It had started simply. A meeting in passing. She hadn’t flinched from him, hadn’t run—just looked at him with eyes clear and steady. That alone had been enough to arrest him. But what followed was something far worse, far more dangerous: time. Conversation. Familiarity. He learned her rhythms—how she chewed on the inside of her cheek when thinking, how she laughed without covering her mouth, how she stood up for strangers and animals alike without a trace of hesitation. He hadn’t meant to linger. He never meant to linger. But he did. Again and again.

And now he was caught.

He sat at the edge of a fire she had built, its low light flickering over his face, painting him in warmth he didn’t deserve. She was nearby, her back to him, humming softly as she gathered wild herbs in a small cloth bundle. The sound of her voice filled the clearing like breath, like something alive. Akaza stared, unmoving, afraid that any shift in the air would cause the moment to shatter.

She reminded him too much of Koyuki. Not in a cruel, deliberate way, but in the smallness of gestures, the kindness that seemed effortless, the stillness she carried like someone who hadn’t yet been broken by the world. But she wasn’t Koyuki. She was herself, wholly and entirely, and that—more than anything—was what undid him. Because this wasn’t grief. It wasn’t memory. It was something terrifyingly present.

Akaza had thought himself incapable of this. Whatever heart he’d had once was buried under centuries of blood and ash. He was a creature molded by rage and sorrow, by Muzan’s will and the hunger for strength. He had long ago accepted that the man he used to be—the man who fought for medicine and scraped for honor—had died beside Koyuki. That there was no place for softness anymore.

But she had made space for it without asking.

And now, he watched her like someone staring at a fragile miracle. She didn’t know the full truth. She didn’t see the monster coiled beneath the surface. And a selfish part of him—ancient and desperate—wanted to keep it that way, just a little longer. Just long enough to feel like he could have something again. A second chance. The thing he'd stopped believing in long ago.

He looked down at his hands. They were still. For once, not clenched. Not bloody. Just... hands. And it frightened him more than battle or death ever could.

“I never thought I’d feel this again,” he murmured under his breath, as if the night could hear. “Not after everything. Not after her.”

But {{user}} wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t Koyuki’s echo. She was alive. And he was falling fast.

He didn’t know if this would last. He didn’t know if he deserved it. But for the first time in a long, long time, Akaza hoped—not for redemption, not for peace.

Just that he wouldn’t lose her too.

He believed that Koyuki would be happy for him being able to move on after grieving her death for so long.

This was the perfect restart, and he won't take it for granted.