” His tone softened instantly. “Did you look at Hizashi just now?”

You nodded, lip wobbling. “He went quiet.”

Hizashi slowly sat up straighter, all his usual brightness replaced by stunned realization. “Little listener,” he said carefully, this time in his normal voice, “did you make my Quirk stop?”

You stared at him, confused and scared. “I didn’t mean to.”

Your father reached out then, one hand settling at the back of your head, steadying you. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But his voice—”

“It’s fine,” Hizashi said quickly, kneeling beside both of you. “Hey, hey, look at me. Totally okay. You didn’t hurt me at all.”

Your father’s eyes narrowed in thought, gaze flicking from your watering eyes to the way your hair was slowly settling back down around your face. Something unreadable moved through his expression.

Then he exhaled once, long and quiet.

“Your Quirk manifested,” he said.

You sniffled. “My what?”

He brushed a tear from under your eye with his thumb. “Your Quirk.”

You stared at him.

Then your face crumpled.

“My eyes are broken!”

Before the first full sob could escape, your father pulled you into him.

Shota Aizawa was not naturally a cuddly man. He was all angles and practicality and tired sighs. But with you, there was no hesitation at all. He folded you against his chest and tucked your head under his chin like he’d done it a thousand times.

“They’re not broken,” he said steadily.

“They hurt!”

“I know.”

“I don’t like it!”

“I know.”

Hizashi stood up immediately. “Curtains,” he said, and darted off to dim the room without even being asked.

Your father kept one arm around you and carried you to the couch. Once the apartment was shaded and quieter, he sat down with you in his lap, your face buried in his shirt.

You could hear his heartbeat.

Slow. Even. Safe.

It took a few minutes for your crying to quiet into hiccups. When it did, he tipped your chin up gently.

“Can you open your eyes for me?”

You tried. They stung.

He didn’t push. He just looked as much as he could, checking for redness, swelling, anything worse than what he suspected. Then he glanced at Hizashi.

“Eye drops are in the bathroom cabinet,” he said.

“On it.”

You clung tighter when Hizashi left the room.

“Daddy,” you whispered, “why do they hurt?”

Your father was quiet for a moment. He always chose his words carefully with you, especially when you were upset. He never talked down to you, but he knew how to make hard things simple.

“Because your Quirk is in your eyes,” he said at last.

You frowned through your tears. “In my eyeballs?”

“Basically.”

“That’s gross.”

Hizashi snorted from the hallway. “She really is your kid.”

Your father ignored him. “Some people’s Quirks are in their hands. Some are in their legs. Some come from their voice.” He jerked his head faintly toward the other room. “Yours works through your eyes.”

You sniffed. “Like you?”

His gaze rested on your face, and something softer than surprise settled there. “Yeah,” he said. “Like me.”

You blinked up at him. “I have your Quirk?”

“It looks that way.”

He said it calmly, but you knew him well enough to hear the layer underneath. Worry. Thought. Plans already forming.

Hizashi came back with the eye drops and a cool washcloth. “Medicine delivery!” he announced in a quieter voice than usual, then crouched down in front of you. “No yelling package today.”

You managed a tiny smile.

Your father took the washcloth first and gently laid it over your eyes. The coolness made you sigh.

“Better?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Good.”

Then you heard the faint click of the eye drop bottle opening.

Your whole body stiffened.

“No,” you said immediately.

“Yes,” your father replied.

“Nooooo.”

“Y/N.”

You grabbed his shirt. “Daddy, no. It’s scary.”

“It’ll help.”

“I don’t want it.”

Hizashi leaned in, hand over his heart. “Brave little listener, may I interest you in an exciting challenge? If you hold still for the eye drops, I will personally buy you the biggest mochi at the bakery downstairs.”

You peeked out from under the washcloth. “The strawberry one?”

“The strawberry one.”

“And chocolate milk?”

“Done.”

Your father gave him a look. “You’re bribing her.”

“I’m supporting medical compliance.”

You wavered.

Your father shifted the washcloth aside just enough to see your face. “Listen carefully. Your eyes hurt because you used your Quirk without knowing how. That means they got too dry and strained. The drops will help them feel better.”

You swallowed. “Will it make me blind?”

His expression changed instantly.

For a second, his face went very still.

Then he leaned forward and touched his forehead to yours.

“No,” he said, firm and absolute. “You are not going blind.”

The fear in your chest loosened.

He pulled back just enough to look you in the eye. “And if something ever hurts badly, you tell me right away. Understood?”

You nodded.

“Good.”

The eye drops were still awful.

You complained the entire time. Hizashi held your hand and made ridiculous commentary like a sports announcer while your father pinned you with the kind of calm patience that meant escape was impossible.

“And here we see the tiny hero facing her greatest enemy—hydration!”

“Uncle Hizashi,” you whined, “stop laughing at me.”

“I’m encouraging you!”

Your father put one drop in each eye with practiced precision.

You gasped, offended. “Betrayal.”

“Necessary betrayal,” he said.

You glared at him with watery eyes.

He stared back, unimpressed. “Blink.”

You blinked.

The sting slowly eased.

A few minutes later, with the room dim, the washcloth back over your eyes, and your breathing finally steady again, your father explained more.

“Your Quirk works when you keep your eyes open and focus,” he said. “If it’s the same as mine, it can temporarily stop someone else from using their Quirk.”

You thought about that. “So I made Uncle Hizashi regular?”

Hizashi barked a laugh from beside the couch. “Regular! Oh, that hurts.”

Your father’s mouth twitched again. “Temporarily, yes.”

“Can I do it to you?”

He shook his head. “My Quirk isn’t active all the time. You’d only erase it if I was using it.”

You considered this very seriously. “Can I erase Kacchan?”

“Hizashi.”

“I’m not answering that,” your father said.

You lifted the washcloth enough to squint at him. “But why did it hurt so much?”

He leaned back slightly, one arm still around you. “Because our Quirk has drawbacks.”

That word made your nose wrinkle. “Draw-backs?”

“The bad side of it,” he translated. “When we use our eyes too long without blinking, they dry out. The more we strain them, the more they hurt.”

You were quiet for a moment. “Your eyes hurt too?”

There it was.

The real question.

Not about the Quirk. Not about the mechanics.

About whether you were alone.

Your father looked at you, and for once there was no shield in his expression at all. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Mine do.”

You stared.

He almost never admitted things like that. If he was injured, tired, aching, he usually dismissed it with a grunt and kept moving. Hearing him say it plainly made something settle in you.

“Do you cry?” you asked.

Hizashi turned away abruptly, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Your father sighed. “Not usually.”

Hizashi lost the battle and cackled.

Your father gave him a dead stare, then looked back at you. “Because I learned how to manage it.”

You nestled against him more comfortably. “Can you teach me?”

His hand came up to smooth your hair back.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can.”

That became the start of everything.

Your father made a routine that very evening.

Blink exercises.

Artificial tears.

No rubbing your eyes, no matter how much you wanted to.

Breaks from screens and books if your eyes got tired.

A little humidifier in your room.

A tiny pair of tinted goggles Hizashi claimed made you look “like the world’s cutest underground hero.”

“I look cool,” you informed your father while wearing them with complete seriousness.

“You look like a bug,” he said.

You gasped. “Daddy!”

“An adequately cool bug,” he amended.

Hizashi nearly choked laughing. To

In the weeks that followed, your father approached your Quirk the same way he approached everything important: logically, carefully, and with terrifying thoroughness.

He did not let you train alone.

He did not let you overdo it.

And he absolutely did not let Hizashi turn it into a game without supervision, though that mostly happened anyway.

The first controlled practice session took place in the living room.

You sat cross-legged on a cushion, goggles pushed up onto your head, while your father crouched in front of you.

Hizashi stood across the room with his arms spread. “I volunteer as tribute!”

“You volunteered because you think this is funny,” your father said.

“It is funny.”

Your father ignored him. “Y/N. Remember what I told you.”

You sat up straighter. “Blink first. Focus second. Stop if it hurts.”

“Good.”

“And tell Daddy if my eyes get stingy.”

“Stingy isn’t a medical term, but yes.”

You beamed. He had taught you something complicated, and you’d remembered it. That mattered.

He held up two fingers. “Try looking at Hizashi. Don’t force it. Just focus.”

You turned your head toward Uncle Hizashi.

He struck a pose like he was on stage. “Behold! A man of sound!”

You stared.

At first nothing happened.

Then your eyes began to tingle. You instinctively tried to keep them open wider, concentrating as hard as you could.

Your father noticed immediately. “Don’t strain.”

“I’m trying—”

A few strands of your hair floated.

Hizashi suddenly clapped a hand over his throat in exaggerated offense. He opened his mouth wide, but no amplified voice came out. He flailed dramatically in total silence.

Your eyes burned.

You blinked and looked away.

Sound snapped back.

“I HAVE BEEN ROBBED!” Hizashi shouted, then winced at his own volume. “Ow. Sorry. Indoor voice.”

Your father was already in front of you with the eye drops in hand.

You made a face. “Again?”

“You lasted three seconds. Drops.”

“That’s not a lot of seconds.”

“It’s a start.”

You let him tilt your chin up and put a drop into each eye. This time you complained less.

Progress, according to him.

“Did I do it right?” you asked after blinking the sting away.

He considered. “You activated it. You also pushed too hard.”

You slumped. “So I did it wrong.”

“No.” His voice was flat, but gentler than his words sounded. “I said you pushed too hard. That means you succeeded and then overextended. Those aren’t the same thing.”

You thought that over carefully.

Hizashi crouched beside you, grinning. “Translation: little listener is amazing.”

Your father sighed. “That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant.”

Your father didn’t answer.

Which, from him, was basically a yes.

Later that night, long after Hizashi had gone home and the apartment had gone quiet again, your eyes started hurting worse.

You had been brave all day. Brave through the drops, brave through the training, brave through the explanation that your Quirk would probably always be harder on your eyes than most children’s Quirks were on theirs.

But bravery gets smaller at bedtime.

You padded out of your room in your pajamas, rubbing one eye before remembering the rule and dropping your hand guiltily. The apartment was dark except for the lamp by the couch.

Your father was there, half buried in his sleeping bag, grading more papers.

He looked up the second you entered.

“What’s wrong?”

You stood there miserably. “My eyes hurt again.”

The papers were set aside immediately.

He unzipped the sleeping bag, stood, and held out a hand.

You went straight to him.

This time he didn’t carry you to the couch. He carried you to the bathroom sink, set you carefully on the counter, and dampened a soft cloth with cool water.

“Too bright?” he asked before turning on the full light.

You nodded.

He left the bathroom mostly dark and worked by the low hall light instead.

“Can you tell me how much it hurts?”

You frowned, trying to find the right words. “Like… hot dust.”

That earned the smallest nod. “Okay.”

He folded the cloth and laid it over your eyes.

You sighed shakily.

“Did you tell me as soon as it started?” he asked.

You hesitated.

That was answer enough.

His tone stayed calm. “Why not?”

You twisted your fingers in your pajama shirt. “Because you already helped. I didn’t wanna be bad.”

Something in his face changed.

Not anger.

Worse—hurt.

He crouched so he was eye-level with you, one hand resting lightly over your little fists until you stopped twisting the fabric.

“Listen to me,” he said.

You peeked out from under the cloth.

“You are never bad for telling me when something hurts.”

Your throat tightened. “But you were busy.”

“I don’t care.”

“You had papers.”

“I can get more papers.”

That made you blink.

His hand squeezed yours once. “I only get one of you.”

It was such an uncharacteristically open thing for him to say that for a second you forgot about the ache in your eyes.

Your father exhaled through his nose, like he hadn’t meant to say that much out loud. But he didn’t take it back.

“When I was younger,” he said quietly, “I had to figure a lot of this out the hard way. You don’t.”

You stared at him.

His voice lowered even further. “You understand?”

Your eyes filled again, but this time not from pain.

You nodded. “Okay, Daddy.”

“Good.”

He applied the drops again, then sat with you on the couch after, holding you against his side while the cool cloth rested over your eyes. His thumb moved slowly over your shoulder in absent circles.

After a long silence, you asked, “Do you wish I got a different Quirk?”

He went still.

It took him a moment to answer.

“No,” he said finally.

You turned your head a little toward his voice.

“I wish it didn’t hurt you,” he continued. “That’s different.”

Your chest felt warm.

“Being like you isn’t bad?” you whispered.

His arm tightened slightly around you.

“No,” he said. “It’s not bad.”

Then, after the smallest pause, in a voice so quiet it almost disappeared into the room:

“But I want you to have it easier than I did.”

You slipped your small hand into his.

“I can do it,” you said with the fierce certainty only children had. “Because you’ll help me.”

For the first time that night, your father smiled properly.

Small.

Tired.

Real.

“Yeah,” he said. “I will.”

A month later, you stood in the apartment living room in your tiny goggles, feet planted wide in what you thought was a very serious fighting stance.

Your father sat on the floor in front of you, one knee up, elbows resting on it. Hizashi stood near the kitchen, ready to be your target again.

“You remember the rules?” your father asked.

You nodded. “Blink first. Focus second. Stop before it hurts too much. Tell you if it hurts at all. Drops after.”

“Good.”

Hizashi pointed at himself grandly. “And then I suffer artistically!”

You grinned.

This time, when you looked at him, you didn’t force your eyes open as hard as you could. You breathed. You focused. You remembered what your father had shown you—steady, not strained.

Your hair began to lift.

Hizashi’s voice cut off.

Your eyes prickled, but not sharply.

“One,” your father counted.

You held your focus.

“Two.”

Hizashi waved his arms wildly in silent agony.

“Three. Blink.”

You blinked at once and the effect vanished.

Hizashi dropped to his knees. “Defeated again by the smallest menace in Japan!”

You bounced in place. “Daddy! Daddy, I did three!”

“You did,” he said.

That was it.

Just two words.

But his eyes were warmer than usual, and when you launched yourself at him, he caught you without even rocking back.

“I did it!” you repeated into his shoulder.

“You did.”

“Are you proud of me?”

He was quiet for exactly one heartbeat too long, as if the question had caught somewhere deeper than expected.

Then his hand settled on the back of your head.

“Yeah,” Shota Aizawa said, voice low and steady above you. “I’m proud of you.”

Hizashi sniffed loudly from across the room. “I’m emotional, and no one is allowed to make fun of me.”

Your father looked up. “No one said anything.”

“Your face said plenty.”

You pulled back enough to grin at both of them. “Uncle Hizashi, I made you regular again.”

He pressed a hand to his chest. “A brutal child.”

Your father sighed, but there was no real annoyance in it. “Come on. Eye drops.”

You groaned dramatically. “But I was heroic.”

“And now you’ll be hydrated.”

He set you down on the couch and reached for the bottle while you flopped back in exaggerated despair. Hizashi laughed and promised mochi again. The apartment was dim and familiar and safe, filled with the ordinary sounds of home.

Your eyes still hurt sometimes.

Some days more than others.

You were still learning how to handle a Quirk that asked a lot from someone so small.

But you weren’t afraid of it anymore.

Because every time the sting started, every time your eyes went dry or your vision blurred with tears, your father was there with cool cloths, steady hands, and simple explanations that made scary things smaller.

He never let you face it alone.

And in the quiet of that little apartment, with your father’s tired eyes watching over you and Uncle Hizashi’s laughter echoing through the rooms, you learned something important.

Being like Shota Aizawa didn’t just mean inheriting his Quirk.

It meant inheriting his stubbornness, his focus, his strength, and the quiet way he loved—with actions, with presence, with the promise that when things hurt, he would stay.

Like father, like daughter.

The lot is so loud it feels alive.

Bets are still being shouted. Shoes scrape over broken concrete. Cigarette smoke hangs low in the hot afternoon air, mixing with sweat, dust, and the metallic tang of old blood. Boys crowd the ring in a rough circle, elbow to elbow, all waiting for entertainment.

And right in the middle of it, your idiot brother has just challenged Kiyomasa.

You stand half a step behind Takemichi, baseball cap pulled low over your freshly cut hair, your undercut cool against the back of your neck. The long top of your tomboy cut falls in a rough middle part beneath the cap, shadowing your blue-gray eyes just enough to help sell the lie. Your loose shirt flattens your chest. The pants Takemichi gave you hang low and straight. As long as no one looks too closely, it exists.

As long as no one looks too closely, Y/N disappears.

Kiyomasa rolls his shoulders and grins like he’s been handed a toy.

“You again?” he says, voice dripping amusement. “Did yesterday scramble your brain?”

Takemichi’s fists are up, though he’s already battered from the day before. His blond hair sticks to his forehead with sweat. One cheek is still swollen. He looks terrified.

He also doesn’t back down.

“I said I’ll fight you,” he says.

The circle around you both erupts.

