#imgoingbananas

He knows he’s drunk.

The soft kind, not the sloppy kind. The kind that makes everything warm and hazy. The kind that dulls his shame and sharpens every inch of you.

You’re standing near the kitchen, sipping something sweet, laughing with Nobara. You haven’t looked at him in minutes.

He feels it like a bruise.

He shifts on the couch and stares into his half-empty cup.

He could stay here.

But his body has other plans.

You don’t hear him at first when he slips in behind you,quiet, always. Not until he leans forward and rests his chin on your shoulder.

You go still. Then, “Fushiguro?”

“‘S me,” he murmurs, smiling into the crook of your neck like it’s funny. “Why are you always over here when I wanna be where you are?”

You blink, turning your head slightly. He’s closer than you expected face flushed, eyes a little glossy, voice low and honest.

He’s not usually like this. He never says what he wants. But right now… he is.

You raise an eyebrow. “You wanna be where I am?”

He nods. Slowly. Resting more of his weight against you. “Always.”

Nobara catches your eye and discreetly vanishes. Smart girl.

You gently guide him toward the hallway with a soft tug on his wrist. “Let’s get you some air.”

He follows without resistance too warm, too loose, too compliant. You half expect him to stumble, but he doesn’t. He walks steady, silently, except for the way he breathes a little heavier when your hand stays in his.

You end up in a quiet spare room. The door clicks shut. The noise outside fades to a distant thump.

And Megumi… just looks at you.

Still flushed. Still soft. But there’s something underneath it now. Want.

He sways forward slightly. “You’re so pretty.”

You snort, sitting on the bed. “You’re so drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“Prove it.”

He moves closer. Drops down beside you on the edge of the bed. Shoulders brushing. Knees knocking. You can feel the heat radiating off of him.

Then he looks at you like you’ve just said something sacred.

“I want to kiss you so bad right now,” he says, barely more than a whisper.

You go still. But you don’t move away.

You tilt your head, lips quirking. “So kiss me, then.”

He does.

And fuck, it’s a mess. His mouth crashes into yours, hot and open and needy. Like he’s been holding back for too long and now he’s unraveling in your hands.

His fingers tangle in your hair, pulling just enough to make you gasp. He swallows the sound like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted. His other hand finds your waist, then your thigh, gripping hard like he’s scared you’ll disappear.

You don’t stop him. Not yet.

Your hands slide up under his hoodie, palms dragging over heated skin. He groans and kisses you deeper, harder, like he needs to feel all of you at once.

His body shifts, thigh slotting between yours. You roll your hips against the hard line in his jeans before you even mean to, and he feels it. You know he does. His mouth breaks from yours with a ragged sound, forehead pressing to yours, panting.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “I want you so bad.”

You can tell. It’s written in the way he kisses you again, open-mouthed, desperate, wet and hot, and messy. His hands explore more now, bolder, sliding up your spine, fingertips grazing the edge of your bra.

He wants more. He needs more. He starts to guide you back against the bed slow, shaking, like he’s asking without asking.

He wants your shirt off. He wants your mouth on his neck. He wants to see you, all of you. To have you cling to him the way he's aching to cling to you.

Then, your hand closes around his wrist. Firm. Still. “Megumi,” you breathe, lips still brushing his.

He freezes. Eyes wide. Wanting. Waiting. “Not like this.”

He swallows. Chest rising fast. His thumb strokes your waist like he doesn’t want to let go.

“But I-”

You hush him gently, sliding your hand up into his hair. “I know what you want.” He leans into your touch. Pathetic. Hungry. Yours.

“And I want it too,” you say softly.

His breath hitches. “But you’re drunk. And I need you to remember this for the right reasons.”

He whines. Actually whines. Quiet and low and so frustrated it breaks your heart.

You press a kiss to the corner of his mouth slow and sweet. “Next time,” you whisper. “When you ask sober.”

He groans, collapsing forward into your neck, burying his face in your shoulder. His arms wrap around you like they always wanted to. He’s shaking just a little.

You let him stay there.

And when he mumbles “Don’t go,” into your skin, so soft you almost miss it

You swear you can feel him in your throat.

Every slow thrust pushes you further, deeper, and stretches you wider than you thought possible, but Megumi just holds you there. One arm wrapped firm around your back, the other splayed at the base of your spine, palm flat, forcing you to stay close, to stay open for him.

His cock drags out of you so achingly slow it burns. You feel every ridge, every vein, the way the thick head catches on your swollen entrance before he slides back in, heavier, deeper than before. It punches the air from your lungs. You cry out, and he moans into your shoulder.

“You feel that?” he rasps, his voice wrecked. “That stretch? That pressure?”

He tilts his hips up and grinds not fast, not sloppy. He knows exactly where to push, how to angle himself until your cunt clenches and your body jolts against his.

“God, you’re sucking me in,” he groans. “So fuckin’ deep inside you I can feel your heartbeat around me.”

He’s thick, and your body is stuffed with him. Every movement is wet and messy, the sound of your slick echoing between gasps, squelching around every grind of his hips. You don’t even know where he ends, and you begin just skin and sweat and the unbearable fullness of him buried inside you, again and again.

Your thighs tremble as he fucks up into you from below, lazy but precise, each thrust pressing against that aching spot that makes your vision blur. His cock twitches and pulses with every tight squeeze your cunt gives him, and he fucks into it desperate to feel you fall apart.

“Gonna make a mess of you,” he whispers, lips dragging over your jaw. “Wanna keep you dripping for hours.”

You can feel it, his cum from earlier already leaking out around the base of his cock, mixing with your slick, smearing down your thighs, slicking the sheets below. He hasn’t pulled out once.

And he won’t.

“Feel so good inside you,” he breathes, like it’s a prayer. “Too good. Fuck, I don’t wanna stop.”

His voice breaks on the last word. His hips falter. But he keeps going has to keep going, holding you tighter as his thrusts grow messier, needier, deeper. His cock swells, stretching you more with every second, and you can geel it coming

The moment he presses in deep balls flush, tip grinding against your cervix and stays.

You freeze. You feel it. The twitch. The heat. The pulse.

He’s coming again.

Thick ropes of it spill deep inside you, and Megumi gasps hips stuttering, hands digging into your skin, desperate to hold you in place as his cock throbs. You can feel every drop, the way it fills you up, overflowing, leaking around him, still connected, still deep.

You whimper, overstimulated, twitching in his lap.

And Megumi sweet, ruined Megumi brushes the hair from your face, presses his forehead to yours, and whispers,

“Don’t move. I wanna stay inside you like this.”

You nod, barely breathing, and he just holds you his cock still buried, still twitching as aftershocks ripple through both of you.

And when he finally speaks again, it’s a whisper you’ll never forget,

History class is pointless when you've lived through half of it.

Youve watched empires rise and fall, you hear the echoes of war and famine, names written in blood then forgotten in the same breath. you've walked the halls of emperors. You've watched dynasties burn.

You've died for love.

And now you're here-room 302, Modern Eastern Civilization, 11:15am with a mechanical pencil in your hand and a syllabus in your backpack.

Pretending this is the first time you've heard it all.

You've been reborn seven times.

And every time, you remember.

You remember the warmth of spring under a wisteria tree. The cold of palace stone floors and silk on your skin. The sting of betrayal. The ache of love that won't die even when he does. You remember the stench of blood and the loss.

And worse, you remember him.

Megumi Fushiguro.

He never remembers you. Never knows the weight he carries in his face, in his voice, in the way he always finds you no matter how far you run. He doesn't know that you dream of him in every life time, that your heart yearns to be held by him just once more.

You swore that this life, your seventh, would be different. You wouldn't search for him. Wouldn't let him find you.

Wouldn't fall in love again just to bury him.

Again.

But then he walked into vour lecture. You swear you could feel your heart in your throat. He sat down just two rows behind you with the same dark blue eyes you fell in love with, the same uninterested and cold expression, the same hands that held you in too many life times.

He sat down like he wasnt actively tearing your world apart again. Your hands trembled as you gripped the edge of your desk.

Of course he's here, you thought.

Of all the universities, all the cities in the world, of course he ended up here. In your class. In your reach.

This has to be some cruel joke.

You keep your eyes glued to the front of the classroom, you dont tune out the sound of professor Nanamis voice anymore you try your hardest to just focus on what he's saying.

You dont turn around, you can't. Not when he's this close. Your thoughts are in shambles already debating dropping this class or moving away entirely.

God he's so close. You can hear him shuffling you can hear him turning to the next page. You almost want to look, to drown in the blue of his eyes like every other time.

But you can't, you remind yourself of all the other times, of the grief, of the death.

So instead, you gripped your pen tightly knuckles white as you repeat after Nanami, every date, every historical event, like it was a prayer. Like reciting history might save you from repeating your own.

The class moves around you blissfully. You resent every other classmate around you, how they get to fall in love for the first time and believe it's new. You wait the long painful minutes till class ends.

When it comes, you stand so quickly your chair legs screech. A few heads turn. You don't care. You gather your things with shaky fingers and record time, not looking at him, not daring to spare him a glance.

You can still feel the weight of his presence, the gravity, the pain that no one will ever truly understand.

You head for the door relieved to be free of him.

But fate mocks you, fate hates you.

You hear his voice, deep and low its drowned out by the sound of other students but to you, its as loud as day.

"You dropped this."

You freeze and it feels like a dozen lifetimes just flashed across your eyes. His voice hurts you so deep in your bones you hate him for it.

You turn your head slowly, gaze not quite meeting his. There he is, holding out your mechanical pencil like it's just a thing. Like he's just a guy. Like your entire world hasn't shattered at the sound of his voice.

Your fingers close around it without meeting his eyes.

"Thanks," you mutter.

You walk away before your knees can give out. Out the door. Down the hall. Around the corner. Until you're alone. You gasp sharply leaning against a wall.

You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to slow your pulse, trying to remember the vows you made to yourself in the dark of your last life. The promises. The boundaries. The grief you swore you wouldn’t survive again.

The bell rings like it’s pulling a curtain down on a play.

A soft, metallic clang that vibrates against the cheap ceiling tiles, signaling the end of something not just class, but the strange, delicate stillness that always exists when you and Megumi sit near each other without speaking.

You don't move at first. You take your time slipping your notebook into your bag, fingers trailing over the cover. Around you, chairs scrape the linoleum and sneakers scuff against the floor, but it all feels far away. You're used to letting people leave first. It’s easier not to be noticed that way.

Megumi, of course, leaves too. You assume.

You sling your bag over your shoulder, the strap catching on your jacket sleeve, and when you finally step out into the hallway, you don’t expect him to be there.

But he is.

Leaning against the wall just beside the classroom door, one foot propped up behind him like he’s trying too hard to look relaxed. His hair still falls into his eyes, but he doesn’t brush it away. He’s staring down at his phone, not typing just holding it, like maybe it gives him something to do with his hands.

Your eyes skim over him once, then away.

You don’t stop.

You pass him with the measured steps of someone who doesn’t plan on making this easy, gaze forward, chin lifted. You count three steps.

“Wait,” he says.

It’s not loud. Not urgent.

You glance back over your shoulder. Megumi isn’t looking at his phone anymore. He’s looking at you, almost like he’s surprised the word even came out of his mouth.

You tilt your head slightly. “Something wrong?”

He straightens up a little, clears his throat. His hands are already in his pockets, like they’re safer there.

“I was just wondering if you were doing anything after school,” he says, way too casual. Like this is a normal thing for him to ask. Like youre friends or more.

You raise a brow. “Why?”

“For the project,” he says quickly. “Thought we could get some work done.”

You pause. The hallway around you is loud and narrow laughing students, slamming lockers, someone yelling. It all feels like a blur compared to the quiet awkwardness between you two.

“We were going to meet in the library,” you remind him.

“I just thought maybe somewhere else.” His eyes flick to the floor. “Somewhere quieter.”

You narrow your gaze, suspicious but amused. “Quieter than the library?”

His ears go pink.

“I meant… somewhere private,” he says.

You blink.

A beat.

“Private?” you echo, lips quirking. “Megumi. Be honest. Are you trying to seduce me?”

Then you laugh a short, surprised sound that slips out before you can stop it. He flinches, but not in a hurt way. More like he knows he walked straight into that one.

He groans and looks away immediately, exasperated. “No. God. That’s not- I just thought it’d be easier to focus without distractions.”

“Mhm.”

His jaw flexes. “You’re enjoying this.” You’re grinning now, just a little.

He sighs, defeated, then glances up at you again and for a second, he’s not awkward. Just earnest. Still quiet, still closed-off, but there’s something open in his eyes. Vulnerable, maybe. Or uncertain in a way that matters.

You inhale softly. Then shrug. “My place is close. Ten-minute walk.”

His brows lift, surprised.

“It’s private,” you add with a teasing lilt. “No distractions. Unless you count my ac.”

“You sure?”

You nod. “No one’s home. You’ll survive.” There’s a pause. And you realize he’s hesitating not because he doesn’t want to go, but because he knows this means something. This is you letting him in. Not just to your house, but to the version of yourself you don’t usually let people see.

He nods. “Alright.”

You turn toward the stairs, adjusting your bag strap again. “Let’s go, so we can be in private.” You teased.

He groans behind you. “I really hate you sometimes.”

And still he follows.

You glance over your shoulder, walking backward now, a smirk curling on your lips. “You wish.”

The school fades behind you, swallowed by the early afternoon blur of traffic noise and distant shouts from the soccer field. The sun hangs lazily above the rooftops, casting your overlapping shadows long on the sidewalk. You walk side by side, a pace or two apart. Not close enough to brush shoulders, but close enough to feel him there.

For a while, it’s quiet.

The kind that doesn’t press. The kind that settles between people who are still figuring out how to be near each other without needing to fill every space. Then Megumi speaks.

“You know,” he starts, voice low, thoughtful. “I realized something.”

You glance over at him, brows raised slightly. “Yeah?”

“You don’t have a car.”

He doesn’t look at you. He’s squinting forward, eyes narrowed against the sun. His hands are back in his pockets.

You blink. “That’s what you realized?”

“I mean, think about it.” He gestures vaguely with one hand. “You walk everywhere. Every time we meet up, you’re either already on foot or you say something like ‘It’s not that far’ or ‘I don’t mind walking.’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drive.”

You snort, amused. “Maybe I’m just really committed to the pedestrian lifestyle.”

“Maybe,” he mutters. “Or maybe your car just doesn’t exist.”

You shrug. “It’s true. I don’t have one.”

He looks at you now, almost surprised you confirmed it so easily. “Why not?”

You tip your head back, watching a bird cross overhead in a lazy arc. “Lots of reasons. Don’t really need one. I live close to everything. Plus, I like walking. Makes me feel like I’m not just passing through everything, y’know? Like I actually exist in it.”

You both fall into another stretch of silence, but it’s softer now. A little warmer.

Megumi is quiet for a second, processing. “Of course you’d say something poetic about walking,” he says eventually, deadpan.

The buildings thin as you get closer to your block, the world slowly quieting around you. You can feel the shift in him less guarded, like the rhythm of walking beside you has stripped some of the stiffness from his spine. His arm brushes yours once, maybe by accident most likely not.

He doesn’t pull away.

Neither do you.

You reach the worn steps of your building, the sun casting long shadows across the cracked concrete. The hum of the city feels distant here, muffled behind the heavy front door.

Megumi pauses beside you, hesitating for a moment before asking, his voice low and careful, “Do you… live alone?”

You fumble with your keys, the metal cold against your fingers. You don’t look at him right away.

“Yeah,” you say finally, sliding the door open. “No siblings. Just me.”

He steps inside behind you, The door shuts softly behind him.

“Must be... quiet,” he says, voice almost uncertain.

You shrug, hanging your jacket on the hook by the door. “It can be. Sometimes too quiet. Mom’s a doctor works crazy hours no time to visit. I’m used to having the place to myself.”

You glance at him, surprised by the softness in his tone. “Sometimes. But it’s also nice not having to answer to anyone.”

Megumi lingers by the door, hands tucked into his pockets. “That must be lonely.”

He nods slowly, eyes thoughtful. “I guess it’s good, having a space like that. Somewhere you can just be.”

You walk down the narrow hallway to the small living room, the afternoon light spilling through the window. You flop onto the couch, and Megumi follows, sitting down on the edge of the seat opposite you.

His eyes flick around the room, taking it all in rows of books stacked on a battered wooden shelf, some leaning precariously, a small turntable nestled in the corner, next to a neat stack of vinyl records with worn covers. A few framed photos sit scattered across the windowsill mostly landscapes and old concert shots, nothing too personal. No family photos.

There’s a quiet hum of life here, even in the stillness.

