#emotional devastation

removed from your personality somewhere around your second year in Port Mafia — but because you were doing what you always did before entering any new situation. Reading it. Mapping it. Deciding where the exits were and who would be the most dangerous person in the room and what your opening move should be.

Okay, you thought. Let's see what this is.

You pushed the door open.

The office was chaos in a way that felt almost artistic. Papers on every surface. Someone young and white-haired was doing something to a filing cabinet that looked like it might be a rescue operation or might be making things significantly worse. A man with glasses so precisely clean they were nearly offensive was writing in a notebook with the focused intensity of someone composing a sacred text. On the couch, a bandaged man was either sleeping or doing a performance of sleeping that was, frankly, pretty committed.

And there were the others — the big one reading what appeared to be a children's book, a young woman who met your eyes and then looked away with the particular speed of someone who had been staring, a detective who was elbow-deep in what appeared to be a truly spectacular quantity of snacks—

Then there was the woman by the window.

She wasn't doing anything that should have made her stand out. She was just standing there with a coffee cup in one hand and a medical journal in the other, reading, white coat perfectly pressed, dark hair falling over one shoulder. But there was something about the way she held space — completely, without effort, like the room had organized itself around her rather than the reverse — that made your eyes go to her and stay there.

She looked up.

Dark eyes. Direct. Assessing. The gaze of someone who was running their own analysis and wasn't particularly concerned about you knowing it.

She didn't smile. Didn't nod. Just looked at you with that level, measuring regard for a moment and then looked back at her journal.

Interesting, you thought.

Fukuzawa's introduction was efficient. New recruit, strong ability, solid record — the carefully edited version, Port Mafia omitted by mutual agreement, history reframed as general intelligence and field experience. Clean slate. New chapter.

"I'll show her around," said Kunikida, already reaching for his notebook.

"I'll do it."

The woman with the journal. She'd said it without looking up, in the tone of someone stating an obvious fact, and Kunikida stopped mid-reach.

"Yosano, you're in the middle of—"

"I'm aware of what I'm in the middle of." She closed the journal. Looked at you. "Come."

Not a request. Not an invitation. A statement of what was going to happen.

You followed her. You were somewhat surprised to find that you didn't mind.

She showed you around the office the way she did everything — with efficiency and without performance. This is the break room, that is the filing system, here is Kunikida's desk which you will not touch, those are the emergency protocols which are filed under K for Kunikida made these and they are very thorough.

"Does he file everything under K?" you asked.

"He files everything under the name of whoever is responsible for it. Which is usually him."

"What's filed under D?"

"Dazai." A pause. "It's a thick folder."

The medical bay she saved for last, and it was clearly hers in the way that certain spaces belonged to certain people — the precision of its organization, the specific logic of where things were placed, the almost visible imprint of one mind's particular standards. You stepped inside and looked around with genuine interest, taking in the equipment with the practiced eye of someone who'd spent time in Port Mafia's medical facilities.

"You have a Weitlaner retractor," you said.

She looked at you. "You know what a Weitlaner retractor is."

"Port Mafia has good surgeons. You learn things." You moved closer to examine the instrument tray. "This setup is more sophisticated than most field medical stations I've seen."

"It's not a field station. It's a proper medical bay." Something in her voice — not quite pride, but the specific satisfaction of someone whose standards have been correctly recognized. "I built it to those standards. It took two years and a significant argument with Kunikida about budget allocation."

"Who won?"

"I always win arguments about the medical bay." She moved to stand next to you, looking at the equipment with the same unconscious proprietary regard she'd shown before. "You have trauma surgery training?"

"Enough to be useful. Not enough to be you."

She glanced at you sideways. It was the first time you'd seen anything on her face that might, under certain lighting conditions, be described as being adjacent to being amused.

"Don't touch anything in here without asking," she said.

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good." She turned toward the door. "Any questions?"

"Several. But I'll ask them as they come up."

"Fine." She walked out. You followed. And you thought: This woman is either going to be the most interesting person I've met in years, or she's going to make my life very complicated.

Both, as it turned out. It was absolutely both.

The first two weeks were professionally correct in all the ways that meant nothing warm.

She answered your questions when you asked them. She acknowledged your presence in shared spaces. She did not go out of her way for you, did not seek conversation, gave no indication that you were anything other than a competent new addition to the agency's headcount.

Which was fine. You weren't looking for anything else. You were still learning the rhythms of a place that operated so fundamentally differently from everything you'd known that some days it felt like you'd moved to a different country — a country where people said what they meant and helped civilians and went home at something resembling a normal hour.

It was disorienting in a way you hadn't anticipated. Port Mafia had been brutal and demanding and had required you to be a particular kind of person at all times, and you'd been that person for long enough that you weren't entirely sure who you were without it. The ADA gave you space to find out, which was simultaneously exactly what you'd wanted and deeply, persistently uncomfortable.

The only thing that felt immediately natural was the early mornings.

You were an early riser — habit, Port Mafia kept early hours — and you'd started coming in before seven because your apartment felt too quiet and the office, even empty, felt more like somewhere to be. And Yosano, it turned out, was also an early riser — preference, you'd gather later, because she liked the office before it became the office, liked the hour when it was just a room and not a performance.

You didn't talk, those first mornings. You made coffee, she read journals, the city outside did its slow sunrise warm-up. But it was — it was comfortable. Surprisingly, immediately comfortable. The silence had a quality to it that you recognized: two private people who understood implicitly that the other didn't need to be entertained or attended to, who could simply occupy the same space without making demands of it.

On the eighth morning, you made a second coffee and put it on the edge of her desk without comment.

She looked at it. Looked at you. You were already walking back to your own desk.

She picked up the cup.

Neither of you said anything.

The first real conversation happened on a Thursday, three weeks in, because of a paper on hemostatic applications in ability-affected tissue that you'd been reading the previous evening and that had — frustratingly, stubbornly — had an interesting conclusion built on a foundation with three methodological errors.

You'd mentioned it. Casually. To the room, really, not specifically to her.

She'd looked up from her desk with an expression you'd learn to recognize — the sharp attention of someone who had opinions about this exact topic and was deciding whether the person who'd mentioned it was worth having the conversation with.

"That paper," she said. "You read it?"

"Last night. The conclusion is interesting."

"The conclusion is based on a flawed premise."

"Two flawed premises," you said. "The methodology in the second section is also problematic, but the conclusion still points somewhere worth following up."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she stood up, picked up her journal, and walked to your desk. She put the journal down, open to a page with three annotations in her precise handwriting, and said: "The second section issue is actually more significant than the premise problem. Here."

And that was it. That was the door.

You spent an hour and forty minutes on that paper. You argued — not unpleasantly, but genuinely, with the specific friction of two people who both knew the subject well enough to push back properly. She was right about the second section; you were right that the conclusion retained value despite it. You met somewhere in the middle that neither of you had started at, which was how good arguments were supposed to work.

When Kunikida arrived at eight-thirty to find the two of you deep in a debate about cellular regeneration methodology, he stood in the doorway for a moment, looked mildly startled, and then quietly went to make his own coffee without interrupting.

"You have good instincts," she said, eventually, closing the journal. Not warmly. Just — factually. Like she was reporting an observation.

"You have better references," you said.

"Obviously." She took her journal back to her desk. "I'll send you three papers that are relevant. Avoid the one by Tanaka — he's sloppy."

"How sloppy?"

"Embarrassingly. I met him once at a conference. He had no idea what he was talking about and tremendous confidence about it."

"The worst combination."

"The absolute worst." She sat down. Opened her journal. And then, without looking up, in a tone so neutral it was almost aggressively so: "You can ask, if you have questions. About papers. If they're relevant."

It was the most Yosano Akiko possible version of you can talk to me and you understood this completely.

"I will," you said. "Thank you."

She didn't respond. But the set of her shoulders was, infinitesimally, less closed than it had been.

The fashion magazine was an accident that became, in retrospect, one of the foundational texts of your friendship.