Akkun curses under his breath. Makoto outright gapes. Takuya goes pale. Yamagishi starts muttering at machine-gun speed about how this is strategically suicidal.

You keep your eyes on Kiyomasa.

He cracks his neck left, then right. “Fine. Don’t cry when you regret it.”

The match starts with no ceremony.

Kiyomasa drives his fist straight into Takemichi’s stomach.

The sound that leaves your brother isn’t even a shout. It’s all the air getting ripped out of him at once. He folds hard, stumbling forward, and you feel your own body jolt with the hit as if you took it too.

The difference in strength is obvious immediately.

It is a child trying to stop a wrecking ball.

Kiyomasa knees him next, then slams a kick into his chin. Takemichi stumbles backward, almost loses his footing, barely manages to stay upright. The crowd goes wild.

“Finish him!”

“Hanagaki’s dead!”

“This is pathetic!”

You clench your jaw so hard it hurts.

Kiyomasa keeps going. Hook to the face. Elbow. Knee. A brutal side kick that sends Takemichi reeling into the dirt. The jeering grows louder with every hit. Boys are laughing, shouting odds, hollering like this is the best show they’ve seen all week.

Takuya takes a step forward on instinct, but Akkun catches him.

“Michi!” you shout.

Takemichi spits blood onto the ground and pushes himself back up.

“Not yet,” he mumbles.

Kiyomasa pauses.

So does the crowd.

He heard it.

You heard it too.

Not yet.

Kiyomasa’s smile fades into something flatter, meaner. He flicks his cigarette away. “What was that?”

Takemichi sways where he stands. One eye is already swelling half shut. But he lifts his head and says it again.

“Not yet.”

The next blow snaps his head to the side.

You move before you think.

Kiyomasa has just drawn his arm back for another hit when you shove between them and drive your fist into his ribs. It is not a great punch. You know that the second it lands. He barely grunts.

His eyes slide to you.

Annoyed.

Then his mouth twists. “So the brother wants in too?”

Before he can swing at you, you lash out on pure instinct and drive your foot hard between his legs.

The entire lot freezes.

Kiyomasa makes a strangled, hideous noise and doubles over.

For one glorious, impossible second, silence drops over the crowd.

Then half the boys recoil in horror and the other half howl.

“No way!”

“He kicked him in the balls!”

“That’s dirty!”

“That was amazing!”

You plant yourself in front of Takemichi while Kiyomasa staggers, one hand braced on his knee, murderous fury radiating off him in waves.

“You are not touching my brother,” y/n says, your voice low and shaking with adrenaline.

Kiyomasa lifts his head slowly.

There is no humor left in his face now.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m touching both of you.”

He lunges.

You get one more second of success, and then reality catches up. His backhand catches you across the face hard enough to send your cap flying. The world flashes white. You hit the dirt on one knee, taste blood, snatch the cap back before anyone can get too good a look at your hair.

Takemichi throws himself forward at the same time, grabbing at Kiyomasa’s arm, and the fight turns ugly all at once.

Kiyomasa hammers him down.

Takemichi gets back up.

You go in from the side, trying to drag your brother clear. Kiyomasa elbows you away. You slam into the ground, shoulder screaming. Takemichi staggers in again and gets punched so hard you hear the impact over the crowd.

Still he stays standing.

You have never seen anything like it.

Not from him.

Not from the boy who ran.

Not from the twin who spent twelve years telling himself he was weak.

Kiyomasa hits him again.

Takemichi spits blood again.

“Give up already!” somebody yells.

Akkun’s voice cuts through all the rest. “Michi, stop! That’s enough!”

Takemichi’s breathing is ragged. You can hear it even over the noise. But when Kiyomasa grabs his collar and jerks him close, your brother just stares back through one swelling eye and whispers, “I can’t.”

Kiyomasa snarls and knees him in the gut.

“Why not?”

Takemichi folds, coughs, then forces himself straight again.

Because this is not about winning.

You realize that before Kiyomasa does.

This is Takemichi refusing to kneel.

This is him dragging his own dignity back out of the dirt one bloody inch at a time.

He is not strong. He is not fast. He is getting brutalized so badly your stomach keeps trying to turn inside out.

But he is not yielding.

And little by little, the mood in the lot changes.

The laughter dulls.

The jeering gets thinner.

Even the boys who were making bets start to stare instead of shout.

Kiyomasa feels it too.

You can see the moment it gets under his skin.

He hits Takemichi harder, faster, uglier, as if enough force can put the crowd back on his side. Takemichi’s head jerks. His knees buckle. He should be unconscious by now. He should be down.

Instead, he drags in one ragged breath and says again, “Not yet.”

You look over your shoulder and catch Akkun at the edge of the ring.

His hand is inside his jacket.

Your blood goes cold.

A knife.

For one breathless second, you understand everything all at once. If Takemichi had not stood up today, Akkun would have crossed a line none of you could come back from. Slavery under Kiyomasa was crushing your whole group into a shape you were never meant to fit. Fear was turning your best friend into someone desperate enough to kill.

Akkun sees what you see and slowly freezes.

Because the crowd is not cheering for Kiyomasa anymore.

They are watching Takemichi.

Watching the loser who won’t stay down.

Kiyomasa finally loses it.

“Why won’t you fall?” he shouts.

Takemichi spits blood at his feet.

“If you want me to lose,” he rasps, “then kill me.”

The lot goes dead quiet.

You feel the words all the way down your spine.

Kiyomasa’s face contorts.

“Fine,” he snaps. “Bring me the bat.”

Gasps break across the ring. Even some of his own boys hesitate.

This was supposed to be a fistfight.

A match.

A show.

Not this.

One of Kiyomasa’s lackeys runs for the bat anyway, because cowards still obey stronger cowards.

You push yourself back in front of Takemichi despite your throbbing shoulder. He grabs your sleeve weakly.

“N-n/n…”

“Don’t,” you hiss, not taking your eyes off Kiyomasa.

The bat is halfway to Kiyomasa’s hand when a new voice cuts through the lot.

“That’s enough. You’re making everyone look bad.”

The authority in it is immediate and absolute.

Every head turns.

Two figures stand at the opening in the crowd.

The taller one looks like a storm in human form—broad, imposing, with a shaved undercut, a braid trailing down, and a dragon tattoo curling up the side of his head. His expression is all sharp angles and lethal annoyance.

Draken.

Ken Ryuguji.

Vice Commander of Toman.

Behind him is a much smaller boy with soft blond hair and a bored expression, holding an empty package of dorayaki like he’s mildly offended by the universe.

Mikey.

Manjiro Sano.

Commander of Toman.

And the moment the crowd recognizes him, the entire lot shifts.

Boys bow.

Voices trip over each other.

“Mikey!”

“Draken!”

“Commander!”

One of Kiyomasa’s guys hurries forward with a sweating grin, ready to grovel, but Mikey walks right past him without the slightest glance. Draken does not bother hiding his contempt.

“Mikey only talks to people he cares about,” he says flatly.

Mikey, meanwhile, is peering at the empty wrapper in his hand.

“Ken-chin,” he says, “I’m out of dorayaki.”

You would laugh if the whole situation were not so surreal.

Takemichi sags half against you, half on his own feet, both of you staring.

So this is him.

This is the boy Naoto built files around.

This is the name that grows into a future full of corpses.

He looks… young.

Too young.

Kiyomasa straightens in a panic and bows. It is not deep enough.

Draken kicks him in the stomach so hard he folds.

“Bow lower,” Draken says. “You’re not somebody important.”

The ring parts. Mikey steps inside like he owns the air itself.

He does.

He walks straight past Kiyomasa.

Straight past the back.

Straight up to Takemichi.

Your brother, after getting pulped for what feels like an hour, still somehow manages to jolt in confusion when Mikey crouches down and peers right into his face.

“What’s your name?” Mikey asks.

Takemichi swallows. “Takemichi Hanagaki.”

Mikey blinks once.

Then he smiles, small and easy, like he just found something interesting in a junk pile.

“Takemitchy.”

Takemichi stares. “Huh?”

“Takemitchy,” Mikey repeats, pleased with himself. “You’re really in middle school?”

Draken folds his arms. “He is.”

Mikey nods once as if that settles an internal debate only he was having. Then his attention slides to you.

You have your cap back on now, brim low, but he notices you anyway. Of course he does.

“And you?”

For a second, your mouth goes dry.

This is the line.

The beginning of the lie becoming real.

You straighten despite the ache in your body. “Y- B/N Hanagaki… I’m Takemichi’s twin.”

Draken’s brow lifts.

Mikey tilts his head.

“Twins?” he echoes.

Your heart kicks. But you nod.

“We’re twins,” you say, looking up at Mikey.

He studies the two of you. Your eyes. Your faces. Takemichi’s blond hair, your h/c hair hidden under the cap, similar features twisted by different bruises.

Then Mikey grins.

“Takemitchy and…” He squints at you like he’s trying to remember. “N/M.”

You blink. “It’s b/n.”

“N/M,” Mikey says again, satisfied.

Draken snorts.

Something about the absurdity of it almost breaks the tension in your chest. “That’s not even close.”

Mikey points at you. “It is now.”

And just like that, the name sticks.

He rises and says, as casually as if he’s commenting on the weather, “Starting today, Takemitchy and N/M are my friends.”

The lot goes silent all over again.

Kiyomasa looks like he might throw up.

Takemichi looks like he would prefer to.

You just stand there, dazed, because after all the impossible things that have happened since shaking Naoto’s hand, this might still be the strangest.

Mikey turns to Kiyomasa.

“You run this?” he asks.

Kiyomasa nods too quickly. “Y-yes.”

Mikey’s face goes blank.

Then he kicks Kiyomasa so hard in the face that the bigger boy flies backward.

The rest happens in a blur.

A second kick.

A punch.

Kiyomasa drops like someone cut all his strings.

Mikey stands over him, expression cool and disgusted. “Fight clubs are lame.”

Draken’s gaze sweeps the ring, making boys flinch away from it. “Don’t drag Toman’s name through the mud with garbage like this.”

The command in his voice leaves no room for argument.

Then, just as abruptly as they came, the two of them start to leave.

Mikey glances back over his shoulder at you and Takemichi.

“Later, Takemitchy. Later, N/M.”

“It’s not—” you start.

He waves without turning around.

Draken does not hide his amusement this time.

When they’re gone, the whole lot exhales.

Nobody looks at Kiyomasa anymore.

Nobody looks at Takemichi like he’s a slave either.

By the time the crowd starts to break apart, everyone’s whispering the same thing.

Mikey called them friends.

You get Takemichi sitting against a wall before his legs give out on him completely. The Mizo boys swarm in a messy, frantic cluster.

“That was insane!”

“You’re alive?”

“He called you Takemitchy!”

“And you N/M!”

“That’s not my name,” you mutter.

Akkun crouches in front of Takemichi, eyes too bright. “Michi… you idiot.”

Takemichi gives a weak laugh that turns into a cough. “Yeah.”

Akkun looks away for a second, jaw tight. When he speaks again, his voice is lower.

“I was gonna stab him.”

The group goes still.

You had guessed, but hearing it aloud still lands heavy.

Akkun curls his fingers into his knees. “I thought if we didn’t do something, we’d stay like this forever. So I went to get a knife.” His gaze lifts to Takemichi. “But then you kept standing up. And everyone stopped cheering for Kiyomasa.”

His throat works.

“You changed it.”

Takemichi’s expression cracks a little. “I didn’t do anything that cool.”

“You did,” you say quietly.

Akkun laughs once, shaky. “Yeah. You did.”

No one jokes after that, not for a moment.

Then Makoto, because he physically cannot handle sincerity for too long, straightens up and starts doing an exaggerated Mikey impression.

“Takemitchy!”

Yamagishi immediately joins in. “N/M!”

“That still sucks,” you say, and the whole group breaks into tired, almost hysterical laughter.

For the first time since coming back, it feels like maybe the past can be changed after all.

The next morning hurts.

Everything hurts.

Your face is tender where Kiyomasa backhanded you. Your shoulder aches. Your shin still feels the impact of kicking him. Takemichi looks worse. He looks like he got run over and then argued with the truck.

The two of you walk to school anyway.

Hinata appears at the corner like sunrise in human form.

“Michi!”

She hurries over, then slows when she sees the bruises all over both of you. Her brows pull together immediately. “You two got into another fight?”

“Technically,” Takemichi says weakly, “I got into one fight. It just lasted forever.”

Hina huffs. “You’re impossible.”

Then she brightens, just a little. “I have cram school later, but before that… do you want to go on a date?”

Takemichi forgets how to function.

You watch your brother go red all the way up to his ears and almost rescue him, but it is too funny.

“A date?” he echoes.

“Yes.” Hina looks delighted by his panic. “Unless you’re scared?”

He straightens instantly. “I’m not scared!”

“Good.” She smiles. “Then after school.”

You drift half a step away to give them space, but Hina’s eyes flick to you, narrowing slightly.

You feel it at once.

Too sharp.

Too curious.

When you and Takemichi part ways for class, you feel her gaze on your back.

And sure enough, a little later, when you’re at the lockers adjusting your cap and checking that your shirt still sits right, someone catches your wrist and yanks you into the narrow blind spot between locker rows.

You react on instinct, hand flying up to cover the person’s mouth.

Wide brown eyes stare back at you.

Hina.

She has already recognized you.

Worse, in her shock, she has bitten—no, licked—your palm because your hand was over her mouth.

You jerk your hand back with a horrified whisper. “What is wrong with you?”

Hina’s eyes go even wider.

You slap your hand back over her mouth before she can scream.

“Shh. Yes it is me, Hina. Keep your voice down,” you whisper fiercely.

Her whole body vibrates with contained disbelief.

“You can’t tell anyone, okay? The truth is I worry about my brother and I decided to cut my hair short and dressed like a boy. Only my brother and the boys know that it’s me. When we’re out and in front of everyone, you call me b/n, okay? Now don’t scream or freak out when I remove my hand from your mouth and please don’t lick my hand again.”

Hina blinks once.

Twice.

Then nods as much as your hand allows.

You slowly let go.

She inhales sharply, then grabs your shoulders and whispers, “Y/N?!”

You wince. “Volume.”

She clamps both hands over her own mouth, then lowers them with visible effort. “You cut all your hair off!”

“Yes.”

“You look like a boy!”

“That was the point.”

“You really worried me! I thought Takemichi had another delinquent brother hidden somewhere!”

You deadpan. “He can barely survive the sibling he already has.”

That almost makes her laugh.

Then her face softens. “You did this for him.”

You look away for a second. “Partly.”

“And the other part?”

“To get close enough to Toman to actually do something.”

Hina studies you in a way that feels older than middle school, older than this whole stupid impossible loop of time. Then she nods once.

“Okay,” she says. “I won’t tell.”

You relax by inches.

She points a warning finger at you. “But if you get hurt because of this, I’m yelling at both of you.”

“That’s fair.”

“And I’m still not sorry about the hand thing.”

“You should be.”

She grins.

The bell rings.

By lunch, half the school is buzzing.

At first it’s just noise from the hall. Raised voices. Feet running. The sort of commotion that makes every student sit a little straighter and pretend not to be interested while absolutely being interested.

Then your classroom door slams open.

Mikey stands there like he belongs in every room he enters.

Draken looms behind him.

Every student in class freezes.

Takemichi makes a choking noise.

You stand so fast your chair scrapes.

“Mikey! Draken! What the fuck are you doing here at our school?” you say in shock.

Several classmates gasp at your language.

Draken looks mildly impressed. “Got a mouth on you, N/M.”

“It’s b/n,” you say automatically.

Mikey points at you, delighted. “See? N/M likes me.”

“I said nothing like that.”

Takemichi looks between all of you like he’s one wrong word away from fainting.

Mikey jerks his thumb toward the hall. “Come hang out.”

“During class?” Takemichi squeaks.

“Yes,” Mikey says, as if that should be obvious.

Draken adds, “We already handled the guys who got in the way.”

That sentence explains the groans in the corridor.

You step out with Takemichi and stare.

A bunch of third-years are sprawled on the floor in various states of defeat.

Your jaw drops.

Takemichi’s too.

Draken nudges one with his shoe. “Line up on your stomachs.”

They do.

He and Mikey walk over them like they’re crossing stepping stones.

Your school watches in total disbelief.

“Are they insane?” you whisper.

“Yes,” Takemichi whispers back.

Mikey glances at the two of you. “Let’s go.”

Takemichi hesitates.

This is what Naoto wanted, isn’t it? Get close to Mikey. Stay near him. Stop him from meeting Kisaki somehow.

You can almost see the thought moving behind Takemichi’s bruised face.

Then a familiar voice cuts through the crowd.

“Takemichi!”

Hina storms down the hallway, sees Mikey gripping your brother’s attention, and immediately misreads the entire scene.

She slaps Mikey.

The crack echoes.

Every person in the hall stops breathing.

