To save you from me
When jujutsu sorcerer and salaryman Nanami Kento dies in the Shibuya Incident, his final thoughts are not of curses or battles, but of her—the woman he loved enough to leave behind. Given the impossible gift of returning to age twenty-one, he vows to rewrite their fate. If he never catches her when she falls, never speaks when she reaches out, never loves her at all, then perhaps she will be spared the grief of losing him.
But love is not so easily unwritten.
The twenty-first floor hummed with that particular frequency that only existed in corporate buildings—sterile, constant, a sound that burrowed into the skull and stayed there. Nanami Kento stood before the elevator bank, his reflection warped and fractured across the polished chrome doors, and he felt the weight of twenty-eight years pressing down on shoulders that were, physically, only twenty-one.
He had died three hours ago.
Or rather, three hours ago in a timeline that no longer existed, in a future that had been carved away from him like rotten fruit from a tree. He remembered the heat of Shibuya, the stench of cursed energy thick as oil in his lungs, the way his body had stopped responding to his commands. He remembered Mahito's fingers, casual and curious, reaching into his chest cavity as if checking the ripeness of a melon. He remembered the wet, sucking sound of his own heart being crushed.
But more than that—infinitely more than that—he remembered her.
The way she had screamed when they brought his body out. The way she had thrown herself across his half-burned corpse, her hands clutching at charred fabric and blistered skin, her voice breaking into frequencies that didn't sound human. "One more minute," she had begged, her tears falling onto his ruined face, mixing with the ash. "Please, just one more minute. I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't get to say I love you one last time."
She had been thirty-one years old. They had been married for six years. They had been planning to try for a child.
And he had left her there, in that hell of smoke and sirens, with nothing but a ring on her finger and a hole in her chest that would never heal.
But the universe, in its infinite and terrible mercy, had heard his final prayer. Not a prayer for survival—he had known he was beyond saving—but a prayer for her. For her happiness. For her peace. Let her forget me. Let her find someone who will come home. Let her live without this grief eating her alive from the inside out.
And so he had opened his eyes to the morning of June 14th, 2008, twenty-one years old again, his body whole and unmarked, his heart beating with the obscene regularity of youth. He had stumbled to the bathroom mirror of his cramped apartment and vomited until there was nothing left but bile and dry heaving, because he could still feel her tears on his skin. He could still smell the smoke in his hair.
He could still hear her screaming.
Now, standing in the lobby of Miyamoto Financial Services, Nanami adjusted his tie with hands that trembled imperceptibly. The fabric was cheap polyester, the knot imperfect, the shirt still carrying the creases of a department store hanger. He remembered this day. He remembered it with the clarity of a man who had lived twenty-eight years of memory in a body that had only experienced twenty-one.
He remembered the exact moment she would walk through those glass doors at 9:47 AM, her hair pulled back in a ponytail that was already coming loose, her arms overloaded with a cardboard carrier containing eight cups of coffee because the senior associates had decided to haze the new interns by sending them on impossible errands.
He remembered catching her elbow. He remembered the way the tray had tilted, the way hot liquid had arced through the air like a bronze waterfall, the way his body had moved before his mind had caught up—shoving her aside, taking the scalding coffee across his own chest rather than letting it touch her skin.
He remembered her face turning up to his, eyes wide and grateful and impossibly bright. He remembered her voice, breathless and sweet: "Thank you. I'm so sorry. Thank you."
He remembered the first time she touched him, her fingers brushing his arm as she checked his burns. He remembered the first time she looked at him and really saw him—not as an obstacle or a colleague or a stranger, but as a person. As someone worth knowing.
That moment, that single moment of spilled coffee and burning skin, had been the beginning of everything. The first domino. The first thread that would eventually strangle them both.
The elevator dinged.
Nanami's heart stopped.
She stepped out, and he felt the world tilt on its axis. She was so young. So painfully, beautifully young. Her skin was unlined by the grief he would eventually etch into it. Her eyes were bright, untouched by the sleepless nights of waiting for a husband who patrolled cursed battlefields. She was wearing that yellow dress, the one with the small daisy print, the one she had told him years later she had bought specifically for her first day because she wanted to seem "cheerful and capable."
She was carrying eight cups of coffee in a cardboard carrier that was already sagging under the weight.
Nanami stepped back. He stepped back into the shadows of a decorative pillar, his breath coming in shallow gasps, his hands curling into fists at his sides. He could do this. He had to do this. He would not catch her. He would not save her. He would not be the reason she looked up with those grateful, wondering eyes.
He would not doom her to love him.
She walked past him. Close enough that he could smell her shampoo—strawberry, the same brand she would use for their entire life together, the smell that would linger on their pillows and in their bathroom and in the fibers of his sweaters when she borrowed them. Close enough that he could see the small mole on the back of her neck, the one he had kissed a thousand times in their marriage, the one he had traced with his fingers while she slept.
She tripped.
Of course she tripped. The floor was uneven near the reception desk, a flaw in the marble that had never been fixed. She had tripped that day, in the original timeline, and he had caught her. He had always caught her.
Nanami didn't move.
He watched, frozen in a horror of his own making, as the cardboard carrier tilted forward. He watched her face transform from concentration to panic to despair. He watched the coffee—black, two sugars, one cream, exactly as he remembered the orders—arc through the air in slow motion.
It hit her chest first. Then her arms. Then her hands as she instinctively tried to shield herself.
The scream that tore from her throat was not the scream of inconvenience or embarrassment. It was the scream of someone being burned. Third-degree burns. He knew, because he had memorized every detail of this day in the years that followed, torturing himself with the what-ifs and the almosts. The coffee had been brewed not twenty minutes ago. It was still near-boiling.
She collapsed to her knees, the empty cups scattering around her like fallen soldiers, and Nanami stood there, behind his pillar, his nails digging crescents into his palms until they bled.
I'm sorry, he thought, the words screaming through his skull with the force of a hurricane. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my love, my heart, my everything. I'm sorry I didn't catch you. I'm sorry I let you burn. I'm sorry I'm saving you from me.
People were rushing to her now. The receptionist was calling for security, for a medic, for an ambulance. Someone was trying to help her stand, but she was crying too hard, the sounds tearing out of her in wounded-animal noises that Nanami knew he would hear in his nightmares for the rest of this second life.
He turned away.
He walked to the elevator. He pressed the button for the fifteenth floor. And when the doors closed, sealing him in that metal box with his reflection, he finally let himself feel it.
The grief hit him like a physical blow, doubling him over, forcing him to brace himself against the handrail. He sobbed—great, heaving, ugly sobs that shook his entire frame. He cried for her pain. He cried for the coffee burns that were even now blistering her beautiful skin. He cried for the fact that he had chosen this, that he had deliberately let her suffer, that he was the kind of man who could stand by and watch the woman he loved be hurt.
But mostly, he cried because he had forgotten how much he loved her.
Not the comfortable, worn-in love of a seven-year marriage. Not the love of shared grocery lists and inside jokes and comfortable silences. He had forgotten this—the violent, terrifying, all-consuming love of first sight. The love that felt like being struck by lightning. The love that made him want to tear his own heart out of his chest if it meant she would never know a moment's pain.
The elevator doors opened. Nanami wiped his face with his sleeve, straightened his tie, and walked into the intern bullpen as if his soul weren't currently screaming.
The morning was chaos. Rumors spread like wildfire—a new intern, some girl from HR's department, had been hospitalized with severe burns. The senior associates were nervous, worried about liability, about workers' compensation, about the optics of overworking an intern on her first day. Nanami sat at his desk and said nothing.
He worked.
He worked with the manic intensity of a man trying to outrun his own thoughts. He processed spreadsheets that would have taken a normal intern three hours to complete. He reviewed financial statements with the expertise of someone who had spent seven years in this industry before leaving to become a sorcerer. He answered emails, filed reports, and when his direct supervisor asked if he could stay late to help with a presentation, he said yes.
He said yes, and then he stayed until midnight.
And when the office was empty, when the cleaning crew had come and gone and the only light was the sickly glow of his computer monitor, Nanami finally let himself look at her desk.
