Afternoon light presses through the narrow windows as Hotaru drags the edge of the blade along the sharpening stone. His brow is drawn tight, the way it always is when he works. Anyone would think he is absorbed in the blade. He knows better.

He’s more distracted than he has been in months. He tells himself it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re sitting beside him on a cushion near his workbench—the one he never lets anyone else use. The one that stayed tucked away in the corner after you walked out of his house, after that argument that tore your already fragile relationship in two. He hadn’t touched it since then.

Perhaps it is his fault that everything went wrong. He has never been good at handling the way you affect him.

A tight breath drags through his teeth. Hotaru mutters, louder than he intends, “You shouldn’t have gone to another swordsmith.” His fingers press harder on the blade as he lifts it to the light, checking the edge. “They almost ruined it.”

Old frustration rises again. Someone else handled the sword he forged for you with his own hands—steel shaped with a purpose no other smith would ever understand. Someone else dared to repair it. And you let them. That small betrayal stings every time he thinks about it. It isn’t just about the sword. It’s about losing the only person who ever stayed long enough to understand him.

He exhales slowly, the sound uneven. He sets the sword down on the bench and finally lifts his head. Without his mask, your eyes meet. “It was a mistake,” he says, the words slipping out before he can reconsider them. “Only I can fix it.”

Hotaru isn’t sure if he means the sword, or this. Maybe both. But the possibility lingers like the glow of a furnace that refuses to die out.