Megumi’s gaze lingers on the cluttered coffee table, where notebooks and loose papers mingle with a half-finished cup of tea. You notice him picking up a record, running his fingers over the cover with an almost reverent curiosity.

“You really like music,” he says softly, not looking at you.

You nod, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Yeah. It’s kind of a constant. Helps me...focus. Keeps things from getting too quiet.”

He studies the record a moment longer before setting it down carefully, as if it might shatter. His eyes meet yours briefly tentative, as if he’s unsure whether to say more.

After a pause, he asks, “Do you spend a lot of time here alone?”

You shrug, looking away for a second. “Enough. It’s not bad. I’m used to it, the rest of my time is at school or the record shop.”

Megumi doesn’t press, but you catch the shadow behind his eyes, like he understands loneliness better than he lets on.

The room feels smaller now, but warmer. Somehow, sharing this quiet space shifts the weight between you, less distance, more something fragile beginning to form.

You clear your throat, nudging the conversation back. “So… project stuff. You ready to get to work?”

Megumi nods, pulling out his notebook too. But the way he glances around the room once more before focusing makes you think this moment will linger longer in both your minds than any project ever could.

You both settle in without saying much. It’s not awkward just that quiet concentration that settles between people who are used to keeping to themselves. Megumi flips open his notebook while you grab your laptop from the arm of the couch, balancing it on your knees.

“I was thinking,” you start, “we should open with the part about Heloise’s letters. It sets the tone better than Abelard’s side he’s kind of...dry.”

Megumi hums in agreement, already jotting something down. “Her letters are more emotional. More-” He hesitates, searching for the word. “Exposing. Makes the tragedy feel lived in, not just written about.”

You glance at him, surprised. “You’ve been thinking about this.”

“I’m not useless,” he says, deadpan.

You snort. “Didn’t say you were. Just...I didn’t think this would matter to you.”

He shrugs. “It didn’t. Then it did.”

You watch him for a second, trying to read into that. But he doesn’t elaborate. Just flips a page and starts outlining his points for the presentation slides.

You refocus too, syncing your document with his notes. You’ve developed a rhythm by now, he builds the framework, you fill it in with nuance, emotion, context. It works, strangely well. Like you’ve been working together longer than a few weeks.

“Visuals?” you ask.

“I found some manuscript scans and some modern portraits. We could contrast them old world versus romanticism.”

“Ooh, yeah. Tragedy as myth versus tragedy as feeling.”

You share a small smile, and it’s...nice. Warm. Like something between you has softened without either of you meaning it to. Not like the bickering from when you first started.

Megumi glances up at you. “Exactly.”

You lean back for a second, stretching your arms above your head. “If we don’t get an A on this, I’m rioting.”

“You mean we’re rioting,” he corrects.

“Right, of course. Co-dependent academic sabotage.”

He huffs a laugh under his breath and nudges his notebook toward you. “Your turn.”

You take it from him, but your eyes linger on the edge of his expression the faint, rare smile that sticks even after he turns back to the screen.

You return the notebook to him, your fingers brushing, and this time, he doesn’t flinch.

“I fixed the citation on the second slide,” you say, tugging your knees up onto the couch.

He takes it with a little half-smile barely there, but it lingers longer than usual.

Megumi glances at the page, then back at you. “Yeah. I figured you would.”

You raise an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re... a control freak,” he says, matter of factly.

Your mouth falls open. “Excuse me?”

He shrugs, feigning innocence, but there’s that twitch in the corner of his mouth the start of a real grin. “You fixed it before I even got a chance to open the file. That’s kind of the definition.”

You narrow your eyes at him, but it’s hard to hold the glare when he looks so pleased with himself. “Coming from the guy who color-coded our outline.”

“That was efficiency.”

“It was neurotic.”

He snorts, actually snorts, and you blink because you’re not used to hearing him laugh so freely.

And he must catch your surprise, because he sits back, eyes still on you. Something soft settles behind his expression.

“What?” he says, voice quieter now.

“Nothing,” you murmur. “You just… smiled.”

“Don’t act like it’s a rare event.”

“It is.”

You both fall silent for a moment, but it’s not heavy. It’s… charged. Warm.

He’s still looking at you more openly now, like the act of teasing you cracked something open in him and he doesn’t want to shut it again.

“Hey,” he says suddenly. “This might be a weird time to bring it up, but… you looked really pretty. At the party last week.”

Your breath stutters. You didn’t expect him to say it not so plainly.

“...Oh.”

“I mean, you look good now, too,” he adds, rambling a little. “But at the party I- uh- I noticed. Noticed more. Not just the outfit or anything, I mean, the way you… god, never mind.”

You’re staring.

“You’re blushing,” you say, trying to sound smug, but your voice is too soft to sell it.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

He groans and drags a hand over his face. “This is why I don’t say things.”

He glares at you, but his ears are red.

“No, no, you’re doing great,” you say, grinning now. “Please continue. I want to hear more about how good I looked.”

Chasing him.

You can’t remember the last time you felt like this teasing, light, safe. The lives before didn’t have this kind of stillness. There was always something chasing you.

But this version of him is sitting across from you, blushing and smiling and trying so hard to be brave in his quiet way.

“You wanna rehearse now?” you ask. He shrugs. “Yeah, but if I mess up, you’re not allowed to tease me.”

“I make no promises.”

He chuckles, leaning forward to grab the laptop. His shoulder brushes yours, close, familiar.

The laptop warms between you, screen tilted toward both of you as you scroll to the slides. Megumi shifts beside you on the couch, and his knee bumps yours just a little.

You start with the intro, reading from the script you’d drafted together.

“‘Love letters in exile, a study of Abelard and Heloise’s epistolary connection,’” you recite, your voice low, steady.

Megumi clears his throat, picking up the next line. “‘Their correspondence, spanning years of separation and tragedy, reveals the emotional gravity of forbidden love.’”

You nod approvingly. “You sound like you actually care.”

He glances sideways. “I do.”

You don’t expect the quiet honesty of it. It shuts your teasing right up for a second.

“…Yeah,” you murmur. “Me too.”

You run through the first slide and halfway into the second, but he keeps stumbling on the word “transcendental.”

“That’s the third time,” you say, lips twitching.

“It’s a dumb word,” he mutters. “Who even picked that-”

“You did.”

He groans, dragging a hand through his hair. It messes it up a little, and you absolutely notice.

“You’re nervous,” you say, nudging his knee with yours again. “Megumi Fushiguro. The guy who got into an argument with Nanami over historiography methods. Nervous?”

“I’m not nervous,” he says, and even though it’s a lie, it comes out sounding a little cocky.

You smirk. “Prove it.”

He tilts his head, gaze dropping to your mouth for half a second too long.

Then, still holding your stare, he reads his next line flawless pronunciation, perfect cadence.

You blink. “…That was hot.”

He chokes.

You laugh, covering your face with your hand, because you didn’t mean to say that out loud, but it’s too late. His face is red, but his eyes are bright, and he looks annoyed, embarrassed, and way too pleased.

“You can’t just say that in the middle of a presentation,” he mutters, not meeting your gaze.

“Sorry,” you say, and you’re not sorry. “It was. You looked very academic.”

“...Is that a thing now?”

“I have weird tastes.”

You’re both smiling too hard to keep going, but you try.

You scoot closer so you can read from the same screen, and your shoulder brushes his chest this time. His hand is resting near the trackpad, and you reach to scroll down, your fingers grazing the back of his.

He doesn’t move.

You don’t either.

You both pretend to keep reading.

The silence stretches soft, unspoken.

You shift just slightly, leaning into him under the pretense of seeing the next line. He tilts the screen down for you, like instinct. His voice is a little lower now, more relaxed.

He reads again. “‘Even through centuries, the letters echo with longing. They offer not resolution, but the ache of persistence.’”

You swallow.

“Megumi.”

“Yeah?”

You don’t know what you were going to say. Maybe just his name. Maybe “I’m scared.” Maybe “don’t die this time.”

But instead, you say, “Let’s run it again.”

He nods once, slow.

And this time, when he shifts closer, his thigh presses against yours and stays there.

The sun sets and you finish the last line of the last slide. Silence follows thick, warm, buzzing with the kind of shared relief that feels almost like victory. You shut the laptop gently, the click of it closing louder than it should be.

“That’s it,” you murmur.

Megumi exhales, head dropping back against the couch. “Finally.”

You smile, leaning back too. “We finally finished it.”

“Yeah.” His voice is softer now. “We really did.”

A quiet beat passes between you. You both stay where you are, bodies close but not touching anymore. His thigh isn’t against yours now, but you can still feel the echo of it, the weight of where he’d been.

You sit forward, stretching your arms over your head. Your back arches, spine popping slightly, and you sigh at the release.

Megumi watches.

You don’t see it feel it, maybe. But his gaze follows the line of your arms, the tilt of your neck, the way your shirt rides up slightly at the waist.

And when you sit back again, turning toward him, you notice his eyes aren’t on your face.

“You good?” you ask, voice laced with playful suspicion.

He blinks. Looks away a second too late. “Yeah. Just tired.”

“Right,” you say, drawing out the word.

He rakes a hand through his hair again. “What?”

“You’re acting weird.”

“You’re acting normal,” he counters, tone dry. “That’s weirder.”

You snort, nudging his knee with yours again. “That’s fair.” The air shifts again. Still light, but no longer funny. Something lingers beneath it now unfinished sentences and almost confessions.

You lean your head against the back of the couch, looking at him out of the corner of your eye.

“You’re quieter than usual,” you say.

He hums. “I was thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Shut up.”

You smile at the ceiling. “What about?”

There’s a pause, too long. Then,

“…You probably.”

Your breath catches.

But you don’t move. Neither does he. You turn your head, slowly.

He’s already looking at you.

And it’s different now. His eyes aren’t guarded. There’s something bare there, like he’s trying not to fall into something he already stepped into hours ago.

You’re still leaning back, the laptop closed, the night still quiet.

But nothing feels quiet anymore.

You lean back again, head resting lightly against the couch, eyes on the ceiling, heart a little too loud in the silence.

Megumi’s leg brushes against yours again, slower this time, like he’s testing the space between you, measuring the possibility.

His voice is low, careful, almost hesitant. “You don’t have to say anything.”

You don’t turn to look at him. “Say what?”

“That.” His gaze drops just a little, but the weight of it stays. “The way you look at me.”

A faint smile tugs at your lips, but your throat tightens. The air between you feels dense, charged.

You finally meet his eyes, slow and steady. “What do you want me to say?”

He exhales, a breath caught deep, as if he’s fighting the pull of all the words he could say but doesn’t.

“I want you,” he says simply, voice raw with something unspoken something older than this moment.

You feel the confession like heat rising in your chest.

His hand moves, almost without thinking, resting on the couch just inches from yours. The quiet invitation hangs there close enough to reach, but still a choice.

You hold your breath.

He swallows. “If you want me to stop, just say.”

But you don’t say anything.

Instead, your fingers twitch, inching toward his.

The space between you vanishes in a single breath.

It starts slow.

His lips brush yours cautious, almost reverent, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to want this.

But then you press into him. Let him taste your answer. And he kisses you back with hesitation, with trembling hands, like someone who wants to be good for you.

You let him try.

You let him try to kiss you like he means it, let him cup your cheek, angle your face just right like he’s seen it in a dream. His mouth parts against yours, breath hot and uneven but he doesn’t know what to do with it. Not really.

But you do.

You know him better than he knows himself in this life, in the last, in every one before.

So you grab his jaw.

You tilt his face up to yours like he’s a worshipper and you’re the altar. Your mouth slants over his with force, wet and eager and aching. Your tongue slides in deep, and he gasps, that broken, sweet sound that’s always been yours to pull from him.

You chase it.

You kiss him the way you know he likes to be kissed not soft, but starved. The way he never asks for, but melts beneath. The way that makes him whimper through his teeth and clutch at your waist like he might fall apart.

Your lips drag down, over the edge of his mouth, his jaw. You suck at the spot beneath his ear and he shudders. His fingers tighten in your shirt like he’s drowning.

He’s breathing hard now. Not saying a word. Just letting you.

Because he’s wanted this, you longer than he’s willing to admit.

You move to straddle him, and he doesn’t stop you. Doesn’t hesitate. His hands are on your hips, sliding up, grasping like he’s afraid you’ll disappear again. You rock down against him and he groans into your mouth, hips jerking up beneath you instinctual, helpless.

His breath is ragged when he tries to take the kiss back tries to lead.

You let him for half a second.

You let him mouth at your bottom lip, kiss you deeper, sloppier. But he’s too careful, too hesitant. So you swallow the control back tilt your head and kiss him open, unfiltered. You lick into his mouth like you know exactly what he tastes like when he moans. You do.

You know he likes when it’s messy.

You know the sound he makes when you bite his lip just enough to make him gasp “Ah—fuck—” the way his hips roll like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

And now he’s not holding back.

His arms wrap around your waist, dragging you flush to his chest, and he’s kissing you back like he’s falling. Like if he doesn’t stay pressed to your mouth, he’ll die all over again.

Your hands are in his hair, tugging, grounding yourself in him. His hands roam under your shirt now, warm palms splayed over bare skin like he needs to feel all of you, now, now.

You're drowning in it.

The heat. The memory. The weight of every life you lost him.

And still, still it isn’t enough.

You kiss him like you want to ruin him. Like you’ve waited lifetimes just to taste the sound he makes when he breaks.

He’s gasping into your mouth now, rocking up against you, nails biting into your waist.

It’s not safe.

It’s too much.

But you don’t care.

You’ve waited too long to be good.

You're allowed to be selfish. Just this once.

And god, he lets you.

Your lips drag against his as you pull back, just barely, but his mouth follows like he can’t stand the loss, like he’d rather drown than let you go. His breath stutters across your cheek, warm and wet, and then you're both gasping into each other again, too close, too slow, too deep.

It's a kiss that clings.

His lips slip, miss, catch again on yours. You bite gently, too gently, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat, low and aching, almost a whimper. His fingers flex at your hips, digging in like he’s holding himself together by the bones of your body.

And you can feel it, the desperation in the way his tongue moves against yours, the way he breathes like you’ve stolen something vital from him and he wants you to. Like he’s falling apart from how good it feels to be kissed like this like you know him. Like you remember.

You kiss him through it. soft, deep, dirty.

Your lips slick with spit and heat, tongues curling again, slow and heavy.

You only pull back when you absolutely have to your breath a harsh exhale against his mouth, lips hovering over his, your noses brushing. A string of spit stretches between you before it breaks, glinting in the low light, shamefully intimate.

He chases the space between you.

Eyes closed. Mouth open. Chest rising like he’s still tasting you.

He’s trembling.

So are you.

You pull back barely. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to see him.

And God, he's ruined.

His face is flushed down to his throat, skin burning hot like he's been fevered for hours. His pupils are blown wide, inked deep into the soft blue of his eyes. They flicker between your eyes and your mouth, unfocused, dazed. His lips are parted bitten, swollen, slick. Kiss-drunk.

His breath escapes in shallow pants, brushing against your cheek.

His hair’s messier than usual. His jaw’s clenched. His hands still gripping your waist tense like he’s not sure whether to pull you in or just hold you there, memorizing the shape of you.

You don’t say anything. Neither does he.

The silence stretches but not wrong. Not cold.

It simmers.

His eyes trail down again slow, hungry and stop at your mouth like he’s still tasting you. Like he’s desperate to drown in it all over again.

And he would.

If you leaned in even a little, he’d fall. No hesitation, no pride. He’s already halfway gone, and he doesn’t even know it.

All he knows is you.

And how he’s never been kissed like that before.

His hands are still on your waist, fingertips twitching like they don’t know whether to let go or pull you back in. You can feel how warm they are through the fabric. How warm he is.

“I-” he starts, then stops. His voice breaks on nothing. He clears his throat, still breathless. “That wasn’t... too much?”

You blink at him.

“Too much?” you echo.

His ears are a whole new shade of red now. “I just meant- if it was weird or- I don’t know, maybe I...”

“Megumi.”

You lean in again, just close enough to press the softest kiss to the corner of his mouth. He exhales, eyes fluttering shut.

“You were perfect.”

He swallows hard.

You pause. It lingers. Everything lingers.

The silence between you stretches, not uncomfortable just full. He’s still looking at you like he can’t believe you’re real. And you’re still in his lap. And your apartment’s quiet except for your breathing and the distant hum of your fridge, and you’re warm. You’re both warm.

You pull back just far enough to see his hair mussed from your fingers. His expression soft now, sweet and a little dazed.

“Wanna stay for a bit?” you ask quietly. “We don’t have to do anything else. Just… stay.”

He nods.

"Yeah," he says. "I'd like that."

