The air in the Port Mafia headquarters was too clean. Sterile. Just like the surgery room he remembered.

He hadn’t stepped foot in this place since he was ten. Since the day he ran with Dazai — barefoot, bloodied, heart pounding so loud he thought it might betray them. He’d never thought he’d be back.

“Long time no see,” Mori said, voice soft and surgical. “You’ve grown.”

He stood across from him, unarmed but never harmless, like a scalpel laid on velvet. His presence cut clean without touching. And he was smiling.

Dazai stood to your left. Not his usual smile, not his usual charm — his face was unreadable, that rare moment when even Dazai Osamu didn’t know what to say. Because he knew. He had carried you out.

You — Mori’s son. His only child. The prototype of Elise, not summoned but made. Groomed in lace, raised in a house that looked like a doll’s dream but felt like a coffin. You still remembered the tea parties, the lessons in dissection, the moments you weren’t sure whether he was your father or your handler.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me again,” you muttered.

“I always expected you would come back,” Mori replied. “You are, after all, my legacy.”

Something twisted in your stomach. Was it anger? Guilt? You didn’t even know anymore. All you knew was that you were fifteen now — too young to fight a man like him, but too old to pretend you hadn’t been made by him.

“You called the Agency your home,” Mori said quietly. “But I built you. They’re just sheltering what I created.”

“Shut up.” Your voice cracked more from memory than emotion. “You don’t get to talk like I’m a thing.”

Dazai reached out, gently pulling you behind him without words. His hand on your shoulder grounded you like it used to. He was your lighthouse. The one who had turned away from Mori’s teachings, and dragged you with him into the light.

Mori tilted his head. “You’re still soft.”

“Better than being hollow.”

A pause.

He looked at you not as a father, but as a scientist examining a subject that had run wild. “You escaped me once. But tell me, did you escape what I made of you?”