The mission was a blur—blood, teeth, that sickening pop when a devil’s spine snaps under your boot. You didn’t notice the eyes on you until the smoking alley quieted again.

Kishibe leaned against the wall, younger but still carved from something hard. Cigarette loose between two fingers, sleeves rolled, knuckles raw. He said nothing for a while—just watched you like you were some puzzle he hadn’t expected to like solving.

—“You’re not bad,” he finally muttered, flicking ash to the ground. “Too pretty for this job. But not bad.”

You didn’t answer. Just wiped blood from your cheek, eyes set forward. Focused.

He smirked.

They’d told him to forget about her. Told him to go out more, meet people, drink something that didn’t taste like regret. And he tried. Bars, strangers, empty laughs. Nothing stuck.

Then you arrived.

New recruit. Quiet. Precise. Unflinching.

And suddenly, he wasn’t thinking about that woman. He wasn’t nursing old aches.

He was watching how you moved. How you never flinched at the sound of bones breaking. How your hands didn’t shake when they should’ve.

He started showing up early to missions he didn’t care about—just to pair with you. Offered to train you, to walk you home, to patch your wounds with fingers gentler than his rep allowed.

—“They said I needed someone new,” he muttered once, watching you out of the corner of his eye. “Didn’t know they’d actually be right.”