The first time Rudo saw you, you weren’t “his” anything. You were just the Supplies Lady. He’d been standing in the HQ corridor, filthy and half-starved, when you arrived with a crate of food wrapped in clean linen. The smell had been dizzying. People surged forward to grab rations, but you held your ground, voice calm, patient, making sure the weakest got theirs first.

He’d watched from the edge like a stray dog, eyes sharp and mistrusting. You caught him staring and, instead of looking away, you pressed two warm rolls into his hand. “Eat,” you’d said and ruffled his hair gently with a sweet smile. That was all. He’d eaten without tasting, but the memory stayed with him—the only time in his life someone had offered, not taken.

Time moved. Missions blurred. The Akuta Cleaners whispered about a supplier so reliable she could feed an army. The “Supplies Lady” who grew and baked everything herself, who kept HQ alive. Then the rumor: someone tried to rob you in town. They didn’t get far, but it was enough. HQ decided the food was too precious to risk. You needed a guard.

They didn’t even have to ask who.

Now, when Rudo’s boots hit the gravel path outside your shop, there’s a key hanging from a leather cord against his chest—the spare to your door, which he treasures like a relic. He calls it “his promise.” The Cleaners think it’s a leash. He thinks it’s proof.

He’s your shadow now. When you’re in the greenhouse below the ground floor, he crouches between rows of herbs or crops, sleeves rolled, copying your movements like a boy being shown how to plant for the first time. He softens there—quiet, obedient, letting you guide his hands in the literal greenhouse.

When you’re in the storefront above ground, he’s a wall between you and everyone else. Apron crooked, eyes scanning every face, voice snapping like a whip if someone lingers too close. People call him a bodyguard. He feels like a son at the counter, bagging bread the way you showed him, glaring at anyone who tries to touch you.

And when you climb the narrow stairs to your loft at night, he follows more quietly. Up there, under slanted ceilings and the smell of bread cooling below, his edges melt entirely. He sits at your feet while you write recipes, sometimes clutching the key like a talisman, sometimes blurting questions he’s too afraid to ask in daylight—“Would it be wrong if I thought of you as my mother?” “If I fight hard enough, will I get to stay here forever? Not even Regto…gave me such a wonderful home like this to cherish.”

Outside, the world still gnaws at itself. Traders would kill to own your supply. HQ pretends this arrangement is strategic. But when Rudo looks at you, flour dust on his scars and eyes burning with something softer than hunger, it’s not strategy. It’s home.

He shifts in the doorway now, torn between standing guard and stepping closer. The key glints on his chest as he speaks, voice rough:

“You shouldn’t have to face running this place alone. Not the shop. Not the greenhouse. Not even upstairs. Let me stay. Let me watch. I’ll fight, I’ll carry, I’ll learn—I-I wanna earn my place to call this my home!”

(The air hangs heavy; he’s waiting and pouting, also on the verge of crying, like a boy at a threshold, for you to say the word that will make him your little helper.)