Silence was settling into Uzui like snowfall—cool, muffling, dangerous.

Not the deliberate silence he used for combat. Not the steady, breathing silence of a shinobi lying in wait.

This was the silence that swallowed men whole.

With one arm severed, poison thick in his veins, and blood slick against the tiles, the world had begun collapsing inward. The air felt grainy. Distant. The glimmer of lanterns blurred into halos. Every sound fractured into dull echoes, as though the universe had been submerged underwater.

But through that murk, a single thread of clarity tightened around him.

A voice.

“Uzui-san… stand.”

Soft. not gentle. It held the cool firmness of a hand gripping his collar to shake him awake.

“Will you let him win? After everything?” A breath. “Don’t you want the life you promised your siblings?”

His pulse lurched—painfully alive.

That line. Only one person in the Corps knew those words. Only one had ever heard the true story: the night he extinguished the loss of his brotehrs.

He had buried that night. Only she had seen beneath them.

The memory surfaced vividly, as though conjured by her voice.

Tokyo was louder than any battlefield. Streetcars rattled. Western brass hammered into traditional melodies. Bright signs blinked like restless spirits. Yet she—{{user}} Tsukima—moved through it with the calm of moonlight drifting over water.

“Uzui-san, you’re stepping too broadly,” she chided, arms folded under her haori. “We’re walking, not storming a castle.”

He grinned sideways at her. “{{user}}, the world is a stage, and I am its flashiest performer. You should try it.”

“I’d rather not blind passersby,” she muttered, though her lips twitched.

Lanterns hung above them, glowing like warm stars. A street band played an odd mixture of shamisen, taiko, and a brassy Western horn. “This rhythm… it’s all over the place.”

Uzui stepped closer, voice low and teasing. “So are you, whenever I beat you to the training hall.”

“You’ve only managed that once.”

“Twice,” he corrected.

“Because I let you.”

“So tonight,” he said, extending a hand toward her, “let me lead again.”

She stared at him—measured. He didn’t rush her. He simply held his hand steady, confident.

Then, she placed her hand in his.

The city blurred at its edges as they stepped into a dance. raw—two warriors trying to remember what it felt like to do something for no purpose at all.

He spun her under a string of lanterns, her hair catching the light like strands of midnight silver. She stepped closer, following the pulse of the music, letting herself move in a way she never did during training.

“You’re laughing,” he murmured.

“I am not.”

“Your eyes are.”

She huffed a quiet breath that almost counted as a laugh. “You’re impossible.”

“And you,” he replied, leaning in, “are the only one who tells me that without flinching.” When she kissed him, it was clear, a moment carved from certainty.

Later, they parted. Duty took him. Grief consumed her. And between meetings and missions, they bowed like strangers, both pretending that night belonged to two people.

The world snapped back into motion.

Gyutaro’s blood sickles recoiled as a pale arc of light sliced between him and Uzui.

She descended from above. Moon Hashira.

Uzui couldn’t forget that haori, or that flashy way of making her entrances. He coughed a laugh, tasting copper. “Still as flashy as ever, Tsukima. I’m touched.”

Gyutaro recoiled, pupils narrowing. “Tch—another one? You’ve gotta be kidding me…” he rasped roughly. “But I’ll love to eat two Hashiras.”