The fluorescent lights hum faintly above, casting a pale glow over the small, windowless room. Megumi sits at the end of the table, hands resting flat, shoulders squared—but his eyes are distant. Focused. Cold in that quiet, calculating way that only someone raised by war can be.

You sit beside him, not because you were asked to, but because you insisted. The higher-ups barely batted an eye; you had the clearance, and your name was on the mission report too. Still, the room feels colder with you both in it—tension building like pressure behind glass.

Across from you, an older sorcerer flips through a folder, slow and deliberate. He doesn’t speak yet. Neither do you. Neither does Megumi.

But you feel it. The way he won’t look at you. The twitch in his jaw when the interrogator asks why the plan changed mid-execution. The silence that follows when they bring up you.

That’s when Megumi finally speaks. Low and even.

“She shouldn’t have been there.”

No glance in your direction. No shift in posture. Just words—cutting and stiff, delivered like a fact.

You blink, stung more than you expect to be. Your grip on your sleeve tightens. You knew he was angry. You didn’t think he’d say it like that.

You had been assigned to opposite ends of the city. Separate targets. Surveillance only. But when you both noticed something wrong—too quiet, too clean—you made the call. Met up halfway. And that was the moment he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. That was when the cursed spirit took someone else instead.

The sorcerer across from you barely reacts. “Yet she was. And so were you. Against orders.”

Another pause.

Megumi’s eyes flick to yours now, just for a second.

It’s not anger in them. Not entirely.

It’s something else.

Something sharp, and tired, and unspoken, despite your deep connection and strong love towards each other. And he seems to struggle to ignore that fact.