You press your forehead to his. His arms tighten just slightly around your waist.

And for a little while, you just stay like that.

No blood. No past lives. No one else.

Megumi doesn't remember falling asleep.

One moment, he's on his back in bed, heart still too loud from earlier at your apartment, the taste of you still caught on his lips, ghosting across his skin. Every time he closes his eyes, it floods back your hands, your mouth, the way you kissed him like you already knew how he liked to be kissed.

Like you've done it before.

So he doesn't fight sleep when it comes. He lets it have him.

And then

There is firelight.

And the scent of blood.

Not in the way that startles, but in the way that feels familiar. Like the thick weight of summer heat and iron on his tongue has always been part of his memory. Like waking up inside a body he doesn't question.

Because suddenly, he's not Megumi Fushiguro anymore. He is, but he isn't. He's older, not in just age but in weight. His hands are rougher. His right leg is gone below the knee

He's sitting on a stool inside a dim, canvas lined medical tent, the fabric walls swaying with the wind and moans of imjured men. A makeshift crutch leans against the cot beside him. His uniform's sleeves are rolled up, stained to the elbow, and he's stitching a man's abdomen with the kind of focus that's become instinct.

He used to be a fighter. Sharp with a blade, fast on his feet. But a mortar had taken his leg in the early days of the war, and after the fever broke and the pain dulled to a permanent throb, he had refused to go home. He couldn't swing a sword anymore but he could still save lives.

So he learned.

How to cauterize a wound, how to cut away rotted flesh. How to press two cracked ribs back into place with steady hands and a mouth full of apologies.

But lately, those hands have been drifting his attention, tugged by something else, someone else.

You always stand too still during roll call.

That’s what first catches his attention.

The other soldiers fidget wipe sweat from their brows, shift their stances, adjust their swords. But not you. You stand like you’re carved from stone, like you’re waiting for something to strike you. Like you want it to.

Megumi doesn’t know your name. He doesn’t ask. He’s not supposed to get involved not with the soldiers, not anymore. Not after he lost the leg.

But he watches.

From the infirmary tent, from the edge of the training grounds. On slow mornings when the drills are loud and the medic quarters are quiet, he takes his stool to the shade and lets his gaze wander. Just casually. Just enough.

Your movements are too clean. Your stance slightly off. And your voice, when it carries across the field, holds a softness no man around here should be brave enough to show. He catches it sometimes when you bark commands. In between the grunts, the steel, the blood.

There’s something wrong about you. Off.

But he never looks too long.

Because he knows better.

If a woman’s caught with forged documents, her death won’t be swift. And he’s seen enough carnage in this war to know what people do when they’re afraid of being fooled.

Still-

You fight like you’ve already died once.

You throw your body too hard into sparring drills. You don’t flinch when you're knocked down. You never hesitate.

That’s what gets to him the most.

Men on the field hesitate because they want to live. But not you.

You train like someone begging not to come back.

And though he doesn’t understand why, He can’t stop watching.

"Hold still," he mutters, adjusting the bandage on a soldier's thigh.

The boy flinches anyway, and Megumi clicks his tongue, refocusing.

He ties off the gauze, sets the salve aside, and leans back on his stool. His crutch is leaned against the cot, and the war drum echo of sparring rings in from across camp.

He doesn't mean to glance toward the training grounds again.

But he does.

You're back in the ring this time against

someone twice your size. Your helmet's askew, sweat darkens the collar of your uniform, and your sword arm moves with a speed that doesn't belong to someone trying to win.

It belongs to someone who no longer cares.

Steel clangs. Dirt kicks up. You take a blow to the ribs and don't react.

Megumi exhales slowly through his nose. His jaw ticks.

"Reckless idiot," he mutters under his breath, too low for the soldier on the cot to hear.

You stumble, straighten, and lunge again. There's a wildness in your posture, like your bones are brittle with something other than war. Something heavier.

Megumi doesn't know what it is.

But he knows what it looks like to train like that. He used to do it, too, before the injury. Before they pulled him off the field and told him he was useful in other ways now.

He sets the salve jar aside, wipes his hands on cloth, and tells himself he's not looking at you again.

He doesn't know your name.

You don't know he exists.

But still-

He watches.

A lull settles over the tent as the sun dips past the edge of the camp, shadows stretching long over bloodstained linen and crates of dwindling supplies. Megumi sits on the edge of his rickety stool, washing his hands in silence, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, wrists aching.

The flap of the tent rustles.

“Got a gash on my thigh,” grunts a soldier, dragging himself in. “From drills, not glory. Don't laugh.”

Megumi doesn’t. He gestures for him to sit, already reaching for the stitching kit. “Lucky it wasn’t deeper.”

“Tell that to my pride.”

They sit in silence while Megumi works, the tension eased only by the low hiss of cloth being cleaned. The soldier watches him for a moment, then lets out a breath.

“Hey, you ever see that one?” he asks suddenly. “The quiet one. Keeps their helmet on even during mess. Kinda small, weird gait. Trains like he’s got something to prove.”

Megumi doesn’t look up. “No.”

The soldier chuckles under his breath. “You’d remember. Weird guy. Doesn’t talk. Fights like he’s got nothing left. Creeps me out sometimes like he doesn’t care if he dies.”

Megumi’s hands still for a moment, just a second.

The soldier winces as the needle bites skin. “Hell, sorry. Didn’t mean to spook you.”

“You didn’t.” But Megumi’s tone has changed, barely. Thoughtful. Quiet.

He finishes the stitches, wraps the bandage, and sends the soldier off with a muttered warning about reopening the wound.

When the flap closes again, the tent falls back into stillness.

Megumi leans back, elbow on one knees, staring at the tent’s far wall. The image forms unbidden, a silhouette on the edge of the training grounds. Slight frame. Controlled violence. Movements too fluid to be purely masculine, too angry to be self preserving.

Not his problem. Not his patient. Not his concern.

Still…

There’s something about the way you move.

Something he can’t stop noticing.

The war moves like a storm with no eye no pause. Days bleed into each other, soaked in red. Soldiers limp or are carried in, torn open, crying for mothers long buried. Megumi stitches flesh until it becomes instinct. Lost his leg long ago. Nearly lost his hands to frostbite last winter. He doesn’t feel the cold anymore, only the dull pressure of time. The ghosts never stop arriving.

Tonight, the air is thicker than usual.

Iron and ash curl through the canvas flaps. Somewhere, a shell hits too close dust rains from the ceiling, and the medic beside him flinches. Megumi doesn’t.

“Another one!” someone shouts, and it’s not unusual, until it is.

There’s a strange silence in the voices hauling the stretcher in. Urgency, but no shouting. The kind of quiet men use when something doesn’t make sense.

Megumi doesn’t look up at first. He’s elbow-deep in another man’s chest, blood pooling against gauze. But when they set the stretcher down near his station and the light catches on the splatter of red smeared across the soldier’s face, your face, he finally sees you.

Unconscious, maybe. No helmet. A soldier’s uniform clinging wet and too tight to a frame that.

His brain stutters.

He doesn’t understand at first. Just stares. Until his eyes follow the path of torn cloth along your torso, the shift in curvature where no man’s body would give like that. Your armor’s half, destroyed chest plate snapped from impact, belt twisted off and when he presses down to stop the bleeding, his hand catches on-

His stomach drops.

He freezes.

No one else sees it. They’re busy with triage, with shouting and bleeding and dying.

But Megumi sees you.

Sees what you are.

Not a boy. Not just another body thrown into this machine of death.

A woman.

In a place that will kill you if it knows.

He’s not breathing. He feels it.

You stir barely. Dried blood crusts in the corner of your mouth. One eye struggles to open, unfocused, dazed, pupils blown from pain but they still meet his. Your lips part, barely audible.

Your voice is low, broken, slurred from blood loss. “I started wars… for those beautiful eyes…”

The world stutters around him.

It’s ridiculous. You’re delirious. Dying.

But it cuts through him like a hot wire. The kind of thing people say in old poems, before they’re executed. The kind of thing that shouldn't be said in a tent full of dying men, to a boy who only knows how to stop the bleeding and not much else.

It’s not his problem.

It should be a report. A death sentence.

But something in him something long buried claws upward. Maybe it’s the flicker of stubborn heat in your voice. Maybe it’s the way you looked straight through him.

Or maybe it’s the fact that you’re going to die. And Megumi is so fucking tired of watching people die.

His hand presses firmly to your side, gauze already soaking through. He curses under his breath, grabbing thread.

“I didn’t hear anything,” he mutters. To himself. To the tent. To no one.

He works fast. Fixes what he can. Wraps you in silence. Hides the curve of your chest beneath new bandages, new linens.

Masks the truth in layers, shadows.

You don’t say anything else.

But your words are already carved somewhere in him.

He doesn’t know why he’s doing this.

He only knows he can’t let you die.

Not like this.

The world outside the tent groans with war.

Metal clashes in the distance dull, relentless, like thunder muffled by cloth. Somewhere closer, a soldier screams. Another one begs. The scent of burning iron seeps through the seams of the medic’s tent, curling into the corners like smoke from a slow death.

And yet inside, it’s quiet. It’s just you. And him.

Megumi doesn’t move from the stool he dragged to your side. His hands are still sticky with your blood, even after scrubbing them. His fingers tremble with the ghost of stitching your skin shut, his palms remembering the tremor of your pulse as it fluttered, fragile, beneath your throat.

You're breathing. Shallow. Slow. Barely there.

He tells himself that's enough. He did his part.

But he doesn’t leave.

He sits there, elbow braced on his knee, jaw tight. His leg what’s left of it, aches from the way he’s bent. A phantom pain in a limb long gone, echoing through bone. He flexes his shoulders, tries to shake the tension.

Fails.

Because all he can think about is you.

The boy who wasn’t a boy at all.

The soldier he kept an eye on from a distance, drawn to your movements without knowing why. The way you fought like you had nothing to live for. Like dying was a choice. The grace in your violence. The fury. The grief.

And now you’re here. Armor stripped. Bandages blooming red around your middle. A woman.

A woman.

Megumi stares at you for a long time. Longer than he should.

You’re smooth beneath the grime. Lips parted just slightly, brow furrowed like even unconscious, you’re still fighting something.

He shouldn’t be looking at you like this. Not with that softness in his chest. Not with the way his eyes trace the curve of your jaw, the dark fan of your lashes, the smudged blood on your collarbone. Not with the way he keeps hearing your voice slur through the haze

He should’ve laughed. Should’ve dismissed it. You were bleeding out, half dead, delirious.

But he didn’t laugh. He couldn’t.

Because something about the way you said it stuck to him. Like a match held too long between trembling fingers.

He swallows hard. Glances at the flap of the tent. No one’s coming. No one knows what you are.

And he’s the only one who saw.

The only one who didn’t report you.

The only one who stayed.

He wipes a cloth across your forehead, slow. Careful. Tells himself it’s just to keep the fever down. Tells himself it means nothing that his fingers shake.

“You idiot,” he murmurs, barely audible. “You could’ve died.”

Maybe you still will.

But he won’t let it be tonight, not if he can help it.

Your breath hitches once. Then evens out again.

Megumi flinches.

He doesn’t know why it’s not like you said anything, not like you woke up or moved. But still, the sound hits him in the chest like shrapnel. He glances down at your lips again. Dry. Cracked. Smudged with something that might’ve been blood or ash or both.

There’s nothing pretty about war. But there’s something unbearable about the way softness still clings to you, even now.

He shouldn’t notice that.

He shouldn’t.

But he does.

And now he can’t stop.

Because you’re the only woman he’s seen up close in months. Years, maybe. He’s lost track. Most of the soldiers are men. The medics, too. The civilians? All long gone or long dead. And you, God, you’ve been right under his nose this whole time. Fighting in the mud. Training at dawn. Clashing swords with enemies twice your size and never giving an inch.

He thought you were reckless. Arrogant. Always getting dragged back into camp half broken, smeared in someone else’s blood.

Now he knows why.

And he wishes he didn’t.

Because the realization sits heavy in his chest. Because he remembers how his hands fumbled with your armor. How his breath caught when he saw the soft curve of your ribs, the unmistakable press of your chest, the swell of your hips beneath layers of blood soaked cloth.

He shouldn’t have looked. He shouldn’t have stared.

But he did.

And now it’s seared into him.

And worse, he wants to look again.

Not to gawk. Not like that. But just to see. To understand how someone like you exists in a place like this.

You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have survived this long. You shouldn’t have made it to his tent bleeding, delirious, looking at him with glassy eyes and saying something so goddamn romantic he thought for a second he imagined it.

He lets out a bitter breath. Drags a hand down his face. Who says something like that on their deathbed? Who fights like hell, masks themselves for years, survives war after war, and still clings to language like that?

You.

And that’s the problem. Because Megumi doesn’t believe in fate. Doesn’t believe in poetry. Doesn’t believe in much of anything anymore not with everything he’s lost.

But now you’re here.

And for some reason, it matters.

He watches the rise and fall of your chest. The little crease between your brows. The line of your neck, pulsing faintly with life.

“I should’ve reported you,” he murmurs, not even sure who he’s talking to himself or you. “They’d kill you for it.”

And he almost did. Had his hand on the tent flap. Had the words in his mouth. There’s a woman in the ranks.

But then your head had lolled to the side. Your lips moved. Your voice rasped and wrecked slipped out that impossible line.

And Megumi couldn’t do it.

Because he saw something in you that wasn’t just reckless or foolish or brave.

He saw someone like him.

Someone who kept surviving out of spite. Someone who didn’t want to be seen, not really, but still burned with the hope that someone might.

And now he’s the only one who knows. The only one who sees. His throat tightens.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters under his breath.

He doesn’t know if he’s cursing you or himself. Probably both.

You shift slightly in the cot just enough to draw his eyes again. And he hates it. Hates that he’s thinking about how pretty your eyelashes are, or how strange it is to see dirt smeared across collarbones instead of stubble. Hates the warmth in his gut that comes from proximity, not pity. Hates that part of him wants you to wake up not to thank him, not to explain yourself but just to look at him again. Like you did. Like it meant something.

I started wars for those beautiful eyes.

He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Hard.

He’s so fucking tired.

And now he’s keeping secrets. And part of him is afraid terrified that if you die, no one else will know who you really were. That your name will get buried under the wrong one, your body burned with the rest, and your story will vanish like every other forgotten soldier.

So he stays.

Staring.

Wishing he were braver. Kinder. Colder. Anything but this.

Because you're not just bleeding out on his table anymore.

You're bleeding into him.

You cough yourself awake. It’s not gentle. It’s violent, like your body’s fighting for air after being drowned.

Megumi bolts upright from the stool at your side, startled out of a haze he hadn’t realized he’d slipped into.

Your eyes fly open. Disoriented. Dark and glassy.

And then they lock on him

.

Something shifts.

It’s just a second but it snags him. You stare at him like he’s a ghost. Like his face means something.

But before he can place it before he can even ask...you’re scowling.

“Fuck,” you rasp, trying to sit up. “Why- why am I still alive?”

“Careful,” Megumi says, pushing gently at your shoulder, “you shouldn’t...your stitches-”

You slap his hand away, teeth grit. “Why am I still alive?”

He’s stunned by how furious you sound.

And by how familiar your eyes look up close. The kind of familiarity that makes his throat tighten for reasons he doesn’t want to name.

“You were bleeding out,” he says evenly. “I stopped it.”

You look like you want to hit him.

Or yourself.

“Goddamn it,” you whisper, sinking back into the cot, face twisted in something bitter. “You should’ve let me bleed.”

Megumi exhales through his nose. His jaw ticks.

“I did think about it,” he admits. “But I couldn’t. I don’t- ” His voice falters. “I don’t know why.”

The tent crackles faintly with the sound of far-off gunfire and static through the field radio.

You stare past him, into some dark corner like it might swallow you whole.

He studies you.

The lines on your face. The tension in your jaw. The way your hand trembles as it fists the sheets, not from pain but restraint.

You’re angry. But not at him.

Still he feels it anyway.

“You’re lucky youre still alive” he mutters. “If I hadn’t gotten to you first you wouldve been slaughtered ”

You scoff. “Would’ve been easier.”

“That’s what you came here for?” he snaps. “To die?”

“Maybe.”

Your voice is low. Flat. Like you’re daring him to react. Megumi leans back, jaw tight. His one leg hurts from sitting too long, but he doesn’t move.

He looks at you again.

At the dried blood across your temple. The bruises along your arms. The soft shape of your mouth when you aren’t gritting your teeth. The curve of your lashes when your eyes flutter shut like you're trying to disappear.

You’re- fuck.

You’re beautiful.

