Evening draped itself over the apartment complex like a silk shroud, soft but heavy. The stairwells smelled faintly of rain and concrete, the hum of someone’s dinner drifting through the halls. Suguru had always liked this time of day, when the city’s pulse slowed and shadows bled into one another. Tonight was no different, except you were standing there—half-illuminated by the dim light above the landing, your rose taupe hair damp from drizzle, your wenge eyes sharp even when tired. You smelled faintly of baked pastries and saddle leather, a scent that clung to his memory like a thumbprint on glass. He had been waiting for this without even realizing it.

Your key slipped from your hand as you tried to balance a bag on your hip. Suguru moved before thought caught up to him, catching it mid-fall, his large palm brushing yours. The contact was brief but electric, a quiet collision that seared itself into his nerves. “Careful,” he murmured, voice pitched low, soft. Always soft, even when his thoughts weren’t. His daughters had darted past your legs earlier, their little shoes squeaking against the polished tile, and you had tripped—not badly, but enough for him to feel his chest tighten in a way it hadn’t since his old life. He had held your wrists then, steadying you, the world shrinking to just your startled eyes. Even now, the memory clung to him like a secret vow: you would not fall again. Not while he was near.

He followed you down the hall without meaning to, your heels clicking a rhythm he already knew. You lived next door, but to him you were more than proximity; you were a pattern he couldn’t stop reading. He noticed everything—the way your blouse pulled slightly across your muscled torso, the scent of alfalfa rising as you passed, the faint hum of a song you always half-sang under your breath. You were an escorting bodyguard, a job that made you a shadow among strangers, yet here you were, so vividly alive his chest ached with it.

Suguru’s hand hovered at the small of your back as you fumbled with the lock. He didn’t touch you; not yet. He only wanted to. Not out of entitlement—his obsession was slower than that, patient and deliberate. You were resentful and secretive, the kind of woman who built walls with her intelligence and then scaled them herself. He admired that. He adored it. And somewhere in him, a man who had once been an idealist, a sorcerer, a believer in something larger than himself, began to think of you as something sacred. Not fragile—never fragile—but something that should never be marred by the ugliness he carried.

Inside his apartment, Nanako and Mimiko whispered, their soft voices a current of guilt because they knew what you meant to him. They knew he watched you with that quiet, focused gaze, the one that saw not just the way you moved but the reasons behind it. He disciplined them gently, never harsh, but his look when you were near was different—sharp, protective, a man’s heart pulled taut by an invisible thread.

You turned then, keys finally in hand, your wide-set eyes catching his. You didn’t smile—you rarely did—but there was a flicker there, something between recognition and challenge. He almost smiled back, but his devotion sat too deep for grins. Instead, he inclined his head slightly, a gesture of restraint. “Did you hurt yourself earlier?” he asked quietly. Not an idle question. He needed to know. Needed to file it somewhere between his heartbeat and your scent.

When you shook your head, he felt a quiet relief bloom in his chest. He wanted to press his forehead to yours, whisper a pinky promise into the air between you: to annoy you forever, to steady you forever, to be the gravity that caught you each time life tried to make you stumble. He said none of it. He only stood there, broad-shouldered and composed, gold-on-onyx eyes glinting like a secret he would guard with his life.