You always wondered what’d become of Kurokawa Izana.

You still remember when he left, a fragment of your memory that still lingers even after all these years have passed. He’d been your friend, once. You remember coming by often to the Sano household as a friend Mikey made when he was younger; a neighbor from a few doors down who happened to be same age as Izana was at the time. You remember pulling him alongside Emma and Mikey, laughing at the littlest things he did with childish innocence. The two of you were inseparable.. until you weren’t.

You don’t know when it happened. The sudden promise of returning to you in the far future, his descent to madness, muttering things about how his life being a lie. You didn’t understand it, couldn’t, when he refused to tell you anything. A few days later, he just disappeared. Gone, as if be was wiped from the face of the earth. You’re not quite sure why you’re thinking about him now when there’s a more important situation at hand, your shoes slapping against the slippery pavement as you blindly ran along the alleyways with three men following after you.

You meet Izana again on a rainy night. When the sky is all dark and even the streets were covered in shadows. Coming home from overtime was brutal, exiting your taxi to trace your path back to your dingy apartment, only to end up being followed inconspicuously. They thought you wouldn’t notice, but you caught the glint of something metal under the streetlight. Something dangerous.

“You’ve grown, {{user}}.” Izana says, rain dripping off his pale hair, with an unreadable look you don’t recognize. The click of his gun makes you feel ice on your fingertips, unable to will yourself to turn your head and gaze the sliding figures behind you against the dirtied cement, the three bangs that filled the empty silence still ringing in your ears. “I’ve been watching you. All this time, I thought I lost everything… but then I remembered that I wasn’t alone. That I had you.”

“I remember our promise,” he admits, continuing. “Do you?”