You close your eyes for one full second. Of course she did.

Mikey turns his head back slowly.

Hina grabs Takemichi’s hand. “Come on. You don’t have to go with them just because they scare everyone.”

Draken steps forward and catches her wrist.

The temperature in the hall seems to drop.

You move instantly, but Takemichi is faster.

He grabs Draken’s arm.

“Let her go.”

Draken looks down at him.

Takemichi is shaking. You can see it from where you stand. Hina is shaking too. But neither of them backs down.

“If you’re really his friends,” Hina says, glaring right at Mikey now, “you don’t drag him around by force. And if you’re the reason he’s covered in bruises lately, I’ll stop you myself.”

The hallway might as well be a graveyard.

Nobody talks to Toman like that.

Nobody slaps Mikey and keeps standing.

You take one step closer, ready to throw yourself into the worst fight of your life if this turns ugly.

Takemichi tightens his grip on Draken’s arm. “I won’t give this up again.”

Something flickers in Draken’s expression.

Mikey tilts his head. “Too bad. I thought we could be friends.” He steps forward. “How do you want to die, Takemitchy?”

Takemichi doesn’t move.

“Promise me,” he says, voice rough, “you won’t touch Hina.”

Mikey raises his hand.

Half the girls in the hallway flinched.

Hina stiffens.

You set your feet.

And then Mikey stops his fist inches short and snorts.

“I’m kidding,” he says. “I’d never hit a girl.”

The collective exhale from the hall is almost violent.

Draken lets go of Hina’s wrist. “You’ve got nerve,” he tells Takemichi. “Threatening us like that.”

Takemichi blinks. “I wasn’t—”

“You were,” Draken says. “It’s fine.”

Hina, still rattled but stubborn, bows a little. “Sorry for hitting you.”

Mikey rubs his cheek and shrugs. “It’s okay. Standing up for your boyfriend is cool. Just don’t overdo it.”

Takemichi combusts on the spot. “B-boyfriend?!”

Hina smiles sweetly at him and ignores that.

Then, because she is somehow the bravest person in the hall, she turns to you too.

“And b/n, stop hanging around criminals during school hours.”

You cough to hide a laugh. “Yes, ma’am.”

Only you catch the tiny glint in her eyes that says she is very aware of exactly who she is bossing around.

When she leaves, Takemichi turns to ask about their date, only for Hina to wave it off.

“Another day,” she says. “Your friends came to get you.”

Mikey points at Takemichi. “Treat her right, Takemitchy.”

Then he points at you. “And you too, N/M.”

“Still wrong,” you mutter.

Somehow, despite all logic, you end up spending the afternoon riding with the two most dangerous middle school delinquents in Tokyo.

Mikey pedals lazily, somehow still looking completely relaxed. Draken rides with easy control, one eye always on the street, the other on Mikey. You and Takemichi follow.

The city feels different from a bike.

Looser. Wider. Summer wind moves through the longer top of your cut where it escapes your cap, and for a little while, if you ignore the gang jackets and the violence and the future pressing on your ribs, it almost feels like being a normal middle schooler.

Almost.

They stop at the riverside.

The water glints dull gold under the lowering sun. Cicadas scream from the trees. All four of you leave your bikes in the grass and drift toward the embankment.

Takemichi has been stealing glances at Mikey the whole ride.

You know why.

This boy does not fit the future Naoto described.

Finally Takemichi blurts, “Why do you even like me?”

You wince. “Subtle.”

Mikey looks over, then laughs under his breath. “That’s a stupid question.”

Takemichi flushes. “S-sorry.”

Mikey stretches his arms behind his head and looks out at the river. “You remind me of my brother.”

The joke dies out of all of you instantly.

“My older brother,” Mikey says. “He was ten years older. Reckless. Picked fights with guys way stronger than him. Never quit even when he looked stupid.”

Draken’s expression softens just a little.

Mikey smiles, but there is grief tucked under it. “He died.”

The breeze shifts.

Nobody interrupts.

Mikey keeps looking at the water. “People say delinquents are lame now. But back when my brother was around, there were biker gangs everywhere. Fights too. Guys who acted big. But they cleaned up their own messes. They had pride.” His eyes sharpen. “That wasn’t lame.”

You glance at Takemichi. He is listening like his life depends on it.

Maybe it does.

Mikey turns back to the two of you. “I’m gonna make a new era for delinquents.”

Draken leans against his bike. “There are lots of strong fighters in the world. Not many idiots who’ll keep standing because of something they refuse to give up.”

Mikey points at Takemichi first. Then at you. “So come with us, Takemitchy. N/M.”

You groan softly. “I’m never escaping that, am I?”

“Nope,” Mikey says.

Takemichi laughs a little, bruised and disbelieving and still somehow lighter than he was yesterday.

You look at Mikey again.

At the easy grin. At the way Draken watches him without watching. At the careless confidence and the strange sincerity underneath it. This boy does not look like someone who would kill Hinata. He does not even look like someone who would order it.

And that frightens you more than if he did.

Because it means something happens.

Something turns him.

Something rots Toman from inside.

When Mikey and Draken finally ride off, they leave you and Takemichi standing by the river with the evening wind moving around you.

Takemichi watches them go for a long time.

Then he says quietly, “He’s not what I expected.”

“No,” you answer. “He isn’t.”

“Do you think Naoto got it wrong?”

You think of police files. Of the future. Of Hinata dying again and again at the edge of your memory.

“No,” you say at last. “I think we just don’t know the whole story yet.”

The sun is lower by the time you start walking home.

Takemichi is lost in thought beside you, probably building plans out of panic and determination in equal measure. You keep scanning the street out of habit now, shoulders tight whenever groups of delinquents pass.

At one intersection, a cluster of boys walks by in the opposite direction.

You would have ignored them—

except one of them turns just slightly.

Glasses.

A composed face.

Eyes too cold for someone this young.

Something in you goes still.

Takemichi slows too, glancing back over his shoulder.

“I know him,” he says, more to himself than to you.

The boy looks your way only once.

Then he keeps walking.

The hairs rise on the back of your neck under the shaved fade of your cut.

Because even without Naoto’s files, even without a name, some instincts are immediate.

That boy is wrong.

The first thing you feel is air.

Cool, conditioned, stale air that smells like paper, old coffee, and metal filing cabinets.

Not blood. Not dust. Not the sour stink of a back-alley fight ring.

Your eyes snap open.

Takemichi is already halfway upright beside you, breathing like he has just been dragged out of drowning water. His shoulders are tense, his hands clawing at the couch under him, his eyes wide and glassy with panic. For one wild second, the two of you just stare at each other.

Then he blurts, “N/n—?”

“Michi.”

Your voice comes out rough, but it is enough. Enough to ground him. Enough to prove you are both here.

Alive.

Across from you, Naoto Tachibana stands in a dark suit with a calm, unreadable face that does not belong to the little boy from twelve years ago. A badge glints at his belt. His gaze flicks from Takemichi to you, steady and sharp.

“Welcome back,” he says.

Takemichi blinks at him. “You got old.”

Naoto does not react. “And you two did not.”

You sit up slowly, every nerve still lagging behind reality. The last thing you remember is a child’s small hand in yours. A cramped apartment hallway. The shock of seeing Hinata alive. The impossible feeling of being pulled through your own bones.

Now Naoto is taller than both of you, dressed like the kind of man who makes people confess without raising his voice.

Takemichi rubs at his face. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You’re really Naoto?”

“Yes.”

“The same Naoto?”

“Yes.”

“The little kid who—”

“Yes.”

Takemichi points at him, then at himself, then at you, as if maybe one of those things will make sense if he gestures hard enough. “Then that means—”

“That means you really did go back in time,” Naoto says. “Both of you.”

Silence drops over the room.

You look down at your own hands. Longer fingers. No dirt under the nails. No bruises blooming over your knuckles. Your hair falls over your shoulder in a dark curtain, black again in the present, not the h/c shade you wore in middle school. Beside you, Takemichi tugs at a strand of his own black hair like he still cannot accept it is no longer bleached blond.

It is real.

Everything about it is real.

Naoto steps closer and sets a file on the low table in front of you. Then another. Then another, until the table is a small mountain of documents.

Takemichi stares. “What the hell is all that?”

Naoto folds his hands behind his back. “Your homework.”

You almost laugh at that, but the expression on his face stops you. He is serious. Completely serious.

He looks at Takemichi first, then at you. “My sister dies in twelve years. On August 1, 2017. In the original timeline, she died because of the Tokyo Manji Gang. In the current timeline, she still dies because of the Tokyo Manji Gang. Saving me changed the future enough for me to survive, become an officer, and find you. But it did not save her.”

Takemichi’s face changes at once.

Hinata.

Even after all those years, her name still hits him like a fist to the ribs. You see it happen in real time. The fear. The guilt. The ache.

You feel it too, quieter and colder. Hina’s smile in that apartment hallway was too bright, too alive, for a future like that.

Naoto continues. “You asked me before why I believed you. That is the reason. After the day you saved me, I remembered everything. The tracks. Your warning. The way both of you disappeared after shaking my hand. I knew the future had changed.”

Takemichi swallows. “And you became a cop because of that.”

“Yes.”

Naoto opens the first file. Photos slide into view. Crime scene images. Mug shots. newspaper clippings. Names.

Tokyo Manji Gang.

Toman.

The room seems to get narrower.

For the next two days, Naoto turns his apartment into a war room.

You do not sleep. Takemichi barely blinks. The three of you live on canned coffee, convenience store rice balls, and desperation.

Naoto walks you through timelines, internal gang structures, shifting alliances, arrests that never stuck, murders that were never solved. He pins names to faces and faces to bloodstains. He tells you which information made it to the media and which died before it could.

Some of it is horrifying in a way that does not hit all at once.

Some of it lands like delayed poison.

“The Tokyo Manji Gang was not always this large,” Naoto says on the second night, standing beside a whiteboard covered in dates. “But in the future we know, it becomes one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the country.”

Takemichi squints blearily at the photos. “That part I got.”

Naoto ignores him. “At the center of that transformation are two people. Sano Manjiro. And Kisaki Tetta.”

You memorize the names even though you already know them now, the way people know the names of storms after they have destroyed a city.

Manjiro Sano.

Mikey.

Kisaki Tetta.

Naoto taps each photo in turn. “If these two never connect, the Toman that kills my sister may never exist.”

Takemichi drags both hands down his face. “That sounds simple when you say it like that.”

“It is not simple,” Naoto says. “It is only necessary.”

You study the images.

Sano Manjiro looks young in the older photograph, almost harmless if not for the eyes. Kisaki looks worse somehow. Clever. Controlled. The kind of expression that makes your skin go tight between your shoulders.

“Do you know when they met?” you ask.

Naoto nods. “August, 2005.”

Takemichi groans and tips back against the wall. “Great. So all we have to do is find two middle schoolers in Tokyo, get close to one of them, and stop them from meeting. Easy.”

Naoto says, with no trace of irony, “Yes.”

Takemichi stares at him. “You have, like, negative common sense.”

Despite everything, a small laugh escapes you.

Naoto does not take offense. “Your time leap has rules. That much is clear now. You cannot choose any date you want. You jump exactly twelve years into the past from the present moment.”

He looks at the clock.

“It is July 6, 2017. Which means when I trigger your ability, you will return to July 6, 2005.”

Takemichi straightens. “Trigger?”

Naoto’s gaze sharpens. “The handshake. When we shook hands in the past, I felt you disappear. When we shook hands in the present, you returned. I believe I act as the trigger because saving me altered my connection to your power.”

“And me?” you ask.

Naoto looks at you for a moment, thoughtful. “The first leap involved both of you. The change began with both of you. So I believe the same rule applies. If I shake hands with either twin individually, that twin can leap. If I connect with both of you, both of you go.”

Takemichi lets out a shaky breath. “So that’s it, then.”

Naoto closes the last file.

“That is it.”

He steps toward you both and extends his hands.

For one second, nobody moves.

Takemichi glances at you.

You have known that look all your life. He only gets it when he is scared enough to joke and too serious to do it well. He is your twin, younger by fifteen minutes, but sometimes he still looks at you the way he did when you were children—as if checking whether the world is survivable because you are still standing in it.

You reach out first.

Your fingers close around Naoto’s right hand. Takemichi takes the left.

You squeeze Takemichi’s hand with your free one.

“No running this time,” you murmur.

He gives a broken little grin. “Only if you don’t either.”

Naoto’s grip tightens.

The room drops out from under you.

You land in noise.

A roar of voices crashes over you before sight fully returns—boys yelling, jeering, laughing, money changing hands, sneakers scraping concrete. Your knees nearly buckle. For a split second, your brain still expects Naoto’s apartment and its hard fluorescent light.

Instead you are standing in a filthy lot behind a building, shoulder to shoulder with a crowd of middle school punks.

Your hair is different.

You know it before you even touch it. Longer. Heavier. A familiar weight from years ago, your h/c hair sliding over your shoulders instead of the black hair you wear in the present. Your school uniform hangs on a younger frame. Your heart slams.

You are back.

“N/n!”

You whip your head toward the ring of shouting boys just in time to see Takemichi—blond now, small for his age, standing across from another kid with his fists halfway up and his eyes wide with total confusion.

He has exactly enough time to look down at his flip phone.

To see the date.

July 6, 2005.

Then the other boy’s fist crashes into his face.

Takemichi drops in one hit.

The crowd explodes.

You shove forward before someone catches your arm from behind.

“Stay put,” one of Kiyomasa’s lackeys snaps. “You’re part of the show too.”

The words hit like a trigger.

The smell. The lot. The crowd. The cheap thrill of violence. A memory rips itself open in your chest.

Kiyomasa.

Masataka Kiyomizu.

A Toman member.

This is his fight club.

This is the hell both you and Takemichi ran from.

Takemichi groans as he tries to lift his head. He barely gets his elbows under him before laughter rains down from every side.

“Seriously?” somebody barks. “He went down in one punch?”

“People bet on that trash?”

“What a waste.”

Kiyomasa steps into view with a look of disgust so sharp it could cut. He is taller than most of the others, broad-shouldered, radiating the kind of mean that thrives on having an audience.

He nudges Takemichi’s side with his shoe.

“You ruined the mood,” he says flatly.

Takemichi blinks up at him, dazed.

Kiyomasa clicks his tongue and jerks his chin at one of his guys. “Teach him a lesson.”

You lunge on instinct. “Stop—”

A hand shoves you back hard enough to send you into the crowd. Boys laugh. One whistles. Another mutters something about you needing to learn your place too. Your stomach twists.

Takemichi gets grabbed by the front of his shirt and punched back down. Then kicked. Then lifted again just to be hit harder.

And just like that, the past stops being an abstract thing you came to change.

It becomes pain.

It becomes memory.

It becomes the exact place your brother broke the first time.

You force your way forward again, but you are still too far away, and Kiyomasa’s boys know you, know how to block, how to pin, how to humiliate without even looking worried.

Takemichi coughs, blood on his lip, and his eyes finally focus.

He remembers too.

You see the recognition hit him—the understanding that this is why he ran. Why all of you ran. Why he abandoned his friends, Hina, everything.

Kiyomasa and his group start to turn away, bored already.

And because Takemichi is Takemichi, because some part of him will always manage to blurt out the worst possible thing at the worst possible time, he rasps, “Can… can I meet Sano and Kisaki?”

The entire lot goes silent.

Even the crowd noise dies.

Kiyomasa stops walking.

Slowly, he turns around.

“What did you just say?”

Takemichi is still half on the ground, half trying to sit up, every instinct screaming too late. You can see it on his face.

Kiyomasa holds out his hand. One of his boys immediately passes him a metal bat.

Your blood runs cold.

“Michi,” you whisper.

The first swing lands with a sickening crack against Takemichi’s side.

He screams.

You tear free from the hand on your arm and rush forward again, but two boys catch you this time, one around each wrist. You twist, kick, snarl, anything to get loose, but they hold fast.

Kiyomasa swings again.

“And don’t,” he says between blows, voice low and murderous, “ever say Mikey’s name like you know him.”

Another strike.

“Or I’ll kill you.”

By the time one of Kiyomasa’s own guys finally mutters, “That’s enough, man,” Takemichi is barely conscious.

Kiyomasa looks down at him with contempt, then tosses the bat back.

The crowd starts breathing again.

The show is over.

Later, when Takemichi wakes again, the sky has gone dark.

You are sitting against the wall a little way off, your hands scraped raw from fighting uselessly against people stronger than you. Your head throbs. The lot is almost empty now. Only a few boys remain, cleaning up, smoking, talking like none of this mattered.

Takemichi’s face is swollen. His shirt is filthy. When he sees you, something in his expression twists.

“Sorry,” he croaks.

“For what?”

He laughs once, bitter and tiny. “For making things worse in under five minutes.”

