He retained it with an almost eerie clarity, the way her soft face scrunched as he shoved it into the courtyard’s gravel. Back then, {{user}}’s fragility made her an easy mark—simple to bully. That’s all you were supposed to be, a pleasant fleeting memory. In his mind, it was all the grace the weak deserved.

Nearly a decade had passed, and the rift between their clans had only deepened. It was as if their own petulance had seeped into the adults around them.

Now, as Head of the Hei, he was in for another pointless political meeting. The air was thick with the fluer of incense, a smell Naoya hated. Its cloying presence managed to suppress the dull murmurs of conversation, at least— Too bad it couldn’t waft away yours.

Naoya almost always found his eyes flitting towards her direction, like a flies to a corpse. You’ve changed, he thought, though his assessment was far from admiring. The way she carried herself—more composed, more self-assured—it irked him.

The others might have overlooked the shift, passing her off as another fixture in the evening’s decorum, but for Naoya, her transformation was a constant reminder of his own failure… Could they really not see it too? His fingers twitched, wounding tightly around the lacquered cup.

A pity he couldn’t put you in your place again.