You'd been reading VOGUE Japan at lunch — a habit from before Port Mafia, something you'd held onto through everything, the small ordinary vanity of caring about beautiful clothes in a life that was otherwise focused on very unbeautiful things — and you'd gotten called away on a case and left it on the break room table.

You came back an hour later to find Yosano sitting at the break room table, coat off, reading your fashion magazine with the focused expression she normally reserved for surgical literature.

She looked up.

You looked at her.

The break room was very quiet.

"It was just sitting there," she said. Her tone implied she was making a reasonable observation about available reading material and not explaining herself and definitely not doing anything that required comment.

"It's a good issue," you said, moving to the coffee machine with the studied casualness of someone choosing not to make a thing into a thing. "The October editorial on structural tailoring is the best piece they've run in two years. Though I think the Comme des Garçons spread in the main body is trying too hard."

A pause. The sound of a page turning.

"Trying too hard or making a deliberate choice about maximalism?" she said.

You turned to look at her. She was examining a spread with the particular critical tilt of her head that you'd learned meant she was taking something seriously.

"Can't it be both?" you said.

"It can be both," she conceded. "But if it's a deliberate choice the critique changes." She turned another page. "The Valentino section is stronger. Less self-conscious."

You took your coffee and sat down across from her. She didn't look up, but she also didn't do anything to indicate this was unwelcome, and you'd learned to read Yosano's version of welcome — it was almost entirely communicated through what she didn't do.

"I have last month's Figaro," you said. "There's a retrospective on Rei Kawakubo that's worth reading."

She turned another page. "I don't have strong opinions about the Figaro."*

"You'll have opinions about this piece."

A pause. "Bring it tomorrow."

You brought it the next day. She read it in forty minutes and had seven opinions, four of which were criticisms and three of which were genuine enthusiasm, and it was the most animated she'd been in your presence since the medical methodology argument and you thought: there you are. There's what's actually in there.

You didn't say it out loud. But you thought it very clearly.

The shopping was not planned. Nothing between you and Yosano was ever exactly planned — it accumulated, instead, the way things did when two people were both too private to suggest things directly but kept ending up in the same places anyway.

It was a Saturday in September, the city doing that particular early autumn thing where the light went golden and the air smelled like something ending and something beginning simultaneously. You'd been in Motomachi for your own reasons — a specific shop that had gotten in a shipment you'd been tracking — and you'd turned a corner and nearly walked directly into Yosano.

She was carrying a coffee. She looked, for a brief moment, like a person who had been caught existing outside of their professional context, which on Yosano manifested as a very controlled micro-expression of recalibration before she returned to her default composure.

"Following me?" you said.

"I live four blocks from here," she said. "You're the one standing in the middle of the pavement."

"I was about to go into that boutique." You nodded at the shop behind you. "They got a Paris archive shipment in. Someone apparently cleared out a collection from the late nineties."

She looked at the boutique. Something happened in her expression that she very nearly managed to keep off her face.

"The late nineties," she said. Neutral. Informational.

"Some good Mugler in there, apparently. And a few Lacroix pieces."

A pause. She took a sip of her coffee. "I have time," she said, as if this were a logistical observation she was sharing out of generosity.

"Great," you said.

You went in.

What followed was two hours and twenty minutes that you would later identify as the point where everything shifted — not dramatically, not with a single moment you could point to, but gradually and then all at once, the way friendships actually happened when you were both the kind of people who moved carefully.

She was extraordinary to shop with. Terrifying, but extraordinary. She had opinions about everything — structural, historical, technical opinions, the kind that came from genuinely understanding what clothes were doing rather than just what they looked like — and she delivered them with the same precision she brought to surgical assessments. A garment was either earning its existence or it wasn't. There was no sentimentality about it.

"This is trying to be Alaïa and not succeeding," she said, replacing a jacket with a finality that brooked no argument.

"It's a decent attempt," you said.

"Decent attempts are not sufficient when you're referencing a master." She moved along the rack with the purposeful energy of someone on a mission. "Either commit to the reference or do something else."

"So you'd rather it committed to the reference and failed completely than partially succeeded by hedging?"

She stopped. Looked at you. "Yes. Obviously. A complete failure that had the courage of its convictions is more interesting than a successful compromise. The compromise has nothing to say."

You looked at her. "That's actually the most coherent fashion philosophy I've heard in years."

"It's not fashion philosophy. It's just logic."

"Most people don't apply logic to fashion."

"Most people," she said, moving toward the next rack, "are doing it wrong."

You found the Mugler pieces. She found two Lacroix items that she examined with the careful attention she gave to things she genuinely cared about, which she would never admit to, which you noted and said nothing about. You found a jacket that fit perfectly and that she looked at and said, flatly, "that's yours, buy it" in the tone of a verdict.

You bought it.

You went to two more stores. You argued about a Westwood retrospective with the intensity of people who both had genuine stakes in the outcome. You found common ground on Yamamoto and significant disagreement on a particular era of Chanel that got heated enough that a shop assistant sidled away from you with the nervous energy of someone not wanting to get caught in crossfire.

By the time you ended up in the small boutique near the harbor, the afternoon had turned into evening and neither of you had suggested stopping.

The display case was near the door — you almost missed it. Delicate chains, small pendant butterflies, one silver and one gold. Simple. The kind of thing that either meant nothing or meant something, depending entirely on context.

You both stopped at the same moment.

"Tacky," she said.

"Completely," you agreed.

A pause. She was looking at the silver one with an expression she wasn't quite managing to make neutral.

"The metalwork is actually quite fine," she said.

"It really is. Surprisingly well-made for the price point."

Another pause. Longer.

"The silver one," she said to the shopkeeper, in the tone of someone making a practical decision. Then, not looking at you, examining something on the other side of the case: "The gold suits you better."

"Does it," you said.

"Yes. Stop being difficult."

You got the gold one.

She fastened the clasp for you because the mechanism was small and fiddly and your fingers were — she said, with clinical detachment — apparently designed for something other than fine motor work. Her fingers were warm and precise against the back of your neck, and she worked quickly, and the whole thing lasted maybe fifteen seconds, and you were absolutely not thinking about the warmth of her hands or the proximity of her, you were simply standing there while she did a practical thing.

You fastened hers. She held very still.

She looked down at the small silver butterfly at her collarbone for exactly two seconds. Then she adjusted her collar, picked up her bags, and walked out of the boutique.

You followed her. You were smiling and you knew she couldn't see it and you let yourself have it for exactly as long as it took to walk out onto the pavement, and then you put it away.

"Same time next week?" you said.

She looked at you. "I didn't plan this one."

"Neither did I."

A pause. "I might be in Motomachi on Saturday," she said.

"I might be too," you said.

She made a sound that was not quite acknowledgment and not quite dismissal and walked toward her apartment. You watched her go, silver butterfly catching the last of the evening light.

Oh, you thought, for the first time. Just: oh.

You filed it immediately in the category of things you were absolutely not going to examine and went home.

The Saturdays became a thing. Not every week — neither of you would have accepted every week, it was too much like admitting something — but often enough that it had its own shape. You'd end up in the same part of the city, you'd go into shops, you'd argue your way through boutiques with the focused energy of people who genuinely cared about this and weren't embarrassed about it.

The arguments were their own kind of pleasure. She was almost always right but not always, and the occasions when you found a genuine point of disagreement and could hold your own against her had a specific quality — the way she'd get sharper, more engaged, the rare occasions when she'd concede a point with the controlled grace of someone who respected the argument even while disliking losing it.

"The nineties minimalism revival," you said one afternoon, holding up a piece with studied calm, "is being handled better this season than last."

"It's being handled adequately," she said. "Adequately is not better."

"Compared to last season, adequate is a significant improvement."

"Setting the bar at 'not as bad as before' is how mediocrity becomes acceptable."

"I'm not calling it good. I'm calling it better. Those are different claims."

She looked at you. The particular look — the one you'd started looking forward to because it meant she was actually engaging, not just dismissing. "Fine. Better. Adequate. Neither of which is worth the price point."

"Agreed on the price point."

"Then we're in agreement."

