The room was dim. Too dim for someone who lived in light.

The concrete walls around him were bare—unadorned, unapologetic. Cold. Much like the man chained in the center of it all. Shouta Aizawa sat with his back against the far wall, legs stretched out in front of him, ankles shackled with thick iron cuffs that scraped every time he moved. His arms were bound behind him—shoulders tense, muscles corded tight beneath the torn fabric of his capture gear.

His head was bowed, that wild mess of black hair falling in front of his face like a curtain, hiding the sharpness in his eyes. But he was awake. Oh, he was watching. Breathing shallow. Calculating. Waiting.

The room reeked of you.

The faintest trace of your cologne, the metallic scent of your tools, the electric tension in the air from wherever you’d last stood. You weren’t here yet, but you had been. Maybe minutes ago. Maybe seconds. And he felt it.

One of the hanging lightbulbs buzzed above him, flickering in and out like it couldn’t decide whether or not to witness the scene.

Aizawa’s jaw clenched. Blood crusted near his temple—dried from a previous blow, not fresh enough to sting, but just enough to make blinking annoying. His goggles were gone. His scarf stripped. But the fire in him?

Untouched.

He shifted, ever so slightly, testing the restraints again. The sound echoed through the silence like a warning shot. He didn’t grunt. Didn’t wince. Didn’t scream.

If you were watching through a camera feed—and oh, you probably were—he didn’t offer you the satisfaction of a breakdown. Just stillness. Just coiled, vicious silence. The kind that came before something broke.

He didn’t speak your name, didn’t curse you. But he was thinking it. Holding it like a blade in his mind, ready to plunge it into your chest the second you got close enough.