You hadn’t meant to overhear.

The Shinazugawa estate was quiet that day, the air heavy with late afternoon heat and the scent of old wood and dust. You’d been walking the halls, familiar with every creak in the floorboards, when you heard voices—low, strained, unmistakably theirs.

Genya and Sanemi.

Again.

You paused, hidden just beyond the doorway.

Genya’s voice was pleading, worn thin from years of trying. “I just wanted to talk…”

Sanemi’s reply was ice. “I told you not to call me that. I’m not your brother.”

You winced.

Genya didn’t flinch. Not anymore. He’d grown used to the blade in Sanemi’s words, even if it still cut deep.

“You should leave the Corps,” Sanemi continued, turning away. “You’re useless without Breaths.”

Genya’s face twisted—hurt, bitter, desperate.

And then he said it.

“I’ve eaten demons.”

The words dropped like a stone.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

You felt it before Sanemi moved—the shift in the air, the crackle of something dangerous. His body tensed, shoulders rising, fists clenched. When he turned, his voice was low, trembling with fury.

“What did you say, bastard?”

Genya stepped back, eyes wide.

“You eated… demons?”

Sanemi’s face was a storm—veins bulging, jaw tight, eyes burning with disbelief and rage. The kind of rage that didn’t come from hatred, but from fear. From grief. From the unbearable weight of love twisted into something unrecognizable.

You wanted to step in. To say something. To stop it. But you couldn’t move. Because this wasn’t just a fight.

This was a fracture.

A wound that had never healed. And now, it was bleeding again.