It was three cubicles down from his, a temporary setup with a borrowed chair and a nameplate that read "Visitor." Her bag was still there, a canvas tote with a small embroidered cat on the front. He remembered that bag. She had carried it everywhere in their early twenties, until the strap finally broke and he had bought her a leather replacement for her birthday.
He walked over. He shouldn't have. He knew he shouldn't have, but his body moved without his permission, drawn to her like a planet to its sun.
Her notebook was open on the desk. Her handwriting—he knew her handwriting, had seen it on a thousand grocery lists and love notes and birthday cards—filled the pages with neat, careful kanji. She had been taking notes on the company's organizational structure. She had drawn a small star next to the name of the department she had wanted to transfer to after her internship: Corporate Social Responsibility.
She had wanted to help people. Even then, even at twenty-one, she had wanted to make the world a little kinder.
Nanami closed the notebook. He gathered her things—her bag, her notes, her spare cardigan that she had left draped over her chair—and he locked them in his own desk drawer for safekeeping. Then he sat back down at his computer and began doing her work.
He worked through the night. He answered the emails that had been sent to her account, completing the tasks she would have been assigned if she hadn't been in the hospital. He prepared the reports she would have had to file. He organized the data entry that was part of every intern's miserable existence.
At 6 AM, he finally stopped. His eyes were burning, his head pounding, his hands cramping from the repetitive motion of typing. But he had done it. He had completed three days of her work in eight hours. She would not fall behind. She would not be fired. She would still have a job waiting for her when she healed, even if he had to work himself to death to ensure it.
He went home. He showered. He changed his clothes. And then, standing in his tiny apartment kitchen, he finally let himself break.
The sound that came out of him didn't sound human. It was a howl, a wail, a raw expression of agony that seemed to tear itself from the marrow of his bones. He sank to the floor, his back against the refrigerator, and he screamed into his hands until his throat was raw.
He had let her burn. He had stood there, with arms that could have caught her, with a body that could have shielded her, and he had done nothing. He had watched her skin blister and bubble and char, and he had called it love.
This is mercy, he told himself, his voice cracking around the lie. This is kindness. She will find someone better. She will find someone who won't leave her crying over a corpse in the middle of Shibuya.
But his soul knew better. His soul knew that there was no one better, because there was no one else who would love her like he did. There was no one else who would memorize the way she took her tea, or the way she hummed when she was happy, or the exact pressure she liked when he scratched her back. There was no one else who would die for her, kill for her, sell his soul to every dark and terrible thing in the universe if it meant she would smile one more time.
He cried until he couldn't breathe. He cried until his face was swollen and his chest ached with the force of his own sobbing. And when he was empty, when there was nothing left inside him but ash and regret, he stood up, washed his face, and went back to work.
The next day, he learned that she had been admitted to Tokyo General Hospital with second-degree burns across her chest and arms. She would be there for at least two weeks. The doctors were concerned about infection, about scarring, about the psychological trauma of a burn injury so early in her professional life.
Nanami listened to this information with the expression of a man receiving a weather report. He nodded. He made appropriate noises of concern. And then he went back to his desk and worked fourteen hours, completing not only his assignments but hers as well.
He developed a routine. He would arrive at 6 AM, before anyone else, and work on her tasks. He would attend his own meetings, perform his own duties, and then stay until midnight doing the work she would have been assigned. He stopped eating regular meals. He stopped sleeping more than three hours a night. He became a ghost in the office, pale and hollow-eyed, moving through the fluorescent-lit halls with the single-minded determination of a man possessed.
On the fifth day, his manager—a middle-aged man named Tanaka who wore cheap suits and cheaper cologne—approached his desk.
"Kento," he said, using Nanami's first name with the familiarity of a superior who had never bothered to learn boundaries. "You've been working late. Every day. Is everything alright?"
Nanami looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face gaunt. "I'm fine."
Tanaka shifted uncomfortably. "And… the new intern. The girl who was burned. The hospital said visitors are allowed now. Some of the team are going tomorrow. You should come. Show some team spirit."
The words hit Nanami like a physical blow. Visit her. See her. Stand in the same room as her, breathe the same air, look into her eyes and pretend he didn't know the exact shade of gold they turned in the sunlight. Pretend he hadn't memorized every freckle on her nose, every curve of her smile, every sound she made when she was happy or sad or in the throes of passion.
"No," he said, his voice flat.
Tanaka blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I'm paid to work," Nanami said, turning back to his computer. "Not to make hospital visits. If you want to deduct my salary for the time spent on personal matters, that's your prerogative. But I won't go."
There was a long silence. Then Tanaka cleared his throat, mumbled something about "young people these days," and walked away.
But the seed had been planted. The guilt had been watered.
That night, Nanami went home and stood in his shower until the water ran cold. He thought about her lying in that hospital bed, alone and in pain, surrounded by strangers. He thought about how scared she must be, how lonely, how confused about why her coworkers had abandoned her after only one day.
He thought about the flowers. He knew, because he had overheard the conversations in the break room, that people were bringing her flowers. Bouquets of lilies and roses and chrysanthemums, the standard hospital gifts, beautiful but impersonal. And fruit baskets. And boxes of chocolate. All the generic offerings of people who felt obligated to care but didn't know how.
She hated lilies. They reminded her of funerals.
She was allergic to most melons.
She preferred savory to sweet, always had, always would.
And nobody, not a single person, had thought to bring her something that mattered. Something that said I see you. I know you. You are not just a patient or an obligation or a workplace accident—you are a person, and you deserve to be known.
Nanami turned off the water. He stood in the darkness of his bathroom, dripping and naked and more broken than he had been at the moment of his death, and he made a decision.
He would not visit her. He would not speak to her. He would not let her see his face or hear his voice or know his name.
But he could feed her.
He got out of the shower. He dried himself with rough, efficient motions. And then he went to his kitchen, turned on the light, and opened his refrigerator.
It was nearly empty. He had been surviving on convenience store onigiri and vending machine coffee for five days. But in his pantry, he found flour. He found eggs. He found the ingredients for the dish he had cooked for her a hundred times in their marriage, the one she had called "the taste of home," the one she had requested on her birthday and their anniversary and the days when the world had been too heavy and she needed comfort.
Curry. Not the instant kind, not the blocks from a box, but real curry. The kind that took hours to make, with caramelized onions and homemade roux and a secret blend of spices that he had perfected over years of cooking for her.
He started at 1 AM.
He chopped onions until his eyes burned worse than they had from crying. He stirred the roux until his arm ached. He added the spices one by one, tasting and adjusting with the muscle memory of a man who had cooked this meal for the love of his life more times than he could count.
By 4 AM, the curry was perfect. Rich, golden, fragrant enough to make his empty stomach twist with longing. He portioned it into containers—three of them, enough for dinner and lunch the next day, because he knew she ate like a bird when she was stressed and he wanted her to have enough.
Then he made rice. Perfect, fluffy rice, each grain separate and gleaming.
He packed it all carefully, wrapping the containers in towels to keep them warm. He added pickles—her favorite kind, the sweet yellow daikon from his hometown. He added a small container of umeboshi, because she loved the sourness. He made miso soup with wakame and tofu, exactly the way she liked it, with the tofu cut into small cubes rather than chunks.
And then, because he knew she would be bored in that hospital room, because he knew she loved to read and would have finished whatever book she had brought within the first day, he went to his bookshelf.
His manga collection. He had kept it hidden during his first internship, embarrassed by what he thought was an immature hobby. She had discovered it years later, in their shared apartment, and had teased him mercilessly until he admitted that yes, he loved shonen manga, and yes, he had a particular soft spot for the ones about friendship and found family and fighting for what you believed in.
He selected her favorite. The one with the orange-haired protagonist who never gave up, no matter how broken he became. The one she had read so many times that the spine was cracked, the pages soft with handling.
He wrapped the books in brown paper. He wrote nothing on them. He would leave no trace, no signature, no clue that could lead back to him.
At 5:30 AM, he left his apartment.
The hospital was across town, but Nanami walked. He needed the time. He needed the cold morning air to clear his head, to remind him of what he was doing, to give him the strength to walk away after he had delivered his offerings.