And he hates that it’s the first thing that’s come into focus after hours of watching you sleep, waiting for your pulse to waver, waiting for your chest to stop moving.

Because it doesn’t mean anything, right?

You’re a soldier. Or- no. Not even that.

You’re a liar. Pretending to be one of them. Hiding right in front of him. Until your shirt tore in that blast and he saw what no one else did.

That you weren’t supposed to be here.

That you were a woman.

He’s not stupid. He knows what it means for you to risk that. The weight of it. The desperation.

But he doesn’t understand why.

Not yet.

Still you opened your eyes and looked at him like you knew him. Like he’d ruined everything just by being here.

“You got a name?” he asks finally.

You don’t answer right away.

He watches your throat work. Your jaw twitch.

Then you meet his eyes again and this time, it’s colder.

“Does it matter?”

Megumi swallows whatever softness he felt.

Maybe it doesn't.

He notices it how your eyes shift.

The way they scan him, calculating, assessing, as if you’re not just seeing him for the first time but recognizing something in the wreckage. Something about him.

Then your gaze drops.

To the end of his right leg. Or what’s left of it.

And for the first time, your anger cracks.

Just a little.

Your eyes soften. Not with pity but something gentler. Something he doesn’t deserve.

“What happened?” you ask quietly, like you’ve known him forever.

His brows twitch up. “Motar tore it up.”

You don’t say anything. Just nod. Like that’s enough.

He watches you shift on the cot still slow, still stiff with pain, but holding your own.

You shouldn’t be upright at all, honestly.

And yet here you are, like a stubborn nail.

“What about you?” he says, nodding faintly toward your chest. “Shrapnel nicked your lung. You’re lucky it didn’t collapse.”

“I’ve had worse,” you mutter.

He snorts. “Sure. That why you bled out face-first?”

You glare at him. He raises his brows in challenge There’s a pause. You tilt your head against the tent pole and exhale like you’re bracing for something.

Megumi watches you.

There’s something about you that keeps catching him off guard. The calm under the fury. The way you talk like you’ve already lived through worse than death.

And the way you looked at him when you woke up.

Like you’d seen that face a thousand times before.

He finally asks, “Why’d you come here?”

You go still.

Not defensive. Just quiet. Like the words were waiting to be pulled from somewhere deep.

You look at him for a long moment.

“I was running away,” you say finally. “From someone.”

A beat.

You lower your gaze, voice dropping to something darker. “Someone who keeps haunting me.”

The tent buzzes with silence.

Megumi doesn’t know what he expected.

But not that. Not something that sounds like memory. Like grief. He swallows hard. “You wanted to die.”

You don’t confirm it.

You don’t have to.

It’s in the way your eyes drift toward the flaps of the tent like you’re still half in the dirt.

But then you turn your head, back to him. And your expression shifts again measured, a little too calm.

“You gonna tell someone?” you ask, tone light. “About what I am?”

He meets your gaze. Holds it. Shakes his head once. “No.”

You stare at him like you don’t believe it.

Then, “Why not?”

It’s the first time he really looks at you not just the bruises and blood, but you. The strange weight in your stare. The familiarity he keeps trying to ignore.

He doesn’t have an answer.

So he just shrugs.

“Guess I didn’t want to lose someone withlut knowing their name.”

Your face flickers.

And this time it’s not anger that rises behind your eyes.

It’s grief.

Old and quiet and bottomless.

But you don’t speak again.

You just look at him.

He doesn’t know when it started.

Not the war. Not the pain. That was always there, like the breath before screaming.

But this you this ache he carries in the soft parts of himself… he doesn’t remember the first time it made a home in him.

It wasn’t when you woke up. Not even when you bled out on his cot, half-conscious and thrashing. No he was too caught in the moment then. Too desperate to keep her alive.

But after?

After you woke?

After you looked at him with something hollow and furious in your eyes something ancient?

Something changed.

You pretended it hadn’t.

Went right back to wrapping your chest, right back to slipping your voice into deeper tones when others passed. Right back to silence. Control. Disappearing.

But he saw it now.

The way you flinched when someone called you “kid.” The way your eyes hardened when someone barked an order too loud. The way your hands moved like a soldier’s, but your mouth said nothing unless it had to.

You didn’t speak to him unless it was necessary. You made sure of that. Kept your distance. Kept your dignity.

But he noticed when you limped.

He noticed when your left shoulder hung lower than the right too many hits, too many nights without proper bandages.

And when you came back bruised, blood dried under your collar?

He treated you anyway.

Even when you told him not to.

Even when you said you could handle it yourself.

Even when you spat, “Why do you care?”

Because he did. Against his will, against his logic. Against everything war had made him bury he did.

And somewhere in the stretch of weeks that followed between drills and raids and smoke rising black into a washed-out sky he began to notice more.

The curve of your lip when you held in a retort.

The way your throat moved when you swallowed back words too heavy to carry.

The quick flick of your eyes across his body before landing on the leg he didn’t have anymore like you already knew the story.

He caught himself watching you in the quiet moments. Just watching.

When you cleaned your rifle.

When you tightened the straps of your vest.

When you walked past him and didn’t look and something in his chest ached at your absence of attention.

It was stupid. You made herself clear.

You wanted nothing from him.

And still-

He found himself replaying your voice in his head. The way you asked, soft but not gentle, “What happened?” after your gaze landed on the space where his leg used to be.

How your voice had dipped, casual and familiar, like you asked that question once before in another life.

How your anger wasn’t just rage, but grief dressed in armor.

He doesn’t know what it means.

Only that he waits now.

He waits to see you in the yard again. Waits to hear you call out a warning during drills. Waits for the moments when their hands brush by accident and you pull away like he burns.

He waits to be near you, even if you never wants him close.

And maybe that’s what falling in love is, out here.

Not flowers or confessions. Not touches or names.

Just silence.

Just yearning.

Just watching the one thing you were never meant to keep, and hoping somehow that they stay anyway.

You come in bleeding.

Not limping, not groaning, not asking for help. Just… bleeding. Like it's something you plan to fix yourself. Like you’re still trying to stay invisible even when you're covered in your own blood.

Megumi doesn't say anything at first.

Just sets his book down. Quiet. Careful.

You glance at him once, brief and unreadable, before you start peeling off your jacket. You try to hide the way your hands shake, the way you can’t reach the gash along your side. You’ve always hated showing weakness.

But he already knows.

And when your knees almost give out halfway to the cot, he’s there. Steadying you. Touching your waist like it’s instinct like he’s done it before. One hand on your waist the other on his makeshift crutch.

You flinch.

But you don’t pull away.

He guides you down. Doesn’t ask for permission. Doesn’t joke or scold or soften it with pleasantries. He just grabs the med kit and kneels in front of you like it’s a routine.

Only it’s not.

Not to him.

Because he’s wanted to touch you since you came back into the camp. Since you eyed him like a threat and called him soft with that sharp tongue of yours. Since you let him treat your wounds and didn’t thank him, but stayed. Since you showed up in the middle of the night, bruised and hurting and his.

He wanted to kiss you then. He wants to kiss you now.

He doesn’t know when it started. Only that it’s in everything now how he hears your voice even when you’re gone, how he memorizes the way you breathe when you’re angry, how every glance you throw his way feels like it means something.

Like maybe… maybe you want him too.

“You need stitches,” he murmurs, pulling gauze from the kit. “Lie back.”

You grunt. “You always this bossy?”

“Only when people bleed all over my floor.”

You snort. It’s soft. Tired.

But it still stirs something in him.

He presses the gauze to your side and watches you flinch again. Not from pain at least not the physical kind. It’s something else. Something you’re trying to swallow.

“Let me do this,” he says.

You let him.

And the quiet stretches.

You watch him. He can feel it your eyes on him like heat. He doesn’t look up, because if he does, he might do something stupid. Something selfish. Something he won’t be able to take back.

Like kiss you.

God, he wants to kiss you.

Wants it in a way that hurts.

He should say something clinical. Should change the subject. Should ask about the mission or make some sarcastic comment to fill the silence.

But he doesn’t.

He finishes tying off the bandage, sets the gauze aside, and says soft, like a secret,

“You scare the shit out of me.”

You blink.

He shrugs, but his voice stays low. “You walk in half-dead like it’s nothing. You don’t ask for help, but you always end up here. You don’t want to be seen, but you look at me like you’ve known me your whole life.”

Your jaw tightens.

He finally looks at you.

And it hits him all at once how close you are. How worn you look. How much he wants to pull you in and keep you.

He swallows. Hard.

“Tell me to stop,” he breathes.

You don’t.

So he leans in.

It’s not gentle. It’s not rough, either. It’s something raw. Something desperate. A kiss like a whisper of something lost, something ruined, something he never got to have.

He doesn’t expect you to kiss back.

But he hopes.

For one second just one your breath stutters. Your hands don’t push him away.

Then they do.

You shove him. Harder than necessary. And your voice shakes when you say, “Don’t.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t apologize.

He just watches you stand, fury in your eyes and grief under your skin. You hold your side like it’s all that’s keeping you together.

Then you walk out.

Fast. Bloody. Gone.

Megumi stays where he is. Breathing hard. Heart breaking loud in his chest. But he doesn’t regret it. Because he meant it.

Because loving you feels like something he’s already done a many times in another life and he’s doing it again now, even if it ruins him.

It’s been three days since you walked out.

Three days of silence. Three days of him replaying every second your flinch, your voice, the kiss. Wondering if he crossed a line. If he imagined the way your hands trembled. If he broke something he’ll never get back.

He’s been sleeping in the infirmary again. Not because he has to. Because it’s the only place that still smells like you.

He doesn’t expect the tent to open.

Not now. Not after midnight. Not after three days of pretending he’s fine.

But it does.

Soft. Slow.

And then you’re there.

He doesn’t move. Can’t. Just sits on the cot, frozen because he’s not sure if you’re real or if he’s finally snapped from the waiting.

You don’t say anything.

You just walk to him. Quiet. Careful. Like you’re afraid he’ll vanish if you’re too loud.

He watches every step like a man trying not to breathe underwater.

And then you kneel.

Right in front of him.

Your fingers brush his leg. The one that ends in phantom ache and memory. He twitches, but doesn’t pull away.

You look up at him, eyes wet but steady. Then your hand slides beneath his thigh, adjusting it. Gentle. Familiar. Like you’ve done it a hundred times. Like it doesn’t scare you. Like it never did.

And that’s when it breaks.

His composure. His doubt. The pain he kept locked behind his ribs. “You came back,” he says, like a confession.

You nod.

“I didn’t think you would.”

“I know,” you whisper. “I didn’t think I could.”

He doesn’t ask why.

Because your hand is already on his jaw. And your thumb is brushing the corner of his mouth like you’re memorizing him all over again. Like you missed him. Like you love him.

And then you kiss him.

Not urgently. Not in apology.

Soft. Steady. Like a promise that’s been buried under lifetimes. His hands find your back. Your waist. The back of your neck. Anywhere he can hold you and convince himself you’re not a dream.

You kiss him like you’ve waited years.

And maybe you have.

He lets himself fall into it. Lets his lips part under yours. Lets his heart race too fast. Lets his breath hitch when you whisper against his mouth, against his skin, against the place in him that never stopped hoping.

“I love you.”

His throat catches.

“I always will,” you say. “Even when I run. Even when I die. Even when you forget.”

He’s shaking.

You hold him like you’re trying to keep him together. Like you know what the waiting has done to him.

Your hands are in his hair. On his chest. Around his neck. You kiss his temple, his cheek, the place just below his ear.

“You’re my home,” you murmur.

He doesn’t cry.

But something breaks open inside him. Quietly. Sweetly.

Like the ache is finally being kissed away.

And he thinks if you left again, it would kill him.

But if you stay...

God, if you stay He’d love you like this forever.

It happens again.

And again.

And again.

You wait until the last sword is sheathed, until the fires burn low, until the others have crawled to their mats and the shadows are thick enough to swallow a body whole. And then you slip into the darkness.

You never say where you're going.

But he knows.

You find him behind the supply tent, or near the river, or sometimes under the old hollow tree behind the medic’s hut where the moss grows thick and the air tastes like rain. He’s always there. Waiting. Watching.

He can’t help it.

He touches your jaw like a prayer. Kisses your mouth like he’s parched. Lets his hands roam beneath your bandages like he’s learning you from memory like if he doesn't hold you now, the next time they’ll carry your body in on a stretcher.

There are bruises on your ribs again. A split at your brow. You never flinch when he cleans the blood, but your eyes flicker when he reaches for the salve because you know what comes next.

Because he always leans in after.

Because he always whispers your name, the real one, the one no one else is allowed to know.

And you let him.

You let him even though it’s wrong. Even though it’s dangerous. Even though the wrong person catching wind of this could see your throat slit by morning.

You still let him.

There’s a moment always a moment when he braces his weight against you, left leg firm, right thigh hollow beneath your palm. You never say a word about it. Just reach down and adjust him, steady him like you’ve always known how. Your touch lingers. He lets it.

You lean close, and he can’t stop the way his breath shudders when your lips brush his throat.

“Someone will see,” you whisper.

“Let them,” he answers, reckless. “Let them see I love you.”

Your mouth parts, but he kisses you before you can speak. And gods, it’s sweet. It’s ruinous. He doesn’t even care that you might bite back again. That you might run. That you might shove him away and vanish into morning like you did last time.

Because he remembers the last kiss. The one you gave him.

Because he still wakes up with your hands on his face and your mouth on his.

Because in all the horror and rot of this place, you are the only softness left.

And so he kisses you like that. Like you’re hope. Like you’re the only thing that’s still warm.

Your fingers clutch at the hem of his shirt. His palm finds your neck. You’re breathing too hard. His leg shakes beneath you both, so you steady him again softly, without thought, the way you always do.

He lets out a breath, forehead pressed to yours, voice barely there.

“You’re going to get us both killed.”

You smile, slow and tired and far too fond. “You’re the one who keeps showing up.”

He grins despite himself. “I lost my leg, not my heart.”

You go still.

Then your mouth finds his again, hungry and gentle all at once. Like you know it’s not forever. Like this is the only now you get.

And maybe it is.

So you kiss until you forget where the danger ends and where he begins.

And he lets himself have you. Just for tonight. Just for this breath. Just for this impossible, aching, beautiful love you’ve pressed into the hollow space of his chest and made home.

The air smelled like blood and fire.

Megumi didn’t notice the pain at first.

Maybe because it had been hurting all day. Maybe because it didn’t matter anymore.

The medical tent was half-torn from shelling. One side caved in. Bodies outside. Screams fading. Dirt soaking red beneath him, thick and hot and endless.

His hands were covered in someone else’s blood.

Maybe yours.

Maybe his.

He couldn’t tell.

Everything was smoke.

Everything was breaking.

Then Footsteps.

Frantic. Uneven.

He turned his head, breath frozen in his throat.

And there you were.

You were running toward him.

Through smoke and chaos and death, with one hand clutching your side, the other swinging wild as you limped forward. Your coat was ripped open. One leg dragged useless behind you. Blood poured from a wound on your jaw, and still you ran.

Megumi blinked.

His vision doubled.

Your name caught in his mouth, but it didn’t come out.

You were crying. Your face—grimed with ash, streaked with blood twisted in something more than pain. Desperation. Grief.

You looked like the world was ending.

And he realized-

It was.

You collapsed to your knees beside him, arms hooking under his shoulders. Your whole body trembled from exertion, but you didn’t stop. You didn’t flinch. You pulled him upright like you’d done it before. Like you’d carried him through fire in another life.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he rasped. His voice was thin. Useless.

“I know,” you whispered. “But I had to come for you.”

Your hands were shaking as you gripped him, breath rattling in your chest. Every time you moved, you winced but you kept going. Pulled his weight against you. Stood. Walked.

Your leg wasn’t holding you. You were half dragging yourself across the ruined tent floor, taking each step like it cost you something permanent.

But you still did it.

You walked for both of you making up for his missing leg. Megumi couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t speak.

All he could do was feel the weight of you beneath him warm, real, familiar in a way that terrified him. Like he’d always known your shape.

Then movement. Behind you.

Too fast. Too close.

“Look out!”

He didn’t think.

He threw his weight forward, shoved you away. Your body hit the ground hard.

And the blade meant for you...

Drove into him.

For a moment, everything stopped.

His breath left him like a gasp punched from his lungs. Pain blinding, sharp lit up his chest. Then dulled. Then faded.

He fell.

The earth rushed up fast and too far.

The sky spun. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and hot.

And then your hands again.

On his face. His shoulders. His chest.

“No,” you whispered. Over and over. “No, please, please stay with me.”

Your voice was shaking. Broken. Choked.