"We're in partial agreement. I think the direction is promising even if the execution isn't there yet."

"The direction being promising means nothing if they can't execute."

"The direction being promising means in three seasons they might execute."

She looked at you for a long moment. Something moved in her expression — not quite a smile, but the thing that lived in the same neighborhood. "You're an optimist," she said.

"About fashion?"

"Apparently."

"Is that a character flaw?"

"In fashion, possibly." She put the piece back. "In general, less so." She moved to the next rack, and you couldn't quite see her face, but you thought — you were fairly sure — that she was doing the thing where she was almost smiling and not admitting it.

You kept up with her, and you thought about that in general, less so for much longer than was reasonable, and you said nothing about it, and you touched the gold butterfly at your throat without deciding to, and you moved on.

The agency was its own education.

You'd expected hostility or at minimum wariness — Port Mafia's reputation was not exactly conducive to warm welcomes — and you'd gotten neither. Atsushi had adopted you with the earnest totality he applied to everything, which was both touching and slightly exhausting in its completeness. Ranpo had determined within ten minutes that you were not a mystery and therefore not interesting, which you understood was, in its way, a form of acceptance. Kunikida had performed a two-week assessment and then placed you firmly in the asset column, which was the highest available designation.

Dazai was the complicated one.

Not unfriendly — never unfriendly, Dazai operated on a frequency of cheerful sociability that made it difficult to be anything other than charmed if you weren't careful. But you'd both come from the same place, and that meant you both knew how to read the particular tells of people who'd been trained by Mori's school of thought, and you were aware from early on that he was watching you with more than the casual interest he performed.

"You're doing well," he told you one afternoon, appearing at your elbow with the suddenness that was either a habit or a power. "The integration. It's smoother than most."

"I'm motivated," you said.

"Mm." He was quiet for a moment, studying the middle distance with the expression he wore when he was being thoughtful and letting you see it, which meant he wanted you to know he was being thoughtful. "Can I ask you something? You can tell me it's none of my business."

"It's probably none of your business."

"Probably," he agreed, unperturbed. "Are you actually out? Or is this—" He made a vague gesture that somehow conveyed the entire concept of long-game infiltration.

You looked at him. He looked back with those dark, unreadable eyes.

"I'm out," you said. "I don't want to go back. I don't want anything to do with Mori's agenda. I'm here because this is where I want to be."

A pause. He studied you with that assessing gaze, the one that saw more than it should, and then something shifted in his expression — something that you thought, cautiously, might be genuine.

"Good," he said simply. Then, transitioning back to his usual register without break: "Also, for what it's worth, Yosano doesn't do what she's doing with you with most people. In case you were wondering."

He drifted away before you could ask what he meant.

You thought about it for the rest of the afternoon. You tried not to think about it for the rest of the afternoon. Both were happening simultaneously.

The girls' nights began because of a work event that went spectacularly wrong in every direction simultaneously.

Kunikida had organized it. Agency social, structured, appropriate end time. Dazai had immediately identified it as a challenge and begun methodically dismantling every aspect of it with the focused creativity he usually reserved for frustrating Kunikida specifically. By eight-thirty the karaoke machine had appeared from somewhere, two chairs had been broken in ways that still weren't fully explained, Kenji was on the roof for reasons that were even less explained, and the general atmosphere had the specific energy of something that was either going to become a story or a report to Fukuzawa.

You and Yosano had looked at each other across the chaos at the same moment. The kind of look that communicated a complete sentence without requiring any words. The sentence was: we are too old for this and also this was never our kind of thing.

"My apartment," she said. "Now."

"Yes," you said.

You left. It took seventeen minutes for anyone to notice, which told you everything about the state of the party.

Her apartment was everything the party wasn't — quiet, warm, smelling of something clean and slightly floral. She opened wine, you found cheese and crackers in her refrigerator and assembled something respectable, and you both settled on her couch with the unified energy of people who had escaped something.

"Better," you said.

"Significantly," she said.

And then you just — talked.

It was remarkable, actually, how it just happened. You'd been building toward it for months without knowing it — all those early mornings, the medical debates, the Saturdays in Motomachi, the slow accumulation of shared language — and now, in her apartment on a Friday night with wine and no professional context and nowhere to be, it all just... came out.

She was funny. This was something you'd suspected but not fully confirmed — Yosano's humor was dry and precise and required paying close attention, deployed with such deadpan certainty that you occasionally had to replay what she'd said to find the joke. But once you'd calibrated to her frequency, she was genuinely, unexpectedly hilarious.

"Walk me through the Dazai situation," you said. "From the beginning. I've heard fragments but I feel like I'm missing essential context."

She settled back against the couch cushions, wine in hand, with the expression of someone who had been waiting for someone worthy of this story. "How much do you know about the Port Mafia's operational structure from, let's say, four years ago?"

"Enough to fill in gaps."

"Then you'll appreciate this." She took a sip of wine. "So. Dazai Osamu, former Port Mafia executive, age twenty-two, decides to defect. This is not, in itself, surprising — he was always the kind of person who would do exactly what you least expected simply to see what happened. What is surprising is the method."

"Which was?"

"He showed up at the agency in the middle of the afternoon wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a box of expensive pastries, sat down in Fukuzawa's office, and presented a forty-minute PowerPoint on why he would be an asset to the agency's operations. Complete with footnotes."

You stared at her. "A PowerPoint."

"With footnotes," she repeated. "Kunikida has never fully recovered from the fact that the presentation was genuinely excellent. He found it both professionally impressive and personally offensive, which is a state of being he has been in with regard to Dazai ever since."

You laughed. She watched you with that expression — the one you'd started cataloguing, the one that appeared when you reacted to something she'd said in the way she'd hoped you would, warm and private and quickly smoothed away.

"Tell me more," you said.

She told you more. She told you about Kunikida's notebook and its specific sacred significance, about Ranpo's snack economy which functioned as an alternative currency within the agency, about a case three years ago involving a criminal who had been defeated not by any ability but by Kenji's completely unironic earnestness overwhelming his entire operational plan.

"He just— kept being sincere at him," she said. "This man had a fourteen-step plan, backup plans, contingencies. And Kenji just looked at him with those eyes and said 'I'm sure you're a good person really' with absolute conviction and the man just— stopped. Sat down. Waited for the police."

"That's either the most heartwarming or the most unnerving thing I've ever heard."

"Both. Definitively both." She refilled her wine. "He's done it four times now. I've started keeping count."

You talked until one in the morning. You talked about the agency and about cases and about the specific interpersonal dynamics that made it function in the chaotic miraculous way it did. You talked about medicine — she had a story about a conference where a surgeon had presented findings so poorly that she'd had to physically restrain herself from standing up and correcting him in front of two hundred people — and about fashion, a brief detour into the question of whether there was a meaningful philosophical distinction between fashion as art and fashion as commerce.

You didn't talk about Port Mafia. You didn't talk about the real histories. But there was an ease in the room that felt like those things being acknowledged without being spoken, the particular comfort of two people who understood each other's silences.

At one in the morning you said you should go. She walked you to the door — didn't have to, wasn't required to, just did — and leaned against the frame watching you put your coat on.

"Same time next week?" you said.

She looked at you with that expression. "I suppose I have nothing better to do on Fridays," she said, which in Yosano language meant yes, absolutely, I want this, I'm not going to say that directly.

"High praise," you said.

The corner of her mouth moved.

"Goodnight, Yosano."

"Goodnight."

The girls' nights found their shape over the following weeks — wine, food, conversation that went wherever it wanted, the occasional film that you'd both end up talking over until the film gave up and just played to itself in the background.

It was the sixth one where things got real.

You'd ordered pizza, which had been your contribution to the evening's food situation, and it had arrived during a conversation about ADA mission methodology that had gotten surprisingly heated. You'd both been sitting on her floor for some reason — you'd ended up there, as you sometimes did, migrated from the couch at some point during the evening — with the pizza box between you, and she'd gotten out the face masks because she'd bought them and they might as well get used, and you'd both been sitting there with ridiculous amounts of pale goop on your faces arguing about tactical approaches while eating margherita pizza, and at some point you'd both become aware of how absurd this was and laughed until the pizza situation became precarious.