He arrived at 6:45 AM. The morning shift was just beginning, nurses yawning as they received reports from the night crew. Nanami walked past the reception desk with the confidence of someone who belonged there, and he found her room number from the directory—307, third floor, shared room.
He took the stairs. He couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in an elevator, not when his heart was already pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.
Room 307. The door was closed. He stood outside it for ten minutes, his hands shaking, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He could hear voices inside. A nurse, checking vitals. The rustle of sheets. A soft, tired voice—her voice—thanking the nurse for the help.
Nanami closed his eyes. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the doorframe, and he whispered her name into the silence. Just once. Just to feel the shape of it on his tongue, the familiar weight of syllables that had been his prayer and his home.
Then he waited. He waited until the nurse left, until the footsteps retreated down the hall, until the room fell into the particular stillness of early morning that meant she had gone back to sleep.
He opened the door.
She was lying on her side, facing away from him, her bandaged arm visible above the blanket. Even in sleep, she looked uncomfortable, her brow furrowed, her breathing shallow. The burns were hurting her. He could see the tension in her shoulders, the way she held herself rigid even in unconsciousness.
The room was terrible. He saw it immediately, with the eyes of a man who had spent his adult life protecting people. The bed was old, the mattress thin, the pillow flat. The window looked out onto a brick wall. There was another bed in the room, occupied by an elderly woman who snored with the wet, rattling sound of congested lungs. The air smelled of antiseptic and despair.
Nanami placed the food on the small table beside her bed. He arranged it carefully—the curry in the center, the rice beside it, the pickles and soup and umeboshi in a neat row. He placed the wrapped manga on the chair, where she would see it when she woke.
Then he looked at her.
Really looked at her, with the hunger of a starving man presented with a feast. He memorized the way her hair fell across the pillow, the smallness of her form under the thin hospital blanket, the flutter of her eyelashes as she dreamed. He wanted to touch her so badly his hands ached with it. He wanted to brush the hair from her face, to kiss her forehead, to whisper that she was safe, that he was here, that he would burn the world down before he let anything hurt her again.
Instead, he took a step back.
And another.
And another, until his back hit the wall and he realized he was crying again, silent tears streaming down his face, his hand pressed over his mouth to keep the sobs from escaping.
He forced himself to turn. Forced himself to walk to the door. Forced himself to leave her there, alone and unknowing, surrounded by the only gifts he could give her—food she loved, stories that would make her smile, and the cowardice of his absence.
But as he reached the door, he stopped. He looked back at the room, at the peeling paint and the broken blinds and the elderly roommate coughing in the corner, and he felt something inside him snap.
No.
She would not heal here. She would not recover in this place of shadows and suffering, surrounded by sickness and decay. She deserved sunlight. She deserved privacy. She deserved a room with a view of something green and growing, where she could rest and read and eat her curry in peace.
Nanami walked to the nurses' station. The nurse on duty looked up, surprised to see a young man in business attire at 7 AM.
"I'd like to pay for a room upgrade," he said, his voice steady despite the tears still wet on his cheeks. "Room 307. The patient with the burns. I want her moved to a private room. The best you have."
The nurse blinked. "Sir, that's… that's quite expensive. And we need the patient's consent, or family authorization—"
"I'll pay for six months in advance," Nanami interrupted, reaching for his wallet. He had savings from his previous life, money he had earned in a timeline that no longer existed, but the bank accounts were the same, the investments had been made, and he had access to funds that no twenty-one-year-old intern should possess. "And I'll cover all medical expenses. Whatever insurance doesn't pay. Whatever treatments she needs. Just… please. Move her today. This morning."
He pulled out a credit card. The platinum one, the one he had kept in his desk drawer for emergencies, the one that had enough available credit to buy a small car.
The nurse stared at the card, then at his face. "Sir, are you family?"
"No," Nanami said. "I'm no one. I'm nothing. Please, just… do this for her. Don't tell her who paid. Don't tell anyone. Just… let her have something nice. Let her heal somewhere beautiful."
Something in his voice must have convinced her. Perhaps it was the desperation. Perhaps it was the tears he wasn't bothering to hide. Perhaps it was simply the fact that it was 7 AM and she hadn't had her coffee yet and rich young men did strange things for love all the time.
She took the card. She processed the payment. And when she handed it back, she looked at him with something that might have been pity, or understanding, or both.
"Room 512," she said softly. "It's empty. It has a view of the garden. I'll have her moved within the hour."
Nanami nodded. He couldn't speak. He turned and walked away, down the hall, down the stairs, out into the morning light that felt like an assault.
He went to work. He sat at his desk. He stared at his computer screen without seeing it.
At 10 AM, Tanaka approached him again. The manager looked shaken, his usual bluster replaced by something that looked almost like guilt.
"Kento," he said quietly. "I went to the hospital this morning. To see the intern. The girl."
Nanami's hands froze on his keyboard. "Did you."
"She's been moved. To a private room. And… and I saw the food someone left her. Home-cooked. Curry. Rice. All her favorites, apparently. The nurse said she cried when she woke up and saw it. She said it was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for her."
Tanaka paused. He looked at Nanami's hollow cheeks, his red-rimmed eyes, his hands that were trembling slightly on the keyboard.
"Kento," he said, his voice gentler than Nanami had ever heard it. "I was wrong. I shouldn't have sent her for coffee. I shouldn't have let her carry so much alone. It was my fault she got hurt. And I… I need to apologize. To her. To everyone. I've been a terrible manager."
Nanami said nothing. He couldn't look away from his screen, couldn't risk Tanaka seeing the fresh tears gathering in his eyes.
"Will you come with me?" Tanaka asked. "To visit her? To apologize together?"
"No," Nanami whispered.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm paid to work," he said, the words tasting like ash. "Not to apologize. Not to visit. Not to…" He stopped. He couldn't finish the sentence. Not to love her. Not to save her. Not to be the reason she smiles.
Tanaka sighed. "You're a strange young man, Kento. But… I think you're a good one. Whatever you're going through… I hope you find peace."
He walked away. Nanami sat at his desk, his hands over his face, and cried silently until his throat was raw.
That night, he worked until 2 AM. He finished a week's worth of her assignments. He organized her desk, filing away the papers that had accumulated, leaving everything perfect for her return.
If she returned.
If she didn't quit after this, after the burns and the hospital and the strange anonymous benefactor who seemed to know her better than she knew herself.
If she didn't meet someone else, someone safer, someone who would love her without leaving her, someone who would give her the life Nanami was trying to buy for her with his absence.
He went home. He slept for four hours. He dreamed of Shibuya, of smoke and blood and her screaming face. He woke up gasping, her name on his lips, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Day six.
Day seven.
Day eight.
He continued his routine. Work, work, work. He completed her tasks and his own. He learned, from office gossip, that she was healing well. That the burns were responding to treatment. That she would likely recover without severe scarring, though she would need physical therapy for her hands.
He learned that she had read the manga he left her three times already. That she asked every nurse who brought her food if they knew who had cooked it, who had paid for her room, who had left the books.
No one knew. He had paid in cash for the subsequent meals, leaving them at the nurses' station with instructions to deliver them anonymously. Curry on Monday. Oyakodon on Tuesday. Miso ramen on Wednesday. All her favorites. All made with hands that shook from exhaustion and love.
On day nine, he broke again.
He was walking past the hospital on his way home. He told himself it was a shortcut, that he wasn't deliberately passing by, that he didn't know what he was doing until he found himself standing in the garden below her window.
Room 512. He could see the light on, could see the shadow of someone moving behind the curtain. She was awake. She was reading, probably, or eating, or just staring at the ceiling wondering why the universe had decided to burn her on her first day of work.
He stood there for an hour. Just watching her window, imagining her inside, imagining the way she would look in the soft lamplight, the way she would smell like hospital soap and the strawberry shampoo he knew she used.
And then, miracle of miracles, the window opened.
She leaned out, just her head and shoulders, her hair loose around her face, her bandaged arm resting on the sill. She took a deep breath of the evening air, and she looked up at the sky.