You pressed your forehead to his, as if closeness could keep him tethered. Your hands tried to hold him together like you’d done this before. Like you'd lost him once and swore never again.

Your blood mixed with his.

You looked at him like he was everything.

“I thought I could change it,” you said.

Your voice cracked on the last word.

Megumi blinked, slow. What were you saying?

"Youre not even cursed” you breathed, barely audible. “You were supposed to live. I did everything right this time. I- I kept my head down, I stayed close, I didn’t run- I thought maybe, maybe this time you’d stay.”

He couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t move.

But god, he could see you.

He saw the panic in your eyes, the way your fingers pressed into his shoulders, the way you were trying to memorize him in the seconds left.

He should’ve been scared. But all he felt was...Peace. Because it was you.

Because if this was the end, and you were here, he could take it.

You looked at him like you’d watched him die before. Like this wasn’t the first battlefield. Like he’d left you again and again and again.

And now he finally understood the ache in your voice when you said, “This is my fault. I always lose you.” Tears slipped down your cheeks.

And he wanted to say, No. Not your fault.

He wanted to reach for you. Wanted to take your hand. Wanted to promise he’d stay next time. Wanted to believe there’d be a next time.

But he couldn’t move. So he looked at you. One last time. And saw everything. Not the blood. Not the battlefield. Not the end.

He saw you.

Beautiful.

Even now. Especially now. Your hands on his face. Your voice breaking. Your grief old, deep, ancient.

Like it had lived in you for centuries.

You leaned closer, and your lips brushed his temple. “Why do you always leave me?” you whispered.

Megumi wanted to cry.

He wanted to beg forgiveness for every life he couldn’t remember, every promise he must’ve made and broken, every death that left you alone.

But the light in his eyes was already fading.

You were the last thing he saw.

You. And only you.

And then.

Nothing.

He woke with a gasp.

The ceiling above him was blank. His sheets tangled. His shirt soaked. His chest ached like something had torn loose inside it.

He sat up.

The dream already slipping. Vanishing.

But something stayed. A whisper. Your name a heat in his ribs. His hands trembled. There was no blood. No battlefield. No smoke. No you.

But god, it hurt.

Like something precious had been ripped away from him mid-sentence. Like a promise broken across time. He pressed a hand to his chest, stared at the dark ceiling.

After a moment of breathing he checked his phone, a message from you.

'Thanks for the kiss earlier, come by tomorrow?'

It was your third life.

The first taught you silence. The second taught you desperation.

But the third, this one, taught you love.

by the time fate spun you into this body, you already knew what the curse could do.

So you were born cold. You vowed to never love too deeply or to feel too much. You were a princess in this life, one who scowled too much and smiled too little unlike your brother, who was younger than you but loved by everyone from the court to the commoners.

You kept your hands gloved so no one would see how tightly they shook. You kept your voice calm so no one would hear the cracks.

They called you "Your Grace."

But behind closed doors, they called you the bitch who was too self centered.

You were fine with that. You wanted it that way. Because you carried the scars of every life before this, the loss, the heartbreak, the cruel ache of loving someone who never remembered. That weight made you wary, made you guard your heart behind walls of silence.

That was the cruelest thing the curse could do. Make you remember everything... and make everyone else forget.

So you were cold to everyone, your own father once said you were hard to love.

And maybe he was right.

But then, you met him.

Megumi Fushiguro was a servant of the royal family low in rank, barely tolerated by the courtiers who whispered behind his back.

Yet his disdain for their greed and false smiles was impossible to hide.

He never bowed too low, never smiled when it wasn’t genuine. The court’s polished lies weighed on him, and more than once, he found himself in trouble for speaking too bluntly.

Where others chased your favor with flattery and falsehood, he met your scowl with a sharper one of his own.

Unlike the sycophants scrambling for your grace, Megumi never pretended. He never played the game.

His honesty was a blade cutting through the pretense of the palace and though it should have made him your enemy, it was the thing that drew you to him.

Because you, too, had learned to wear a mask but unlike the others, you saw through theirs and you desperately wanted to see through his.

You found him in the garden again.

Not that you were looking. Not that you'd admit it. You just happened to pass through at the same time every morning since you'd first seen him kneeling in the dirt, fingers covered in soil, face shaded by the brim of his plain cap. He didn't bow when you stepped close. He didn't stop working.

"Is that how you greet royalty?" you said flatly, standing just close enough to cast a shadow over the flower bed he was tending.

He didn't look up. "Is that how royalty shows gratitude? Blocking the light?"

The silence between you crackled.

"You're bold," you said eventually, more observation than insult.

"Not bold," he said, still not glancing your way. "Just not interested in pretending."

Something in you tightened. Was it admiration or hatred? You didn't know.

"You'll get in trouble, speaking like that."

"I usually do."

His honesty should've irritated you. Instead, it stirred something. You folded your hands behind your back.

"You should smile more" he added suddenly, brushing dirt from his palms. "Isn't that what they say about vou? The other commoners i mean."

Your mouth opened then shut.

It wasn’t mocking. Just observant. A mirror held too close.

“I’m not here to be charming,” you said voice sharp.

“Good.” He finally looked up, straight at you. “Because you’re not.”

You blinked.

And he turned back to his work like you were no different than the weeds he pulled.

You stood there a moment longer, heat blooming low in your chest. Not anger. Not quite.

You weren’t sure what it was yet.

So you left.

But you came back the next day.

You shouldn't have come back.You told yourself that before you stepped into the garden. Told yourself again when your foot crunched against the gravel path and you saw him kneeling in a different spot from where he'd been yesterday, sleeves pushed to his elbows, wrist and porcelain cheek smudged with dirt.

Unbothered. Unbowed.

He didn’t glance your way. “You missed a weed,” you said coolly, pointing toward the cluster near the root of the rose bush.

He didn’t even pause. “You missed the door. This isn’t your wing.”

You crossed your arms. “Bold of a servant to speak about royal wings.”

“Bold of a royal to wander so far from her throne,” he shot back, finally glancing up. “Unless you’ve grown tired of being worshipped.”

You raised your chin. “I wouldn’t expect a man who bows for no one to understand the burden of being revered.”

“Burden?” He snorted actually snorted. “Must be hard. All that praise and luxury. You poor thing.”

You took a step forward. The hem of your dress brushed the edge of his garden. “You’re awfully mouthy for someone who scrubs the halls.”

He stood now. Not out of deference. Just to level his gaze with yours.

“And you’re awfully nosy for someone who claims not to care about the lower ranks.”

Your eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I don’t care?”

“You carry yourself like we’re all beneath your boots.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t,” you said, voice like ice cracking, “if any of you tried to rise above the dirt.” The air stilled. The garden somehow quieter than before.

Then, “I’ll remember that next time I’m feeding your roses,” he said. “They bloom better when they’re left alone.”

Your throat tightened but you wouldn’t let him see it. So you smiled, sweet and sharp. “And here I thought they bloomed because of you. My mistake.”

He smirked. Just faintly. “Everyone makes them, Princess.” You left before he could say anything else, your dress sweeping against the gravel. But your heart was beating too loud, and you hated that it was.

And tomorrow?

You already knew you’d return.

The third morning brought with it the familiar hush of silence. The garden was still damp from a light dawn rain, and the scent of turned soil and crushed herbs hung thick in the air. You were already there before he arrived this time. Not because you meant to be, of course.

You just happened to have nowhere better to be. That’s all.

Megumi entered through the west gate, carrying a worn basket of tools and the same distant expression he always wore like this palace, this world, was just something he was tolerating.

He didn’t greet you.

You were used to bows. To grand, overzealous gestures and overblown words meant to earn favor. He gave you none of that.

You were standing by the rosebush again, gloves on, arms loosely crossed. You didn’t look at him until you spoke.

“You're late.”

He glanced up only slightly, brow already furrowed with a day’s work he hadn’t even started.

“By whose clock?”

“Mine,” you replied, coolly. Megumi crouched beside a bed of herbs. “Then perhaps you should have brought a sundial.”

You bit the inside of your cheek. “I could have you reassigned for that tone.”

“You could,” he said, not looking up. “But then you’d be back to being bored.”

Your stomach tightened annoyance or amusement, it was hard to tell. He wasn’t wrong.

You walked over slowly, deliberately, heels muted against the moss-lined stone. “You talk as though I seek you out for entertainment.”

He paused, then glanced up at you from under his long gorgeous lashes. “Don’t you?”

Your eyes narrowed. “So confident for someone with dirt under his nails.”

He stood, wiping his hands on a cloth before tucking it away. “Better than having blood on them.”

The words hit sharper than he likely meant them to. You looked away first, lips tight. That flicker of memory blood on your hands from healing too late, too little, too often in your first life it rose too fast, too hot.

“Careful,” you warned, voice lower now. “You’re inching toward impertinent.”

“Just inching?” he asked.

A beat passed. Then, unexpectedly, you laughed. Quiet. Unpolished. Real.

Megumi blinked.

You didn’t explain it. You didn’t owe him that. Instead, you walked to the lavender stalks he’d half-pruned and knelt beside them, not caring for the silk of your dress brushing against the dirt.

“You missed a few stems,” you murmured.

He tilted his head. “You memorize the garden layout?”

“I memorize everything,” you said, running your fingers along the stems. “Occupational hazard.”

Megumi crouched beside you again, not too close. “Of being a royal?”

“Of being cursed,” you almost said. But instead you said, “Of being tired.”

He said nothing for a long time. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It just hung there. Like breath caught in a chest.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter.

“You don’t act like them.”

You glanced at him. “Like the other royals?”

He nodded.

You tilted your head, giving him a cold smile. “You’re not supposed to say that.”

He shrugged. “You’re not supposed to listen.”

Something about the honesty in his words scraped against something inside you. It made you feel exposed. And seen.

You stood then, brushing off the folds of your dress. “Enjoy your solitude, servant.”

He didn’t bow. Didn’t even look up. But just before you walked away, he muttered without malice, “Try not to trip over your own self importance next time, Your Grace.”

You turned around with mock offense, arching a brow. “Careful. I could still have you as my foot rest.”

“That’d be quieter.”

You stared at him. And he didn’t smirk, didn’t flinch. He just returned to trimming the lavender like you weren’t even there.

You hated how much you didn’t want to leave.

You hadn’t expected to see him again so soon. Not outside the gardens, not beyond the neat hedges and rose bushes.

But there he was arms full of linens, sleeves rolled up, brow furrowed in familiar concentration as he moved through the palace’s west corridor, the servant wing.

You’d gotten lost.

Not in direction. You knew every turn of this palace by heart. No, you’d gotten lost in a memory you hadn’t lived in this life. The scent of healing herbs or old booze had dragged you into a daze, and your feet had taken you to the servants wing, where no princess ever wandered

He saw you when he rounded the corner. He didn’t stop right away, just blinked once like he was registering you the way one registers a thundercloud: inconvenient, but not surprising.

“You’re in the way,” he said. Flat. Like fact. Like royalty meant nothing here.

You stepped aside half a pace, just enough to be difficult. “That’s not how you greet a princess.”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

He kept walking didn’t even slow until you said,

“I wasn’t looking for you.”

He stopped.

Didn’t turn around. Didn’t speak.

But something in his posture shifted.

You swallowed, hating the way your own words lingered too long in the air between you.

You meant to sound sharp. Dismissive.

It came out softer than that. Like you were denying something.

When he finally turned to face you, the light from the window cut across his jaw in a way that made him look older. Or maybe just more tired.

“I didn’t ask if you were,” he said.

“I know,” you answered. “I just… wasn’t.”

He studied you for a beat. With sharp eyed awareness.

“You’re far from your corridors” he said.

“And you’re far from knowing your place.”

That earned a flicker of something in his expression. Not quite a smile. But not contempt, either.

“You don’t strike me as someone who likes being worshipped.”

You tilted your head. “And you don’t strike me as someone who enjoys breathing under monarchy.”

A pause.

Then, as if testing the waters: “Maybe we’re both right.” He moved past you then the soft rustle of fabric brushing against the silence but this time, when your shoulders touched briefly, neither of you stepped back.

He didn’t say anything more. Didn’t glance behind him.

But just before he disappeared around the bend, you caught him shaking his head, and you swore you heard it low and just amused enough to make your chest ache,

“…Wasn’t looking for me,” he muttered.

“Yeah right.”

And for once, you didn’t know if you hated the sound of your own heartbeat.

You don’t know when your meetings with him became less accidental and more deliberate.

And he doesn’t know when he started to linger longer in places you frequented, when his mornings felt wrong if he didn’t see your silhouette pass by.

But it happened.

Somewhere between silence and sparring, your conversations started to change. Still sharp, still dry but laced with a warmth neither of you dared name.

You mocked him for his stubbornness. He rolled his eyes at your theatrics. You told yourself you hated the way he never bowed. He told himself you were just another bored royal.

But you both started showing up.

You crossed the eastern courtyard more often now, just to pass the kitchen wing where he sometimes carried deliveries. He took the long route from the garden to the storage rooms, just in case you were at the window.

And if your eyes met?

He’d nod once. You’d raise a brow. No words. Just recognition. Once, you passed him in the corridor close enough your sleeves brushed and neither of you stepped away fast enough.

He looked down at your gloved hand, like he wanted to say something. But didn’t.

“You’re in my way,” you said.

“I was here first,” he muttered, and the tension between you tightened like pulled thread.

You could have moved. He could have. Neither of you did.

Until he finally stepped aside, and you hated the way something in your chest loosened like disappointment.

Another time, you found him cleaning silver in the antechamber. He barely glanced up.

“Don’t you have a throne to sit on?” he asked.

“Don’t you have boots to polish?” you shot back.

But you sat anyway. Across from him. Legs crossed. Watching his hands work.

You didn’t talk. He didn’t ask why you were there. But when he finished, he left one goblet unpolished and pushed it toward you.

“Its dirty,” you said flatly.

He didn’t smile. But his eyes flicked to yours, warm like dusk. “Then fix it.”

You did.

Not because he told you to.

But because for some reason, your fingers itched to hold something he touched.

You weren’t supposed to feel anything. That was the whole point.

But that evening, when your mother’s words cut sharper than they should’ve “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

you didn’t retreat to your chambers. You didn’t go riding or pacing or screaming into a pillow like you might’ve in a different life.

You went looking for him.

You told yourself it was coincidence. That you were just walking. That the ache in your chest wasn’t pulling your feet down familiar corridors on purpose.

But when you found him shoulders bent over a stone basin near the outer courtyard, rinsing something from his hands you didn’t hesitate.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said without turning. His voice was quiet. Not cold.

You stepped closer anyway. “And yet here I am.”

He dried his hands slowly. “A princess being seen alone with a servant?”

“You’re not just any servant,” you said, softer than you meant to.

He turned at that. Slowly. His deep blue eyes were steady. Tired. Familiar. “And what am I then?” he asked.

You didn’t answer right away.

Instead, you sat not gracefully, not like royalty just dropped onto the edge of the stone bench nearby like your bones were too heavy. Like your name had weighed too much today.

Megumi watched you. Then, finally, sat beside you. Not close. But not far, either.

“My mother wants me to smile more,” you said flatly. “Wants me to laugh like my brother. Charm the nobles. Be gracious. Lovely.”

You scoffed. “I told her maybe I should just carve dimples into my face.”

That got him. A short, sharp exhale of a laugh. Barely there. But real.

You glanced at him, heat rising behind your eyes. From relief. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “That sounds... messy.”

You smiled bitter and crooked. “Wouldn’t be the first scar I earned for trying to please someone else.”

That silenced him. And maybe that was good. Because you weren’t sure you could say much more without unraveling.

When he finally spoke, it wasn’t with pity.

“You shouldn’t be caught with me alone,” he said again. But this time, there was something else under it.

Not warning. Not rejection.

Longing. Hesitation. Fear.

You looked over at him. Really looked.

And for the first time, you realized he wasn't just enduring your presence anymore.

He waited for it.

“Then I guess we should get better at hiding,” you said.

You don't know why you did it.

Maybe it was the way he lingered longer now, even after his tasks were done. Or maybe it was how he watched you trace your finger across pages in the library when he thought you weren’t looking.

You never asked if he could read.

But he never asked you to teach him, either.

He was in the herb cellar when you brought it up. Sorting dried wheat into bundles, face smudged with dust and calm as ever.

You leaned against the doorway, a book tucked under your arm thin, worn, pages folded with use.

“You’ve got ink on your wrist,” he said without looking.

“And you’ve got soot on your cheek” you replied. “We all have our vices.”

He smirked barely. Then paused as you stepped inside.

“I have something for you.”

His gaze flicked to the book. Suspicious.

“I’m not much for court poetry.”

“It’s not poetry,” you said, offering it. “It’s a children’s primer.” Megumi stared at you. The silence stretched.