You push yourself closer and help him sit. “You were trying to find Mikey and Kisaki.”

“Yeah, well. Turns out asking about the strongest people in Toman to a psycho Toman underling is stupid.”

“That part was stupid.”

He huffs a weak sound that might have been a laugh if it did not hurt him. Then his eyes go flat.

“I can’t do this.”

The words come out almost too quietly to hear.

You say nothing.

Because you know what he means.

The future is massive and cruel and hard to touch. The present is a police file filled with dead people. The past is a metal bat and a dirt lot and a boy who cannot even stay standing for one punch.

Takemichi stares at the ground. “Naoto picked the wrong person. I can’t even get near them. I’ll just die before I do anything.”

You want to argue. You want to shake him. You want to tell him he already changed the future once.

Instead you help him stand.

“Then let’s go see Naoto.”

He blinks. “What?”

“If you want to run, then say it after you look him in the face.”

That gets him moving.

The two of you walk through familiar streets that feel strange after twelve years and one impossible explanation. The city is younger somehow. Dirtier. Smaller. The air sticks to your skin in the summer heat. Your reflection in darkened windows startles you every time - h/c hair loose around your shoulders, middle school uniform, a face you remember and do not.

By the time you reach the Tachibana apartment, Takemichi has gone quiet again.

Then the door opens before he can knock.

Hinata stands there, alive and incandescent.

For a second, nobody speaks.

Her hair frames her face just the way you remember. Her eyes widen when she sees the two of you, and then immediately narrow in anger.

“What happened to you?” she demands.

Takemichi actually points at himself like he has forgotten how language works. “Me?”

“And Y/N too!” Hina snaps. “Why are you both covered in bruises? Did you get into another fight?”

Takemichi glances helplessly at you. You almost feel bad for him.

Almost.

Hina grabs his sleeve and tugs him inside before either of you can answer. “Honestly, boys are ridiculous.”

You lean against the wall while she fusses over Takemichi first, then over you, because that is just how Hina is. Her hands are gentle even when her voice is sharp.

“Why do boys always settle things with fists?” she mutters while dabbing at a cut on Takemichi’s cheek. “If I were a boy, I’d protect you two instead.”

Something changes in the room.

Takemichi looks at her as if he has forgotten how to breathe.

You feel it too—that tiny, bright click of fate shifting around a single stupid, sincere sentence.

Hina has always been like this. Brave in a way that never announces itself. Tender and fierce at the same time.

Takemichi’s voice comes out hoarse. “No. I’ll protect you.”

Hina pauses.

Takemichi freezes right after he says it, probably because of the next word that falls out of his mouth.

“Hina.”

Her cheeks go pink.

Takemichi looks like he wants to die on the spot.

You turn your face away before either of them can see your smile.

Hina lowers her gaze for a second, then looks back up with that stubborn little spark you remember so well. “You? Protect me?”

Takemichi flusters immediately. “I mean— yeah— I mean—”

“You’re such a crybaby, Michi.”

He jerks. “It was one time!”

Hina laughs softly. “I’ll remember it forever.”

There it is.

The whole future in one tiny living room: what Takemichi lost, what he still wants to save, what you suddenly understand you cannot let him do alone.

When you leave the apartment a little later, the sky is dark and warm above the streetlights. Takemichi is quiet again, but not in the same way as before.

He looks wrecked.

And resolved.

“I can’t let her die,” he says at last.

“No,” you say. “You can’t.”

He looks over at you. “You’re saying that like you already decided something.”

“Maybe I did.”

Your house is still your house, only smaller than memory. The walls are thin. The bathroom mirror is spotted and old. Childhood sits in every corner like dust that never really left.

Takemichi is washing blood off his face when he notices the scissors in your hand.

At first he does not understand.

Then he looks at your reflection.

Really looks.

You are standing in front of the mirror with your long h/c hair pulled over one shoulder. The scissors gleam under the light. Your jaw is set.

“N/n,” he says slowly, “what are you doing?”

You close your fingers around the first thick lock and cut.

The sound is harsh.

It falls into the sink.

Takemichi jerks upright. “Oi!”

You cut again. And again.

“If I’m doing this with you,” you say, watching your own eyes in the mirror, “then I’m cutting it short.”

Another section drops.

“I’m going in with you, Michi.”

His expression twists between shock and disbelief. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

You set the scissors against another handful of hair and slice through. Your neck feels lighter already.

“If I stay a girl in this world, it’ll be harder to get close to Toman.”

He opens his mouth, but you keep going.

“Harder to be taken seriously. Harder to get where I need to go. Harder to stand beside you without someone trying to shove me aside, use me, or lock me out.”

Hair litters the sink, the floor, your sleeves.

“So I won’t.”

He stares at you.

You turn then, scissors still in your hand, chopped hair brushing your jawline in uneven pieces.

“I’ll dress like a boy. I’ll cut it shorter. I’ll use a cap. If they want to overlook me, I’ll make them underestimate the wrong person.”

Takemichi takes one step closer. “N/n…”

Your throat tightens, but your voice stays steady.

“We do this together, brother. No matter what.”

The room goes still.

“You’re my family,” you say. “You are not doing this alone.”

For once, Takemichi has no immediate answer. His eyes shine with that raw, helpless emotion he never hides well. Then he scrubs hard at his face and mutters, “Damn it, don’t say things like that when I’m trying not to cry.”

You snort softly.

He exhales, long and shaky, then reaches for the scissors. “Give me those.”

You lift a brow. “Can you even cut hair?”

“No,” he says honestly. “But yours already looks like you lost a fight with a lawn mower, so I can’t make it much worse.”

“That rude mouth is why you keep getting punched.”

“Move.”

You do.

What follows is messy and ridiculous and weirdly intimate in the way only siblings can be. Takemichi trims the hacked-off length down with painful concentration. You take the scissors back to shape the longer top yourself. He shaves the sides and back with a buzzing clipper you dig out from an old drawer. You guide his hand for the fade. He curses when he almost takes too much off one side. You elbow him in the ribs. He yelps and accuses you of assaulting a wounded man.

By the end of it, the bathroom floor is covered.

You stare at your reflection.

The sides and back are shaved close, faded tight against your scalp. Near your temples, Takemichi has carved two clean angled lines after three failed attempts and one near-disaster. The top remains longer, enough to part and sweep with deliberate volume, enough to shadow your face in a way that feels sharp and androgynous. When you push it into a loose middle part, it frames your features differently. Harder. Leaner. Less familiar.

Not feminine. Not exactly masculine either.

But close enough.

A tomboy cut with an undercut. Bold. Clean. Practical.

Dangerous in its own way.

Takemichi goes very still.

“What?” you ask.

He shakes his head once. “You really look like a guy.”

You tilt your chin, studying yourself. Same blue-gray eyes as his. Same bone structure hidden under different angles. With your chest bound flat under layers and the right clothes, it could work.

Without a word, Takemichi goes to his room.

He comes back with a button-up shirt, loose pants, and a baseball cap.

“Try these.”

You do.

The shirt hangs right. The pants hide your shape. You tuck your newly short hair under the cap, leaving only enough loose at the front to frame your face. When you look up again, the person in the mirror is not the girl Kiyomasa’s crowd expects to dismiss.

Takemichi gives a low whistle.

“Well,” he says, “guess I have another little brother now.”

You deadpan, “I’m still older.”

“By fifteen minutes.”

“Older is older.”

He raises both hands in surrender.

You touch the brim of the cap and look at yourself one last time.

“From now on,” you say, “out there I’m b/n.”

Takemichi nods.

“All right, b/n.”

The next morning, the Mizo Middle boys nearly choke when they see you.

You and Takemichi meet them in the bathroom like always, where the cracked mirrors, damp tile, and smell of smoke have become the unofficial headquarters of every bad idea in your adolescence.

Akkun is the first to notice. He squints. Blinks. Squints again.

Then he points at you. “Who the hell—”

Takemichi jerks a thumb your way. “My brother.”

Makoto smacks the back of his head. “Idiot, Y/N doesn’t have a—”

His sentence dies as you lift your cap just enough.

All four of them gape.

Takuya’s jaw drops. Yamagishi actually pushes his glasses up and leans in like he is examining a rare species.

“Y/N?” Akkun breathes.

You tip the cap back down. “Not if Kiyomasa’s people ask. From now on, it’s b/n.”

Makoto circles you once. “This is insane.”

Yamagishi, somehow delighted, says, “Strategically, it’s not bad."

Takuya blinks fast. “You seriously cut all your hair off?”

You shrug. “Hair grows back.”

Takemichi looks at you sidelong. He still seems half shocked you went through with it.

Akkun exhales through his teeth, then grins despite the tension in the room. “Damn. You really do look like some punk middle school guy.”

“That was the point,” you say.

The mood sours again a second later when Atsushi’s expression darkens.

“Kiyomasa picked today’s fighter,” he says.

Everyone knows what that means.

“Who?” Takemichi asks, though something in his face says he already remembers.

“Takuya.”

Takuya startles. “I can do it.”

“No, you can’t,” Makoto snaps.

Akkun runs a hand through his hair. “I said I’d go instead, but Kiyomasa won’t listen.”

You watch Takemichi’s face as the memory comes back to him. The fight ring. The daily bets. The way Kiyomasa feeds boys to each other for fun and profit. Takuya is not built for that kind of brutality. In one timeline, it nearly kills him.

That knowledge settles over all of you like humidity before a storm.

Takemichi looks at each of his friends in turn.

Akkun trying to step in for Takuya.

Makoto angry because he is scared.

Yamagishi talking too much because silence would be worse.

Takuya pretending to be brave because somebody has to.

You see the exact moment Takemichi remembers what he once threw away.

Not just Hina.

Not just some vague idea of his middle school life.

These boys.

This loyalty.

This stupid, fierce, unpolished love.

They care enough to bleed for each other even when they are terrified.

Something hardens in his expression.

The fight ring that afternoon is even louder than the day before.

Word must have spread. Boys crowd the space in a rough circle, shouting odds, tossing insults, slapping cash into waiting palms. Dust hangs in the heat. Kiyomasa stands at the center of it all like a king of garbage, grinning with lazy cruelty.

“Kojima from Sakura Middle,” someone yells.

“Takuya from Mizo!”

“Six to four on Kojima!”

“Make it quick!”

Takuya steps forward, pale but determined. Your stomach knots. Takemichi stands beside you, shoulders tense under his uniform. Under the brim of your cap, your eyes sweep the crowd automatically now, searching for angles, exits, faces worth remembering.

No Mikey.

No Kisaki.

Just Kiyomasa and his pack of scavengers.

Kiyomasa lifts a hand to start the match.

Takemichi moves before you can stop him.

“Boring.”

It is not loud, but it cuts clean through the shouting.

The crowd stills.

Kiyomasa’s hand stops in the air.

Takemichi steps into the ring space, bruised face unapologetically visible, blond hair a mess, eyes shaking and determined at the same time. He looks scared. Of course he does. He is Takemichi. Fear is practically part of his heartbeat.

But he steps forward anyway.

“This is boring,” he says again, louder now. “The same weak guys getting dragged out every day. Same trashy fights. Same rigged bets.”

A ripple runs through the audience.

Kiyomasa smiles, but there is no humor in it. “You got a death wish, Hanagaki?”

Probably, you think.

Takemichi swallows once. Then he points straight at Kiyomasa.

“If you want to make it interesting, do a king versus slave match.

The entire lot seems to inhale together.

Kiyomasa’s eyes narrow.

Takemichi’s voice comes out rough, but it does not break.

“I’ll fight you.”

For a second, nobody moves.

Then the crowd erupts.

“What?!”

“He’s insane!”

“Kiyomasa’s gonna kill him!”

“Hanagaki finally snapped!”

Akkun curses behind you. Takuya spins around in shock. Even Kiyomasa’s own boys look entertained in the worst possible way.

Kiyomasa takes a step forward, grin widening.

“You?”

Takemichi plants his feet even though his knees are probably begging him not to.

You can feel the whole scene tipping into place around him, the way fate sometimes seems to wait for one stupid, brave choice before it changes direction.

If he backs down now, it all stays the same.

If he stands, maybe the future cracks.

Kiyomasa rolls his shoulders. “You think one night gave you a spine?”

Takemichi says nothing.

So you step forward too.

The brim of your baseball cap shadows your eyes as you move to stand at your brother’s side. Murmurs ripple through the crowd. Kiyomasa glances at you, annoyed that his moment has been interrupted.

“And who the hell are you?” he asks.

You lift your chin.

“b/n,” you say. “Michi’s brother.”

Takemichi shoots you a quick look. Half panic. Half gratitude.

The crowd eyes you up and down—your cap, your loose shirt, your undercut peeking from the sides, your stance just a little too calm. They do not see Y/N. They see another boy stepping into trouble.

Good.

Let them.

Kiyomasa sneers. “Another slave?”

You smile without warmth. “Not yours.”

That gets a sharp, dangerous hush from the boys nearest the ring.

Kiyomasa’s grin twitches.

For the first time, he looks interested.

Takemichi lets out a breath through his nose, steadier now because you are there. Because he is not alone. Because the past may still be hell, but this time it is not swallowing him whole without a witness.

Behind you, the Mizo boys fall silent.

In front of you, Kiyomasa cracks his neck.

“Fine,” he says. “If the slave wants the king, I’ll give him what he wants.”

Takemichi’s fists rise.

So do yours, just a little, just enough.

The air between all of you tightens until it feels like wire.

Somewhere beyond this filthy lot, somewhere still hidden inside the summer of 2005, wait the two names that matter most.

Mikey.

Kisaki.

The future is still far away.

But this—

This is the first wall.

And standing beside your twin under the hot, dirty sky, cap pulled low and shorn hair brushing the sides of your face, you know with sudden, electric certainty that you are done being helpless.

Whatever comes next, Takemichi will not face it alone.

Not this time.

By the time the evening news started repeating itself for the third time, you were still standing in the same place between the fiction shelves and the register, one hand wrapped around a stack of returns you had forgotten to sort.

The little TV mounted in the corner of the bookstore crackled with static before the anchor’s voice sharpened again.

A dispute involving the Tokyo Manji Gang had resulted in multiple civilian casualties.

You only half listened at first. Gang violence was on the news often enough that most people learned to tune it out. Customers still wandered past with romance novels and exam guides tucked under their arms. Somebody asked where the magazines were. A child cried because his mother wouldn’t buy him a coloring book.

Then the anchor read two names.

“Among the deceased are Tachibana Hinata and Tachibana Naoto—”

The books slipped from your arms and hit the floor hard enough to make a customer jump.

For a second, the entire world narrowed into a high-pitched ringing in your ears.

Hinata.

Hina.

Your friend. Your brother’s first girlfriend. The bright, stubborn girl who used to scold Takemichi like she was trying to hammer courage straight into his skull.

Dead.

You stared at the screen, at the scrolling text beneath the reporter’s face, like if you looked hard enough the letters would rearrange themselves into something kinder.

They didn’t.

“Y/n!”

Your manager’s voice cut through the fog. “Don’t just stand there. Pick those up, please.”

You bent automatically, murmuring an apology before the thought even fully formed. “Sorry.”

That word came too easily these days.

Sorry for shelving too slowly. Sorry for breathing too loudly. Sorry for existing in the way of people who had figured out how to become adults while you were still treading water.

When you crouched to gather the fallen books, your hair slipped over your face in a dark curtain. Black now. The same shade as Takemichi’s. The same as it had been for years. If you caught your reflection in the glossy cover of a paperback, you’d see tired blue-gray eyes looking back at you—your brother’s eyes, too.

Twelve years ago, it had been different.

Takemichi’s hair had been blond in middle school, messy and loud and trying too hard, like him. Yours had been your own color then, softer, brighter, impossible to ignore. Back then, people could tell at a glance that you were twins only after looking twice—same eyes, same expressions, same terrible instincts, but packaged differently enough to fool strangers.

Now adulthood had worn you both into matching exhaustion.

Your phone buzzed in your apron pocket.

You already knew who it was before you looked.

**Michi.**

You swiped it open so fast you nearly dropped it.

*You saw the news?*

Three little dots appeared almost immediately. Vanished. Came back.

*Yeah.*

Then, after a pause:

*Can you meet me after work?*

Your chest tightened.

*Of course,* you typed. *Same station?*

*Yeah, n/n.*

That did it.

The stupid nickname hit harder than the news had. You pressed your lips together until the sting behind your eyes eased enough for you to breathe around it.

Your manager called your name again. A customer wanted help finding a textbook. The register chimed.

So you did what you always did.

You swallowed everything and kept going.

By the time your shift ended, the sky had gone the dull gray-blue of a city evening. Summer heat clung to the pavement and drifted up from the roads in waves. The bookstore’s air-conditioning vanished the moment you stepped outside, leaving you sticky, tired, and angry in a way that had no clean target.