Nanami stepped back into the shadows of a tree, his heart stopped, his breath held.
She was so beautiful. Even wounded, even suffering, even confused and alone in a hospital room that shouldn't have been paid for by a stranger—she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The moonlight caught her face, turning her skin to pearl, making her eyes glow with a light that seemed to come from within.
She smiled.
It was a small smile, tentative and sad, but it was there. She was looking at something—a cloud, a star, perhaps just the feeling of fresh air after days in a sterile room—and she was smiling.
Nanami felt his knees buckle. He caught himself on the tree trunk, his nails digging into the bark, his whole body shaking with the effort of not calling out to her, not running up those stairs, not throwing himself at her feet and begging for forgiveness.
I'm sorry, he thought, the words a prayer, a mantra, a lifeline. I'm sorry I let you burn. I'm sorry I'm not there. I'm sorry I'm too dangerous to love. But please, please, please… keep smiling. Even without me. Especially without me.
She stayed at the window for ten minutes. Nanami watched her for every second, memorizing the way the wind moved her hair, the way she rested her chin on her hand, the way she hummed a little tune under her breath—a song he knew, a song she had sung while cooking in their kitchen, while getting dressed for work, while lying in his arms on Sunday mornings.
Then she went back inside. The window closed. The light stayed on.
Nanami stayed in the garden until dawn.
He went to work the next day with leaves in his hair and dirt on his suit and a look in his eyes that made Tanaka give him a wide berth. He worked sixteen hours. He went home. He cooked her dinner—nikujaga this time, because he knew she loved the sweetness of the potatoes, the tenderness of the meat.
He brought it to the hospital at midnight. He left it with the night nurse, a kind older woman who was beginning to suspect who he was but said nothing, just took the containers with a gentle smile.
"She's getting better," the nurse told him. "She asks about you every day. The mystery man. She says she wants to thank him."
"Tell her…" Nanami paused. He looked at the closed door of Room 512, imagining her asleep inside, imagining her dreams. "Tell her she's welcome. Tell her… tell her to get well soon. Tell her the world is waiting for her."
"Why don't you tell her yourself?"
He shook his head. He walked away. He went home and stood in his shower and screamed into his hands until his voice gave out.
Week two began.
She was discharged on Wednesday. He learned this from the office gossip, from the excitement of HR preparing for her return, from the way people spoke of her with a mixture of pity and admiration—the brave intern who had survived a terrible accident, who was coming back to work despite her injuries.
Nanami prepared her desk. He left a new notebook, nicer than the one she had been using, with a soft leather cover and thick, creamy paper. He left a good pen, the kind that wrote smoothly without skipping. He left a small potted plant—a succulent, easy to care for, something green and living to keep her company.
He did not leave a note.
She returned on Friday.
Nanami was at his desk when she walked in. He heard the door open, heard the murmur of greetings, heard her voice—thank you, I'm happy to be back, yes I'm feeling much better—and felt the world tilt on its axis.
He didn't look up. He couldn't. He stared at his computer screen until the pixels blurred together, until he realized he had been typing the same sentence for ten minutes without making sense.
She walked past his desk.
He smelled her—strawberry shampoo, hospital soap, the faint lingering scent of the curry he had made her. She paused. He felt her eyes on him, curious, confused, wondering why this stranger looked so familiar when they had never met.
Then she moved on. She sat at her desk, three cubicles down, and began to unpack her bag.
Nanami let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. His hands were shaking so badly he had to hide them under his desk. His heart was hammering so loud he was sure the whole office could hear it.
She was here. She was alive. She was healing.
And she didn't know him. She didn't love him. She didn't look at him with the weight of seven years of marriage, of shared memories, of a future that had been stolen from them.
He had done it. He had succeeded. He had erased himself from her life, and she was safe.
So why did it feel like he was dying?
The morning passed in a blur. He worked mechanically, automatically, his body going through the motions while his mind screamed. He heard her voice, answering phones, speaking to colleagues, asking questions about the work she had missed. He heard her laugh—god, her laugh, that bright, musical sound that had been his favorite song for a decade—and felt something inside him crack.
At lunch, people invited her to join them. She hesitated. He heard her say she had brought her own food, that she was still a bit tired, that she would eat at her desk.
He had made her bento that morning. He had left it in the office refrigerator with her name on it, knowing she would find it, knowing she would wonder, knowing she would eat it because she hated waste and because he had made her favorites—karaage, tamagoyaki, pickled vegetables, rice sprinkled with furikake.
He heard her open the container. He heard her sharp intake of breath. He heard her whisper, "Who…?"
Then, silence. Then, the soft sounds of her eating.
Nanami bent his head over his work and cried silently, tears falling onto his keyboard, his heart breaking and breaking and breaking with every bite she took.
The afternoon was torture. He could feel her presence like a physical weight, a gravitational pull that made it impossible to concentrate, impossible to breathe, impossible to be. Every time she moved, every time she spoke, every time she laughed or sighed or shifted in her chair, he was acutely, painfully aware of her.
At 5 PM, people began to leave. She stayed. He stayed. He was determined to outlast her, to make sure she got home safe without ever having to interact with her, to maintain the distance that was killing him but saving her.
At 6 PM, she stood up. He heard her gathering her things, putting on her cardigan—the yellow one with the daisy print, the one she had worn on her first day, the one that had been ruined by coffee but she had loved too much to throw away.
She walked toward the elevator.
She paused at his desk.
Nanami froze. He didn't look up. He couldn't look up, because if he looked up he would see her face, and if he saw her face he would be lost, he would say her name, he would beg her to remember him, to love him, to save him from this hell he had chosen.
"Excuse me," she said, her voice soft and uncertain. "Are you… do I know you? You look so familiar."
He said nothing. He shook his head, still staring at his screen, his hands clenched into fists so tight his nails drew blood from his palms.
"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry. It's just… you look like someone I know."
I am, he thought, the words tearing through him like shrapnel. I'm your husband. I'm your future. I'm the man who loves you more than breath, more than blood, more than life itself. I'm the one who held you while you cried, who kissed your tears away, who promised you forever and then died and left you alone.
He heard her walk away. He heard the elevator doors open, close, carry her down and away and out of his life.
Nanami sat at his desk until midnight. He didn't work. He didn't move. He just sat there, staring at the space where she had stood, breathing in the lingering scent of her perfume, feeling the absence of her like a phantom limb. Days passed.
The fluorescent lights of the fifteenth floor hummed their sterile song, and she was singing over them.
Not literally—though Nanami wouldn't have been surprised if she had burst into song, given the sheer vitality that seemed to radiate from her small form—but in the way she moved through the office, her voice lilting up and down in gentle arcs, greeting everyone by name, remembering details about their lives that she had only learned in passing. The way she asked Tanaka-san about his daughter's piano recital, the way she complimented the receptionist's new haircut, the way she brought an extra onigiri for the junior associate who always forgot breakfast.
She was sunlight poured into human shape, and she was killing him by inches.
Nanami sat at his desk, his spine rigid, his eyes fixed on the spreadsheet before him with the intensity of a man trying to memorize scripture. He didn't look up when she approached. He didn't need to. He could feel her presence like warmth radiating from a furnace, could smell that strawberry shampoo that haunted his dreams, could hear the soft shuffle of her footsteps stopping three feet from his cubicle wall.
"Good morning, Nanami-san!" Her voice was bright, buoyant, utterly without the shadow of resentment that should have followed him after what he'd done to her. After he'd let her burn. After he'd ignored her suffering. After he'd been cold and cruel and distant when she had every right to hate him.
He didn't respond. He typed a number into cell B-14. The cursor blinked back at him, accusing.
"I wanted to thank you," she continued, undeterred by his silence. She moved closer, close enough that he could see her hands in his peripheral vision—small, delicate hands still bearing the faint pink scars of healing burns, resting on the edge of his desk. "For the notes you left. While I was in the hospital. They were so detailed, so thorough. I would have been completely lost without them. You saved my job, probably."
I didn't save you, he thought, the words acid in his throat. I let you burn. I watched you suffer. I am not your savior. I am your curse.
