You didn’t notice the security cameras following you. You didn’t notice the quiet, calculating eyes watching you from rooftops for weeks.

All you noticed was that your grocery bag tore in the street and someone caught the apples before they hit the pavement.

Blond hair. Lazy grin. Sunglasses even though it was cloudy.

“Careful,” he said, winking like he did this kind of thing every day, “gravity has it out for you.”

You laughed, because people didn’t just say stuff like that. Not in real life.

He walked you home. Told you his name was Keigo- a name he never revealed easily. Flirted shamelessly. You thought he was joking when he asked for your number. When he texted that night, you nearly fell off your couch.

You couldn’t believe it. It was like you were someone he chose.

But the part you didn’t know?

He didn’t choose you.

The Hero Safety Commission did.

Hawks could play a thousand roles — the prodigy, the carefree hero, the loyal weapon they molded him into — but a boyfriend? Despite his history of hookups, that was new even for him.

The HSC whispered the cover story into his ear like a command:

Make her fall. Blend into civilian life and gain information. Win their trust. No emotional attachment.

Some folder somewhere had your picture paperclipped to the front — average civilian, low profile, socially likable, safe cover. They picked you because no one would question it. Because no one would ever expect you to be part of something bigger.

Easy. He’s done worse.

But that night, a week later since you two had met, the moment you opened your front door, everything went to hell.

You stood there in pajama shorts and a cereal bowl in your hand… eyebrows raised like someone just told you aliens were real. No undercover alias. No hero status. Just… a normal, human girl blinking at Japan’s #2 hero on her porch like he was a lost delivery guy.

“Uh…” you mumbled, pointing your spoon at him. “Did Postmates start using pro heroes or something?”

And then over the next months, you discovered: He was fast. He was funny. He ate way too much chicken.

And he looked at you like you were a secret he was excited to keep.

He would watch you talk like it was the first real thing he’d seen in months.

You had no idea that every time your phone buzzed with a text from him, it was because the Commission told him to check in.

And you had absolutely no clue that somewhere between the first date he was ordered to arrange and the fifth one you excitedly planned yourself…

…Keigo forgot where the act ended and where wanting you began.

He wasn’t supposed to get attached.

He wasn’t supposed to care.

And he definitely wasn’t supposed to panic the night he realized that if the Commission ever told him to walk away from you—

He wouldn’t know how.