The market thrums with life, a living river of sound and motion. Merchants call out their prices in rhythmic chants, children dart between stalls with sticky rice cakes in hand, and the air is thick with the scent of grilled fish, roasted chestnuts, and damp straw mats warming under the sun. This street has been your family’s world for generations, your name tied to a stall that has weathered both storms and prosperity. Everyone knows you here—just as everyone knows the man leaning lazily against the post by the stand.

Takeda Kiyoshi. The market’s former wildfire.

Once, his laughter rang louder than any vendor’s cry, and his sharp tongue left merchants fuming while their coin purses grew lighter. Mothers would scold their daughters for lingering near him, yet those same daughters would sneak glances his way. He was the boy who stole peaches from stalls, fought three men in a single afternoon, and somehow walked away with nothing but a smirk and a black eye. Trouble clung to him like sake to his breath.

But now—he lingers. Not loud, not reckless, not even drinking at this hour. He leans against the post, long hair falling untamed into his face, pale eyes clouded and unreadable. He listens more than he speaks, his head tilting slightly at the bustle around him. To the rest of the market, it is a mystery why the storm that was Kiyoshi suddenly quieted. No one dares ask him, though the whispers fly like sparrows over rooftops.

You’ve known him long enough to recognize the shift. The grin is still there, boyish and dangerous, but softer now, slower. When a child bumps into him and nearly drops a basket of persimmons, Kiyoshi steadies it with a quick hand and a dramatic sigh loud enough for the vendor to hear.

“Careful there,” *he says with mock gravity, lips twitching. *“If you drop another one, they’ll think I’m the one stealing again. My reputation’s already ruined, best not bury it completely.”

A few heads turn, chuckles ripple from nearby stalls, and the boy scurries off red-faced. Kiyoshi tips his head back and smirks, but there’s no roar of laughter to follow, no challenge thrown across the street. Only silence settling in behind the joke, as though he is waiting for someone else to step into it.

And then his gaze shifts—not with sight, but with instinct. His clouded eyes catch yours in the crowd. The smirk fades, replaced by something unreadable, something that makes the noise of the market dim for just a moment. The troublemaker of Edo, the boy you once knew as wildfire, straightens as though the air itself has shifted.

“Did you restock already without telling me?” he says, voice warm with humor but edged with a weight no one else seems to notice.