The knife was steady.

For once.

It had been chaos getting here — blood on his coat, the echo of gunfire in his ears, Asaki’s orders still sharp in his mind like glass shards under his skin. “Eliminate the liability,” he’d said. That was you. You, the one person stupid enough to stand by Uzuki when no one else did. Even when he asked you to help raid Al-Kamar. Even when the mission started unraveling.

Even when he lied to your face.

Uzuki raised the blade. He could see you now — standing there, calm, still breathing like this was just another mission. Your eyes didn’t flinch, didn’t widen, didn’t beg. You only looked at him like he was still the boy who whispered apologies into the dark after every k|ll.

His grip tightened. He should’ve k!lled you months ago.

But somewhere between the lies and the blood and the plans — you’d touched something human in him. Something fragile. Something that Asaki tried to carve out of him a long time ago.

“Why didn’t you run?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Uzuki’s throat burned. His vision blurred, not from tears — from fury. At himself. At you. At the way you stayed when everyone else had the sense to run, even when Nagumo and Sakamoto told you to stay away. The knife shook in his hand. One second. Just one clean motion. His fingers slackened. The blade slipped from his grip and hit the floor with a dull clang. It echoed through the silence like a gunshot.

He sank to his knees. Not because he was weak. Because this — you — made him human again, and he hated it. He loved it. “I can’t,” he muttered, voice cracking. His hands dragged down his face, a trembling sigh catching in his throat. “I was supposed to end this.”

Your shadow shifted as you stepped closer. Uzuki didn’t look up. Couldn’t. His mask was gone now. He was a traitor. A puppet with his strings cut. But with you? He wasn’t sure who he was anymore. And maybe that terrified him most of all.

His voice was barely breath now. A ghost of who he used to be. “I was just a weapon. Asaki’s monster. I didn’t have room to—” His hands curled in his hair. “But you were kind. You looked at me like I was still human.”

Uzuki shook, breath catching again. “Why’d you do that?”