"You have mask on your pizza," she said.

"I do not—" You looked at the slice in your hand. You did. A small amount. "That's from my hand. Not my face."

"Your hand has mask on it because your face has mask on it."

"This is a mask-related chain of causation, I'll grant you that."

She shook her head with the expression of someone dealing with something. You ate the pizza anyway. She looked like she was judging you and also like she might, under other circumstances, do the same.

The conversation drifted, the way it did when you were both relaxed enough to let it — from cases to the agency to something quieter and more real. Outside, rain had started, the particular steady Yokohama rain that turned the city into its own kind of sound.

"Can I ask you something?" you said.

"You can try."

"What do you actually want?" You paused. "Not from the agency. In general. Long term."

She looked at you. The face mask made her expression harder to read, which you suspected she might consider an advantage.

"That's a large question," she said.

"You don't have to answer."

"I'm deciding whether I want to." She picked up her wine glass, held it without drinking. "I want—" She stopped. Started again. "I want to do work that means something on my own terms. I spent a long time doing important work on terms that weren't mine. I don't want to do that again."

"That makes sense."

"What about you?"

"I want to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop," you said. It came out more honest than you'd intended. "I've been in fight-or-flight for so long that I don't always know what I'm like when I'm not. I'd like to find out."

She was quiet for a moment. "You're different from how I expected," she said. "When you first came in. I knew you were Port Mafia, obviously—"

"You knew?"

"I knew from the first week. Possibly earlier." She looked at you with those direct eyes. "I know what Mori's training looks like. I've seen enough of it."

"And you didn't—"

"Report you? No." She set her wine glass down with careful precision. "Because I watched you. For weeks I watched how you moved through this place — how you talked to Atsushi, how you handled the civilians in the Kamurocho case, how you are when you think no one's paying attention." She paused. "You're not performing being a good person. It's not strategy. It's just — what you are. Inconveniently."

"Inconveniently," you repeated.

"I had decided you were going to be a liability," she said. "And then you kept not being one. Which was irritating."

You looked at her. "I irritated you by being a decent person?"

"You irritated me by making me revise my assessment." The slightest pause. "I don't like being wrong."

"I've noticed."

She picked up a pizza slice. "You're like—" She stopped. Something moved across her face, complicated and quick. "You understand me in a way most people don't bother trying to."

The rain outside. The low music. The ridiculous face masks and the pizza box between you.

"I feel the same," you said. Quietly. "For what it's worth."

She looked at you for a long moment. Then she said: "You still have mask on your hand."

"I'm going to leave it there as a statement."

"Please don't."

"It's a look."

"It's a problem." But she was almost smiling — that real almost-smile, the one that went all the way up, the one she almost never let happen — and you were smiling back, and the rain kept going, and you thought: this is it. This is the thing I was trying to find out I was like when I wasn't in fight-or-flight.

This. Her. Exactly this.

You didn't say it. But you thought it very clearly, sitting on her floor with pizza and face masks and the best conversation you'd had in years.

The photo was her idea, though she'd never frame it that way.

It was near the end of the same evening, masks removed, wine mostly gone, the comfortable winding-down of a night that had been better than expected. She'd gotten her phone out for something — you didn't notice exactly what — and then she looked at you and said, with the casualness of someone proposing something minor:

"We don't have a photo."

"Of tonight?"

"Of any of it. The Saturdays. Any of it."

You looked at her. "Do you want one?"

A pause. The pause of someone who wanted something and was deciding whether wanting it was acceptable. "It seems like a gap," she said finally. "In the documentation."

"The documentation," you said.

"Yes."

You smiled. She gave you a look. You composed your face.

She came and sat next to you on the couch — properly next to you, shoulder to shoulder — and held up her phone, and adjusted the angle twice with the focused precision she brought to everything, and took the photo. She checked it. Checked it again. The light from the lamp caught both of you just right; the silver and gold butterflies were both visible.

She showed you the screen.

You looked at it for a moment. Both of you, in her apartment, looking like people who were comfortable. Looking like people who had been doing this for years. Looking like—

"I want to print it," she said.

"Obviously," you said.

She got up and printed it on the small photo printer on her desk. You watched her look at it — the warm print, slightly glossy — and thought about something, and then she came back and sat and handed it to you.

"Turn it over," you said. "Write something on the back."

She looked at you. "Like what."

"Whatever feels right."

A pause. She took the pen from the coffee table and sat with it in her hand for a moment, looking at the back of the photo, and you watched her think and didn't rush her, and she wrote something and handed it back.

Let butterflies adorn our friendship.

You read it. The handwriting was hers — clean, precise, the writing of someone who treated everything they put on paper as permanent.

Friendship, you thought. The safe word. The word that means everything you mean and stops short of the thing you're not ready to say.

"Perfect," you said, and you meant it, because it was — because this was where you were, this was the true thing, and the other true thing could wait, could keep, could stay in the space between words where it had been living for months.

You put the photo in your inside jacket pocket. Against your chest.

She watched you do it. Something moved in her eyes — brief, complicated, filed away.

"It's late," she said.

"It is," you agreed.

At the door, you put your coat on, and she stood in the doorframe, and for a moment neither of you moved.

"Yosano," you said.

"Mm."

"Thank you. For tonight. For—" You stopped. "For all of it."

She looked at you. "Go home," she said, soft. "Get some sleep."

"Yeah."

"I'll see you Monday."

"Monday," you agreed.

You walked down the hallway. You didn't look back. Behind you, very softly, her door closed.

You put your hand over your jacket pocket, over the photo.

I love you, you thought. I love you and I put it in my pocket and I'm going home and Monday will be like every other Monday and that's fine.

That's fine.

The briefing was on a Tuesday.

You'd felt something coming for a week — the particular way the intelligence networks moved before something significant, the specific quality of silence from certain channels that meant people were paying attention to something. You'd mentioned it to Fukuzawa, quietly, and he'd nodded with the gravity he reserved for things that mattered.

The full meeting was called Wednesday morning.

Everyone in the room. Fukuzawa at the head of the table, and you'd known before he opened his mouth that this was serious because he'd closed the blinds, which he only did for operational security.

The briefing was clear. Port Mafia had a target — intelligence that would give them a significant operational advantage for the next year, connected to networks that overlapped with people the ADA was responsible for protecting. The access point was within a district that Port Mafia controlled. Getting in, getting the intelligence, getting out required someone who understood Port Mafia's structure from the inside.

"The ideal candidate," Fukuzawa said, without looking at you, "has intimate familiarity with Port Mafia operational protocols, access points, and behavioral patterns."

Everyone looked at you. Some of them tried not to.

"I'll go," you said.

"Y/N—" Atsushi started.

"I'm the right person for this. I have the best read on their current structure of anyone in this room. I know the access points, I know how they move, I know what to expect." You kept your voice level. Operational. "Tactically, this is the obvious choice."

Kunikida was looking at his notes. Ranpo was eating something and staring at the ceiling, which meant he was thinking. Dazai was very still, which with Dazai meant something, though you weren't sure what.

You did not look at Yosano. You didn't need to. You could feel her looking at you.

"The operation window is Friday night into Saturday," Fukuzawa said. "We'll finalize the approach Thursday. Y/N, I'll want your read on entry points this afternoon."

"Yes sir," you said.

The meeting ended. People dispersed. You stayed in your chair for a moment, looking at your own hands on the table, running the calculus. Variables. Probabilities. Outcomes.

The variable you kept coming back to: Mori Ougai knew you were here. He'd known for months — Mori knew everything. He'd chosen, so far, to let you operate, because your value to the ADA as an asset meant that your removal would cost more than your continued existence.

So far.

But you were about to walk into his territory. And Mori Ougai did not forgive defection. He tolerated it, at a calculated distance. Up close was different.

It'll be fine, you told yourself. Clean operation. In and out.

"Y/N."

