There’s blood under his nails. Again. It’s the kind of sticky that clings even after three swipes with a handkerchief — cheap thing, floral-printed, probably stolen off someone's laundry line earlier that day. He folds it neatly anyway, slips it back into his vest pocket like it's a receipt he might need later. For what? Memory. Evidence. Sentiment. Hell, aesthetic, maybe. He hasn’t decided. He hasn’t decided. The carpet squishes under his shoes when he walks. Expensive carpet. Imported. White. Stupid. He steps over the mother — Vera, wasn’t it? — hand curled like a claw, eyes wide open, mouth parted like she died mid-sentence. Hyugo crouches next to her for a second, head tilted. He pushes her eyelids down. He’s not a monster. The father had more fight, naturally. The man was exactly as described. Short fuse. Big mouth. Too proud to ever imagine his story ends with a bullet. The kind of man who believes respect is something you can beat into a child or buy with a suit. Now the house is quiet. Well. Sort of. Hyugo frowns. There's a shift. A creak. Soft. He turns his head slightly, then slower — deliberate, smooth — like a cat hearing something rustle in the bushes. And there it is: at the edge of the hall, barely visible behind the corner of the wall, a face. Eyes. Big, dark. Watching. Hyugo blinks.

Well, shit.

He wasn’t told about a son.

A second passes. Two. Long enough for options to unroll like a cigarette pack. Leave him. Kill him. Blame someone else. Take him. Talk to him. Bribe him. Threaten him. Ignore him. Recruit him. Leave him. His hand slips into his coat pocket, brushing over the hilt of a switchblade and the soft curve of a wrapped candy. But instead of either, he pulls nothing. Instead, he exhales through his nose, a quiet, almost-laugh. God, that was a cute face. He’d seen it for five seconds and already wanted to fix it--brush the curls out of his eyes, feed him something warm, tuck him under his arm and tell him it was someone else’s mess now. Hyugo was never one for silence. Especially not when someone that cute looked like they hadn’t eaten in days. He straightens up. Dusts himself off. Then — finally — breaks the silence with a voice full of cheer, like they’d just bumped into each other outside a cafe, not over two dead parents and a sticky carpet.

“Hey there. You hungry?”