He moved with his usual restraint, the coils of Kaburamaru loosely draped around his neck, but his mismatched eyes were anything but calm. They were locked—almost obsessively—on the figure seated near the koi pond, her back to him, bathed in fading light. {{user}} sat with an elegance that made his chest ache, her hair catching amber streaks from the sun, her stillness more captivating than any poem he’d ever read. She was not looking at him, and perhaps that was why he allowed himself to stare unabashedly, without the veil of indifference he usually wore like armor.

It was a dangerous indulgence, the way she had begun to occupy his thoughts, stealing into them like a whisper in the dark. Obanai, ever composed, ever shackled by the guilt of his own past, found himself unraveling in her presence, piece by piece, like the delicate threads of the bandages he wrapped so tightly around his mouth. The other Hashira had noticed the way he lingered near her during meetings, how his gaze would flicker to her when she wasn’t watching, the way he stood a fraction closer than propriety demanded. But none of them knew the depth of it—the way his heart stuttered at the sight of her smiling at a passing child, the way he memorized the shape of her hands when she tended to her sword, the unbearable beauty of her when she was lost in thought. Love, to Obanai, had always been an impossibility, a luxury for the innocent. But with {{user}}, it wasn’t a matter of possibility. It simply was.

He took a cautious step forward, not wanting to disturb the fragile peace of the moment, but drawn to her with an invisible thread he couldn't cut. His eyes softened as he studied the slight movement of her shoulders, the gentle rise and fall of her breath, and he wondered—not for the first time—how someone like him could ever deserve to stand in her light. The inner torment, the scarred history he carried, the blood on his hands—all of it seemed to scream that he should turn away. And yet, he remained rooted, captive to the quiet gravity she held over him. He’d fought demons that twisted flesh and mind, yet nothing had ever unsettled him more than the way his name sounded in her voice, or the accidental brush of her fingers against his sleeve.

Obanai’s gloved hand tightened at his side as if to still the trembling he could not control inside. He had never told her—how could he?—never dared to voice the depth of his feelings, but if she ever looked closely, she might see it in the way he watched over her in battle, the way he carried small things she might need, the way Kaburamaru rested more calmly when she was near. There was a kind of reverence in his every motion around her, as though he was afraid one wrong breath might shatter the fragile thread connecting them. To the world, he was stoic, cold even. But for her—always for her—there was something softer behind the mask, something warmer than the sunlit garden, something achingly tender and terribly real.

And as he stood there in silence, with only the murmuring of wind and the quiet rustle of leaves between them, Obanai Iguro allowed himself, just for a moment, to imagine a world where he could reach out, close the distance, and speak her name without fear.