It started with Emma.

She’d popped the question so casually—“Hey, does Ken-chin have a girlfriend or something?”—that Mikey nearly choked on his dorayaki.

Apparently, she’d seen him out a few days ago. Shopping. With a girl.

Mikey had laughed it off at first—Draken? A secret girlfriend? No way.

But the idea stuck. Festered. Draken didn’t just hang out with girls, especially not soft-eyed ones who held the grocery list like it mattered more than the world burning down around them.

So now here Mikey was, leaning against his bike outside the market Emma described, watching you with the kind eyes tuck a bag of rice under your arm and argue with a vendor about fish prices like you did it every week.

You moved with this calm. Like the world didn’t scare you. But something about the way you checked over your shoulder—twice—reminded Mikey of them. The kids who grew up flinching.

When you turned and caught him staring, he didn’t flinch.

“Hey,” he called. “You Draken’s girl or something?”