Yosano. Still in her chair at the far end of the table. Everyone else had gone.

You looked at her.

She looked back. Her expression was controlled in the specific way of someone working to keep it controlled. "Come to the medical bay," she said. "I want to go over some things with you before Friday."

It wasn't a request.

"Okay," you said.

The medical bay in the late afternoon was quiet, the city light going gold through the window, and she moved through the space with the purposeful energy of someone who needed to be doing something with their hands.

She talked you through the medical kit she was preparing — what was in it, what each thing was for, how to use the things you might not know. You listened and asked the right questions and watched her hands and thought about the photo in your jacket pocket.

"You know how to field-dress a deep laceration?" she said.

"Yes."

"Show me."

You did. She watched with her arms crossed and her eyes sharp and corrected one thing — the angle of pressure on one particular type of wound — and then said "good" in the tone of someone whose approval was not given easily.

She put the kit down. Stood with her back to you for a moment, looking at her surgical tray.

"I don't like this," she said.

"I know."

"I don't like that you're the only person we can send."

"I know."

"I don't like—" She stopped. When she turned around her expression was as controlled as you'd ever seen it, which meant she was working very hard. "Port Mafia doesn't forgive. You know that."

"I know."

"Mori especially."

"Yosano."

"I'm being factual."

"I know you are." You looked at her directly. "I've run every version of this. I know what the risks are. I'm going anyway because it's the right call and you know it's the right call."

A long pause. She looked at you with those dark eyes.

"If something goes wrong," she said, and her voice was very controlled, "you call for extraction immediately. You don't try to finish the mission. You call and you get out."

"Yosano—"

"Promise me."

You looked at her. "I'll do everything I can to come back."

"That's not what I said."

"It's what I can promise."

The silence between you had weight. She held your gaze and something moved in her expression — the something you'd been seeing for months, the thing she never let fully surface, and for a moment it was closer to the surface than it had ever been.

"Friday," she said finally. "Girls' night is Friday. You will be there."

Something happened in your chest. "Friday," you said. "I'll be there."

She nodded, once, sharply. Turned back to her tray.

"Go home," she said. "Sleep. You have work tomorrow."

At the door you stopped. Turned.

"Yosano."

"What."

"The photo." You touched your jacket pocket. "I carry it. Every day. I thought you should know that."

You didn't wait for her response. You walked out, and behind you the medical bay was very quiet, and you didn't see the way she stood very still with her hand on the surgical tray until the sound of your footsteps had fully faded.

Thursday was operations planning. You spent six hours mapping entry points, contingencies, extraction routes, going over every element of the operation with the systematic thoroughness that Port Mafia had trained into you.

In the evening, Dazai found you in the break room.

He sat down across from you without asking. You looked at him.

"Say what you're going to say," you said.

"I think you should know," he said, and his voice was quieter than usual — not the performed thoughtfulness, the actual kind — "that Mori's been aware of your position here for approximately five months. I have information suggesting he's been waiting for an opportunity rather than acting immediately."

You were very still. "How confident are you in that information?"

"Confident enough to be telling you."

"And you're telling me now."

"I'm telling you now because I wasn't sure before. Now I'm sure." He looked at you with those eyes that saw everything. "I'm not telling you not to go. The mission matters and you're the right person. I'm telling you to go in knowing that the landscape has changed."

"Mori might be there."

"Mori might be expecting you."

You thought about this. You turned it over. You ran the new calculus with the new variable.

"Thank you," you said.

"Come back," he said. Just that. Flatly, simply. "She doesn't—" He stopped himself. Shook his head slightly. "Come back."

He left. You sat in the break room with the city going dark outside and thought about what Dazai didn't finish saying.

She doesn't what.

She doesn't have many people. She doesn't let people in easily. She doesn't—

You stopped the thought.

You got up. You went home. You took the photo out of your jacket pocket and looked at it for a long time — the candlelight, the butterflies, her handwriting on the back.

Let butterflies adorn our friendship.

You turned it over.

You wrote, underneath her words, in the space that remained:

Thank you for every morning. Thank you for every sharp and honest and extraordinary thing. I carry this because it's the best thing I have.

— Y/N

You put it back in your pocket. You went to bed. You did not sleep much.

In the morning you slipped a sealed envelope into her apartment mailbox on the way to the mission debrief, and you didn't let yourself think about it.

The operation began cleanly.

Port Mafia's district at two in the morning had its own particular language — the specific way spaces were patrolled, the timing of guard rotations, the access points that weren't in any public record but that you knew because you'd used them, because you'd been on the other side of them, because this had been your world for four years and you didn't forget the geography of places you'd survived.

You moved through it like water finding its level. Calm. Efficient. No wasted motion.

The first hour was clean. The access point was where you'd calculated it would be. The intelligence — physical records, the kind Port Mafia still kept in certain high-security contexts because digital systems had failure points — was in the location your analysis had identified. You extracted it with the care and speed of someone who had done versions of this many times.

The second hour was when the operation started to breathe differently.

Small things first. A patrol timing that was off. A door that should have been accessible and wasn't. The particular quality of silence in a place that should have had some ambient noise, the silence of a space that had been deliberately emptied.

Oh, you thought, with a clarity that had no fear in it because fear was a luxury for later. He knows I'm here.

You recalculated. Fastest extraction route. Contingency A. Contingency B. The comm signal to send if you needed extraction. Your hands kept doing the mission while your mind ran the new map.

You were one corridor from the exit when the lights came on.

Full lights — not the low operational level, full illumination, the kind that said we're done pretending you might get out of here without this conversation.

And at the end of the corridor, with the particular unhurried composure of someone who had planned for exactly this moment, was Mori Ougai.

He looked exactly as he always had. Small. Precise. The cane he carried not because he needed it but because he liked having it. Those eyes — flat and dark and engaged in the way of a scientist studying something interesting.

Six people behind him. Positioned correctly, not bunched. He'd prepared for this. Of course he'd prepared for this.

"Y/N," he said. Pleasantly. As if you were running into each other at a conference. "I've been waiting for the right moment. You chose an impressively high-value moment, I'll give you that."

Your weapon was in your hand. You'd already assessed the six people behind him. The calculus was not favorable.

"Mori."

"Nine months," he said, beginning to walk toward you slowly, cane tapping on the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound of something inevitable. "I allowed nine months because I was curious. You were always one of my more interesting investments — the ones who had genuine potential rather than just utility. I thought perhaps independence would— clarify things."

"And?"

"And here you are." He stopped. Ten feet away. His expression didn't change. "Extracting intelligence that you will give to my enemies. So I think the experiment has reached its conclusion."

"I'm not your investment," you said. "I stopped being your anything when I left."

"That's not how it works," he said, with the gentle patience of someone explaining something obvious. "You understand that. You were never naive, even when you wanted to be." He tilted his head slightly. "Who is it? The agency. The work. Or someone specific?"

You said nothing.

"Ah," he said. "Someone specific." Something that wasn't quite a smile. "She's remarkable, isn't she. I considered acquiring her again, after the first time, but she became more trouble than she was worth. Sentiment, in my line of work, is—"

"Don't," you said. Your voice came out flat and very cold.

"There it is." He looked at you with something that might have been satisfaction. "The thing worth dying for. Everyone has one." He raised one hand, a small gesture, nothing dramatic. "This isn't personal. I want you to understand that. It's simply math."

"I know," you said. "It's always math with you."

And then you moved.

Because the alternative was standing there while six professionals closed in, and standing there had never been how you operated. You moved and you were fast — Port Mafia trained you and that training was yours now, whatever else you'd left behind — and the first two people went down before they'd finished reacting, and you were through the gap in the formation and running for the contingency exit—

The third person caught you. A hit from the left, something that sent white up your vision, and you didn't go down but the fourth person was already there and the fifth—

You fought. You kept fighting. That was the thing they'd taught you and the thing you'd kept — the absolute refusal to stop, the insistence on making every second count, the knowledge that stopping meant it was over.

But it was six people and Mori had planned this and eventually the math caught up.

It always caught up.

