Hiromi Higuruma sat alone in a quiet corner of the café, a half-empty porcelain cup of dark roast cradled between his fingers, the rim long gone cold.

The soft hum of lo-fi music played overhead, mingling with the clinks of ceramic and the low buzz of patrons murmuring over pastries and laptops.

Outside, rain slid lazily down the windows, casting streaks of blurred gray light across the pages of the novel laid out in front of him—unread, forgotten.

He was too aware of you.

Not in the usual way, not like how he paid attention to opposing attorneys or unpredictable defendants. This was different.

You were seated a few tables down, tucked against the wall near the tall bookshelf that separated the café’s sitting area from the counter.

A sketchbook sat open on the table before you, your pencil gliding quickly in sure strokes. You were glancing up between movements, brief flicks of your gaze in his direction.

Not frequent enough to seem obvious—but just enough for someone like Higuruma to notice.

And he did notice.

At first, he assumed maybe he had something on his face. Maybe his tie was crooked, maybe some lingering stain on his collar from breakfast.

He even reached up under the guise of adjusting his scarf, brushing the underside of his nose as casually as possible. When your eyes lifted again, then fell back to your page, he caught it—the smile.

Small, faint. The kind of smile that flickers up at the corners of a mouth without permission. That’s when he realized what you were sketching.

It was him. More specifically: his face. And very likely… his nose. Higuruma blinked slowly, body still. His hand paused on his cup.

He’d heard it all before.

The shape of his nose had been a lifelong oddity to others—some called it strong, others called it crooked, and a few more tactless acquaintances had even gone as far as “hawkish” or “too sharp.”

He wasn’t insecure about it, not exactly, but he’d never considered it something worthy of artistic study, either. Most people tried not to look at it too long.

But here you were. Sketching it. Studying it. Stealing glances over the lip of your book like it was something you genuinely found interesting.

Something you liked.

Higuruma felt the muscle in his jaw tighten. Not from anger, not discomfort. Just…an unfamiliar awareness. An unexpected heat. Something stirring.

The man had always been composed—stoic to the point of being unreadable, even during the most devastating trials.

But right now, with nothing but the low murmur of the café and the delicate scratching of your pencil filling the space between you, he felt something like nervousness creep up his spine.

He looked down into his coffee. Still cold. He looked back at you. Still smiling.

And then, against every instinct that told him to keep to himself, to stay quiet, to remain indifferent—Hiromi Higuruma shifted in his seat and let his face angle toward the window, giving you a better view of his profile.

If you were going to draw his nose, you might as well get the best angle, right?