"You're welcome," he said, his voice flat and cold as stone. He didn't look up. He didn't smile. He offered nothing—no warmth, no acknowledgment, no hint that he remembered her favorite curry or the mole on her neck or the way she hummed when she was happy.
There was a pause. He could feel her confusion like a physical weight, could imagine the way her brow was furrowing, the way she was tilting her head in that particular gesture of curiosity that he had sketched a hundred times in the margins of his notebooks in another life.
"Well," she said, her voice still cheerful but with a note of uncertainty now, a crack in the armor of her brightness. "I just wanted to say thank you. If you ever need anything—coffee, help with a project, someone to talk to—I'm here. We're desk neighbors, after all."
Don't be here, he wanted to scream. Don't be kind. Don't be warm. Don't look at me like I'm someone worth knowing when you have no idea what I cost you in another life. When you have no idea that loving me means your future becomes a graveyard.
"Is there anything else?" he asked, finally looking up, letting his eyes meet hers with all the coldness he could muster. "I have work to do."
She flinched. It was small, barely perceptible, but he saw it—the way her shoulders tightened, the way her smile faltered, the way she took a half-step back as if his words had physically pushed her.
"N-no," she stammered, her voice smaller now. "I'm sorry to bother you. I'll just… I'll get back to work."
She walked away, and Nanami watched her go in the reflection of his computer monitor, watched the way her steps slowed, the way she paused at her desk and sat down heavily, the way she stared at her keyboard for a long moment before squaring her shoulders and beginning to type.
He had hurt her. Good. That was the point. That was the only way to save her.
But she didn't avoid him.
If anything, his coldness seemed to make her more determined. It was as if she had looked at his walls and seen them not as fortifications to be respected, but as wounds to be healed. She began bringing him coffee—black, two sugars, exactly how he took it, though he had never told her. She began leaving small notes on his desk when she finished early, offering to help with his workload. She began studying him with those golden eyes, not with the frustration or anger he expected, but with a gentle, probing curiosity that made him feel like a puzzle she was determined to solve.
"Nanami-san," she said one afternoon, two weeks after her return. He was working late again, as he always did, as he had done every night since she came back, because the office was safe, the office was empty, the office didn't smell like strawberry shampoo and hope. "You're here late again. Do you… do you not like going home?"
He didn't look up from his spreadsheet. "I like my job."
"Do you have family waiting? Friends? A girlfriend?"
You, he thought. In another life, I had you. You waiting with dinner on the table. You in my bed, warm and soft and mine. You in my future, in my name, in my heart. I had everything, and I lost it, and now I have nothing because I chose to give you up.
"That's none of your business," he said, his voice sharp as a blade.
"I know," she said, and she didn't leave. She pulled up a chair—he heard the scrape of it against the carpet—and sat down beside him, close enough that he could feel the heat of her body, close enough that he could see her hands folded in her lap, the scars still pink and new. "I know it's none of my business. But you seem so lonely, Nanami-san. And I think… I think maybe people have been unkind to you. I think maybe you've been hurt. And I just want you to know that not everyone is like that. That some people want to be kind. That I want to be kind."
She reached out. Her hand hovered over his, not touching, just there, offering.
He jerked away as if burned. "Don't," he snapped, his voice rising, his composure cracking. "Don't pity me. Don't project your… your sunshine and rainbows onto me. I'm not some wounded bird for you to heal. I'm not some project. I'm just a man who wants to be left alone. Is that so difficult to understand?"
She withdrew her hand. She looked at him with those eyes—god, those eyes, the ones that had looked at him with love and lust and grief across two lifetimes—and he saw something there that terrified him more than any curse he had ever faced.
Understanding. Not complete, not yet, but the beginning of it. The suspicion that there was more to him than met the eye. That his cruelty was a mask. That his distance was a defense.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to presume. I just… you seem like someone who needs a friend. And I need friends too. This job is new, and scary, and… never mind. I'll leave you alone."
She stood. She walked away. And Nanami sat there, his hands shaking, his chest heaving, feeling like he had just cut off his own arm with a dull knife.
But she didn't leave him alone.
She couldn't. It wasn't in her nature. Where another person would have been deterred by his coldness, she was only more intrigued. Where another would have given up, she persisted with a gentleness that felt like water wearing away at stone. She began leaving him small things—a packet of his favorite tea on his desk, a bookmark with a quote about perseverance, a note saying simply "The cherry blossoms are blooming in the park nearby. They're beautiful today."
She never pushed. She never demanded. She simply… existed. Softly, persistently, kindly.
And it was destroying him.
Because every time she smiled at him, he remembered the way she had smiled in their kitchen, wearing his shirt, making coffee on a Sunday morning. Every time she brought him coffee, he remembered the way she had learned to make it exactly how he liked it, the way she would bring it to him while he was reading, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Every time she looked at him with those gentle eyes, he remembered the way she had looked at him in Shibuya, the way she had screamed his name while his blood ran between her fingers.
He was drowning in memory, suffocating in love, and she was the air he couldn't breathe.
Then came the investigation.
He noticed her watching him more carefully, noticed the way she would pause when she passed his desk, noticed the way she seemed to be putting together pieces of a puzzle he couldn't see. She asked subtle questions—when his birthday was (he had let it slip in a moment of weakness, mentioning it was "soon" when Tanaka asked about plans), what he liked to eat, what he did in his free time.
He answered tersely, guardedly, but she collected the information like a magpie collecting shiny things, storing it away with that secret smile that meant she was planning something.
He should have known. He should have recognized the signs. In their first life, she had been the same way—secretive and excited when planning surprises, her eyes sparkling with mischief, her hands fluttering with nervous energy.
But he was so tired. So exhausted from fighting his own heart every moment of every day. So depleted from loving her in silence, from watching her and wanting her and knowing he couldn't have her.
He didn't see it coming.
It was a Tuesday. The office was decorated with streamers and balloons, which should have been his first clue, but he was so focused on not looking at her, not thinking about her, not breathing her air, that he walked right into it.
"Surprise!"
The shout went up as he stepped off the elevator, and he froze, his blood turning to ice in his veins. The entire floor was there—Tanaka, the receptionist, the junior associates, the senior managers. They were all smiling, holding a cake, wearing party hats like ridiculous children.
And there she was, in the center of it all, holding a gift wrapped in gold paper, her face glowing with pride and happiness and that particular brand of joy that came from making someone else feel special.
"Happy birthday, Nanami-san!" she cried, stepping forward, pressing the gift into his hands, her fingers brushing his, her eyes shining. "We wanted to celebrate you! You're always working so hard, always helping everyone, and you never let anyone do anything for you. So… so I thought… I wanted to make you feel special. Just for one day."
The cake was pushed forward. Twenty-two candles—one for luck, she would have said in another life. The lights were too bright. The voices were too loud. The smell of sugar and frosting and cheap office coffee was overwhelming.
And suddenly, he wasn't in the office anymore.
He was in their apartment. Their real apartment, the one they had shared in Sangenjaya, with the big windows and the creaky floorboards and the kitchen that was too small but perfect because it was theirs. He was sitting at their table, wearing a sweater she had knitted him, his hair still wet from the shower.
She was in the kitchen, humming, bringing out a cake. Not a store-bought cake like this one, but a homemade one, lopsided and slightly burnt because she was terrible at baking but insisted on doing it anyway. She was wearing an apron and nothing else, her hair loose, her face flushed from the oven heat.
"Happy birthday, Kento," she said, leaning down to kiss him, her lips sweet with frosting. "Thirty-one years old. My old man."
"Thirty-one isn't old," he had protested, but he was smiling, pulling her into his lap, ignoring the cake in favor of tasting her.
They had talked for hours that night. They had eaten cake in bed, crumbs in the sheets, her head on his chest, his fingers in her hair. They had talked about the future. About the child they wanted to try for. About names—Yuki if it was a girl, after her grandmother. Haru if it was a boy, because she liked the way it sounded with his last name. Nanami Haru. Spring. New beginnings.
They had made love slowly, sweetly, whispering promises into each other's skin. They had fallen asleep tangled together, full of cake and hope and love.