You were on the ground before you'd fully registered the last hit, and the corridor was very quiet, and Mori walked over with that unhurried composure and stood above you and looked at you with those flat, detached eyes.

"I'll tell her," you said. It came out strange. Your voice didn't sound right. "I'll tell her you—"

"You won't be telling anyone anything," Mori said, gently. "That's rather the point."

He turned and walked away, cane tapping, and the corridor was empty, and the lights were very bright, and you thought about a photo in your jacket pocket and handwriting on the back of it and Friday, I said I'd be there Friday—

I'm sorry, Yosano.

The gold butterfly at your throat was cold.

I'm sorry I won't make it to Friday.

I should have said it. I should have been brave enough to say it.

I love you. I love you and I—

The lights were very bright.

She'd known something was wrong at three in the morning.

Not from the communications — the comm had been silent since the operation began, which was expected. Not from anything she could point to. Just the particular quality of certainty that had no rational basis and didn't need one, the thing that happened when you'd learned to pay attention to the parts of yourself that knew before you did.

She'd been awake. She was sometimes awake in the early hours, a habit from years of being on call, and she'd been sitting in her apartment with a medical journal she wasn't reading when the feeling arrived. She sat with it for twenty minutes. Told herself it was nothing. Told herself she was catastrophizing.

At three-thirty she got dressed and started moving.

She called Dazai first because Dazai always knew things. He answered on the second ring, which meant he'd been awake too, and when she said Y/N he was quiet for exactly two seconds before he said I'll track the last known signal. Stay on the line.

She was already out the door.

She walked fast. Then she ran. Yokohama at four in the morning was its own world — the city stripped of its daytime performance, just the bones of it, quiet and strange and enormous. She knew these streets. She'd walked them for years in every condition, but tonight they felt different, felt like they were asking something of her, and she didn't let herself think about what.

Come back, she'd said. Girls' night is Friday. You will be there.

I'll be there, you'd said.

Come back.

Dazai's voice in her ear, directing her — signal had been tracked to Kashiwagi district, an alley behind a building she knew, a name she recognized from Port Mafia intelligence maps.

She got there at 4:52 in the morning.

She found you in the alley.

Later, she would not be able to account precisely for what happened in the first thirty seconds. She had been trained for emergency response. She had seen terrible things. She was, professionally and personally, not someone who froze.

She didn't freeze. But something happened that she couldn't name — a crack, somewhere structural, somewhere deep — and then her training took over and she was on her knees and her hands were moving.

Checking. Assessing. Her ability, reaching—

Nothing.

She tried again. Concentrated harder, reached deeper — her ability had never failed, her ability was the one constant, the one absolute thing she'd built her entire understanding of herself around since the military, since everything, since she'd decided that if she was going to have this power then she was going to use it to keep people alive and that was who she was now—

Nothing.

"No," she said. Out loud, to no one. To the alley. To whatever had already decided. "No."

Again. She tried again. Her hands were shaking — she registered this distantly, her hands never shook — and she tried again and again and the reaching found nothing to reach toward and she kept trying anyway because the alternative was accepting what was in front of her and she was not—

She was not ready to accept what was in front of her.

"No. No, goddammit, no—" Her voice broke on the last word, broke completely, and she was still trying, still reaching, still—

Nothing.

The silence after was the loudest thing she'd ever heard.

She gathered you to her. She didn't decide to — her body did it, both arms, pulling you against her chest, and she was shaking, all of her, every carefully constructed and maintained part of Yosano Akiko shaking apart at its foundations because this was—

This was you.

This was you.

"You said Friday," she said, and her voice was wrecked, stripped of everything, nothing left in it but the raw and devastated truth. "You said Friday. You promised me Friday, you—"

She stopped. Couldn't continue. Pressed her face into your hair and held on with both arms and made a sound she had no name for, a sound she'd never made before, a sound that was what happened when something that had been held very carefully for a very long time fell from a very great height.

She held on.

She held on for a long time.

"Yosano."

Atsushi's voice. He'd come — she didn't know how long she'd been there, time had stopped doing what time normally did — and he was there, at the edge of the alley, and his voice was the voice of someone who was trying very hard to be steady for her sake and was not entirely succeeding.

She didn't answer.

"Yosano, I—" He stopped. She heard him breathing. Heard him trying to find the words and not finding them, because there weren't words, because this was one of the situations that words had been designed to not be able to reach. "I'm here," he said finally. "I'm right here."

She still didn't answer. She was holding on. She needed another minute. Just one more minute.

She heard him move, heard the soft sound of something being picked up from the ground, and then quiet, and then very gently he said: "Yosano. There's—" His voice broke. He composed it. "There's something here. From— I think it's for you."

She looked up.

He was holding a photo, face down. In the alley light she could see handwriting on the back — two different hands, two different inks.

She knew that handwriting.

She knew both of those handwritings.

She let go, very slowly. Stood. Atsushi held the photo out to her and she took it and stood in the grey beginning of dawn and read what was written on the back.

Her handwriting first: Let butterflies adorn our friendship.

And then yours: Thank you for every morning. Thank you for every sharp and honest and extraordinary thing. I carry this because it's the best thing I have.

She read it once.

She read it again.

She turned it over and looked at the photo — the two of you on her couch, candlelight, matching butterfly necklaces, looking like people who didn't know the clock was running. Looking like people who thought there would be more time. Looking like people who—

Something happened in her chest that was not a sound and not a thought and not anything she had words for.

I should have told you, she thought. The words arrived with absolute clarity, with the specific cruelty of things understood too late. I should have said it. Every single morning when you put coffee on my desk. Every time you laughed at something I said. Every Saturday in Motomachi. Every girls' night. Every time I looked at you and felt that thing I kept filing under: later. Later. There's time.

I should have said it when I had it to say.

I love you.

I loved you from so early that I stopped being able to identify when it started. I loved you and I wrote friendship because friendship was the word I could say without my hands shaking and I thought—

I thought there was time.

She was crying.

She became aware of this gradually, the way you became aware of rain — not a moment of it starting, just a point at which you realized it had already been happening. Her face was wet. Her hands were wet. She was standing in an alley in Yokohama at five in the morning holding a photograph and crying in a way that she had not cried since she was young, since before the military, since before everything had calcified into the specific controlled architecture of being Yosano Akiko.

It was all coming apart now. Every reinforced wall of it. Every carefully maintained distance between feeling and showing feeling. The years of being precise and composed and armored.

All of it.

"Yosano," Atsushi said, very softly. He was close — she could sense him there, cautious, not touching, just present. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She didn't respond. She looked at the photo and let herself fall apart for the first time in longer than she could remember, because you were gone and you had been carrying her words against your chest and you had written the best thing I have and you had never—

Neither of you had ever said it.

"Stupid," she said. It came out strange through the tears, broken and furious and directed somewhere she couldn't aim it. "Stupid, we were so—" She stopped. "I should have— I had months, I had so many—"

She couldn't finish.

Atsushi reached out, very carefully, and put his hand on her shoulder.

She didn't shake it off.

She stood in the alley with the photo against her chest and cried for you, for the Friday you never got to, for every morning you'd made coffee and set it on the edge of her desk without comment, for the Saturdays in Motomachi and the face masks and the pizza, for the specific brilliant light of you that the world had decided it was done with before she'd gotten to say the thing she should have said—

She cried until there was nothing left.

And then she straightened.

And then she carefully, precisely, with the hands that never shook, put the photo in her coat pocket.

Over her heart.

The best thing I have.

Mine now, she thought. I'll carry it for both of us.

She touched the silver butterfly at her throat. Held it.

"Okay," she said quietly. To you, who couldn't hear her. To everything that had ended in this alley. "Okay."

She turned to face what came next.

Atsushi was watching her with red eyes and she thought: you were right that first morning. She doesn't do this with most people. You had made yourself the person she did this with, and you had done it honestly, without strategy, just by being exactly and genuinely yourself, and it had worked, and she hadn't told you—

I'll tell you now, she thought.

