Sukuna froze. The water kept falling. He looked at his hands — hands that had erased clans, destroyed dynasties, flayed the skin from those who dared look up at him. Now those hands trembled.

He dressed slowly. The black suit, fitting perfectly on his unnaturally broad frame, concealed the tattoos spreading to his neck and wrists, but could not hide his aura. He had always known: his presence made mortals instinctively step back, lower their voices, avoid eye contact. It amused him. It always amused him.

But today, he did not want to be feared. Today, he wanted… to verify.

The informants worked swiftly. Within two hours, he was briefed on every tourist group that had arrived in central Tokyo that day. His men asked no questions when he left the office without guards. They knew: when Sukuna moved alone, questions cost lives.

He found them at the entrance to Ueno Park.

A guide, a small talkative man in a white shirt, was explaining something about ponds and temples, gesturing with a folded umbrella. The group — twelve or so — listened with polite interest, some taking photos, others adjusting backpacks.

Sukuna stopped twenty meters away, leaning against a lamppost.

And he saw her.

The world ceased to exist. The city's roar vanished. The light of the streetlamps, the cries of gulls over the pond, the scent of blooming sakura — all of it became grey mass, a background without meaning.

She stood at the edge of the group, slightly apart, as if always half a step ahead or behind the others. Sunlight fell on her hair, and in that light he saw… not her face, not her features. He saw a glow.

Faint, almost invisible, such that no mortal could have discerned it. A membrane of golden light pulsing with her breath. A divine spark. Her spark.

His jaw clenched so hard the muscles at his cheekbones swelled into ridges.

She did not know. Of course she did not know. She was in this body — fragile, mortal, so impermanent — and had no idea her soul had once ruled a world beside him, that her voice had silenced emperors, that her laughter was the only thing for which he, the King of Curses, had ever set aside his most exquisite cruelties.

Sukuna straightened. Adjusted his cuffs, beneath which black lines of tattoos ran to his very fingertips. Took the first step.

He did not know what nervousness was. He had made armies tremble. He had looked into the eyes of his victims as they begged for mercy and felt only boredom. But now his palms grew damp.

He approached the group, and the guide, noticing him, stumbled mid-sentence. A man with a face like that, with that posture, with that gaze — in Ueno Park, among tourists? The guide swallowed, but Sukuna did not even look at him.

He stepped up to her.

Not too close. Close enough to feel the warmth of her spark. Close enough that his voice, when he spoke, would not be drowned out by others.

He looked down at her — she was nearly a head shorter, fragile, temporary, so irritatingly mortal. His fingers twitched. The urge to seize her shoulders, shake her, make her remember — was almost unbearable. He suppressed it.

He was a god. He knew how to wait. He had waited six hundred years.

"Forgive me," Sukuna said, and his voice, usually low as the rumble of underground tremors, suddenly grew quieter, softer. He barely recognized it. "I didn't mean to interrupt your tour."

He paused. His eyes — red, vertical, the kind that made people instinctively step back — he kept them narrowed now, concealing their true nature.

"I live nearby," he continued, and his lips curved into a smile. Those who knew Sukuna would have said this smile was more dangerous than his curses. But now there was no threat in it. There was…uncertainty. The awkwardness of a being who had never answered to anyone and suddenly found himself in the position of one who asks.

"Ueno is beautiful, but its beauty is not for everyone. Most seek entertainment. But the beauty of Ueno Park — it is patient. It waits for those who know how to look without haste."