You texted Takemichi that you were on your way, then took the familiar route toward the station.

He worked at a CD and DVD rental shop a few stops away. You worked in the bookstore. Separate apartments, separate messes, separate jobs that paid too little and took too much. But you still saw each other constantly. On purpose. Out of habit. Out of the simple fact that no matter how pathetic life got, it felt a little less humiliating when your twin was there to witness it.

You found him near the vending machines outside the station entrance.

He was hunched over, shoulders rounded inward like he was trying to make himself smaller. His work shirt was wrinkled. His expression looked scraped hollow.

When he noticed you, something fragile crossed his face. Relief, maybe. Or just recognition.

“N/n.”

“Michi.”

That was all it took.

You crossed the last few steps and pulled him into a quick hug before he could decide whether to dodge it. He froze for a second, then folded in against you with a shaky breath.

Neither of you said Hina’s name right away.

You let go first and studied him. “You look awful.”

He barked a humorless laugh. “That’s rich coming from you.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

For a moment, it almost felt normal. Like the two of you were still twelve and had just gotten caught doing something stupid. Like one of you only had to grin and the other would start laughing.

But then he looked away.

“I didn’t even know,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know anything about her life anymore.”

You understood what he meant because the same shame had been gnawing at you ever since the news report.

Hina had once been part of your everyday world. The kind of person who filled space just by being in it. Then time passed. School ended. People drifted. Takemichi ran first, and you—too weak, too tired, too afraid of everything falling apart further—let the distance happen.

She had died in a war started by the Tokyo Manji Gang.

And neither of you had been there.

You touched his arm. “We can’t change that now.”

“I know.”

But the way he said it meant the opposite.

Together, you went through the station gates and made your way toward the platform. The crowd pressed around you in loose currents of office workers, students, and strangers smelling faintly of sweat and cigarettes. Train announcements echoed overhead. Somewhere nearby, a child was whining for juice. Somebody shoved past without apologizing.

Takemichi stood beside you near the edge of the platform and stared down the tracks.

When he spoke again, his voice had gone flat.

“Do you ever think we peaked in middle school?”

You turned toward him. “That’s a depressing sentence.”

“It’s true, though.”

You wanted to disagree. You wanted to tell him adulthood could still become something decent. That twenty-six wasn’t the end. That part-time jobs and bad apartments and late-night convenience store dinners weren’t proof that your lives had already hardened into failure.

But you were thinking the same thing.

You thought of the bookstore. The rent. The apology that lived on your tongue. The way people your age spoke about careers and relationships and plans like those were things available to everyone.

Takemichi let out a bitter breath. “I get yelled at by a manager younger than me. I trip over everything. I can’t even look at my own life without wanting to apologize to it.”

“Michi…”

“And Hina…” He swallowed. “She was amazing. She really was. And I—”

He broke off.

You watched the headlights begin to bloom in the distance.

The train was coming.

Your brother laughed once, small and cracked. “I’m pathetic.”

“You’re not pathetic.”

He glanced sideways at you, blue-gray eyes dull beneath the station lights. Your eyes. The same eyes that made it impossible to deny you were siblings even when your hair had once made you look less alike.

“You don’t have to lie just because you’re my sister.”

“I’m not lying,” you said. “You’re an idiot. There’s a difference.”

That got a real smile out of him, weak but genuine.

Then someone slammed into his back.

It happened so fast your mind refused to process it at first.

Takemichi lurched forward with a choked sound, arms pinwheeling over empty air. His sneaker slipped over the yellow line. His whole body tipped off the platform.

“Michi!”

You grabbed for him on instinct.

Your fingers caught his sleeve for one desperate second.

Then a second impact hit you from behind—hard, deliberate, a brutal shove between your shoulders—and the platform vanished beneath your feet too.

The world tilted.

There was the shriek of someone screaming. Maybe you. Maybe not.

The tracks rushed up. Metal. Gravel. The white blaze of the oncoming train swallowing the tunnel.

Takemichi crashed beside you, eyes huge with terror.

You barely had time to think *no* before everything narrowed to a single impossible image:

Hinata smiling.

Then light.

Then nothing.

When you opened your eyes, you were sitting upright.

You sucked in air so sharply it hurt.

The train wasn’t on top of you.

You weren’t dead.

The first thing you saw was a scratched window reflecting your own stunned face. Not twenty-six. Younger. Softer around the edges. Your hair was wrong—no, not wrong, old. The color it had been in middle school framing your face instead of black. Your school uniform collar sat crooked under your chin.

Beside the window, Takemichi was staring at his reflection like he expected it to attack him.

Blond hair.

Rounder face.

Middle school.

“Oi!” Makoto leaned across the aisle and snapped his fingers in front of Takemichi’s face. “You two seriously asleep with your eyes open?”

Takuya laughed. “They look freaked out.”

Yamagishi hooked a thumb toward the door. “We’re getting off. Come on.”

Akkun peered at you, then frowned. “Y/n, you okay? You look pale.”

You knew those voices.

Knew those faces.

Your stomach dropped.

The five of you stumbled off the train in a daze. The station platform looked cleaner somehow, older in a way that only made sense if it was actually the past. Your pulse hammered so hard you could hear it in your ears.

Takemichi yanked out his phone with trembling hands. It was an old flip phone.

He opened it. Stared.

You snatched yours out, too. July 4, 2005.

Twelve years ago.

You and Takemichi looked at each other in complete silence.

Not a dream, your eyes said.

Not a coincidence, his answered.

Makoto squinted between the two of you. “What’s with you guys?”

Takemichi opened his mouth. Closed it. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” You almost laughed at how strangled he sounded.

“You both are weird today,” Takuya said.

“Today?” Yamagishi threw an arm around Takemichi’s shoulders. “Forget weird. Today’s huge. We’re heading to Shibuya to crush the second years from Third Middle.”

Your entire body went cold.

Of course.

That day.

You remembered now.

Not clearly at first, more like a bruise pressed from the inside. But it was there. The train. The heat. The stupid confidence. The disaster that followed.

The beginning of hell.

Takemichi’s lips parted. He remembered too.

Akkun grinned. “If anyone gives us trouble, we’ve got Takemichi’s cousin, Masaru. He rules Shibuya Third.”

Masaru.

You felt sick.

The timeline was dragging both of you along exactly where it had always gone.

The boys herded you toward a burger place first, talking over one another as if none of this was impossible. As if you and Takemichi hadn’t just died. As if twelve years hadn’t folded like paper.

You sat across from your brother, fries going cold between you.

Neither of you touched them for a while.

Finally, he whispered, “You saw it too, right?”

You stared at him. “If I say no, are we less insane?”

His throat bobbed. “We got pushed.”

“Yes.”

“And then…”

“And then we woke up here.”

For a second, you both just sat there with the sounds of the restaurant buzzing around you—the hiss of fryers, the scrape of chairs, your friends arguing about nothing.

Takemichi looked like he might be sick.

You leaned forward. “Michi, listen to me. If this is real-”

“If?”

“Fine. Since this is real, then we know what happens.”

His eyes widened.

Kiyomasa. The beatings. Being used. Fear sinking into your bones until it rewrote who you were. Takemichi running away after graduation. You letting him. Years of becoming smaller and smaller.

And at the end of that road, Hina dead.

Your hand curled into a fist on the table.

“We can’t do it the same way,” you said.

Takemichi looked down. “I don’t even know if I can do anything differently.”

“You can.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then I’ll drag you with me.”

That made him blink.

It also made something steadier settle inside you.

You were terrified. You had no idea how time travel worked. You had just died or almost died, and landed in your own worst memories. But Takemichi was here.

So were you.

That had to mean something.

Unfortunately, fate did not care that you had reached a dramatic sibling pact over fast food.

The moment your group reached Shibuya, dread curdled into certainty.

You remembered the park. The waiting. The way your friends puffed themselves up with fake confidence because they thought they were picking a fight with second years.

You remembered too late that the second years had never been the problem.

The third years arrived in a loose pack of smirking boys who looked older, meaner, and far too relaxed.

At their center was Masataka Kiyomizu.

Kiyomasa.

Even now, with a middle schooler’s face and build, he had the same rotten presence - lazy cruelty sharpened by the certainty that no one around him could stop him.

He smiled when he saw your group.

“Heard some idiots were looking for our second years.”

No one answered.

The boys around him laughed.

Yamagishi stepped up anyway, trying to sound bigger than he was. “We know Masaru!”

That did it.

One of Kiyomasa’s friends barked out a laugh and shouted for Masaru.

Your cousin came running.

Not like a king.

Like a servant.

He folded in on himself the moment Kiyomasa looked at him. When they ordered him to buy drinks with his own money, he obeyed instantly.

The lie shattered exactly as it had the first time.

You saw the understanding hit Takemichi too. Saw him realize this was not just the past. This was the moment that had broken him.

Kiyomasa rolled his shoulders and smiled wider. “Well, look at that. Guess your big shot cousin’s useless.”

His gaze slid over the group and landed on Takemichi first, then on you. “What’s this? He brought his sister too?”

One of the older boys snickered. “Cute.”

Your skin crawled.

Takemichi stepped in front of you on reflex, which would have been sweet if it weren’t hopeless.

“Don’t,” you hissed, but it was too late.

Kiyomasa’s fist slammed into your brother’s face hard enough to send him sprawling.

Everything after that happened in fragments.

Makoto shouting.

Akkun doubling over with a wheeze.

Someone grabbing your arm.

Your own elbow driving back uselessly before a blow caught you in the ribs and stole your breath.

The ground.

Shoes.

Laughter.

Apologies pouring out of your friends because that was all any of you had left.

Takemichi tried to rise once. He got kicked back down.

You clawed your way upright long enough to lunge toward him, and one of the third years shoved you so hard you skidded sideways across the dirt.

Humiliation burned hotter than the pain.

Because this was it.

This was how it had started before. Not with one fight, but with being taught, all at once, exactly how powerless you were.

Kiyomasa crouched in front of Takemichi and grabbed his chin, forcing his face up. Blood ran from your brother’s nose.

“From now on,” Kiyomasa said lightly, “you brats are our slaves.”

Your stomach twisted.

Aound him, his lackeys laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Tokyo Manji Gang.

At this point they weren’t the monsters they would become—not yet, not fully—but Kiyomasa wore their name like a weapon anyway. Something to terrify smaller kids with. Something to hide his own pathetic brutality behind.

When they finally left, they did it bored, not breathless. As if beating you all half to death hadn’t even counted as exercise.

The park went quiet.

No one moved for several seconds.

Then Takuya started crying.

Not loudly. Just a wet, broken sound like something inside him had come loose.

Makoto cursed under his breath. Yamagishi kept insisting Masaru had lied to them, as if that mattered now. Akkun sat hunched over with his hands on his knees, eyes fixed on the dirt.

Takemichi knelt with his head hanging.

You crawled over and touched his shoulder.

He flinched.

“Michi.”

“I remember this,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“This is why everything…” He choked on the rest.

You squeezed harder. “I know.”

He laughed once, and the sound was awful. “We came back and still got beaten up exactly the same.”

You looked at your trembling hands, scraped raw. “Then next time we change what comes after.”

The walk home felt longer than it should have.

The others drifted apart one by one, muttering about what excuses they’d tell their families. Eventually it was just you and Takemichi under the deepening evening sky.

The streets were exactly as you remembered and nothing like them at all.

Children still played outside. Cicadas screamed from the trees. The whole city felt unbearably alive.

Hina was alive.

The thought hit you so suddenly that you stopped walking.

Takemichi looked back. “N/n?”

“You have to see her.”

He stared for a second, then his expression changed.

Not fear. Not confusion.

Need.

Without another word, he turned and started running.

You ran with him.

By the time you reached the Tachibana residence, both of you were breathing hard and sore in about a dozen places. Takemichi hesitated for only a second before knocking.

Footsteps approached.

The door opened.

Hinata Tachibana stood there in the warm spill of the entryway light.

Alive. Your throat closed.

She looked smaller than the memory of her, because middle school Hina hadn’t yet grown into the force she would become. But her eyes were the same. Bright. Sharp. Entirely too perceptive.

Her gaze landed on Takemichi’s bruised face, then yours.

“You got into another fight, didn’t you?”

That was so normal, so perfectly Hina, that your eyes immediately filled with tears.

Takemichi made a sound that might have been her name.

Hina frowned. “What? Why are you both looking at me like that?”

He stepped forward, then stopped like he didn’t trust himself to get any closer.

You beat him to it.

You threw your arms around her.

Hina stiffened. “Y/n?”

You buried your face in her shoulder for one reckless second, inhaling soap and summer air and the simple miraculous fact that she was here.

When you pulled back, she looked completely baffled.

“Sorry,” you said, voice cracking. “I just… really wanted to see you.”

Hina’s expression softened, but only a little. “That doesn’t explain why you’re crying.”

Takemichi, somehow, looked worse than you did. His whole face had crumpled. “I wanted to see you too.”

Now she was definitely alarmed.

“Did something happen?” she asked.

A hundred answers jammed behind your teeth.

Yes. Everything. We died. We came back. If we fail, you die too.

Instead, Takemichi shook his head too quickly. “No. I just…”

He looked at her like someone had handed him back a piece of his own heart he’d thought was gone for good.

Hina stepped onto the porch and planted her hands on her hips. “If you got beaten up because of something stupid again, then stop doing stupid things.”

There she was.

The girl who would scold a crying delinquent on sight.

Takemichi started crying harder.

You laughed through your own tears because of course he did.

Hina stared between you both in total disbelief. “Why are you two such a mess today?”

Because you were dead this morning, you thought.

Because you were gone in another future.

Because this may be the only chance we get.

But Takemichi only wiped at his face and gave her a watery smile. “Sorry.”

Her expression turned instantly fierce. “Don’t apologize to me for everything.”

The words hit both of you.

You and Takemichi exchanged a glance.

Even twelve years later, some things never changed.

After a few more minutes of awkward explanations that explained nothing, Hina eventually sighed and told Takemichi not to pick pointless fights, then lightly flicked him in the forehead. She did the same to you for good measure.

“Both of you, seriously,” she muttered.

You almost started crying again.

Eventually you left before her mother could come out and ask why there were two bruised delinquents loitering at the door.

Takemichi didn’t speak until you reached the park.

Swings creaked softly in the evening breeze. The sky had gone indigo.

He sank onto one of the swings and hunched forward, elbows on his knees.

You sat beside him.

For a while, the only sound was the chains shifting and the far-off hum of traffic.

Then Takemichi spoke.

“I forgot her face.”

Your chest hurt.

“I know.”

“I really forgot.”

He sounded disgusted with himself.

You looked up at the darkening sky. “Then remember it now.”

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Do you think we can save her?”

The question hung between you.

You wanted to say yes immediately. You wanted certainty. You wanted a plan.

Instead, you said the truest thing you had.

“We have to try.”

A sudden shout cut across the park.

Both of you looked up.

Near the edge of the playground, three older boys had cornered a smaller kid. One had his hand fisted in the front of the boy’s shirt. Another was laughing while the third rifled through the kid’s pockets.

Takemichi stood so abruptly the swing jolted backward.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

You saw it happen on his face, the grief, the fury, the humiliation from earlier, all of it boiling over because some punks had chosen the worst possible moment to ruin the quiet.

He marched over before you could stop him.

“Michi!”

You ran after him.

The closest thug turned. “What do you want?”

Takemichi punched him in the face.

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t even especially strong. But it was sudden, desperate, and full-body angry. The boy yelped and fell backward.

The other two froze.

You grabbed the glass bottle abandoned near the bench, smashed it against the metal support with a sharp crack, and stepped up beside your brother with the jagged neck in your hand.

You were shaking.

The bottle probably made you look crazier for it.

“I am having,” you said, each word clipped, “the worst day of my life.”

The boys stared.

Takemichi was breathing hard beside you, eyes wild.

“If you don’t leave,” he snapped, “I swear I’ll lose it.”

The threat worked because none of them wanted to test whether the crying blond delinquent and his equally disheveled sister were bluffing.

They backed off fast, muttering insults that lost all conviction halfway through, then ran.

The smaller boy remained where he was, stunned.

Takemichi exhaled slowly. You lowered the broken bottle.

The kid adjusted his clothes and looked up at you both with wide eyes. He couldn’t have been older than elementary school.

“Th-thank you.”

Takemichi scrubbed a hand over his face. “If someone’s half-assed, you can scare them off just by not backing down.”

You snorted. “Coming from him, that sounds fake. But he’s right.”

The boy blinked, then smiled a little.

“What’s your name?” you asked.

“Naoto Tachibana.”

You and Takemichi went still.

Of course.

Of course it was him.

Hinata’s little brother looked from one of you to the other, confused by the sudden intensity on your faces.

Takemichi crouched down in front of him first.

