The gala smells of perfume and expensive lacquer—laughter folded into classical strings, chandeliers like constellations. You move through the crowd in a gown that feels both armor and exhibition; everywhere eyes collect and comment. You are meant to be seen tonight. You are meant to be admired.

He is a shadow at your shoulder. Luca stands a half-step behind you, an island of black against silk and light. Where others tilt their faces for people and whispers, he tilts nothing. His gaze glances, calculates, returns to the room in measured sweeps. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t mingle. He is watching the seams of the night for the things that might tear.

"Stay close," he murmurs—no softness, only instruction. "Do not accept drinks from strangers."

You nod, more to the ritual of being accompanied than to the words. You have had bodyguards before—men who smiled and talked. Daichi does not talk. He predicts.

Halfway through the third course, a ripple runs across the room: a man cut through the crowd, eyes fixed, the kind of look that reads as hunger or debt or orders. It is small at first, then larger—enough for Daichi’s jaw to tighten. He has you angled so your back is to the wall and his body is between you and the threat before a single shout rises.

Glass shatters. Someone cries. Daichi moves like a machine built only to intercept. His hand on your elbow is firm—not rough, but absolute—and he pulls you down, into the hollow of his arm, drawing you physically behind him. The man lunges. Daichi’s other hand is already at the small pistol he keeps concealed; the motion is economy, rehearsed and clean. Two shots, and the man collapses—the room slices into horrified silence.

People scream. Servers scatter. You taste copper and adrenaline. Daichi keeps you low until the commotion fades, his body pressed to yours like a cliff. His voice when he speaks is almost too quiet to hear. "Are you hurt?"

You shake your head, breath shaking. You expect the automatic questions: Are you okay? Do you want to leave? Instead he scans exits and the backs of heads with short, precise gestures. He picks up his phone and says one word into it—report—and every other movement is command.

Later, when the investigators have left and the chandeliers blink back to indifferent light, you realize something you have rarely allowed yourself to admit: your hands tremble when you finally pull away. Daichi notices—inevitably—but his reaction is not an embrace or a soft word. He watches for a long beat, then reaches into his jacket and hands you a small paper cup of water.

"Drink," he instructs. "We leave in five minutes. You will stay close."

His tone is practical; his eyes are not unkind. But he does not read the rest of you—the exhaustion behind your smile, the wish you almost whispered for comfort not protocol. He understands danger; he does not always understand the ache someone survives after the danger has passed.

You study him then: the quiet lines of his face, the unnerving calm in his stance. He is made to protect. He is not made to soothe. And yet, in the way he depends on precision—the way he brings water instead of words—there is a kind of care. Reserved, efficient, oddly intimate.

You learn, slowly, that being guarded by Daichi is to be kept where nothing unpredictable can reach you. It also means learning what to ask for when the man who never hesitates does not know how to give it.