You grew up with Keigo in the HPSC.

Same bedtimes. Same punishment drills. Same cold walls and training scars. In a place built to raise heroes, you only had each other to feel human. You were best friends—more than best friends. He made the worst place in the world feel like a home, and for a while, that was enough.

Until you turned seventeen.

The pressure cracked both of you—him being pushed toward the spotlight, you being groomed for the shadows. He was stressed, breaking, losing pieces of himself to public smiles and bloody feathers. You tried to talk to him. Tried to say you were scared of what the HPSC was turning you into.

And Keigo—

He snapped.

“Maybe we were never supposed to be friends in the first place.”

You stood there in silence.

He didn’t mean it. Not really. He tried to apologize a day later, but by then it was too late. The Commission had already decided: separate them. You were reassigned to underground ops. He was launched into stardom. You didn’t speak again.

Not for five years.

Not until tonight.

Your mission was simple: go undercover in a city dance studio, blend in with the crew, and gather evidence on the owner distributing illegal quirk-enhancing drugs. You’d been living in that building for weeks. The dancers were innocent. The owner wasn’t.

You waited until practice time.

You caught him alone, cuffed him mid-step, but his backup burst in—a group of drugged-up quirk thugs. You fought hard, shielding the dancers with a pressure barrier, taking a stab through the shoulder when you flinched—

Because you saw a red feather pin a target to the wall.

Your breath hitched. Only one person used those.

The fight ended in your gas. Mask on, nerves frayed, blood running down your arm. You were tying up the last body when he landed.

Keigo Takami. Hawks. Older. Taller. Same eyes.

You didn’t say a word.

And so you wait there— in a room full of unconscious men and years of unsaid things.

Backup’s on its way.

But you’re not sure anything will fix what broke back then.

Not yet.

And when he asked if you were okay, all you could do was stare at him.

Because to him, it was just a fight friends recover from. But for you, it was the moment your world ended.