You didn’t flinch. “If you already know how to read, feel free to mock me and give it back.” He didn’t. Instead, he took it. Gingerly, like it might bite.

“I never learned,” he said, low. You nodded once. “I know.”

Another beat.

Then, softer he said “I’d like to.”

So you began.

Not with flowery verses or noble speeches, but with small, clumsy syllables scratched in charcoal over old scraps of parchment. You met in quiet corners the garden shed, the stables, once behind the greenhouse while rain tapped against the glass like impatient fingers.

You held his hand once, steadying his wrist as he tried to form the curve of an ‘e.’

He didn’t look at you. But he didn’t pull away either.

“You press too hard,” you murmured.

“I don’t want to get it wrong.”

You were quiet for a long moment. Then “There’s no wrong when you’re learning.”

His head tilted slightly at that, but he nodded. Continued.

Some days he was better. Some days his letters were crooked and his mood worse.

But still he showed up. Still, he tried.

And sometimes, when your fingers brushed as you passed him a new sheet, or your shoulders touched while reading the same page, the silence between you felt louder than words ever could.

Until one night, as you corrected a misshaped sentence, you caught him watching you. Really watching.

“What?” you asked, a half-smile on your lips.

He hesitated. Then said quietly, “I forget you’re royalty when you’re like this.”

You looked down at his messy handwriting.

“Good,” you said. “Because I forget everything when I’m with you.” And it was the truth, when you were with him the wight of every life you lived lightened just a little bit.

The lesson started like all the others.

They sat shoulder to shoulder in the dim warmth of the greenhouse, the air thick with the scent of rosemary and soil. Rain pattered gently against the glass above them, a soft hush that made everything feel distant. Safe.

You handed him a fresh sheet of parchment.

“Same as yesterday. Copy the sentence twice, then try to write it from memory.”

Megumi nodded, jaw set, fingers already smudged with charcoal.

He copied dutifully, slow but focused. His brow furrowed the way it always did when he concentrated, and you didn’t interrupt.

Not until he stopped halfway through the second line.

You watched him glance down at the blank space beside the last word. His hand hovered. Charcoal still poised. Then, quietly, like it meant nothing at all, he asked

“…Could you write mine?”

You blinked. “Your sentence?”

“No.” A pause. “My name.”

He didn’t look at you when he said it. His eyes stayed fixed on the paper, guarded, like the request cost him something to speak aloud.

You didn’t tease. Didn’t smile.

Instead, you reached for the parchment, turned it gently toward you, and wrote,

Megumi.

The strokes were steady. Deliberate. You wrote it once. Then again, just beneath it, slower.

When you handed the paper back, your fingertips brushed his. His hand was warm.

He stared at the letters for a long time. His name, written in your handwriting. Like a mark carved into the world. Like something real. Something that mattered.

“You can copy it if you want,” you said quietly. But he didn’t move.

“…I just wanted to see it,” he said but he didnt tell you that he just wanted to see it in your handwriting.

Your breath caught, but you didn’t let it show. “There,” you said, voice soft but certain. “Now you have it.”

He folded the parchment once, then again, careful, like it was something precious. Like it meant more than he’d say.

And for the rest of the lesson, he said nothing more. But he sat a little closer. And when he left, he slipped the folded paper into the inside of his coat not with the other lesson scraps, but somewhere safe.

Somewhere closer to his heart.

He was frowning again.

You could tell even before you looked up the scratch of charcoal had stopped, replaced by the quiet rustle of him shifting in place, tense in that quiet way he always got when he was frustrated with himself.

You glanced over. Sure enough, his brows were drawn tight, lips pressed in a thin, unhappy line, eyes glued to the smudged paper like it had personally offended him.

“Are you going to scowl that sentence into submission?” you asked lightly.

He didn’t answer.

You leaned in a little, peering over his shoulder. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s crooked,” he muttered.

“It’s handwriting. Not a sword.”

He didn’t laugh. Just kept staring. And that crease the one right between his brows deepened.

Without thinking, you reached up and smoothed it with your thumb.

He froze.

Your hand lingered for half a second longer than it should have. His skin was warm beneath your touch. You only meant to tease, to make him laugh, but when your eyes met his dark, steady, unreadable something in your chest stuttered

.

“There,” you said, trying to mask the sudden weight in your voice. “Less brooding. More learning.”

He didn’t say anything right away. Just looked at you, like he was trying to memorize your face in that moment. Like he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

Then quietly “You’re not very good at pretending, are you?” You blinked. “Pretending what?”

He looked down again, the faintest smirk ghosting his lips. “That you’re not enjoying this.” You meant to scoff. Meant to roll your eyes and say something sharp something dismissive.

But all that came out was a breathless little, “…Shut up.”

And this time, when he laughed, it was real. Low. Rough. But real. You turned back to the paper, trying (and failing) not to smile.

And across from you, Megumi Fushiguro let the world soften just a little for the first time in a long time.

You’d found peace with Megumi.

Not escape. Not fantasy.

Peace

The kind that made the ache in your chest soften. The kind that silenced the ghosts that usually crowded the back of your mind. When you were with him, it felt like the pain didn’t wear you down so much. Like for once, this life wasn’t just about surviving the memories of the last.

You learned him slowly. In pieces.

That he preferred silence to conversation but always listened carefully when you spoke. That he hated sweets, that he carried a knife in his boot not out of fear, but habit.

That he had an older sister, Tsumiki, bedridden from illness, whom he visited whenever he could, leaving wildflowers beside her pillow.

And in return, he learned you.

He noticed the way you moved too precisely, too expertly to be a sheltered royal. He watched you pick locks with hairpins and climb ledges like you’d done it in another life. He never asked how you knew so many things you shouldn’t. He just accepted you.

No masks. No thrones.

Just you.

But peace was never meant to last in a place like this.

Not when your mother summoned you.

You stood in her solar as the morning light filtered in through colored stained glass, casting jeweled shadows in many colors on the marble.

She didn’t look at you right away she was seated at the vanity, fingers deftly threading a needle through a piece of embroidery so intricate you knew she hadn’t stitched herself.

“You’ve been quieter lately,” she said, voice too smooth. “More distracted. Distant.”

You didn’t respond. She didn’t need you to.

“You used to be so focused. So composed. My little ice-blooded heir.”

She smiled at the memory, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I thought perhaps it was nerves. And perhaps it is.” She set the embroidery down and turned, expression soft like poison in tea. “You’re to be married.”

You blinked. “What?”

“Next month. The Duke of Leovan. Handsome enough, and more importantly, obedient. His family’s influence will ensure our line stays unchallenged.”

“I never agreed—”

“No,” she interrupted, calmly. “But I did. That’s what queens do, darling. They decide.”

Your hands curled into fists at your sides.

“You can’t—”

“I can,” she said, her voice sharper now, cold iron wrapped in silk. “And I have.”

She stood, gliding toward you. Each step precise. Predatory.

“I’ve tolerated your defiance. The frowns. The stubbornness. Even your little habits sneaking off to sulk in the gardens with gods knows who, parading around like you’re above courtship. But that ends now.”

She reached up, smoothed a strand of hair away from your cheek like you were still a child in need of taming.

“You’ll smile. You’ll nod. You’ll become a queen. Because that is the only path left to you.”

You wanted to scream. To curse her. To break something, anything.bInstead, you said nothing.Because you knew what she would do with your rage.

She would use it. Twist it into more chains.

So you left.

You didn’t know where you were going until your feet took you there. The stables were warm with summer air, thick with the scent of straw and the soft sounds of hooves. He was there, of course. He always was, somehow like the world still offered you small mercies.

Megumi looked up as you stepped in. And whatever he saw on your face made his hands still mid-brush.

“What happened?”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t, not without shattering. So you crossed the distance between you. Quiet, slow. Like the weight in your chest made it hard to move.

“I’m to be married,” you said. It came out flat. Like stone dropped into a well.

Megumi’s expression didn’t change right away.

But his silence did.

“To the Duke,” you added, voice thinner now. “Next month.” Still, he said nothing. Just looked at you like he was waiting for a punch that he already knew was coming.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. You weren’t sure what for. For telling him? For meaning it? For wishing it was him?

He finally spoke. “Congratulations.” It felt like a slap. You flinched. “Don’t.” He turned back to the horse, brushing its flank with a little too much pressure.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” you snapped. “Anything but that.” His grip on the brush tightened. “What difference does it make? You were never—”

He stopped.

You stepped closer, fire rising behind your ribs. “Say it.” He didn’t. You hated him for that. You hated how badly you wanted him to.

So you said the cruelest thing you could.

“I wasn’t looking for you.”

Megumi’s head tilted slightly like he’d heard thunder far away. He looked at you then. Really looked.

“I know,” he said. Voice low. Barely there. “But I always looked for you.”

And just like that, you couldn’t breathe.

You hadn’t seen him in days after that.

Not in the gardens.

Not in the cellar.

Not in the halls he used to linger in like the ghosts you knew he didn’t believe in.

And it stung. Worse than your mother’s cruel decree. Worse than the endless fittings for a gown you would never want to wear.

You told yourself it didn’t matter. You were royalty. He was a servant. This, whatever this had become, was always doomed to fracture. It wasn’t love. It couldn’t be.

Except… it was.

And the absence of him made that clearer than any declaration ever could. You found yourself in the garden again alone, for once. The lavender he used to tend had started to wilt slightly. You hated how that made you ache.

He was avoiding you.

You were certain of it. So when you finally saw him three days later, back in the herb cellar, sleeves rolled up, jaw tight you stood in the doorway for too long. You thought maybe he’d look up. Say something. Pretend nothing had changed.

He didn’t.

“You’re ignoring me,” you said flatly.

Megumi didn’t flinch. Didn’t pause. Just kept working like you hadn’t spoken.

You stepped further in, voice sharper. “So that’s it?”

He finally looked up. Not angry. Not cold. Just tired. “I thought it’s what you wanted,” he said. “You made it clear.”

Your heart beat a little too loudly. “I never said—”

“You didn’t have to.” He cut you off, quiet but firm. “You’re going to marry him. You said it yourself. You weren’t looking for me.” The words echoed.

You swallowed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didnt mean for any of this”

He stepped toward you then, all the distance of days collapsing in a breath.

“You can’t say that,” he said. “Not after everything. Not after the books. The laughter. The way you looked at me.”

“I never promised you anything,” you whispered.

“I don’t want a promise,” he said. His voice cracked on the edges raw and bruised. “I just want you to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

He was in front of you now. Closer than he should be. Closer than was safe. “That you feel it too.”

The silence roared between you.

You hated how your throat tightened. How your knees went weak under his gaze.

“I can’t,” you said, but your voice trembled.

“Why not?”

“Because I have to marry him. Because I’ll be queen. Because you’re—”

“Because I’m not him?” he cut in, stepping closer still, his chest nearly brushing yours. “Because I wasn’t born with a title? Because I’m not safe?”

“No because you’re the only thing that ever made me want to stay,” you said, voice cracking open. “And if I admit it, I won’t survive this.”

That stopped him.

Something flickered behind his eyes like the last gasp before a storm hits. Then, softly. Devastatingly

“Too late.”

And he kissed you. Not gently.

It wasn’t the kind of kiss that asked for permission. It was the kind that broke walls. That tasted of every unsaid word and every stolen glance and every night you dreamed of something you couldn’t have.

It was messy and desperate and full of everything you both tried to pretend didn’t burn beneath your skin. When he finally pulled back, breath ragged, forehead resting against yours, he whispered,

“I love you. I’ve tried not to. Gods, I tried. But it’s in me now. Like a fire.” And you whispered back, voice shaking,

“I love you too.”

For a little while, you pretended.

That your marriage wasn’t a month away.

That the crown didn’t dig into your heart.

That the world wasn’t already writing the end of your story without you.

You and Megumi lived in the in-betweens. The hidden folds of the palace no one cared to look too closely at. You met in the garden shed at dusk. In the cellar when the lanterns burned low. Once, in your own chambers, when your handmaidens had been dismissed for the night and he slipped in through the narrow servant’s passage with dirt still on his sleeves.

You always started with books. “I think you’ll like this one,” you murmured, handing him a slim volume with worn leather edges. “It’s old. A fisherman who falls in love with the moon. She waits for him in the tide, but he never makes it back.”

Megumi looked at you, something unreadable in his eyes. “Does she stop waiting?”

“No,” you said, barely above a whisper. “That’s the tragedy.”

Some nights, you’d sit cross-legged in front of him on the floor, guiding his hand over each letter, your fingers brushing his as you corrected the curve of an s. The pads of your thumbs met more than once.

You never pulled away.

“You press too hard,” you said again.

“You say that every time.”

“And you never listen.”

But you were smiling. And so was he.

In the quietest moments, he forgot to look away. He’d stare like you were something he didn’t understand yet, something dangerous and beautiful and already slipping from his grasp.

And when you leaned in one night barely breathing, lips so close your exhales mingled he didn’t stop you. You kissed him first. Soft. Hesitant. Like a secret you weren’t sure you were allowed to speak aloud.He kissed you back like it was the only truth he’d ever believed in.

After that, you stopped pretending so hard.

You still didn’t speak of the wedding.

Still didn’t say the truth.

But your fingers found his in shadowed hallways. You learned where the boards creaked and how to silence your steps.

You pulled him into alcoves and kissed him like time owed you something. He pressed you gently against ivy-covered walls and whispered your name like it hurt to say it out loud.

Once, when he looked tense, shoulders rigid from another failed lesson, you reached up and rubbed the crease between his brows.

“You’re going to age like milk if you keep frowning like that,” you said, teasing.

He huffed. “You’re going to get me executed.”

You leaned closer. “I would die with you.”

And he kissed you again. Harder. Like pretending had finally broken into needing.

These weren’t just stolen moments.

They were all you had.

So you stole one more.

The ballroom glittered like a lie masks of gold and velvet, laughter dulled by wine, and music sharp enough to cut your patience in two.

You stood at the top of the grand stairs, face hidden behind silver filigree, and felt the bile rise in your throat.

You hated them all.

Your engagement party, they called it. A parade of suitors and politicians and carefully staged glances. A celebration of a future you had no part in choosing. The prince stood at the bottom of the

staircase, tall, pristine, hand extended toward you like an order.

Your fingers curled into fists.

You gave him a stiff nod and a brief touch of the hand, you glided past him like smoke, and melted into the crowd.

Let them murmur. Let them whisper about the scowling princess who wouldn't dance with her husband-to-be. You didn’t care.

Because he was here.

You felt him before you saw him.

A flicker of presence like the way your body knows a lightning storm is near. And then he stepped into view, moving through the crowd with careful poise, a silver tray balanced in his gloved hand.

Megumi.

His mask was black and simple, just enough to hide him from everyone else.

But never from you.

You spotted the way his lips pressed thin, the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his eyes locked on you for half a second too long. He was doing everything right, silent, obedient, invisible.

But he was burning.

And gods, so were you.

You didn’t hesitate. You glided to him, plucked a glass of wine from his tray without breaking eye contact, and whispered just loud enough for him to hear,

“You’re the only thing worth looking at in this room.”

His throat bobbed. The mask hid his expression, but you saw the twitch at the corner of his mouth. And something else —something darker.

“You stood close to him,” he said, voice quiet, trembling like held-back thunder.

“Who?”

“The prince.”

You smirked. “I didn’t even see him.”

“Liar.”

You grabbed his hand. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. You led him through the maze of guests, past the music and wine and powdered laughter, into a side hall thick with shadows. Your heart pounded like a war drum.

The door to the garden creaked open. The cold kissed your skin. Roses tangled along iron railings, moonlight pooling like milk across stone paths. He followed you in silence like gravity.

You turned. And he was right there. Breathing hard. Eyes dark behind the mask.

“Say it,” he murmured.

“Say what?”

“That you missed me. That you thought about me when he touched your hand.”

You tore off your mask and reached for his.

And then your mouth was on his with a hunger that shook the leaves from the trees.

He kissed you like a man who had been starving for you. You didn’t just kiss him you devoured him. He groaned into your mouth, hands clutching your waist, then your back, then your hair he couldn’t decide where to hold you because he needed all of you at once.

You gasped. He chased the sound with his mouth, catching your bottom lip between his teeth.

“I dream about this—”

Kiss.

“—and wake up angry it was fake—”

Kiss.

“—but you make it worse. You always make it worse.”

You bit his jaw, tugged him closer. “Let me make it better.” He pulled you into him so hard your feet left the ground. His mouth traced your throat, your collarbone. You were dizzy, drunk on him, on heat and desperation.

“You’re mine,” he said, against your skin.

