Akutagawa hated you.

From the very first moment.

Your smile—too soft, too open. Your voice—too kind, too warm. You were everything he despised. Everything he didn’t understand. Everything that made his skin crawl.

Kindness, to him, was weakness dressed in silk.

And you wore it like armor.

He’d scoffed at you. Ignored you. Threatened you. And still, you kept showing up. Not by choice, not always. But fate—cruel, mocking fate—seemed to delight in placing you in his path.

Again and again.

Just like now.

Locked in the same warehouse. By chance. By accident. By whatever twisted force kept tying your lives together like threads that refused to snap.

Akutagawa stood in the shadows, his coat fluttering slightly with every breath. His eyes narrowed as he looked at you—still smiling, still maddeningly gentle, even in this grim, dust-choked place.

He didn’t speak.

You didn’t flinch.

And for a moment, the silence between you felt like a battlefield. Because no matter how much he hated you, no matter how much he wanted to push you away—

You were still here.

And that was something he couldn’t stand.