I'll tell you every day, in whatever way it means to tell someone who can't hear you anymore. I'll carry the photo. I'll keep the necklace. I'll remember every sharp and honest and extraordinary thing.

I love you.

I love you.

I'm sorry I was a coward about it for so long.

She didn't take the necklace off.

The silver butterfly stayed. People noticed and nobody said anything and this was the correct decision by everyone.

She went back to work after five days because she needed to — needed the structure of it, the purpose, the specific comfort of being good at something in a world that had become unreliable. She was exactly herself: competent, precise, professionally impeccable. She did not invite discussion. She did not require comfort in any form she'd have to ask for.

The photo lived on her desk. Framed simply, placed where she could see it from her chair. Both of you in the candlelight, matching butterflies, looking like people with more time than they had.

She'd read what you'd written on the back so many times that she could have reproduced it exactly. She didn't need to turn the photo over. She knew it by heart.

Thank you for every morning.

The mornings were different now. The early hours, the quiet office, the coffee for two that had become coffee for one — these were the hardest. The absence was most precise then, most shaped, the specific contours of you most felt in the space where you used to be.

She made the coffee anyway. Both cups, sometimes, in the first weeks — she'd catch herself reaching for the second cup and then stand there for a moment before putting it back and standing at the window with her own and watching the city come alive.

Thank you for every sharp and honest and extraordinary thing.

She was sharp and she was honest and she was extraordinary, because you had seen that in her and she intended to keep being it.

She found your envelope, eventually — the one you'd left in her mailbox the morning of the mission. She'd missed it in the first days, hadn't been going through her mail, and when she found it and recognized your handwriting on the front her hands went very still.

Inside was a letter. Two pages, your handwriting, written in the particular careful way of someone who was trying to get everything right.

She read it once standing at her mailbox.

She went inside. She sat on her couch — the same couch, the same spot — and read it again.

You'd written about the mornings. About what they had meant, specifically, to someone coming from where you'd come from — the way the quiet before the office woke up had been the first thing in years that felt like something you chose rather than something you survived.

You'd written about the Saturdays. The Mugler pieces and the bad Italian tailoring and the specific pleasure of arguing about things you both cared about with someone who could actually hold their end of it.

You'd written, near the end, about the girls' nights. About the face masks and the pizza and what it had felt like to realize you were someone who could be that — that relaxed, that honest, that unguarded — with another person.

And then, in the last paragraph, in handwriting that was slightly less careful than the rest, like you'd written it faster:

I have not said the thing I wanted to say. I know that. I'm choosing this letter over saying it in person because saying it in person would make leaving harder, and I can't make it harder, I need to be able to do what I need to do. But I want you to know it exists. The thing I haven't said. I want you to know it was there, that it's been there, that every morning and every Saturday and every Friday night I felt it and chose the safe word because I was afraid and because I thought—

I thought there would be more time.

If there isn't: I loved you. I love you. In whatever tense is correct for whatever comes next.

Come to girls' night anyway. Drink the good wine. Read the magazines. Talk to someone who sees you the way I do.

You deserve to be seen.

— Y/N

Yosano sat on her couch for a very long time.

The city outside was doing its evening things. The ordinary sounds of a world that continued.

She cried again. Less than before, different than before — not the shattering kind, not the coming-apart kind. The kind that was, somehow, almost gentle. The kind that meant something was being acknowledged rather than endured.

I loved you, you'd written. I love you.

"I love you too," she said. Out loud, to the empty apartment, to the photo on her desk, to wherever you were. "I love you too. I'm sorry I said it to an empty room."

She stayed on the couch until it got dark. Then she got up, turned on the lamp, and sat at her desk.

She opened her journal.

She wrote: Thank you for every morning.

She kept writing.

Outside, Yokohama was a city at night — its noise and its movement and its complete indifference to any individual story, the way cities were, the way they had to be to hold everyone's stories simultaneously.

She had enough memory for both of them.

The silver butterfly was warm from her hand.

She held it.

She kept writing.

I know what it feels like when life leaves something. I've felt it a hundred times with my own hands. I was not prepared for it to feel like her. - Yosano Akiko

ty for reading!

It started a few months ago. The nightmares. They were vivid. Painful. Always the same. An iridescent blinding blue light. Then the beeping. The rhythmic and cold beep. A hospital bed. Looking at yourself lay there helpless. Hooked up with wires and tubes. People sat nearby, watching or sleeping. Bringing flowers. Holding your hand. You reached out many times but could not touch. You screamed. No one could hear you. You just lay there. Motionless. But alive.

It took weeks before the faces began to mean something. A woman with your eyes. A man who squeezed your hand every time he visited. Friends whose names sat frustratingly on the edge of your memory. Then one morning it hit you all at once. They weren't strangers. They were waiting for you. That those people were family and friends. Those wires, tubes and the beep were that of a life support machine in a hospital. That you were from that world. A different world.

You sit up with a jolt in your room. Sweat dripped from your forehead and mixed with the tears on your cheeks. Your hair matted to your head and hands trembling. Moonlight shone through the small window in silver streaks casting a glow on your Survey Corps cloak hanging on the back of your chair. The nightmares were getting more painful. Your chest ached. You could feel it. Your body. Your real body was dying. You had started hearing a voice while you slept. It seemed to come from the blue light. The word "choose" repeated over and over. You closed your eyes and rested your head against the wall behind you. The tears pricked at your eyes as quiet sobs rumbled through you. Time was running out. You had to choose. And for the first time since the nightmares began, you already knew which part of the choice terrified you most.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The cool night air stung your skin as you pushed open the door leading to the roof. Dawn was approaching as a line of orange light brushed the horizon. You weren't surprised to find him there. Levi stood near the edge, arms resting on the stone wall. Moonlight painted silver across his dark hair and his cloak that draped over his shoulders. You approach slowly, leaning your arms over the cool stone next to him. You could feel the warmth of his skin, close to your own. For a moment, neither of you spoke. It was not unusual for you to be beside him.

"You've been crying." The words weren't a question. You looked away.

"You can tell?"

"Tch."

You almost smiled. Of course he could tell. Levi noticed everything. Especially when it came to you. The silence settled between you again. Below, the barracks slept. A handful of lanterns still glowed through windows. The only sound was the whistle of the light breeze and the morning call of birds. It felt peaceful. Too peaceful. The kind of peace that only made the fear in your chest louder.

"The dream again?" Levi asked.

You nodded.

"It was clearer this time."

His jaw tightened and his eyebrows furrowed.

"The hospital?"

Another nod. You wrapped your arms around yourself, wishing you had brought your cloak.

"I remembered more."

Levi remained silent, waiting. You were grateful for that. Most people rushed to fill uncomfortable silences. Levi never did.

"My mother's face." The words felt strange leaving your mouth. Like speaking a language you hadn't used in years.

"And my friends." You swallowed hard.

"There was music playing somewhere. I don't know where from. I just..." You shook your head. "I remembered it."

The wind tugged gently at your hair.

"They've been waiting for me all this time."

Levi stared out across the horizon. You couldn't read his expression. That worried you.

"They don't know where I am." Your voice cracked.

"They probably think they're losing me."

For a long moment, the only sound was the distant rustle of leaves. Then Levi spoke.

"Maybe they are."

The honesty of it hurt. Not because it was cruel. Because it wasn't. It was the truth. You closed your eyes.

"You think I should go back?" The question came out smaller than you intended. Levi didn't answer immediately. You hated when he did that. Every pause felt deliberate. Measured. As though he was weighing each word before allowing it to exist. Finally, he sighed.

"Your world sounds better."

You laughed bitterly.

"Better?"

"No Titans."

You looked down.

"No walls."

A long pause.

"People who already love you."

That one struck hardest. Because you knew what he wasn't saying. People waiting beside your hospital bed. People who hadn't given up. You blinked rapidly.

"Levi..."

His hand tightened slightly against the stone ledge. "If you wake up there," he said quietly, "you get a future."