Three months later, he died in Shibuya.
"Nanami-san?" Her voice cut through the memory, through the agony, through the ghost of a future that would never be. "Are you okay? You look pale. Do you want to sit down?"
He looked at her. Really looked at her. Saw the concern in her eyes, the hope, the kindness. Saw the way she had planned this for him, had thought about him, had wanted to make him happy.
And he saw red.
"How dare you," he whispered, his voice trembling with a rage that wasn't really rage at all, but grief so profound it had nowhere else to go.
The room went quiet. The smiles faded. People shifted uncomfortably, looking at each other, wondering what was happening.
"Nanami-san?" she asked, her voice small, uncertain. "I just… I wanted to—"
"Wanted to what?" he interrupted, his voice rising, cracking, breaking. He threw the gift to the ground, heard something inside it shatter. "Wanted to embarrass me? Wanted to make me the center of attention? Wanted to force your… your charity onto me?"
He was yelling now. He could hear himself, could feel the words tearing his throat, but he couldn't stop. The dam had broken, and years of love and loss and pain were flooding out, drowning everything in their path.
"I told you to leave me alone!" he shouted, advancing on her, watching her flinch back, watching the color drain from her face, watching her eyes fill with tears. "I told you I don't want your kindness! I don't want your attention! I don't want your… your cakes and your presents and your stupid, endless, suffocating niceness!"
"Nanami-san, please," she whispered, her hands raised as if to ward him off, her voice breaking. "I just thought… I wanted to make you happy…"
"Happy?" He laughed, and it was an ugly sound, bitter and broken. "You think this makes me happy? You think I want to be reminded that I'm alive? That I have birthdays? That I have a future?"
He was close to her now, close enough to see the tears spilling down her cheeks, close enough to see the way she was shaking, the way her colleagues were staring in horror, the way Tanaka was stepping forward to intervene.
"You don't know me," he snarled, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper that was somehow worse than the shouting. "You don't know anything about me. You don't know what I've done, what I've lost, what I'm trying to protect you from. And yet you keep pushing, keep prying, keep forcing your way into my life like some kind of… of parasite!"
The word hit her like a physical blow. She staggered back, her hand going to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock and hurt.
"So let me make this clear," he continued, his voice shaking now, tears he hadn't known he was capable of anymore streaming down his face. "I don't want you here. I don't want you near me. I don't want your friendship, your kindness, or your love. I want you to leave me alone. Is that simple enough for you? Can you understand that? Or are you too stupid to take a hint?"
The silence that followed was absolute. No one moved. No one breathed. He could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights, the distant sound of traffic from the street below, the rapid beat of his own heart.
She looked at him. Through her tears, through her pain, she looked at him. And he saw something in her eyes that would haunt him for the rest of this life and the next.
Not anger. Not hatred.
Recognition.
She saw him. Really saw him. Saw the pain beneath the rage, the love beneath the cruelty, the sacrifice beneath the rejection. She didn't understand it yet, not fully, but she saw it. And she was crying not just for herself, but for him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I'm so sorry, Kento."
She used his first name. She had never used his first name. Not in this life.
He turned and ran.
He didn't take the elevator. He took the stairs, two at a time, his lungs burning, his vision blurred. He burst out of the building into the evening air, gasping, choking, his hands shaking so badly he couldn't hold them still.
He walked. He didn't know where he was going. He just walked, his feet carrying him on autopilot, his mind a screaming void of self-loathing and despair.
How could he have said those things? How could he have been so cruel? She had only been kind. She had only been herself. And he had… he had destroyed her. Had called her a parasite. Had made her cry in front of everyone. Had taken her beautiful, generous heart and crushed it in his fist because he was too afraid to accept what she was offering.
He found himself at a bus stop. He didn't remember walking there. The bench was cold, the metal biting through his thin suit pants. He sat down heavily, his head in his hands, and he sobbed.
Great, heaving, broken sobs that shook his entire frame. He cried for her. For him. For the life they had lost and the life he was denying them. He cried for the names they would never choose, the children they would never have, the birthdays they would never celebrate together.
And when he was empty, when there were no more tears left, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the cigarettes he had started carrying again.
He had quit at twenty-two. In his first life, he had quit because she asked him to. Because she had wrinkled her nose at the smell and said, "I want you to live a long time, Kento. Long enough to grow old with me."
And he had quit. For her. For their future. For the life he wanted to build with her.
But now there was no future. Now he had given up on everything. So why not this too? Why not one more way to kill himself slowly?
He lit the cigarette with trembling hands. The smoke was harsh, burning his lungs, making him cough. It tasted like ash and failure. It tasted like exactly what he deserved.
He sat there, smoking, watching the buses come and go, watching the city lights flicker on one by one, watching the world continue without him.
And then he saw her.
She was across the street, at another bus stop, waiting for a different line. She must have left the office right after him, must have walked in the same direction without him noticing. She was sitting on her own bench, her small form hunched over, her face in her hands.
She was sobbing.
He could see it even from here—the way her shoulders shook, the way her breath hitched, the way she pressed her hands against her mouth as if trying to keep the sounds inside. She was crying the way she had cried in Shibuya. The way she had cried over his body. Brokenly. Desperately. Alone.
She thought she was alone now. She thought no one could see her. She had waited until she was away from the office, away from prying eyes, to let herself fall apart. To let herself feel the full weight of what he had done to her.
He watched her, the cigarette burning down between his fingers, forgotten. He watched her cry, and he felt his heart break all over again, felt it shatter into pieces so small they could never be put back together.
He had done this. He had caused this. He had taken the kindest, most loving soul he had ever known and he had made her cry alone on a bus bench.
Go to her, his heart screamed. Go to her and apologize. Go to her and tell her the truth. Tell her you love her. Tell her you're dying inside without her. Tell her you'll take it all back, every cruel word, if she'll just stop crying.
But he didn't move.
He couldn't. He was frozen, paralyzed by his own cruelty, trapped in the prison he had built for himself. He had to do this. He had to let her cry. He had to let her hate him. He had to let her move on and find someone else, someone better, someone who wouldn't die and leave her broken.
This was mercy. This was love. This was the only way to save her.
He watched until her bus came. Watched her wipe her face, straighten her shoulders, force herself to stop crying long enough to board. Watched the bus carry her away, into the night, away from him.
He sat there until his cigarette burned down to the filter, until it scorched his fingers, until the pain was the only thing he could feel.
Then he lit another one.
And another.
He sat on that bench until midnight, smoking and crying and hating himself, while the city moved around him, indifferent to his pain.
He had saved her. He had pushed her away. He had given her the gift of a future without him.
So why did it feel like he had died all over again?
The stars came out, one by one, indifferent and cold. He looked up at them, remembering how she had named them in their first life, making up stories about constellations, laughing when he pointed out that stars didn't actually work that way.
"I don't care," she had said, nestled against him on their balcony. "They're ours now. We can name them whatever we want."
He closed his eyes. He could still hear her voice. Still smell her hair. Still feel the ghost of her hand in his.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the empty street, to the uncaring sky, to the woman who was already miles away. "I'm so sorry. I love you. I love you. I love you."
But love, he was learning, was not always enough.
Sometimes love was letting go. Sometimes love was being cruel. Sometimes love was sitting alone on a bus bench at midnight, smoking cigarettes you had promised to quit, crying for a woman you could never have, bleeding from wounds that would never heal.
He stood up. He walked home. He lay in his bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling until dawn.
Tomorrow, he would go back to work. He would sit at his desk. He would be cold and professional and distant.
And she would learn to hate him. She would learn to avoid him. She would transfer departments, or quit, or simply forget that he existed.
And someday, years from now, she would meet someone kind. Someone safe. Someone who would love her without leaving her, who would grow old with her, who would give her the children they had named in another life.
And she would be happy.
And that, Nanami told himself as the sun rose and the tears finally stopped, was worth any price. Even this. Even loneliness. Even a heart that would never beat again.
The hatred was a gift. She gave it to him freely, generously, the way she had once given him her heart—completely, without reservation, without looking back. He watched her learn it, watched the transformation happen in real time across the days and weeks that followed his cruelty.