You nodded, breathless. “Always.” He kissed you again, longer this time, slower like he wanted to memorize your mouth, like he was trying to leave pieces of himself behind.

And it was perfect.

It was everything.

Until it wasn’t.

You didn’t see the shadow behind the hedge.

Didn’t hear the footsteps.

You only heard him gasp but not the good kind.

Then came the sound.

Metal through flesh.

A choked breath.

Your eyes flew open and he was staring at you. Wide-eyed. Mouth parted like he was trying to speak.

Megumi jerked.

Then collapsed.

He stumbled into you, his weight sudden, heavy. And then warmth. Too much warmth.

You looked down.

Red.

Blooming. Spreading. Pouring through the front of his coat like wine from a shattered bottle.

“No,” you breathed, already clutching at him. “No, no, no—” He fell to his knees, dragging you with him. Your arms wrapped around him automatically, holding him up as his head lolled forward, forehead brushing your collarbone.

His breath was ragged. Wet.

You pressed your hands to the wound, panic rising like bile. “You’re okay, Megumi look at me. You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

He smiled soft and broken. “You always… lie so pretty.”

“Shut up,” you choked, your hand trembling over his. “Shut up, I said.”

Your brother stood behind him. Sword gleaming. Mask abandoned. His face was unreadable.

“Youre a disgrace to this family,” he said.

But you weren’t listening.

Megumi’s lips were turning pale. Blood on his teeth. His hand curled in your dress not in pain, but to hold. One last time.

“Tell me it was real,” he rasped.

“Always,” you whispered, cradling his face. “Always you. Even if they crown me a thousand times… it’s only you.”

His body shuddered. Then stilled.

You pressed your forehead to his, desperate to hold the life inside him.

But there was no more heartbeat.

Just silence.

And you sat there, in the dirt and blood and moonlight, holding him like the sun would never rise again.

The garden wept beside you.

Roses withered, vines curled in grief, petals falling like soft sobs. Even the earth beneath you felt hollow, as if the world itself knew what had been stolen from you.

And you… you didn’t scream. You just held him. Until the guards came. Until the blood dried under your fingernails. Until your knees ached from the stone.

They dragged you away. Ripped his body from your arms. You didn’t fight. You didn’t speak. You didn’t eat.

Not for days.

Not until you sat before your mother and father and said, with a voice so calm it chilled the marrow

“I hope the crown rots.”

And then you spoke but only once.

You gave the court everything. The backroom dealings. The arranged assassinations. The hidden debts, the children sold into war, the alliances bought with blood. You wrote it all down. Signed it. Stamped it with your name.

Then sealed it in dozens of letters.

By the time they stopped you, it was too late. The truth was already on the wind. Floating into the streets. Into the hands of the servants. The rebels. The broken.

You didn’t mean to start anything.

You were only trying to make it hurt.

To make them feel a sliver of what they’d taken from you.

But the kingdom began to fracture anyway.

The prince refused to look you in the eye.

Your brother avoided you entirely.

And you?

You wandered.

The palace was too quiet now. The tapestries too red. The gardens too full of memories. You touched the rose bush where he bled once and never again.

Some nights you woke up gasping. Some nights you didn’t sleep at all. And when they finally came for you you weren’t surprised.

A dagger in the dark. A hand across your mouth.

No trial. No last rites.

You died the same way you lived.

With no one listening.

But you didn't care because soon you would be reborn, only more hollow than the last life.

They buried you in secret. Told the people you were exiled. But the truth had already spread like ash. Statues were torn down. Banners slashed.

Your body was laid to rest, but you had died a long time ago.

The weekend starts the way most of Megumi’s bad days do with Nobara in his room, uninvited.

She’s lying sideways across his bed like she pays rent, one leg draped dramatically off the edge, eyes glued to her phone screen. Yuji’s at his desk, also uninvited, clicking through his playlist like this is his home and not, in fact, Megumi’s last sanctuary of peace.

“You’re coming,” Nobara says, not even looking up.

“No, I’m not.”

"Yes," Nobara counters, taking a long, loud sip of her soda. "You've been more emo than usual lately, and frankly? That's saying something."

“You’re coming,” she repeats, drawing out the word like it has extra syllables.

Yuji spins in the desk chair and grins. “Don’t fight it, man. Everyone’s going. Even Maki.”

“Especially Maki,” Nobara adds. “She threatened to bring a taser if Gojo shows up.”

Megumi exhales through his nose.

“Sounds fun.”

“Oh, it’ll be fun,” Yuji says, pulling out his phone. “Drinks, food, maybe a game or two. Kugisaki's already pre-gaming the group chat. She said if you flake again she’s leaking your middle name.”

“You don’t know my middle name.”

“I will find it,” Nobara says, solemn. “And then tattoo it on your forehead.”

He glares at them. “It’s not like you even want me there.”

Nobara finally looks up. “Okay first of all, rude. Second, you’ve been brooding way more than usual and I think your social battery needs a jumpstart.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It does.”

Yuji leans in, voice dropping to a conspiring whisper. “is this about that girl?”

Megumi blinks. “What girl.”

“Oh come on,” Nobara groans, flopping onto her back again. “The one you always leave class with. The one with the stare like she’s reading your entire soul and deciding whether or not to let you live.”

“She’s just like that,” Megumi mutters.

“So you do know who we’re talking about,” Yuji says, triumphant.

“It’s for a project.”

“You said that last time,” Nobara says, grinning now. “But I saw you two outside the library last week. That was not ‘project’ posture.”

Megumi’s ears burn. “What does that mean.”

“It means you looked like someone’s wife just left for war and you were too proud to chase her.”

“She was literally just leaving.”

“You were staring.”

“I was thinking.”

“You don’t do that with your eyes.”

Megumi runs a hand down his face, exhausted already. Then, quieter, “If I go... can I bring someone?”

Both heads snap toward him.

Yuji drops the chair onto all fours with a thud. “Wait you’re actually inviting her?”

“She has a name.”

“Which you haven’t said.”

“Do you like her?” Nobara gasps, already grabbing her phone. “This is groundbreaking.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“I don’t know,” he mutters, pulling out his phone. “She’s just quiet. And kind of... weird.”

“Sounds like someone we know,” Yuji says, pointed.

“It’s just... easier around her,” Megumi admits, like dragging the truth out from under his ribs. “Like we’re both trying not to take up too much space.”

That shuts them up for half a beat.

Then Nobara grins like a knife.

“Text her.”

“I will.”

“Now.”

“I will.”

“She’s gonna say yes,” Yuji says, elbowing him. “No one says no to a house full of emotionally stunted college students and alcohol.”

Megumi ignores them both and opens your contact. There’s not much there. Just a few dry messages. Outline drafts. Notes. Fragments of conversations that always felt like they ended too soon.

He types,

megumi fushiguro

hey. small thing at a friends tomorrow. couple people. chill. you can come if you want might help the project if we… I don’t know. understood each other better.

He stares at it.

Deletes you can come if you want, retypes it. Deletes I don’t know.

Adds a period. Deletes it.

Sends it.

Yuji watches him hit send, then kicks his feet up onto the bed. “You’re so weird when you like people.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Okay, Mr. Understood Each Other Better.”

“Do you want to die.”

“Too late,” Nobara chirps, taking a picture of him. “You just soft-launched her.”

The pan sizzles, onions browning in cheap oil, the smell sticking to your sleeves and something inside your chest. You stir without really thinking, wrist moving in slow, practiced circles. The silence in the kitchen isn’t peaceful it’s just quiet.

You’re alone.

Still.

Your phone buzzes across the counter, screen flashing once, then dimming again.

You let it sit.

The wooden spoon scrapes the bottom of the pan, rhythm steady. You don’t check it right away. There’s no one you’re expecting to hear from.

But something itches at the back of your neck. You set the spoon down. Wipe your hands on the hem of your shirt.

Pick up the phone.

megumi fushiguro

hey. small thing at a friends tomorrow. couple people. chill. you can come if you want might help the project if we… I don’t know. understood each other better.

You stare at it.

The words are stiff, uncertain like they got rewritten too many times. You can feel the edits under his thumbs. The deleted pieces still lingering in the spaces between words.

It’s not a real invitation. Not really.

It’s an excuse. It’s a maybe-I-just-want-you-there dressed up in maybe-this-will-help-our-project.

Your thumb hovers. You type,

you

hey. thanks but i’m not really a party person. hope it’s fun though.

You pause. Re-read it. Feel it already pulling away from you. You think of the conversation from the night he walked you home.

Backspace. All of it.

You type slower this time.

you

sure. send me the address.

Sent.

You exhale. It comes out shaky and soft. You lean back against the counter, phone still in hand, watching the message sit there.

It feels unreal. Not because he invited you.

But because you said yes.

You catch yourself smiling, barely.

“Understood each other better,” you repeat under your breath, a quiet laugh folding in the middle of it. God, he’s so bad at this.

But then again, so are you.

You push off the counter, stir the onions again. They’ve crisped around the edges, the way things do when you forget them for too long.

It’s fine.

You’ll still eat it.

You wonder if he’s waiting on a reply, even now. Wonder if his heart tripped over the Send button the way yours just did.

Wonder what happens next.

Megumi’s still in his room, legs drawn up on the bed, phone abandoned beside him like it betrayed him by delivering vulnerability into the world. Nobara’s finally left.

Yuji’s downstairs making food with the microwave door open, like that makes any difference.

And Megumi’s just… still.

He hasn’t looked at his phone since he hit send. Too much of a risk. Too much of you.

The silence stretches long, long enough that he starts mentally preparing for the no. For the “busy,” the “can’t,” the “maybe next time.”

Not because he thinks youre cruel. Just because youre him. Or close enough. The kind of person who’s spent a little too long learning how to be alone.

The screen lights up.

He doesn’t move right away. Just looks at it.

Then slowly, like it might bite, he reaches over and flips it toward him.

you

sure. send me the address.

It’s short.

Plain.

But Megumi reads it twice. Three times. Like there’s something folded underneath it, something quiet and deliberate and warm in a way he’s not used to.

His chest doesn’t quite ache. Not like earlier not like the café or the sidewalk or the too late realization that you saying his name felt like the edge of remembering something terrible and beautiful at once.

No, this feeling is smaller. Like something soft and unfamiliar settling behind his eyes. A tension he didn’t realize he was holding now gone.

Yuji’s voice echoes from downstairs, “Hey! Do we have any more seaweed snacks or did Nobara eat them all—”

Megumi ignores it. Thumbs over his screen again. Doesn’t reply right away.

Instead, he stares at the text. Thinks about what you must’ve been doing when you sent it. Thinks about your fingers on your phone, maybe hesitating like he had.

You didn’t have to say yes.

But you did.

And even if you show up and say nothing, even if you leave after ten minutes, even if all they do is hover near each other with drinks they don’t finish it’ll mean something.

Because you said yes.

Because you could’ve said no.

His fingers finally move, almost without thinking.

megumi fushiguro

[sends address]

starts at 7. it’s nothing big.

He doesn’t add anything else.

No “cool if you can’t.”

No emoji.

No overthinking this time.

He sets the phone down, lays back across his bed, and closes his eyes. There’s still a weight somewhere in him, but it’s different now.

Like something is starting, and he’s not sure what.

Megumi checks his phone, 6:32 p.m.

He’s not nervous.

Obviously.

He’s just standing in front of his closet like it wronged him personally. His fingers hover over a black hoodie. Then a button up. Then back to the hoodie.

He pulls it out, looks at it, puts it back.

Yuji’s already left texted in the group chat something about picking up chips and maybe beer and maybe not buying either. Nobara replied with a thumbs up and a knife emoji.

Megumi closes the closet door, steps back, then opens it again.

He’s never cared this much about what to wear. Especially not to Yuta’s. It’s just a small get-together. Just people he already knows. Just noise, and drinking, and jokes he’ll probably roll his eyes at.

He drags a hand down his face.

It’s not about the party. It’s not even about them.

It’s about you.

Your text still sits on his phone, read for the twelfth time since he opened it. Just a few words, no punctuation. Still, it hit him harder than it should’ve.

sure. send me the address.

You could’ve said no.

You almost did he could feel it in the silence that lasted just a little too long before the notification came.

And now you’re coming.

To Yuta’s. To him.

He grabs the hoodie again. Then swaps it for a different one. Black on black. Classic. Unassuming. Safe.

Then he changes his mind. Again.

He tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter. That you won’t even notice what he’s wearing. That if anything, you’ll be in the corner like he usually is, hovering near a drink that goes untouched.

Still, he fixes his hair. Pushes the sleeves of his sweatshirt halfway up his forearms. Checks the time.

6:44.

His stomach turns, sharp and quiet. Maybe it’s hunger. Maybe it’s dread. Maybe it’s that you’ll be there, and he won’t know what to say, and you’ll both pretend it’s about the project.

And it won’t be.

He grabs his phone and keys, nearly forgets his charger, then loops back and grabs it anyway. His hands feel too warm. He’s overthinking. He knows it.

And still.

He hesitates at the door.

Exhales. Then leaves.

Nobara drove him, the house is louder than it should be. Not wild just loud. Music hums low from a speaker tucked under the TV, someone’s shouting in the kitchen over whether you can put lime in instant ramen, and there’s already a game of cards happening around the coffee table half the group’s just using it as an excuse to yell.

Megumi steps inside and instantly regrets it.

“Look who actually showed up,” someone calls from the living room. It sounds like Panda.

“Shut up,” Megumi mutters, toeing off his shoes.

There are way more people than he was told. Not strangers, exactly, but not close friends either. He sees Maki in the corner already halfway into a drink, Yuta balancing two pizza boxes, and Inumaki guarding the last seat near the snacks with his whole chest.

It’s crowded. Warm. Smells like cheap beer.

And all he can think is,

She’s going to hate this.

Then, worse,

What if she doesn’t come at all.

He brushes past Yuji, who’s trying (and failing) to connect his phone to the Bluetooth speaker. “It won’t let me rename it,” Yuji says, frowning. “Why is it called ‘Bose Bussy’?’ Who did that?”

Megumi doesn’t answer. He slips into the living room and drops onto the couch nearest to the door like he’s bracing for impact. It’s half empty probably because it’s right by the cold draft from the entrance. He doesn’t care.

His knee starts bouncing.

He checks the time.

7:07.

Not late. Not really. But late enough that his stomach is in knots. Late enough that he’s rethinking everything.

He should’ve warned you. Told you how many people might show. That it wasn’t just Nobara and Yuji. That he didn’t mean “party” in the way it ended up sounding. That the lights would be this dim. That someone brought Cards Against Humanity.

That this isn’t what he wanted you to walk into.

Yuji walks by with a drink and a grin. “You good?”

“Fine.”

“Waiting for your girlfriend?”

Megumi doesn’t look up. “She’s not- ”

“I know, I know.” Yuji makes finger guns. “Project. Totally academic.”

Megumi exhales hard. “I will punch you.”

“Textbook repression,” Yuji mutters, sipping from his red Solo cup. “Tragic.”

He walks off before Megumi can throw a pillow at him.

The couch creaks under him when he shifts. His arms fold tight across his chest. His eyes flick to the door again.

Still closed.

He’s not anxious.

Just aware.

Painfully aware.

Every time it doesn’t open, he imagines you reading the text and regretting saying yes. Imagines yoy getting halfway here and turning around. Imagines you stepping in, seeing all of this, and deciding you dont belong.

His fingers tap against his thigh.

7:10.

He’s not counting.

But he’s waiting.

The door opens with a creak too soft to cut through the noise, but Megumi hears it anyway.

Maybe he’s just tuned to it every sound, every shift, every flicker of movement behind the crowd. Or maybe it’s just you.

You step in like you’ve done this a thousand times. Like houses filled with too much noise and too little air don’t phase you.

And they don’t, not really.

You’ve lived through worse.

Megumi’s breath catches anyway.

You’re not overdressed. You’re not dressed up, really. But your hair’s done more than usual. And there’s something careful about the way you’ve done your makeup, like you were trying but didn’t want it to look like trying. The kind of effort you put in when you’re not sure what something means, but you want to be ready if it ends up meaning something anyway.

And he notices. All of it.

You look different here. Not better. Just… softer. Less guarded than you are in class or across a library table. Like something about the warmth in the air has rounded your edges, or maybe just let them rest for a little while.

You spot him almost immediately half sunken into the couch like he was preparing to be let down. And you smile. Not wide. Not flashy.

Just… easy.

“Sorry I’m late,” you say, stepping in closer. “Had to deal with something.”

It’s casual.

But Megumi’s throat sticks on the response. His fingers twitch where they’re folded under his arm. Something unknots in his chest, a slow exhale he didn’t realize he was holding.

You showed.