The ache in your chest became almost unbearable. A future. You had one here too. It just happened to include him. Atleast you hoped it did. When you finally found the courage to look at him, his eyes were still fixed on the horizon. As if he couldn't bear to watch your reaction. And suddenly you understood. This wasn't Levi telling you to leave. This was Levi trying to put your happiness before his own. Again. Just like he always did.

"If you wake up over there..." His head turned. The intense grey orbed gaze landing on you. The eyes thay felt like they looked directly into your soul.

"Will you be happy?"

You couldn't answer. Part of you wanted it. Your family. Your friends. The safe future. But another part of you wanted to stay. The military. The belonging. With him.

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All day you felt it. The sharp pain in your chest. Your real body didn't have long left. You went about your duties in a daze. This world felt real. It was your home. Except it wasn't. Not really. Your home was somewhere else entirely. Levi's words rang through your head. Would you be happy? Being with your family and friends in a safer world. Or is the thing that makes you truly happy... here?

The sunset cast red and orange hues across the wooden floors of the halls as your feet carried you towards the only place you wanted to be. With him. As you reached the door to his office your fist hesitated in front of the wood. You weren't sure if you could face him. Before you could change your mind his voice called.

"Come in."

Of course he knew you were here. You push open the door slowly. As you step in you let the door gently close behind you. Levi was stood in the middle of the office. His arms crossed. He looked almost disheveled. His dark hair fell across his eyes creating shadows in the bags under his eyes. His gaze was already fixed on you. Sharp. But not cold. His lips were in his usual frown. His shirt slightly unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He didn't blink. Didn't speak. Just stared at you.

You open your mouth to speak. Your throat felt dry and twisted. The pain shooting through your chest and abdomen. Finally the words come out in a strained whisper.

"I don't have much time."

His jaw tightened then released. His chest seemed to rise and fall quicker. He looked nervous. You both had known this day would come you just didn't think it would be so soon. The words seemed to echo around the room. Levi's eyes closed briefly. Maybe for a second. But it was enough. Enough for you to see the crack. Enough to see how exhausted he looked. How afraid. When he opened them again, his composure was already returning. Trying to. And failing. You hated that. You hated that even now he was trying to carry this alone as no one else knew.

"Levi..."

His gaze dropped to the floor. Then back to you. As if he was deciding something. As if he was finally allowing himself something he had denied for weeks. Slowly, he crossed the room. One step. Then another. Until he stood directly in front of you. Close enough to touch. Close enough to see every line of tension in his face.

You felt your breath catch. Slowly his hand lifted. It hovered uncertainly by your face. Then, softly, his fingers brushed a loose strand of hair away from your face and tucked it behind your ear. The gesture was so gentle it nearly broke you. Levi swallowed. Hard.

"You should go back."

The words hurt exactly as much as you expected. Your chest tightened. The pain shooting through you like an electric current. Of course he would say that. Of course he would choose your happiness over his own. Again.

Then his hand slid from your hair to your cheek. Warm. Steady. And suddenly you saw him. Not Captain Levi. Not humanity's strongest soldier. Just a man who was about to lose someone he loved. The man you had come to love. His thumb brushed your skin. Once. Meaningful.

"I know you should."

His voice was quieter now. Rougher.

The words catching somewhere in his throat.

"But..."

The silence stretched. You watched him struggle with it. The words he was trying to find battling their way to his lips. Finally his eyes met yours. And for the first time there was nothing guarded in them. Nothing hidden. Just him.

"Stay."

Your breath stopped. Levi's fingers curled slightly against the soft skin of your cheek. As if he was afraid you'd disappear before he finished speaking.

"Stay with me."

Barely more than a whisper. But it felt louder than anything he'd ever said. Because Levi Ackerman never asked for anything. Not for himself. Not like this. Yet here he was looking at you like you were already slipping through his fingers. And for once he wasn't asking you to do the right thing. He was asking you to stay.

The walk back to your room felt different. The corridors were quiet. Most of the Scouts had long since gone to bed, leaving Headquarters wrapped in silence. Only the occasional lantern illuminated the halls, casting warm pools of light across the wooden floors. You moved through them slowly. Taking your time. As though you were trying to memorise every detail. The creak of the floorboards. The scent of old wood and tea. Home.

Your chest still hurt. Every breath carried that familiar ache. A reminder that time was running out. Yet for the first time in weeks, the fear seemed quieter. It all felt distant now.

You paused outside your room and glanced back down the empty corridor. A small smile touched your lips. Then you stepped inside. Moonlight spilled through the window, bathing the room in silver. Your Survey Corps cloak hung where you had left it. On the back of your chair. The sight of it tightened something in your chest. You crossed the room and gently ran your fingers over the familiar fabric. How strange you thought. Once, this world had been completely foreign. Now the thought of leaving it made your heart stop.

You changed into your pajamas and slipped beneath the blankets. The room was cool. The air was light. The gentle sounds of wind rustled through the curtains. As you settled onto your side, your gaze drifted towards the window. The stars were bright tonight. You wondered if they looked the same in your other world. The thought should have hurt. Instead, it brought a strange sense of peace. Your eyes slowly drifted shut. And before sleep claimed you, your thoughts returned to him. To those grey eyes. To caring, calloused hands. To a voice roughened by emotion.

Stay with me.

A soft smile drifted onto your face.

Then. Finally.

You slept.

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Levi's POV

Levi didn't sleep. Not really. He lay awake for most of the night staring at the ceiling, listening to the old building settle around him. Every creak of wood. Every distant footstep. Every passing hour. He had spent years learning how to live with loss. How to endure it. How to keep moving forward after it hollowed him out. That didn't make this any easier.

The darkness outside his window slowly began to fade. Dawn. His stomach twisted. For several long moments, he remained seated on the edge of his bed. Motionless. The decision had already been made whether he liked it or not. Whether he was ready or not. The only thing left was to find out.

Levi stood. His movements felt mechanical. He was on autopilot. The same way he always was before delivering bad news. The corridors were silent as he made his way through Headquarters. Most of the Scouts were still asleep. The sky beyond the windows had begun to lighten, washing the world in pale blue. Everything looked ordinary. Cruelly ordinary.

He stopped outside your door. For the first time in a long time, Levi hesitated. His hand hovered above the handle. A thousand memories flashed through his mind. Your infectious laugh. The way you rolled your eyes at him. The intoxicating sound of your voice.

Stay with me.

His jaw clenched. A deep breath shuddered in his chest. Then he opened the door.

The room was quiet. Still. The first light of dawn had not yet filled the room. For one terrible second, his heart stopped.

There. You were there. Curled beneath the blankets. Your chest rose and fell rhythmically. You were there. Alive. Real.

Levi stared. Certain he was imagining it. Sure that if he blinked, you'd disappear. But you didn't. The blanket rose and fell with each slow breath. The first rays of morning sunlight finally spilled through the small window and across your face. And you were still there. A sharp breath escaped him. The kind that sounded dangerously close to relief. To something he couldn't quite contain. The movement must have disturbed you. As your eyes slowly fluttered open. For a moment, confusion clouded your features. Then you saw him. Standing in the doorway. Staring. Your lips curved into a sleepy smile as you sat up slightly.

"Morning."

The word was soft. Ordinary. Somehow it shattered what little composure he had left. Because you were here. Still here. You had chosen. Not the safer world. Not the life waiting beyond the blue light. This place. This life. With him.

Levi crossed the room before he fully realised he was moving. Three quick strides. Then he was beside the bed. His hand found yours instantly. As if he needed the proof. As if touching you was the only way to convince himself this was real. Your fingers curled around his immediately.

A shaky laugh escaped you. He loved that sound.

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Tch."

His voice cracked. Just slightly. Enough that neither of you missed it. You squeezed his fingers lightly. Your gaze never leaving his. Neither of you spoke. There was nothing left to say. The choice had already been made. Levi's thumb brushed across your knuckles. Your sleepy eyes softened at the touch instantly. Then he bowed his head and rested his forehead against yours. He let his eyes flutter close. Your touch sending a warm wave through his chest. And for the first time since the nightmares began, neither of you were waiting for goodbye.

Because you stayed.