It started with avoidance. She stopped passing his desk. Stopped bringing him coffee. Stopped leaving those gentle notes and small kindnesses that had been slowly dismantling his resolve. She took the long way around the office to reach the break room, the bathroom, the elevator. She averted her eyes when they passed in the hall, her gaze sliding over him like he was furniture, like he was air, like he was nothing.
Then came the silence. When he entered a room, she stopped talking. When he spoke in meetings, she found something fascinating to look at on her notepad. When Tanaka asked if anyone wanted to join him for lunch, she would only agree if Nanami declined, her eyes darting to him first, checking, always checking, making sure their paths wouldn't cross.
The office noticed. Of course they noticed. Offices were ecosystems of gossip and observation, and the sudden frost between the golden intern and the cold, strange young man was too dramatic to ignore. Whispers circulated. Theories formed. Some said he had rejected her romantically. Some said she had discovered something terrible about him. Some simply shrugged and said, "Nanami has always been strange."
Tanaka, to his credit, tried to intervene once. He called Nanami into his office, offered him tea, spoke in the careful, roundabout way of a man who had seen too many office dramas.
"Kento," he said, using Nanami's first name with uncharacteristic gentleness. "I don't know what happened between you and the girl. But… she's a good worker. Bright. Kind. The kind of person this company needs. If there's something I can do to help you two reconcile—"
"There's nothing to reconcile," Nanami interrupted, his voice flat as a frozen lake. "We were never anything to each other. We are colleagues who do not get along. It happens."
Tanaka studied him with eyes that were sharper than they appeared. "She cried, you know. In the bathroom. For an hour. I had to send her home early."
Nanami said nothing. He couldn't. His throat had closed around the image of her crying, the memory of her sobbing on that bus bench, the knowledge that he had caused her pain so profound she had to hide in a bathroom to endure it.
"Whatever you did," Tanaka continued, his voice dropping to a whisper, "whatever you said… you should apologize. While you still can."
But Nanami didn't apologize. He couldn't. Because Tanaka was wrong—there was nothing to reconcile because there had never been anything to break. They had never been friends. They had never been lovers. In this life, they had never been anything at all.
And that was exactly what Nanami had wanted.
The office adapted to their cold war with the efficiency of any living organism adjusting to a wound. Schedules were rearranged. Projects were reassigned. When teamwork was required, they were never paired together. When meetings were scheduled, they sat on opposite sides of the room. The space between them became a demilitarized zone, a buffer of empty chairs and careful planning that ensured they never had to speak, never had to look, never had to remember what had been lost.
It was perfect. It was torture.
Nanami threw himself into his work with the desperation of a drowning man. He arrived at dawn and left at midnight. He completed projects that should have taken weeks in days. He volunteered for the assignments no one wanted—the tedious audits, the difficult clients, the thankless data entry that made junior associates weep with boredom.
He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. He existed in a state of suspended animation, waiting for the years to pass, waiting for his twenty-eighth birthday to arrive, waiting for Shibuya to happen so he could finally die and be free of this hell.
And he watched her.
He couldn't help it. Despite the distance, despite the silence, despite his own best intentions, his eyes found her constantly. Across the conference room. Through the glass of the break room. In the reflection of the elevator doors. She was sunlight, and he was Icarus, drawn to her warmth even knowing it would destroy him.
She was healing. That was the worst part. She was healing from him, from his cruelty, from the wounds he had inflicted. He saw her smile return, first tentative, then genuine, then radiant. He saw her make friends, real friends, the kind who laughed with her at lunch and brought her coffee and included her in their weekend plans.
He saw her notice someone else.
His name was Nakamura. He was from accounting, a year older than her, with kind eyes and a gentle smile and the kind of stable, predictable future that Nanami could never offer. Nanami remembered him from his first life—remembered the way Nakamura had looked at her during the company Christmas party, the way he had blushed when she spoke to him, the way he had asked about her only to be gently rebuffed because she was already in love with someone else.
With Nanami.
But that had been another life. In this one, there was no Nanami to stand between them. In this one, when Nakamura brought her coffee—black, two sugars, exactly how she liked it—she smiled at him with gratitude instead of confusion. When he asked about her weekend, she answered with enthusiasm instead of distance. When he suggested lunch, she said yes.
Nanami saw them together in the elevator, once. Nakamura was telling a story, something about his sister's wedding, and she was laughing, her head thrown back, her eyes crinkled at the corners in that way that Nanami had once thought belonged only to him. She reached out to touch Nakamura's arm, a casual, intimate gesture, and Nanami felt his jaw tick, felt his teeth grind together, felt his hands curl into fists so tight his nails drew blood from his palms.
He was jealous. God, he was jealous. It was a physical sensation, a poison in his blood, a fire in his gut. He wanted to stride across the elevator, pull her away, snarl at Nakamura that she was his, that she had always been his, that they had named children together in another life and planned futures and grown old in each other's arms.
Instead, he stared straight ahead and said nothing.
The elevator doors opened. She stepped out with Nakamura, still laughing, still touching his arm, still glowing with a happiness that Nanami had destroyed in himself so she could have it.
He went back to his desk. He worked until 3 AM. He didn't cry. He had no tears left.
Six months passed. The internship ended. She was offered a permanent position in Corporate Social Responsibility—the department she had dreamed of, the work she had always wanted to do. Nakamura transferred to her floor. They began having lunch together every day.
Nanami resigned.
He told Tanaka it was for personal reasons, that he had received an offer elsewhere, that he was grateful for the opportunity but it was time to move on. Tanaka didn't believe him—they both knew Nanami had no other offers, knew he was leaving because he couldn't bear to watch her fall in love with someone else—but he signed the paperwork anyway, gave a generous severance, shook Nanami's hand with a sadness that suggested he understood more than he said.
On his last day, Nanami cleaned out his desk. He found a small sticky note tucked in the back of his drawer, faded and old, in handwriting he recognized immediately.
"The cherry blossoms are blooming. They're beautiful today."
She had written it months ago, during those early days when she had been trying to reach him, trying to break through his walls with gentleness and persistence. He had kept it. He had kept it like a talisman, like proof that she had once cared, that he had once been worth her attention.
He crumpled it in his fist. He threw it in the trash. He walked out of the building without looking back.
He moved to a different district. He found a new job, equally soul-crushing, equally meaningless. He rented an apartment that smelled of mildew and old cigarettes, the kind of place he would have never brought her to in their first life, the kind of place that suited his new existence as a ghost.
He didn't make friends. He didn't build a life. He simply waited.
Years passed.
He was twenty-five, then twenty-six, then twenty-seven. He heard about her occasionally, fragments of information carried on the wind of mutual acquaintances. She was doing well. She was promoted. She and Nakamura had broken up—amicably, apparently, Nakamura had transferred overseas—but she was dating someone new. Someone serious.
He was twenty-eight when he heard she was getting married.
It came from a former colleague, someone he ran into at a convenience store, someone who didn't know their history, who spoke of her wedding plans with the casual enthusiasm of a gossip sharing news.
"Such a lovely couple," the colleague said, selecting a rice ball from the shelf. "He's a doctor, I think. Or a lawyer. Someone respectable. They're having the ceremony in spring, when the cherry blossoms are blooming. Very romantic."
Nanami nodded. He bought his coffee. He walked home. He sat in his dark apartment and drank until he couldn't remember his own name.
He didn't attend the wedding. Of course he didn't. He wasn't invited, wasn't wanted, wasn't anything to her anymore. But he imagined it. He tortured himself with it. He saw her in white, glowing with happiness, walking down an aisle toward a man who wasn't him, who would never be him, who would give her everything he had denied them both.
He saw her say I do. He saw her kiss her groom. He saw her dance, laugh, celebrate a future that didn't include him, had never included him, would never include him.
He drank until he passed out. He woke up and drank again. He existed in a haze of alcohol and regret, counting down the days until Shibuya, until Mahito, until the death that would finally set him free.
Four years passed.
