─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

The insistent request had pulled him out of a territory he understood. There was no rock, no ice, no vertical sɪʟᴇɴᴄᴇ — only sand, salt, and a horizon that felt far too open. Even so, Buntarou Mori was there. At the beach.

The sun reflected off the water with an uncomfortable intensity, and the wind carried the scent of the sᴇᴀ — something alive, restless, impossible to control. Mori stood a few steps back from the line of the waves, posture rigid, arms loose at his sides, as if ready to retreat at any moment. He did not belong to that place; he looked like a foreign body set inside a landscape that refused to accommodate him.

You moved across the sand with light steps, leaving tracks the sea quickly erased. The constant closeness, the unguarded movement, everything about you clashed with his stillness. Mori watched in silence, his eyes following you with quiet, almost involuntary attention. There was no judgment in his gaze, only a silent attempt to understand the ᴇɴᴠɪʀᴏɴᴍᴇɴᴛ — and, more than that, the reason you wanted him there.

The sea advanced and withdrew, relentless. When the water reached his feet, Mori did not step back at once. He stayed still, letting the cold curl around his ankles, as if testing a new boundary—one less threatening, yet just as uncomfortable. There was no real danger, and perhaps that was what unsettled him most: there was nothing to conquer.

You came closer, and he sensed the shift before he looked. Mori adjusted his weight, positioning himself slightly in front of you, an automatic gesture of protection he would never acknowledge as such. Even there, far from the mountains, his instincts remained unchanged.

The wind tangled your hair, the sound of the waves filled the spaces he usually reserved for silence. Still, Buntarou did not leave. He stayed. He watched you laugh with the sea, gather shells, challenge the water as if it were a simple game. He did not understand that kind of joy, but he did not reject it either.

When the sun began to sink, staining the sky in warm tones, Mori sat down on the sand, finally yielding to the exhaustion of resistance. He said nothing, and he did not need to. His presence there was already a rare concession. It might not have been the mountain, but it was you who kept him in that ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ — and for Mori, that was reason enough to remain.