“You’re Hina’s little brother?”

Naoto stiffened. “How do you know my sister?”

Takemichi laughed weakly. “Because I love her.”

Naoto’s ears went red immediately. “W-what?!”

Even in the middle of a time-travel crisis, that almost made you smile.

You crouched too, gentler. “We’re her friends.”

Naoto eyed the bruises on your faces. “You don’t look like very reliable friends.”

“Fair,” you admitted.

Takemichi’s expression changed then. The softness vanished, replaced by something urgent and raw.

“Naoto, listen to me carefully.”

The younger boy blinked.

“If I told you I came from twelve years in the future,” Takemichi said, “would you believe me?”

Naoto’s eyes widened with fascinated disbelief rather than fear. “Like a time leap?”

You and Takemichi exchanged a look.

Kids were amazing.

Takemichi nodded once. “Yeah. Like that.”

Naoto leaned in instead of pulling away.

You could practically see the moment he decided this was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him.

Takemichi spoke quickly, as if the words had been waiting behind his ribs.

“On July 1st, 2017, you and Hina die.”

Naoto went very still.

“In a Tokyo Manji Gang incident,” you added quietly. “Please remember that.”

He stared at both of you.

The air in the park seemed to hold its breath.

Takemichi swallowed. “Protect Hina.”

Naoto’s mouth tightened. “You’re serious.”

“Yes,” you said.

He looked between your faces, maybe weighing the desperation there, maybe noticing how completely convinced you both were. He was smart, even then. Sharper than most adults.

Finally he said, very carefully, “If this is true… then what do I do?”

Takemichi let out a broken breath. “Remember the date. Don’t forget us. Protect your sister.”

You added, “And become the kind of person who can fight back.”

Naoto’s small shoulders straightened.

Something changed in his expression.

Resolve.

He held out his hand.

“I’ll protect Hina.”

Takemichi stared at the offered hand, then took it.

On instinct, you placed your hand over both of theirs.

The moment your skin made contact, the world lurched.

A violent pressure seized your skull.

Takemichi jerked. Naoto’s eyes widened.

The park blurred.

The swing set melted into streaks of color and light.

You heard your own voice or maybe Takemichi’s, call out in shock.

Then everything vanished.

When you woke again, the smell hit first.

Antiseptic. Clean sheets. Metal.

You sat bolt upright on a narrow bed, gasping.

White ceiling.

Fluorescent lights.

Your hands flew to your hair.

Black.

A strangled noise came from the bed beside yours.

Takemichi was awake too, staring at himself in horror and relief.

“We’re back,” he whispered.

A station employee near the doorway jumped. “Ah- please don’t move too much.”

Your head was pounding. “Where are we?”

“Station medical room,” the woman said. “You were both brought in after an accident.”

Accident.

Right.

The tracks.

You swung your legs off the bed too fast and nearly collapsed. Takemichi caught your arm automatically.

“Easy, n/n.”

The nickname grounded you.

A date on the wall calendar caught your eye. July 4, 2017.

Only a few hours had passed.

But not exactly the same few hours.

The station employee hesitated. “There’s someone here to see you. He says… he says he’s the one who saved your lives.”

Takemichi looked at you.

You looked at him.

Neither of you said it aloud.

The door opened.

A tall man in a dark suit stepped inside.

He had neat hair, calm eyes, and the kind of posture that screamed law enforcement before he ever spoke. For a moment he simply looked at the two of you, expression unreadable.

Then he bowed his head slightly.

“Hanagaki Takemichi. Hanagaki Y/n.”

Your pulse kicked.

“No way,” Takemichi breathed.

The man straightened. “My name is Naoto Tachibana.”

The world tilted again, only this time without the benefit of supernatural warning.

Adult Naoto looked so different from the child in the park that your brain had to stitch them together piece by piece—the eyes, the seriousness, the intelligence sitting just beneath every word.

Takemichi stood up so fast his bed rattled. “You’re alive.”

Naoto’s face softened by a fraction. “Because of both of you, yes.”

Silence crashed into the room.

You stepped forward. “Then what we said in the past-”

“Reached me.” Naoto nodded. “I remembered it my whole life.”

Takemichi stared at him like he was afraid blinking would make him disappear. “I really time leaped.”

“You both did,” Naoto said.

The words settled over you like a second shock.

Both.

Not just Takemichi.

You looked at your hands.

Naoto continued, voice level and precise, but you could hear the strain underneath it. “Twelve years ago, the two of you told me the date of my death and my sister’s death. You told me to protect Hina. I believed you.”

He glanced toward the window, jaw tightening.

“So I studied. I worked. I became a detective.”

Your chest tightened with something like pride and grief all at once.

Naoto looked back at you. “Today, because I knew what would happen at this station, I was able to save both of you before the train hit."

Takemichi’s breath caught. “So that part changed.”

“Yes.”

Hope flared hard and dangerous in your ribs.

Then Naoto shattered it.

“But Hinata is still dead.”

The room went cold.

You felt Takemichi go rigid beside you.

Naoto’s voice dropped. “I changed my own fate. I changed yours. But I couldn’t save her.”

Takemichi looked like he’d been punched again.

You asked the question because he couldn’t.

“Why us?”

Naoto’s gaze sharpened. “Because when you shook my hand in the past, you returned to the present.”

He looked at Takemichi first, then you.

“I believe I am the trigger for your time leap.”

The phrase rang in your head.

Trigger.

Not the cause. Not the source. The point of contact.

Takemichi frowned. “So if we shake your hand…”

“You may be able to go back again,” Naoto said. “And if that’s true, then there’s still a chance to save Hina.”

You stared at him.

A detective standing in a station infirmary calmly explaining time travel should have sounded absurd. But after what you had just lived through, absurdity had lost its power.

Takemichi’s hands trembled at his sides.

Hina was still dead.

But not unreachable.

You turned to your brother.

He turned to you.

For the first time since the tracks, you saw something in his face that wasn’t only fear.

Determination.

Small. Shaky. But real.

Naoto extended his hand.

“This time,” he said, “I’m asking for your help.”

You looked down at his hand, then at Takemichi.

Michi swallowed hard.

You thought of Hina on the porch, alive and exasperated and warm beneath your arms.

You thought of Akkun, Makoto, Takuya, and Yamagishi kneeling in the dirt.

You thought of Kiyomasa’s grin. Of the life you and your brother had stumbled into after that day. Of all the apologies that had filled the years since.

And you thought, with sudden scorching clarity:

Not again.

You stepped forward first.

Takemichi followed.

When you were little, you did not understand how one day could change your whole life.

You only knew that the room was too bright, your shoes felt too tight, and the teddy bear in your hands was brand new.

It had soft brown fur, round black eyes, and a ribbon tied around its neck in an oversized bow, satin and pale blue. You held it so tightly that your tiny fingers disappeared into its fur. The social worker had smiled and told you it was a gift. A welcome present.

You did not feel welcomed.

You felt scared.

You sat on the edge of a chair in a small office in America, knees together, heart pounding so hard that even breathing felt difficult. You were trying to be brave, because brave girls did not cry in front of strangers. Brave girls sat still and listened. Brave girls nodded when adults talked.

Then the door opened.

Two men walked in together.

Even years later, you would remember how beautiful they looked to your little self.

One of them had soft black hair and gentle brown eyes behind blue half-rim glasses. He looked nervous, almost as nervous as you were, with his hands clasped together like he was trying very hard to say the right thing. The other had bright silver hair, sharp light-blue eyes, and the kind of smile that lit up the entire room before he even spoke. He wore confidence like it belonged to him, but when he looked at you, his expression softened into something warm and careful.

Victor and Yuuri.

At the time, they were just names someone had told you five minutes ago.

At the time, you did not know that one of them would stay up all night when you had fevers and press a cool cloth to your forehead.

At the time, you did not know that the other would braid your hair badly for school picture day and then laugh so hard he had to sit down.

At the time, you did not know they would become home.

Victor knelt first, slow and easy, so he wouldn’t seem too tall. Yuuri crouched beside him, hands resting on his knees. Both of them looked at you as if you were something precious.

You stared back at them over the teddy bear’s bow.

Victor smiled gently. “Hi, y/n.”

Your throat felt tight. You looked down at the bear, then back up at them. Your voice came out tiny and uncertain.

“Um… hi.”

Yuuri’s whole face softened at those first words. You did not know then that he would remember them forever.

For a moment, nobody moved. Nobody rushed you. Nobody told you to smile.

Victor tilted his head a little. “That’s a very nice bear you have.”

You looked down at it again, squeezing it harder. “It’s mine.”

“Of course it is,” Victor said, as if that were the most important truth in the world.

Yuuri swallowed. “We… we brought that for you.”

That made you blink.

You looked between them again, two strangers who were smiling like they wanted to know you but did not want to scare you. It made something strange twist in your chest. Hope, maybe. Or maybe the shape of it.

Your legs swung once under the chair. Then, because little you had always been practical even when scared, you asked the question that mattered most.

“What do I call you two?”

Victor’s eyes widened with surprise, then turned impossibly soft. Beside him, Yuuri looked like he might cry right there in the office.

Victor glanced at Yuuri. Yuuri glanced at Victor.

Then Yuuri said quietly, “If you want… you can call me Dad.”

Victor smiled, his hand brushing lightly against Yuuri’s sleeve. “And you can call me Papa.”

You tested the words silently in your head.

Dad. Papa. They felt foreign.

They felt frightening.

They felt a little like standing at the edge of the ice for the first time, toes at the line, not knowing whether you would fall or fly.

You held the teddy bear against your chest and whispered, “Okay.”

That was the beginning.

Years later, your teddy bear still sat on the shelf in your room in Saint Petersburg.

The bow was frayed now. One eye was a little scratched. The fur was worn soft in patches where your hands had loved it thin. But you never got rid of it.

It had been the first gift your fathers ever gave you.

Now you were sixteen, nearly as tall as Yuuri, and a senior-level figure skater with callused feet, aching muscles, and an entire life built around blades and music and timing and breath. The little girl in the office had become someone fierce on the ice, someone who could land jumps under pressure and hold a step sequence like she had music in her bones.

Sometimes the cameras said you looked like Victor when you performed.

Sometimes people said your softness off-ice was all Yuuri.

Your dads always said you were simply yourself.

That morning, sunlight spilled across the apartment kitchen while Victor stood at the stove in a slate-blue robe, making blini with the dramatic concentration of a man performing for an audience. Yuuri was at the table in one of Victor’s old sweaters, glasses slipping down his nose as he read over your training notes while sipping coffee.

Your skates should have been by the front bench.

They were not.

You tore through the hallway with one sleeve half on, bag bouncing against your hip.

“Papa! Dad, where are my skates?” you called.

Victor didn’t even turn around. “Good morning to you too, my love.”

“Morning,” you said automatically, still looking under the bench. “Seriously, where are they?”

“At the table,” Yuuri said.

You spun around. “Why are they at the table?”

“Because,” Yuuri replied in the patient voice that meant he was trying not to laugh, “your blades needed new guards and if I left them by the door, you would have run out with the old ones again.”

Victor set a plate down and looked over his shoulder, smiling. “Also because your father loves you.”

Yuuri’s ears pinked. “Victor.”

You crossed the kitchen, found your skates resting neatly beside your breakfast, and grinned despite yourself. “Thank you, Dad.”

Victor set more blini on your plate. “Eat first.”

“Papa-”

“No negotiating. You have training, and training requires food.”

Yuuri pushed the jam toward you. “And you know Dr. Sokolova wants you staying consistent.”

At that, some of the ease in your shoulders faded.

A few months ago, one of your routine medical checkups had ended with the sports physician sitting across from you, calm but firm, explaining that you were too close to underweight for the demands you were putting on your body. Not technically past the line, but close enough to worry her. She had advised weight gain, rest, reduced training, and careful monitoring.

You had nodded like it was simple.

It had not felt simple.

Taking a break had felt like losing language. Like waking up and finding out the world still moved without you. You had done what the doctor asked. You had eaten more. Rested more. Trained less. Your body had softened in places. Your hips felt different. Your old costumes fit tighter. Some of your practice dresses did not fit at all.

You had gained ten pounds.

Your dads had never once looked anything but relieved.

Victor turned down the stove and came over, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “I know that face.”

“What face?”

“The face that says you are thinking too much before breakfast.”

Yuuri reached over and squeezed your hand. “Your body needed care, y/n. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

You looked down at your plate. You knew they were right. You really did.

But coming back to full training still made nerves gather in your stomach like storm clouds.

“I know,” you muttered.

Victor crouched beside your chair, blue eyes level with yours. His tone, for once, held no teasing. “Listen to me. Strong is not a number. Healthy is not a punishment. You are allowed to take up space.”

Yuuri nodded at once, his own expression quiet and steady. “More than allowed.”

Your throat tightened. Sometimes their love was so immediate that it caught you off guard.

You took a bite of blini. Victor looked ridiculously pleased, like he had personally won a medal.

“Good,” he said. “Now finish breakfast, and then we’ll drive you.”

At the rink, the air smelled like cold metal, sharpened blades, and old ice. It should have felt comforting. Usually it did.

You changed in the locker room, pulling on one of your newer practice outfits, a dark navy top and black leggings that fit your body now instead of the body you had before. You caught your reflection in the mirror and hesitated.

You looked healthy.

You also looked different.

Before you could think too hard about it, you grabbed your guards and hurried out.

Your coach was already waiting at the boards.

He had trained you for years. He knew your habits, your jump timing, the way you bit the inside of your cheek before difficult run-throughs. He had praised your discipline. Praised your lines. Praised how “light” you used to look.

At first practice back, he just frowned.

Today, after you finished your warm-up laps, he called you over.

You glided to the barrier, breathing lightly. “Yes?”

His eyes moved over you in a way that made your skin crawl.

“You need to be careful,” he said.

You blinked. “About what?”

“Your body.”

Your stomach dropped.

He went on, voice low and critical, as if he were discussing a flaw in choreography. “You were always elegant because you looked long and lean on the ice. Now you look… heavier. Slower. The extra weight shows.”

For a second, all you heard was the hum of the rink.

You stared at him.

“I was told to gain weight,” you said carefully. “By my doctor.”

He shrugged. “Doctors are not judges. Or costume fitters. You can’t expect your old costumes to flatter you now. And if you want to stay competitive at senior level, you need to think about appearances.”

The words hit with surgical precision.

Your old costumes.

Flatter you.

Appearances.

You looked down at your hands gripping the top of the boards.

He was still talking.

“Maybe we adjust your meals now that you’re back. Be more disciplined. You don’t want people noticing.”

You did not realize you had gone completely still until another skater brushed past and sent a spray of ice against your boot.

A hot, painful shame spread through your chest.

The worst part was not that he said it.

The worst part was that some frightened, hidden part of you had already been thinking it.

You managed a brittle nod because you did not trust yourself to speak. Then you pushed away from the boards, skated to center ice, and missed your first jump so badly that the landing sent a hard shock up your ankle.

By the time practice ended, your hands were trembling.

You pulled off your skates too fast, stuffed them into your bag, and walked straight past the lobby. You needed air. You needed not to be looked at.

You made it to a side hallway before the tears came.

You hated crying here. Hated it.

You pressed your sleeve to your face and tried to stop, but the humiliation sat heavy and alive under your ribs. Maybe he was right, a cruel little voice whispered. Maybe everyone had noticed. Maybe everyone was being polite. Maybe you had come back wrong.

“Y/n?”

You looked up sharply.

Yuuri stood at the end of the hall, his glasses fogged slightly from the temperature change, concern already all over his face. Victor was right behind him carrying two coffees and your extra blade cloth, because of course he was.

The second they saw you crying, both of them changed.

Victor set the coffees down on the nearest windowsill so quickly one almost tipped over. Yuuri crossed the distance first.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, voice breaking on the words.

He cupped your face so gently it made you cry harder.

Victor was there a second later, one hand warm between your shoulder blades. “What happened?”

You shook your head once, embarrassed and angry and hurt all at once.

“Y/n,” Yuuri whispered, “please tell us.”

Something in his expression undid you. Maybe because Yuuri knew what it was to hear your body discussed like it was public property. Maybe because he looked frightened for you in a way that made you feel small and loved at the same time.

You sucked in a shaky breath. “Coach said I look heavier. That I don’t fit my old costumes right. That if I want to stay competitive, I need to watch what I eat again.”

Silence.

Not empty silence.

Dangerous silence.

Victor’s hand stilled on your back.

Yuuri’s eyes widened behind his glasses, and for one rare second, the softness dropped away completely. What remained was steel.

Victor blinked once. Slowly. “He said that to you?”

You nodded.

Yuuri’s jaw tightened.

Victor turned toward him. “Yuuri.”

“I know,” Yuuri said.