He was thirty-two. The date was circled on his calendar in red, a countdown to execution. He had quit his job. He had spent his savings on nothing—cheap whiskey, cheaper cigarettes, the occasional meal when his body demanded it. He was thin, pale, hollow-eyed. He looked like a man already dead.
And then, on a Tuesday in October, he saw her.
It was the Yamanote Line, the green loop that circled the city like a noose. He was standing, holding the overhead strap, staring blankly at the advertisements above the windows, when the train stopped at Shibuya station and she stepped on.
She was different. Older, of course—thirty-two now, like him—but it was more than that. She was tired. He could see it in the slope of her shoulders, the circles under her eyes, the way she balanced two heavy grocery bags while trying to hold onto the pole. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, strands escaping around her face. Her coat was worn at the elbows. She looked like any other working mother in Tokyo, exhausted and overburdened and trying to hold everything together.
But she was still beautiful. She would always be beautiful. To him, she would always be the girl in the yellow dress, the woman in white, the love of two lifetimes.
And then he saw the baby.
It was in a carrier on her chest, a small bundle wrapped in blue, sleeping peacefully despite the jostling of the train. He couldn't see its face, couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl, but he knew. He knew with a certainty that transcended logic or reason.
Haru. Or Yuki. One of the names they had chosen together, lying in bed on his thirtieth birthday, dreaming of a future that had never come.
She shifted the bags, trying to get a better grip, and the train lurched. She stumbled, catching herself on the pole, and the baby made a small, disgruntled noise. She immediately soothed it, her hand coming up to pat the small back, her voice dropping to a whisper that Nanami couldn't hear but could imagine perfectly—soft, loving, full of devotion.
"It's okay, Haru-chan," she murmured, and Nanami felt his knees buckle.
Haru. She had named him Haru. Spring. New beginnings. The name they had chosen together for the son they would never have.
She was smiling at the baby now, despite her exhaustion, despite the heavy bags and the crowded train and the weight of her life. It was the same smile he remembered, the same smile that had lit up his existence for seven years, the smile that had been his home and his heaven and his reason for being.
She kissed the baby's forehead. The baby cooed, content, safe in his mother's love.
Nanami wanted to help her. The urge was physical, overwhelming, a compulsion that made his hands reach out before his mind could stop them. He wanted to take her bags. He wanted to give her his seat. He wanted to ask about her life, her husband, her child, wanted to know if she was happy, truly happy, if the sacrifice he had made had been worth it.
But he couldn't. He was frozen, paralyzed by the gulf of years and choices and pain that separated them. He was a stranger. He was nothing. He had no right to her, no claim to her, no place in her life.
The train stopped at Harajuku. She got off, struggling with the bags and the baby and the door, and Nanami watched her go. Watched her walk away, down the platform, into a life that didn't include him.
He went home. He drank. He drank until the room spun, until he couldn't feel his hands, until he passed out on the floor and dreamed of her, of them, of the life they should have had.
Three days later, Shibuya happened.
He had known it was coming. Had planned for it, waited for it, welcomed it as the end of his suffering. But he hadn't expected to see her there.
The station was chaos. Cursed energy filled the air like smoke, thick and choking and wrong. People were running, screaming, dying. Nanami moved through it like a man walking through a dream, his body already broken from encounters with curses he had no business fighting, his mind focused only on the end that awaited him.
And then he saw her.
She was on the platform, clutching Haru to her chest, her face white with terror. The baby was crying, screaming, sensing the danger that surrounded them. She was trying to run, trying to get to the exit, but the crowd was too thick, the panic too overwhelming.
And behind her, materializing from the shadows like a nightmare made flesh, was Mahito.
Nanami didn't think. He couldn't think. He simply moved, his body finding reserves of strength he didn't know he possessed, his legs carrying him across the platform faster than he had ever run.
"Get away from her!" he screamed, his voice raw, his hands reaching for the cursed spirit that had killed him once before.
Mahito turned. That terrible, beautiful face split into a smile. "Nanami Kento. I remember you. We met in another life, didn't we? How… nostalgic."
Nanami didn't answer. He threw himself between Mahito and her, his arms spread wide, his body a shield. He was half-dead already, his injuries from previous encounters leaving him weak, bleeding, barely standing. But he would stand. He would stand until there was nothing left of him to stand with.
"Run," he gasped, not turning to look at her, keeping his eyes locked on Mahito. "Take the baby and run. Don't look back."
"Kento?" Her voice. Her voice, saying his name, recognizing him despite the years, despite the hatred, despite everything. "Kento, what—"
"Run!" he screamed, and Mahito laughed.
"How touching," the curse purred.
The attack came too fast to dodge. Nanami tried to block it, tried to shield them both, but his body was failing him, his strength gone, his will the only thing keeping him upright. The cursed energy hit him square in the chest, lifting him off his feet, throwing him backward.
He crashed into her. They fell together, a tangle of limbs and terror, the baby wailing between them. Nanami rolled, trying to cover them both, trying to be the shield he had always wanted to be, the protector he had failed to become.
The baby was crying, screaming, small fists beating against Nanami's chest. Haru. He could have been their son. The child they had dreamed of, planned for, named in whispers and hope.
Mahito approached. Nanami could feel his footsteps vibrating through the platform, could feel the cursed energy gathering for the final blow. He had no strength left to fight. No way to save them. No future to hope for.
But he had this moment. This last, precious moment.
He reached out with trembling hands. He touched her face, tracing the lines that time had drawn, the scars that life had left, the beauty that had never faded. Then he turned to the baby. To Haru. To the son he would never know, never raise, never teach or comfort or watch grow.
He kissed the small forehead. The baby stopped crying, looking up at him with eyes that were golden like his mother's, wide and wondering and full of trust.
"Haru," he whispered, his voice breaking. "Haru. Be brave. Be kind. Be loved."
He gathered them both into his arms. His wife. His child. His family, finally, after eleven years of separation and sacrifice and pain. He held them tight, as tight as his broken body could manage, and he whispered into her hair the words he had never stopped thinking, never stopped feeling, never stopped being.
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
Mahito struck.
The cursed energy was overwhelming, a tsunami of destruction that consumed everything in its path. Nanami felt it hit, felt his body begin to dissolve, felt the heat and the pain and the terrible, beautiful release of death.
But he didn't let go. He held them, held them with arms that were no longer arms, with a body that was becoming something else, something less. He held them as they melted together, three bodies becoming one, three souls intertwining in their final moment.
He felt her hand in his. He felt the baby's heartbeat against his chest. He felt love, pure and absolute and eternal, washing away the pain, the fear, the regret.
They died together. As a family. As they should have lived.
When the medics arrived, hours later, after the curses had been defeated and the survivors counted, they found a strange formation on the platform. Three bodies, fused together by the intensity of the attack, melted into a single sculpture of embrace. A man, a woman, a child. Arms wrapped around each other, faces pressed together, frozen in a moment of love so profound it had transcended death itself.
They couldn't identify them. The damage was too severe, the records lost in the chaos. They were listed as unknowns, casualties of the Shibuya Incident, three more names on a list that stretched into thousands.
But the medic who found them, an old woman with kind eyes and a gentle touch, she wept when she saw them. She wept because she had never seen anything so beautiful in all her years of service. Because even in death, even in destruction, they had held on to each other. Because the love that had fused them together was stronger than the curse that had killed them.
"They were a family," she whispered to her colleagues, her voice thick with emotion. "Look at them. They died protecting each other. They died as a family."
They were cremated together. One casket, three bodies, three souls that had finally found their way home. The ashes were scattered in a garden of cherry blossoms, where the wind could carry them together, always together, into whatever came next.
And somewhere, in the spaces between heartbeats, in the pauses between breaths, in the quiet moments when the world holds its breath and magic leaks through the cracks of reality—they are still together.
Still holding each other. Still whispering love. Still a family, finally and forever, beyond death, beyond time, beyond the cruelty of a world that tried to tear them apart.
They had spring, after all. They had it in the end. Not the spring of years and aging, of children growing and lives unfolding. But the spring of reunion. The spring of love victorious. The spring of two souls, three souls, finding each other across the wasteland of sacrifice and loss, and holding on.
Holding on.
Never letting go.
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