And you’re not retreating from the crowd. You’re not shrinking into a corner. You’re here fully and he realizes then, it wasn’t the people you were afraid of.

It was getting close.

He sits up straighter without meaning to. “It’s fine,” he says, voice low, awkward. He looks away like that’ll help. “You’re not… that late.”

Your smile shifts slightly, like you noticed something in his voice but decided not to call it out. “Thanks for inviting me.”

He doesn’t answer. Just nods, eyes flicking back to you once more.

Yeah.

He likes this version of you. Not because you’re prettier like this though he thinks maybe you are but because you seem more like yourself.

Or maybe he’s just seeing you fully for the first time without all your defenses.

You both make your way through the party, towards a quiet corner in the kitchen.

The kitchen’s quieter than the rest of the house warm light, hum of the fridge, laughter muffled behind closed doors. It’s not silent, not exactly, but the edges of noise are dulled out here. Softer. Like the world is taking a breath.

You lean against the counter, twisting the condensation off a bottle of water . You haven’t had a real conversation since walking through the door just nods and polite smiles and something between eye contact and avoidance.

Megumi hovers at the threshold like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to be here. Or maybe like he’s waiting to be told to leave.

“You okay?” you ask, voice light.

He shrugs, then steps in. “Too many people.”

You nod.

It’s simple. But it lands somewhere quiet between you, like a mutual unspoken agreement to hide out here until the party swallows itself whole.

He leans a hip against the counter beside you, arms folded. You glance at him from the side, and your gaze lingers a little longer than it should. He’s not looking at you not yet. He’s watching the sink, the tile, anything else.

“Do you drink?” you ask.

His head turns. “Not really.”

“Not really yes or not really no?”

He blinks. “Not really no.”

You smile small, tilted. “I’ll make you something. Nothing strong.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” Your hands are already moving, reaching past him to open a cabinet. He shifts out of the way, barely. His sleeve brushes yours.

You don’t look at him when you say it too soft, almost to yourself, “Let’s see if I remember how to make it…”

The words hang there, quiet and strange. Not something most people would think twice about. But Megumi’s eyes flick toward you, like the phrasing caught him off-guard.

He doesn’t ask what you meant.

You don’t explain.

You gather what you need from the cluttered kitchen vodka, soda water, a splash of citrus, something sweet. It’s instinctual. You don’t think. You don’t have to.

Your hands remember.

They always have.

Even when your head forgets the rest, your body still knows how to stir, how to pour, how to garnish something simple until it tastes like memory.

In another life your sixth, just before this one. You stood behind a bar in a city that never slept. Your hands moved like this every night. Efficient. Gentle. Tired.

And he used to come in, night after night even when you told him not too.

That version of him was older. Harder. Wore tired eyes like it was stitched into his skin. You tried not to care. Kept your distance. Told yourself he was just another regular.

But he always sat at the far end, where the light barely reached, only during your shift of course. Always asked for something soft not bitter, not sweet. Just quiet. Something to drink slowly while the night passed him by.

You used to make him this exact drink and he would always try to talk to you.

Even when you told yourself to stop.

Even when you wanted him to leave.

Even when it hurt to look at him, knowing he wouldn’t last.

And he didn't last, he died violently on the way to the bar, on his way to you.

You place the finished glass in front of him now, this version of him, without ceremony.

He picks it up, sniffs it like it might bite him. “What is it?”

“Something light,” you say. “Just try it.”

He sips.

His brows lift, just slightly. “This is… actually good.”

You roll your eyes.

“I didn’t think you’d be into mixology.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

He takes another sip. Slower, this time. His shoulders loosen.

You pour yourself a little of the same more out of habit than anything and lean against the opposite counter. Your cup clinks softly against the edge of the sink. The moment stretches.

He’s watching you now, quietly. Like he’s seeing something in you he hasn’t before.

“I’ve had this before,” he says suddenly, voice low.

Your fingers pause around your glass.

“I don’t know where,” he adds quickly, like he didn’t mean to say it aloud. “It just… feels familiar.”

You smile, but there’s no humor in it. Just something bittersweet curling under your skin.

“Maybe you have.”

He stares at you for another second too long before dropping his gaze. Takes another sip like that’ll wash down the ache in his throat.

You both drink in silence for a while after that. It’s not awkward but its fragile.

Like something’s blooming here, and neither of you are sure if you want it to.

The alcohol doesn’t hit you of course it doesn’t. You’ve lived too many lives, built too much tolerance. But it hits him. Not all at once, but slowly like warmth curling into his bloodstream, loosening the knot behind his spine.

He laughs at something you say actually laughs and it startles you. Like hearing a new sound in an old room.

He’s softer like this. A little looser in the way he leans toward you. The quiet in his body doesn’t feel like walls anymore. It feels like something unraveling.

Your fingers graze when you reach for the same lime wedge. He doesn’t pull back.

Neither do you.

Megumi smiles, slow and a little sleepy. You don’t see that smile on him often. It suits him more than you’d like to admit.

The kitchen feels warmer now. Dim and still. The music from the other room muffled by doors and distance. Here, in this pocket of quiet, you feel the weight of a hundred unspoken things pressing against your heart.

You don’t say any of them.

Neither does he.

You’re not sure when it happens when the rest of the party fades out. The laughter, the music, the clinking of bottle sit all blurs into the background. Here in the kitchen, it’s just the two of you. A little drunk. A little too close.

You top off your drink slowly, the bottle light now in your hand. Megumi watches, then tilts his glass in your direction with a half smile.

"Another?" he asks, voice rougher, looser around the edges.

You glance at his glass. "Didn't peg you for a lightweight."

"I'm not," he says quickly too quickly and then winces, like he heard himself.

You raise a brow. "Mm-hmm."

He sets his glass down beside yours, closer than he needs to. The backs of your hands brush.

You don't flinch.

"Just... don't usually drink" he mumbles, like it makes sense.

Megumi downs the last sip of his drink and sets the glass on the counter a little too hard.

“youre really good at making drinks,” he says, blinking down at the glass like it surprised him.

You raise an eyebrow. “You sound shocked.”

“I am,” he admits. “I thought you were more... water bottle and no alcohol lady.”

You snort, reaching for the bottle behind him. “Wow. Thanks.”

“No no, I meant it in a nice way.”

“That I give off water bottle energy?”

He nods solemnly. “Like a mysterious, kind of scary hydration witch”

You break into quiet laughter, and it’s easy. Effortless. The kind that slips out without permission. He watches it bloom across your face like it’s something rare.

“Another?” you ask, already moving to pour.

He nods a little too fast. “Yeah. Please.”

You mix it without looking this time, fingers moving like muscle memory.

You feel his eyes on you the whole time. Not leering, watching. Like you might disappear if he looks away too long.

You hand him the drink, and your fingers graze warm skin, calloused fingertips.

He doesn’t move back. If anything, he leans a little closer. Just enough that you catch the faint scent of his cologne faint, clean, and already a little drowned by alcohol.

“You’re, um…” he pauses, then clears his throat, like the words were sticking. “You’re good at this. The drink thing.”

You tilt your head. “You already said that.”

“Right,” he mutters, eyes darting down. “Just. Reconfirming.”

You sip your own glass and hide your smile behind the rim. He takes another long drink, eyes still on you, and then without warning his hand reaches up and brushes something behind your ear. A stray hair, maybe. Or an excuse.

You freeze for a heartbeat.

So does he.

His fingers linger for a second too long before he drops them back to his side.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “It was... in your face.”

“You’re drunk,” you say, but it comes out more amused than accusing.

He shrugs with a crooked grin. “You made me.”

“Don’t blame me for your terrible alcohol tolerance.”

“I’m not terrible,” he says, but the way he’s swaying slightly says otherwise. “Just... slightly... emotionally compromised.”

You snort again, and he leans in closer, emboldened by the sound. He’s warm all over now shoulder brushing yours, knees nearly touching.

“You always this funny,” he asks, “or is it just ‘cause I’m here?”

You glance at him from under your lashes. “Are you trying to flirt with me right now?”

“I—” he hesitates, visibly flustered. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell. Everything’s kinda spinning.”

You bite back a laugh, watching the way he’s looking at you like you’re the only solid thing left in the room.

He reaches for the counter and misjudges the distance, catching himself with a palm flat beside your hip. His face ends up closer than it probably should be eyes glassy, cheeks flushed. You could step back.

But you don’t.

His gaze flickers to your mouth. Lingers.

“You’re staring,” you whisper.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Okay, but I’m doing it respectfully.”

You laugh again, and something in him melts. Like your voice is the only anchor keeping him from slipping away completely.

You rest your glass on the counter beside his. Lean in just enough that your shoulder presses into his chest, testing the weight of him beside you.

He leans right back.

There’s no shame in it no hesitation. Just him, warm and tipsy and clinging to your presence like it means more than either of you will admit out loud.

Your hand drifts toward his without meaning to. Fingers brushing, knuckles grazing. You think you might stop. You don’t.

And he doesn’t pull away.

“You’re really close,” you murmur.

“I know,” he says. “Let me have this for a second.”

You should pull back.

You don’t.

Because this, this moment it’s stupid and simple and golden. It’s just two people in a too warm kitchen, giggling like the world hasn’t broken them yet.

He laughs too hard at your jokes. He touches without thinking. He looks at you like you’ve already said yes to something he hasn’t asked.

And you, you let him.

Because it’s easier this way. To pretend, just for now, that you’re not aching.

That there’s no past, no tragedy, no wisteria in your lungs.

Just this.

Just him.

“Woah, what the hell,” a voice cuts through the quiet. “You’re, like… dangerously good at that.”

You and Megumi both turn toward the doorway Maki’s standing there with a red cup in hand, brow raised. Panda lumbers up behind her, visibly impressed.

“You bartending now?” Maki asks, strolling in and nodding toward the half finished drink in Megumi’s hand.

“She made that?” Panda leans over, eyes widening. “You got any more of whatever that is? I’ll pay.”

You laugh, startled by the attention. “It’s not that serious.”

“It is now,” Maki says, stepping in fully. “You’ve officially made Fushiguro not look like he wants to die at a party. That’s a miracle.”

Megumi glares at her. “I’m fine.”

“You were sulking in a kitchen last time” Maki points out.

“I was hydrating,” he mumbles, taking another sip.

Before you can respond, Panda claps his hands. “Alright, bartender. Impress me.”

You roll your eyes but reach for the shaker again. “Fine. Just one.”

But it’s not just one.

Yuji appears halfway through your second drink with an eager “What’s going on in here?” followed by a “Yo, can you make that thing where it lights on fire?”

“I’m not trying to get banned from the house,” you reply, but you’re already laughing, already pulling out another glass. Nobara’s close behind, dragging Yuta with her, both watching you with intrigue as you flick your wrist and pour with flair.

Someone puts music on again, a little louder this time. Your hands move instinctively flipping the shaker, balancing bottles on your palm, garnishing with quick twists of citrus and suddenly the kitchen isn’t just quieter than the rest of the house.

It’s alive.

You’re laughing.

Freer than you’ve been all week. Megumi watches from the corner of the counter, arms crossed, chin dipped. His glass is empty, but he doesn’t reach for a refill. Doesn’t interrupt. He just… watches.

Your smile keeps tugging wider with every trick. You flick an ice cube off your wrist into a cup and grin when it lands perfectly.

You’re surrounded now. Not smothered, but lit up.

Laughing in a way he’s never seen. It’s loud and effortless and real, and for a second, Megumi forgets the drink in his hand, forgets the knot in his stomach, forgets the music bleeding in from the other room.

Because you’re happy.

And it should be enough.

But it’s not.

He shifts his weight, pulling back from the counter slightly. Watches as Maki tries to mimic your pour and fails miserably, how you double over laughing, hand catching her arm so she doesn’t spill.

His chest aches with something stupid. Something warm and sour and quiet.

He liked you before everyone else saw this part of you.

The soft bartender version, the teasing smile just for him, the moment that felt like maybe it belonged to the two of you alone.

Now you’re here shining.

And he’s not the only one who noticed.

Someone hands you a drink. You pretend to sip it, laughing when Nobara makes a joke at your expense. Megumi sees your eyes flick toward him, just once.

Just for a second.

And it steadies something in him. Just barely.

Still, he stays tucked in the edge of the kitchen, quiet and brooding and a little too flushed. He looks down into his glass, then back up at you.

He wants to say something. Pull you aside. Find another quiet corner, just for a few more minutes.

Instead, he mutters to no one in particular,

“They’re not even that good.”

“I heard that,” you call over the music, eyes narrowing playfully. He shrugs, mouth twitching like he’s not drunk enough to hide how much he wants your attention again.

You toss a lime wedge at him.

He catches it. Barely.

And he smiles.

Just a little.

You see it. He knows you do. You don’t say anything, but your gaze lingers just long enough to count.

He tucks the lime wedge into his empty glass and looks at you like maybe, just maybe, he’ll get another minute alone with you before the night ends.

And if he doesn’t?

Well.

He’ll just have to try harder.

The party fizzles out the way fire does when you’re too tired to feed it.

The music’s barely a whisper now. Panda’s asleep against the fridge. Someone’s trying to scrape pizza cheese off the couch cushions, probably Yuta. And Megumi’s still planted in the same spot you left him hoodie bunched at the collar, cheeks pink, fingers loosely curled around a half-empty water bottle, the one that you gave him.

You’ve sobered up completely.

He very much hasn’t.

You cross the room and stand in front of him. “Hey.”

His eyes lift to meet yours, slow and glassy. “Mm?”

“You got a ride?”

He frowns a little. “Nobara left.” You glance around. Yuji’s gone too. So is Maki. A lot of people, actually. The air feels thinner, like the house itself is exhaling.

You reach for your coat. “Come on. I’ll walk you.”

Megumi blinks. “You walked here?”

You nod. “It’s not far. I’m sober.”

“You’d walk me home?”

“I’m not leaving you here to fall asleep.”

He opens his mouth to argue. Then stops. “That’s fair.”

You offer your hand, and he takes it without hesitation his fingers curling around yours like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He wobbles slightly when he stands, and your free hand comes up instinctively to steady his chest.

He doesn’t pull back.

You both step outside. The night is cool, just enough to make the air feel crisp against your skin. The streets are quiet. Lamps glowing low. Distant dog barking. That kind of calm you only get after midnight where the world feels like it’s waiting for you to say something first.

You let go of his hand, but after a few seconds, he nudges your arm with his elbow.

“You okay?” you ask.

He shrugs. “You stopped holding my hand.”

You glance at him, surprised.

He looks away, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

Your chest warms. You offer your hand again without a word.

He takes it immediately.

For a while, you just walk like that hand in hand, steps easy, his thumb brushing over your knuckles like it doesn’t even register that he’s doing it. He leans into you when he stumbles a little, mutters something about uneven sidewalks, and doesn’t let go.

“You’re quiet,” you say softly.

“M’just thinking.”

“About?”

A beat.

“You. Probably.”

You smile without meaning to. “That’s very honest of you.”

“Drunk,” he reminds you.

“Right.”

Another beat.

Then, quieter, “Still true, though.”

You look at him, and he’s already watching you eyes a little too wide, a little too soft, like he’s trying to memorize something he’s not ready to lose yet.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you murmur.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m someone you know.”

He presses his lips together. Doesn’t answer.

But he holds your hand tighter.

It takes maybe fifteen minutes to get to his place, but it feels shorter. Or maybe just softer. Like time has rounded out its corners for the two of you.

You stop at the base of the stairs leading up to his building. He doesn’t let go right away.

His hand lingers in yours.

“Thanks,” he says, voice low. “For walking me.”

“Thanks for not faceplanting into the sidewalk.”

He chuckles quiet, loose, a little breathless. “Barely.”

You hesitate. “You gonna be okay getting inside?”

He nods. “I’ll crawl if I have to.”

You don’t move.

Neither does he.

For a second, it just hangs there that strange, drunken closeness. The part where neither of you want to leave, even though the door’s right there. Even though this is where normal people say goodbye.

Megumi shifts a little. Then says, too quietly, “I liked… being with you tonight.”

You blink.

He swallows. “Not just the drinks. Or the...jokes. Just. You.”

The words hit somewhere low in your chest. You cover it with a smile. “You’re going to be mortified in the morning.”

He grins, lazy and a little crooked. “Probably.”

“But for what it’s worth…” You squeeze his hand. “I liked being with you too.”

“Go inside,” you say gently.

He nods, slowly. Lets go of your hand like it hurts. Steps back. Looks like he wants to say something else, then just

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Megumi.”

He lingers at the top step. Watches you the whole way down the street until you’re out of sight.

Still smiling.

Still warm.

And for the first time in a long time, the ache inside you goes quiet.