You had seen your father upset before. Anxious, certainly. Emotional, often. But this was different. This was the quiet fury of a man whose child had been hurt in exactly the place he knew could wound deepest.

Victor’s expression went cold in a way that made him look every inch the living legend people once feared competing against. “No.”

Yuuri kept one hand on your shoulder. “Did he say anything else?”

You stared at the floor. “That doctors aren’t judges. That people would notice.”

Victor actually laughed once, soft and disbelieving. It had no humor in it at all. “Oh, I would love to see him say that to a panel of sports physicians.”

“Victor,” Yuuri said, but he did not sound like he was disagreeing.

You wiped your eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Both of them answered at once.

“No.”

Victor crouched in front of you, taking your cold hands in his. “Do not apologize for someone else’s cruelty.”

Yuuri nodded firmly. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do. You listened to your doctor. You took care of your body. I am so proud of you.”

The tears started again, quieter this time.

Victor squeezed your fingers. “And for the record, ten pounds is nothing except proof that your body is recovering like it should.”

Yuuri inhaled slowly, visibly composing himself. “You know,” he said, voice still gentle but edged with experience, “there were years when comments like that would have destroyed me for months. People talk about skaters’ bodies like they belong to the sport before they belong to the person. It’s wrong. It was wrong when they did it to me, and it is wrong now.”

You looked up at him.

He smiled sadly. “Your body is not a problem to solve.”

Victor stood. “Stay here with Dad.”

“Victor-”

“No, no. I’m being calm,” he said, which meant he absolutely was not calm.

Yuuri almost smiled despite everything. “Try to remain mostly calm.”

Victor touched your hair once as he passed. “For you, I will be dazzlingly restrained.”

Then he strode back toward the rink lobby with the crisp grace of a man about to ruin someone’s afternoon.

You stared after him. “Papa’s scary when he’s mad.”

Yuuri let out a breath through his nose. “Yes. Very.”

He sat beside you on the bench and pulled you gently against his side. You leaned into him automatically, your head resting on his shoulder the way it had since childhood.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then Yuuri said, “When I was competing, I used to wear extra layers sometimes.”

You blinked. “Because you were cold?”

He gave you a small, crooked smile. “Sometimes. Mostly because I was worried about how I looked. People had opinions whenever my weight changed. I knew logically that bodies change. I knew performance is more complicated than numbers. But knowing something and believing it about yourself are different.”

You thought of old photos of him, the ones from before you were adopted, before he fully grew into his confidence. Sweaters layered over shirts, jackets zipped high, softness hidden like it was something shameful.

“You’re not ashamed of it now,” you said quietly.

Yuuri adjusted his glasses. “No. Not anymore. And do you know why?”

You shook your head.

He glanced toward the lobby where Victor had disappeared. “Because your Papa spent years loving me loudly until I started hearing him over everyone else.”

That made a watery laugh slip out of you.

Right on cue, Victor returned.

His smile was bright and beautiful and utterly dangerous.

“Well,” he said, smoothing invisible wrinkles from his coat, “you won’t be training with him alone again.”

You sat up. “What did you do?”

Victor looked offended. “I had a conversation.”

Yuuri gave him a look.

Victor relented, but only slightly. “A very direct conversation. Then a second, more professional conversation with the rink director, who was surprisingly interested to hear that a coach had decided to contradict medical guidance and comment on a minor athlete’s body in those terms.”

Your mouth fell open.

Yuuri blinked. “You already talked to the director?”

“I walk quickly when motivated.”

Despite yourself, you smiled.

Victor’s expression softened instantly when he saw it. He came over and held out his hand to you. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“What about practice?”

Yuuri stood too. “Today, practice is over.”

Victor nodded. “Today, we are getting lunch, buying you that new practice dress you liked, and reminding you that your worth does not decrease because old clothes fit differently.”

You hesitated. “But—”

“No.” Victor’s voice gentled. “Listen carefully. Missing one practice will not ruin your career. Staying in an environment that teaches you to mistrust your body might.”

Yuuri zipped your bag for you because your hands were still shaky. “We can review your program at home later, if you want. No pressure.”

Your eyes burned again, but this time it was from relief.

“Okay,” you whispered.

Victor took one side of your bag. Yuuri took the other, even though you could easily carry it yourself. They did it anyway, each holding one strap between them like they were physically sharing the weight.

It made something in your chest unclench.

They took you to a quiet café first.

Victor ordered far too much food. Yuuri made sure you drank water. Neither of them commented on how much you ate, only chatted about choreography ideas and whether your step sequence needed stronger musical accents. After that, Victor insisted on taking you shopping, sweeping through a boutique with the dramatic purpose of a man correcting an injustice.

He picked out dresses based on color. Yuuri picked them out based on comfort and line. Between the two of them, you ended up in a fitting room with three options and a tiny, reluctant smile.

One of the dresses was deep wine-red with subtle crystal detailing at the sleeves. It fits your current body perfectly.

When you stepped out, Victor put a hand over his heart. “See? Stunning.”

Yuuri’s eyes went bright and soft. “You look happy in that one.”

You looked in the mirror.

You did. Not smaller. Not lighter. Just… good.

That evening, back at home, the apartment felt warm with lamplight and the smell of dinner. Your new dress was draped over a chair. Your old teddy bear watched from its shelf. Outside the windows, Saint Petersburg glowed blue-gray under the fading sky.

Victor sat on the floor by the couch, polishing your skate blades with theatrical seriousness. Yuuri was beside him, mending a loose crystal on one of your gloves with the focus of a surgeon.

You stood in the doorway for a moment and simply looked at them.

Your dads.

Your Papa with silver hair and impossible brightness, who had crossed countries and careers and still somehow made room in his heart for you as though it had always been waiting.

Your Dad with the glass heart everyone talked about, who understood fragile things because he had once been one, and who had taught you that tenderness was not weakness.

They noticed you at the same time.

Victor glanced up first. “Why are you hovering? Come here.”

You crossed the room and dropped down between them, nearly knocking Victor sideways. He laughed and wrapped an arm around your waist while Yuuri steadied the skate in his lap.

“Careful,” Yuuri said, amused. “Sharp blade.”

“Sorry.”

Victor rested his chin briefly against your shoulder. “Better?”

You thought about the hallway at the rink. The shame. The sting of those words.

Then you thought about today: warm hands, firm voices, lunch, laughter, a new dress, your fathers standing between you and the kind of harm that wore professionalism as a disguise.

“Yes,” you said honestly. “Better.”

Yuuri set the glove aside and touched your cheek. “You know we mean it, right?”

“What?”

“That none of this changes how proud we are of you.”

Victor nodded. “Not your weight. Not your costumes. Not one coach’s opinion. Nothing.”

You looked down at your hands. “I was scared you’d be disappointed.”

Both of them went still.

Then Yuuri’s expression crumpled in the tenderest way. “Oh, y/n.”

Victor gently took your chin and lifted your face. “My darling girl, the only thing that would disappoint us is you believing you have to hurt yourself to deserve this sport.”

Your eyes filled again.

Yuuri pulled you into him first, and Victor folded around both of you a second later, until you were tucked between them like you had been when you were small and sick and needed comfort.

You could hear Yuuri’s heartbeat at your ear.

Victor kissed the top of your head.

You let yourself sink.

When you finally spoke, your voice was muffled by sweaters and warmth and love.

“I love you, Papa. I love you, Dad.”

For a second, the room went quiet.

Then Victor made the softest sound, halfway between a laugh and something emotional, and tightened his arms around you.

“We love you more,” he said immediately.

Yuuri smiled against your hair. “So much more.”

You laughed, because they always said that, every single time, as if love were a competition they intended to win.

Maybe, in your family, it was.

Later that night, after dinner, after reviewing your program on the living room rug with socks instead of skates, after Victor demonstrated a dramatic arm movement and nearly hit a lamp while Yuuri scolded him fondly, you stood in your room getting ready for bed.

Your gaze landed on the teddy bear on the shelf.

You picked it up.

The bow was faded. One side drooped lower than the other. You brushed your thumb over the worn fur and remembered a tiny office, bright lights, trembling hands, and two men kneeling to meet you at eye level.

What do I call you two?

Dad.

Papa.

Back then, you had not known what those words would come to mean.

You knew now.

They meant sharpened blades left by your breakfast so you would not forget them.

They meant doctor’s appointments, new costumes, and lunches after bad practices.

They meant someone standing in the doorway when you cried, and someone else already reaching for you before you had to ask.

They meant being protected without being smothered, loved without conditions, and reminded again and again that your body was your home before it was ever a performance.

They meant family.

You tucked the teddy bear under one arm and padded down the hall.

Your fathers were already in their room. Victor was reading, stretched dramatically across the bed like a painting. Yuuri was beside him, glasses on, half-hidden by blankets and a skating magazine.

Both looked up when you appeared in the doorway holding the bear.

Victor smiled instantly. “Ah. A sleepover guest.”

Yuuri moved the blankets back. “Come here, sweetheart.”

You climbed in between them, because you were sixteen and nearly grown and still their daughter, and some kinds of comfort did not expire with age.

Victor dimmed the lamp.

Yuuri tucked the blanket around all three of you.

In the dark, your hand found theirs, Dad on one side, Papa on the other.

Safe.

Loved.

Home.

B= Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

You probably don’t become Baji’s best friend in any normal way. It starts with chaos—maybe you step in when he’s about to get into a stupid fight, maybe you yell at him when everyone else backs off, or maybe you’re the only person reckless enough to laugh when he gives you that sharp, feral grin. At first, he acts like you annoy him on purpose, shoving your shoulder, stealing your food, showing up out of nowhere just to drag you into whatever nonsense he’s gotten himself into. But Baji notices people fast, and the moment he realizes you’re not scared of him, not using him, and not planning to leave when things get messy, he latches on hard. Your friendship would grow in that rough, unspoken way—late walks, hanging around while he pretends he doesn’t care that you came, and a hundred little moments where he starts treating your presence like something constant in his life.

As a best friend, Baji would be intense, loud, and unbelievably loyal. He’d tease you mercilessly, start arguments just to see your reaction, and act like he never needs help, but the second anyone else gives you trouble, he’s in front of you without hesitation. He’s the kind of friend who remembers the things you mention offhand, even if he acts dumb about it later, and he’d trust you with parts of himself most people never see—the thoughtful side, the guilt he carries, the way he quietly watches over the people he loves. With you, Baji would be weirdly clingy in his own way: showing up at your place uninvited, demanding you ride with him, dragging you into danger and then making sure you get home safe. He’d never say something soft in a straightforward way, but you’d know you matter by how fiercely he protects you, how quickly he looks for you in a crowd, and how, no matter how wild he is with everyone else, he always comes back to you.

C= Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Baji definitely acts like he is not the cuddly type at first. He would grumble if you called him clingy, flick your forehead, and tell you not to say dumb stuff like that, but the second you lean against him, he is not moving you away. He likes cuddling in a very Baji way—casual, rough around the edges, and like he is pretending it just happened by accident. You would notice that he always ends up pulling you closer with one strong arm, usually tucking you against his side or dragging you into his chest like it is the most natural thing in the world. He is warm, solid, and quietly possessive, the kind of person who acts annoyed while making sure you are as close to him as possible.

When Baji cuddles, he is not overly delicate, but there is a lot of hidden tenderness in it. He would rest his chin on your head, sling an arm over your waist, or pull you into his lap without warning, especially if he is in a lazy mood and wants you near him. If you are tired, he would let you bury your face into his shirt while his fingers lazily run through your hair or rub slow circles into your back, all while pretending he is not doing anything sweet. He is the type to hold you tighter when he feels protective or when he has had a long day, almost like having you in his arms helps settle the storm in him. And if you fall asleep on him, he is absolutely staying put, even if his arm goes numb, because there is no way he is waking you up once you trust him enough to relax like that.

D= Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Keisuke Baji does not grow up dreaming about a quiet, picture-perfect life, and for a long time, “settling down” sounds too much like being caged. He is restless by nature, all sharp grins, bad impulses, and the kind of energy that feels too big for four walls. But with you, it changes. Not because he becomes soft or suddenly tame, but because home starts meaning something different. It is not routine he wants; it is you waiting for him, your voice cutting through the noise in his head, your place becoming the one spot where he can throw himself onto the floor, steal your food, and exist without pretending to be tougher than he already is. Baji would never say he wants domesticity in a neat, polished way, but he absolutely becomes the type to linger around you, to complain if you are out too late, to act like your shared space is his territory in the most protective, possessive way. He settles down without realizing it, one small habit at a time, until loving you quietly becomes the steadiest thing he has ever done.

As for cooking and cleaning, Baji is a disaster first and useful second. He can cook, technically, but only in the reckless, instinctive way where he does not measure anything, cranks the heat too high, and leaves the kitchen looking like he fought it. He is the kind of guy who proudly hands you something surprisingly good while there is smoke in the background and three dirty pans in the sink. Cleaning is even worse. He is messy, forgetful, and absolutely the type to say he is “in the middle of cleaning” when he has really just moved his stuff into one pile. Still, if you are tired, sick, or overwhelmed, Baji tries—really tries. He will scrub dishes with a scowl, sweep badly, and grumble the entire time, but he does it because it is for you. In private, that is what loving Baji feels like: chaos, effort, and devotion wrapped together so tightly that even his clumsy attempts at being domestic feel unbearably sincere.

E= Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

Baji wouldn’t be the type to drag out a breakup or play cruel mind games with you, because even if he’s reckless, his feelings are never fake; if he had to end things, it would probably come after days of acting more distant than usual, jaw tight, avoiding your eyes because he knows once you really look at him, his resolve might crack. He’d ask to see you somewhere quiet, away from the gang and away from anyone who could interrupt, and when you showed up, he’d look irritated more at himself than at you, shoving his hands in his pockets, hair falling in his face as he muttered that you deserve better than someone like him. Baji would try to sound blunt, almost harsh, because softness would make it harder, but the truth underneath would be obvious: he’s doing this to protect you, whether it’s from his dangerous life, the enemies around him, or the parts of himself he thinks will only hurt you in the end. He wouldn’t blame you, and he definitely wouldn’t make you beg for answers; instead, he’d force himself to be honest in the rough, ugly way that suits him, telling you that being with him means getting caught in things you shouldn’t have to carry. Even while breaking your heart, he’d still be watching your expression closely, memorizing it, hating himself for being the reason you look hurt. And when it was over, Baji would probably turn away first so you wouldn’t see how hard he was clenching his teeth, leaving with that same wild pride he always wears, because if Baji had to break up with his partner, he’d do it quickly, directly, and painfully honestly—while secretly hoping you’ll hate him enough to let him go.

F= Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Baji acts like commitment shouldn’t matter to him, like he’s too wild, too restless, too allergic to anything that sounds neat and permanent—but with you, it hits differently. He doesn’t fear being tied down nearly as much as he fears failing someone he loves. If he calls you his, he means it with his whole chest, in that intense, reckless Baji way where loyalty is basically a vow long before he ever puts a ring on your finger. He isn’t the type to give you polished speeches about forever, but you feel it in the way he always comes back to you, the way he gets protective without thinking, the way his voice turns strangely honest in quiet moments. To Baji, commitment isn’t soft or pretty it’s brutal, unwavering devotion, and once he decides you’re his future, there is no halfway.

As for marriage, Baji would probably want it faster than people expect once you’re both actually old enough and settled enough to make it real. He wouldn’t spend years planning some perfect timeline, because overthinking has never been his style; the moment he’s sure, he’d want to lock it in before life gets the chance to mess with it. His proposal would be impulsive but sincere, probably after a moment where he nearly loses you, scares himself, or just gets hit with that fierce certainty that he wants you beside him for the rest of his life. He’d grumble about formalities, complain through ring shopping, and act like ceremonies are a pain, but deep down he’d love calling you his fiancé because it proves something solid: out of all the chaos in his life, you’re the person he chose permanently.

G= Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionaly?)

Baji is the kind of gentle that catches you off guard, because it never looks delicate at first—his hands are rough, warm, and a little calloused from fighting, but when he touches you, it is always with surprising care, like he is constantly reminding himself not to be too much; he steadies you with a hand on your back when crowds get tight, fixes your jacket without a word, and cups your face like you are something precious he does not trust the world with. Emotionally, he is not gentle in a polished or poetic way, but in a raw, honest one—he notices when you are overwhelmed before you say anything, stays close without pushing, and defends your feelings as fiercely as he defends your safety. Baji is not the type to shower you in soft speeches, yet every quiet check-in, every instinct to stand between you and anything that might hurt you, every moment he lowers his voice just for you says the same thing: with everyone else, he may be reckless, loud, and wild, but with you, he tries so hard to be careful.

H= Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Baji does like hugs, but not in a sweet, obvious way that everyone gets to see. With most people, he acts too rough, too restless, too prideful to go around hugging anyone, so it can seem like he does not care for that kind of affection at all. But with you, it is different. Once he trusts you, hugs become one of those quiet habits he slips into without admitting how much he needs them. He is not clingy every second of the day, but he does pull you close pretty often, especially after a fight, after a long day, or anytime he feels keyed up and wants to ground himself with you nearby.

Baji’s hugs are strong, sudden, and a little messy, just like him. He usually grabs you by the shoulders or waist and tugs you into his chest before you can even react, like he already decided that is where you belong. Sometimes he buries his face against your hair or your neck and stays there longer than you expect, breathing hard and pretending he is not being soft when he absolutely is. If he is in a playful mood, his hugs come with teasing, a crooked grin, and enough force to nearly knock you off balance; if he is worried about you, they turn tighter, quieter, almost protective, like he is shielding you from the whole world. More than anything, Baji hugs you like letting go is the hardest part.

|= I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Keisuke Baji does not say “I love you” fast - not because he is unsure, but because those words mean something permanent coming from him. With you, he would show it first in a hundred reckless, unpolished ways: walking you home without asking, putting himself between you and trouble on instinct, remembering the tiny things you mention, and getting weirdly irritated when you do not take care of yourself. Baji is not smooth, and he is definitely not the kind of guy to sit you down for some perfect confession early on; he would need time to trust the softness of what he feels, especially because loving someone makes him vulnerable in a way fighting never does. So when he finally says it, it is probably after you have already realized it yourself blurting out a rough, low “I love you, dumbass” in the middle of a raw, honest moment, like after an argument, after patching him up, or when he is hit with the terrifying realization that losing you would ruin him. Once he says it, though, he means it with his whole chest, and from then on, you never have to doubt it again.

J= Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they're jealous?)

Baji gets jealous fast, but not in a quiet, subtle way. With him, it’s immediate, sharp, and impossible to miss. The second he notices someone getting too comfortable with you, his whole mood changes - his jaw tightens, his eyes narrow, and that usual reckless grin turns into something far more dangerous. He is not the type to calmly sit back and “see what happens.” Even if he trusts you, that doesn’t stop the surge of protectiveness and irritation that hits him hard when someone else thinks they can have your attention. Baji’s jealousy is intense because he loves intensely; when he cares about you, he cares with his whole chest, and the idea of somebody trying to flirt with you or make a move puts him in a foul, territorial mood almost instantly.

When Baji’s jealous, he gets closer instead of pulling away. He’ll sling an arm over your shoulders, stand way too close, or cut into the conversation with a rough, “What’re you doing?” like he already knows he doesn’t like the answer. If the other person keeps pushing, Baji’s the kind to glare them down until they back off, and if they still don’t, he absolutely will start something. Later, when it’s just the two of you, he gets a little sulky under all that aggression - grumbling, asking why that person was talking to you so much, pretending he doesn’t care while very obviously caring a lot. He’d never admit he was jealous right away, but you’d know from the way he keeps you tucked close to his side, like he’s silently reminding the world that you’re his.

K= Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Baji’s kisses are never neat or carefully planned; they happen the same way he does everything else, all heat and instinct and sudden intensity. One second he is smirking at you with that sharp, reckless grin, and the next he is pulling you in by the waist or the back of your neck like he cannot stand being even a few inches away anymore. His kisses usually start rough, almost challenging, like he wants to overwhelm you a little just to see your reaction, but they always melt into something warmer once he realizes you are kissing him back just as hard. He likes kissing you on the mouth most because it feels direct and honest, but when he is softer than usual, he goes for your forehead, your temple, or the corner of your lips when he thinks you are being cute. If he is in a clingy mood, he presses quick kisses to your cheek and jaw between words, like he has too much feeling in him to keep it contained.

Baji likes to kiss places that make you react, so your neck is one of his favorites, especially when he can hear the way your breathing changes because of him. He also likes kissing your knuckles or the inside of your wrist in rare quiet moments, though he would act like he was not being sweet if you pointed it out. As for where he likes being kissed, Baji secretly loves it when you kiss his face in ways that catch him off guard, like his cheek, the bridge of his nose, or right beside his mouth when he is pretending not to want attention. He especially likes when you kiss his hairline or run your fingers through his hair and kiss his forehead after a fight, because it makes him go quiet in that rare way that means he feels safe with you. And of course, he loves being kissed on his lips, hard and sure, because with you he does not want hesitation; he wants to feel chosen.

L= Little ones (How are they around children?)

Baji is the kind of person who looks like he’d scare every kid in the room, but the second a little one waddles up to him, he goes weirdly soft without even realizing it; you notice how he crouches down to their level, lets them tug on his hair or poke at his sharp canines while he acts all offended, and somehow ends up becoming their personal jungle gym by accident. He’s not polished or naturally “gentle” in the usual way, but he’s fiercely attentive, always keeping one eye on them, catching them before they trip, scaring off anyone who makes them cry, and pretending he’s only helping because “they’re annoying.” Around children, Baji is loud, playful, and a little chaotic, teaching them silly games, letting them climb all over him, and grinning when they laugh, and you can tell he’d be absurdly protective if anyone upset them because underneath all that rough, reckless energy, he has a huge heart for anyone small, vulnerable, and trusting enough to love him.

M= Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Mornings with Baji are never neat or quiet; they start with tangled sheets, his long black hair all over the place, and his arm thrown heavily over your waist like even half-asleep he’s making sure you’re still there. He grumbles when you try to get up too early, pulling you back against his chest with a sleepy frown and a rough, “Five more minutes,” even though it usually turns into twenty. If he’s awake first, he acts like he’s not being affectionate, but he’ll wordlessly shove a drink or some convenience-store breakfast into your hands, sit too close beside you, and complain about the morning while making sure you’ve eaten. Sometimes he’s restless, already itching for movement, pacing around while tying his hair back and throwing you lazy grins with those sharp canines showing, but around you his chaos softens; the mornings feel warm, low-energy, and oddly intimate, full of half-mumbled teasing, sleepy touches, and the quiet kind of care Baji would never say out loud but shows in every little thing he does for you.

N= Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Nights with Baji are never quiet in the normal sense, but they always feel strangely safe, because even when he drags you onto his bike for some impulsive late-night ride or pulls you along to sit on a rooftop with convenience store snacks and a stupid grin on his face, there is this steady kind of warmth in the way he keeps you close; he is the type to act wild all day and then, once it is just the two of you, lean against you like he has been carrying too much for too long, grumbling about nonsense, picking playful fights just to hear you argue back, and wordlessly throwing his jacket over your shoulders when the air gets cold, all sharp teeth and rough edges until you reach for his hand and he goes quiet, thumb brushing over your knuckles like he is reminding himself you are really there, and by the end of the night you always realize that with Baji, love is never said gently, but it is shown in every protective glance, every reckless little adventure, and every moment he refuses to let you walk home alone.

O= Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Baji would not tell you everything about himself all at once. At first, getting close to him would feel like trying to catch hold of smoke he is there, loud and reckless and constantly in your space, but the real parts of him stay tucked behind sharp grins and stupid jokes. He would start revealing things only after he decides you are steady enough to stay, usually after you have seen him at his worst and did not flinch away. It would begin with small, almost careless scraps: a random story from when he was a kid, a complaint about school, an offhand mention of Mikey or Chifuyu, the kind of detail he pretends means nothing even though he is secretly watching your reaction. With Baji, trust is not built through soft speeches or neat confessions. It is built when you sit beside him in the quiet after a fight, when you patch up his knuckles without nagging, when you understand that sometimes his silence is not rejection it is him deciding whether it is safe to hand you something real.

Once Baji starts letting you in, it still would not come out in one clean confession. He is too guarded for that, and too used to carrying things alone. Instead, he would reveal himself in pieces over time, usually when he is tired, worked up, or caught off guard by how much he wants you to understand him. One night he might admit he hates people seeing him as stupid. Another time he might talk about Toman with a kind of fierce, aching loyalty that makes it obvious how much of his heart is tied up in protecting the people he loves. The heavier things his guilt, his fears, the way he takes on pain like it is his job - would take the longest, because those are the parts he thinks might make you look at him differently. If Baji ever told you something deeply personal, it would be blunt, low-voiced, and almost frustratingly casual, like he is tossing you a piece of his heart and daring you to make a big deal out of it. He opens slowly, but once he does, every truth he gives you feels important because you know he did not say it lightly.

P= Patience (How easily angered are they?)

You figure out pretty quickly that Baji is dangerously easy to provoke, but only in certain ways he’s not the type to snap over every little inconvenience, but disrespect, fake bravado, underhanded behavior, or anyone messing with the people he cares about will set him off almost instantly. He has this restless, explosive energy where his anger burns hot and fast, like he’s acting before the thought fully settles, so if someone mouths off to you, insults Toman, or tries to pull something sneaky, he’s already halfway to throwing the first punch with that wild grin on his face. But with you, it’s a little different; he’ll grumble, glare, and act annoyed if you tease him or tell him to calm down, yet he has more patience for you than he does for almost anyone else, mostly because deep down he likes that you’re one of the few people who can get away with pushing his buttons and still make him cool off before things go too far.

Q= Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Baji is the kind of person who acts like he forgets half of what you say, but that is honestly just because he looks so chaotic on the outside. You’ll mention something small in passing - your favorite drink, the name of a stray cat you like, the fact that you hate crowded trains and weeks later he’ll remember it at the weirdest, most unexpected moment. He is not the type to sit there nodding politely and asking a million soft questions, but he listens far more closely than people give him credit for. If it matters to you, it sticks with him. He might forget obvious things like dates or what time you said to meet him, but the emotional details, the things tied to your habits, your comfort, your likes and dislikes? Those stay. Baji is deeply observant beneath all that reckless energy, so he remembers you in a way that feels almost startling, like he has been paying attention the whole time even while acting distracted.

What makes it even more intense is that Baji would not bring up those details in a sweet, obvious way he would just use them. You’d be cold and suddenly he is shoving his jacket at you without a word because he remembered you always forget to dress for the weather. You’d stare at some dessert too long and he would grumble before buying it, already knowing it is your favorite because you mentioned it once three months ago. He probably does forget random surface-level stuff sometimes, especially if he is busy, injured, or caught up in Toman problems, but he does not forget you. Not really. Baji remembers the things that build a person, the little pieces that make you you, and because he cares so fiercely, those details become permanent in his mind even if he pretends they are not.

R= Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

Baji’s favorite moment in your relationship is always the quiet aftermath of his chaos those late evenings when he shows up at your place bruised, grinning like he didn’t just nearly get himself killed, and you make him sit still while you clean the cuts on his face and hands; he acts annoyed, complains that you fuss too much, and tries to joke his way out of it, but secretly he lives for the way your hands are gentle with him, the way your voice softens when you tell him to stop moving, and the way you look at him like he’s more than the violence everyone else sees. For someone as reckless and wild as Baji, being cared for by you in those small, quiet moments means everything, because that’s when he feels it most clearly that no matter how hard he fights, where he goes, or what role he has to play, he can always come back to you and be wanted, understood, and safe.

S= Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Keisuke Baji is intensely protective of you, but not in a soft, subtle way; with him, it is immediate, physical, and impossible to miss. The second he senses a threat, he steps in front of you like it is instinct, shoulders squared, grin sharp, already ready for a fight before you can even ask him not to. He is the type to walk on the street side, keep an eye on who is watching you, and remember the faces of anyone who made you uncomfortable. Baji would protect you by taking the danger onto himself first, even if it means getting hurt, because in his mind your safety comes before his pride, his comfort, and sometimes even his own common sense. He would also be surprisingly perceptive about quieter dangers too; if somebody was lying to you, manipulating you, or trying to corner you emotionally, Baji would catch on faster than people expect and shut it down in his own blunt, aggressive way.

At the same time, Baji would not want you to protect him by trying to fight his battles for him or throwing yourself into danger beside him, because that would scare him more than anything. The way he likes to be protected is gentler and more personal: patching him up without making a big deal of it, grabbing his sleeve and making him stop when he is too reckless, reminding him that he does not always have to bleed to prove he cares. He would act annoyed if you fussed over him, maybe grumble and tell you he is fine, but secretly he would love knowing you are someone who stays, someone who notices when he is exhausted, angry, or carrying too much alone. More than brute strength, Baji wants loyalty, honesty, and that stubborn kind of care that keeps choosing him even when he is difficult, because deep down, being protected to him means being understood and not abandoned.

T= Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Baji would put in a messy, intense, very him kind of effort he’s not the type to plan polished, picture-perfect dates with reservations and matching outfits, but if it’s for you, he’s showing up early, dragging you somewhere fun, loud, or meaningful, and making sure nobody ruins your time together. Anniversaries would matter more to him than he’d ever admit; he might forget the “proper” way to celebrate, but he’d remember the exact day, get weirdly serious about it, and give you something rough around the edges but deeply personal, like a charm, food he knows you love, or some dumb little object that reminded him of you and never left his pocket. His gifts wouldn’t always be expensive or elegant, but they’d be heartfelt and chosen with sharp, surprising attention, because Baji notices more than people think. In everyday tasks, he’d be inconsistent in a chaotic way sometimes lazy, sometimes reckless, sometimes acting like chores are beneath him but the second you need help, he’s there without hesitation, carrying your things, walking you home, fixing problems before you can ask, and doing all the small protective boyfriend things like it’s instinct. Loving you wouldn’t make him softer exactly, but it would make him effortful, and with Baji, that means giving you every piece of loyalty, time, and care he has, even if he wraps it up in teasing, stubbornness, and that wild grin of his.

U= Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Baji’s worst habits would wear on you fast if you were close to him he has a reckless streak that makes him act first and think never, so you’d constantly be dragged into the aftermath of fights, impulsive decisions, and half-baked plans he swears he can handle alone. He’s terrible at communicating when something actually matters, brushing off your concern with a grin or a dumb joke, and when he’s upset, he has a habit of shutting you out completely instead of admitting he’s struggling. He can also be stubborn to the point of selfishness, deciding what’s “best” for you without asking, especially if he thinks keeping secrets or pushing you away will protect you. Add in how messy, disorganized, and careless he can be in everyday life, plus how quick his temper is when someone gets under his skin, and loving Baji would sometimes mean loving someone who makes things harder before he ever makes them better.

V= Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Baji isn’t the type to stand in front of a mirror for an hour or obsess over every little detail, but he absolutely cares about how he looks just not in a polished, neat way. With you, it’s obvious his appearance matters to him because he likes looking intimidating, wild, and strong; he wants that sharp grin, messy black hair, and rough-around-the-edges image to hit exactly the way it should. He’ll act like he doesn’t care if his uniform is half-buttoned or his hair is in his face, but if you casually fix a strand for him or tell him he looks good, he gets quietly smug about it for the rest of the day. He’s more concerned with having presence than being “pretty,” so while he won’t fuss over fashion or grooming like it’s a serious routine, he still takes care of the things that make him feel like himself and if you’re the one noticing, he cares even more than he lets on.

W= Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Baji would never say “I need you” out loud because that kind of honesty would make him feel way too exposed, but yes, he’d absolutely feel incomplete without you in a way that would haunt him when you’re gone; not because he’s weak, but because you become one of the only people who see past the violence, the recklessness, and the savage grin to the loyal, self-sacrificing heart underneath. You’d be the person who makes him slow down for a second, the one he looks for in every crowd, the one he instinctively wants to protect even when you’re strong enough to stand on your own, and over time your presence would sink so deeply into his life that everything would feel slightly off without you there—meals would taste blander, fights would feel emptier, victories would matter less. He’d still be Baji, still wild, still charging headfirst into danger, but with you gone there’d be this restless edge to him, like a part of him is missing and he doesn’t know how to name it; so no, he wouldn’t fall apart completely, but he would feel your absence like a missing piece in his chest, because once Baji loves you, he loves you in a way that becomes part of who he is.

X= Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Random headcanon: Baji secretly feeds stray cats after school, and even though he swears he doesn’t care about them, they always come running the second they hear his voice.

Y= Yuck (What are some things they wouldn't like, either in general or in a partner?)

Baji wouldn’t be able to stand anything fake about you, from fake kindness to fake loyalty and fake tears - all of it would piss him off fast, because more than anything, he values honesty and knowing where someone truly stands. He wouldn’t like clinginess that turns controlling, either; if you tried to box him in, monitor every move he made, or guilt him for being fiercely devoted to his friends, he’d pull away hard. Cowardice, cruelty toward weaker people, and underhanded behavior would disgust him too, especially if you were the type to smile to someone’s face and talk behind their back later. In general, Baji wouldn’t have patience for people who are shallow, overly polished, or obsessed with appearances, and in a partner, he’d hate someone who treated his loyalty like a game, disrespected the people he loves, or expected him to become calmer, softer, or easier to handle just to make them comfortable you’d need to accept that he’s wild, intense, and rough around the edges, not try to tame him into someone he’s not.

Z= Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?)