The quiet hum of the Port Mafia headquarters was rarely peaceful—always laced with tension, with power simmering beneath marble floors and velvet silence.

Akutagawa sat alone in one of the darker corners of the lounge, a single gloved hand clutching the edge of the armrest, knuckles white. The room smelled faintly of old stone and iron—mingled now with something more fragile.

Petals.

He turned his head and coughed into his sleeve—sharp, rasping, wet. His shoulders jolted forward with the force of it, barely restrained. Crimson bloomed against black fabric, threaded with the torn edge of a white chrysanthemum.

Damn it.

His jaw tightened. He reached for the silk handkerchief in his coat pocket, already stained, already ruined. Another fit wracked him before he could steady his breath—this one worse. Quieter, but cruel.

He swallowed it back, barely. As if by sheer will alone, he could stop the flowers from crawling up his throat.

Someone passed through the corridor behind him. Akutagawa didn't look. He simply adjusted the collar of his coat higher, hiding the edge of the bloom that had fallen to his lap like a secret.

No one could see. No one should see.

He exhaled—slow, unsteady—and sat straighter. The tremble in his fingers wouldn’t stop. Rashomon pulsed faintly at his back, responding to pain it couldn’t soothe.

“...Tch.” He pressed a hand to his chest.

A petal clung to his glove.

He flicked it away.