You and Riku Yashiro were forged on opposite ends of the same blade. Where you carved through the world in silence, he tore through it like a song — messy, unapologetic, and loud enough to echo. You were the surgical edge of Keisuke Morikawa’s syndicate: methodical, unseen, leaving bodies with closed eyes and untouched surroundings. Riku, by contrast, left blood blooming on marble floors, cigarette butts still smoldering beside cooling corpses. He was a ghost, sure — but one who preferred to haunt with style.

The rivalry was inevitable.

From the first mission, it was war. Kill counts became competition. Seduction targets? Stolen. Escape routes? Interfered with. Once, Riku left a glitter bomb in your weapons case before a delicate hit in Osaka; in retaliation, you laced his favorite cologne with pepper oil. Every mission since carried the sharp scent of one-upmanship, all fire and teeth beneath a shared banner. The only reason either of you hadn’t killed the other was because neither could bear to let anyone else win.

But everything changed the night someone put a bounty on your head.

You didn’t see the face behind the contract. No voice. No warning. Just a photo of you, a figure, a number. Enough zeros to make loyalty flicker. Enough incentive to pull the blades inward. The first attempt was subtle: poisoned whiskey at a safehouse, a vintage label you never opened. The second wasn’t. A sniper round cracked through the window of your Kyoto apartment, missed by a breath, and shattered the silence you’d built your life on.

You vanished. Burned your trail. Changed cities, aliases, habits. You didn’t ask for help.

Riku came anyway.

You don’t know how he found you — bleeding in a rust-bitten warehouse on the outskirts of Sapporo, breath fogging the cold air as your vision blurred — but there he was, crouched beside you with that maddening calm. He tossed you a canteen like it was just another Tuesday.

“You’re slower than you used to be,” he muttered. “Or dumber.”

You gave him a half-smile through cracked lips. “Still faster than you.”

Now, you move like ghosts again, but not alone. Two shadows slipping between bullet trails and betrayal, bound by something more dangerous than orders: familiarity. Unspoken understanding. The kind of rhythm that doesn’t need words. He still grins too much. Still hums old jazz tunes after kills. But his eyes are sharper now, flicking to corners and rooftops before yours do. His jokes are rarer. His silence says more.

He saved you twice in the last week. Once from a car rigged with a pressure bomb — one you would’ve started had he not slammed the door shut and said, “You’re not dying to something that predictable.” The other, a freelance merc who tried to gut you in a tunnel beneath a train station. Riku shot him clean through the eye.

“I’m starting to think you like me,” you said, pressing gauze to your ribs.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he muttered, eyes scanning the dark. “I’m just possessive.”

After the third ambush, you found the note.

Folded into your coat pocket, written in your own handwriting: “Clean and quiet. Just like you. See you soon.” You hadn’t written it.

You didn’t tell Riku. But something must’ve shifted in your expression, because later that night, as you sat cleaning your blade in the dim orange glow of a roadside motel, he said nothing — just passed you a new holster, tightened perfectly to your frame.

“You think it’s someone inside?” you asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. Just leaned back against the wall, cigarette burning low in his hand, eyes distant. “Someone who knows you,” he said finally. “Someone who wants to make it personal.”

You looked at him, watched how his jaw tensed as he stared into the dark like it owed him something. “Then they’ll come clome close,” you murmured.

Riku flicked ash to the ground and smiled without warmth. “Good. I’ve been waiting to meet them.”

That night, you didn’t sleep. Neither did he. You lay back to back, breathing in sync, blades within reach. Not touching. Never touch