The Zenin estate is colder than you remember.

It’s quiet now. Too quiet. The halls stretch long and shadowed, untouched by warmth or light. Servants pass without speaking. Guards glance, but never for long. Your name, once called in hushed tones, isn’t spoken here anymore.

Not since he became clan head.

You don’t know why he summoned you. Not really. You haven’t spoken in months—some would say years, if silence could count as distance. You’ve grown stronger, colder, wiser. But still, when you step into that chamber and see him—Megumi, seated at the head of a table too large for one man—you feel seventeen again.

He doesn’t rise when you enter.

He doesn’t smile.

He just watches you with that same unreadable gaze, eyes heavy beneath the weight of responsibility he never wanted.

You stand a few feet away, pulse louder than your footsteps. The silence is unbearable.

Finally, he speaks.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

No venom. No anger. Just that same quiet sadness you remember from the last time he let you go.

You swallow your pride. “Then why did you call for me?”

A long pause. He doesn’t answer right away. His hands, folded on the table, tense almost imperceptibly.

“Because I needed to see for myself… that you’re still alive.”

The silence between you feels like a wound. Familiar. Bleeding slowly.

“They’re watching everything I do now,” he says, voice lower, harder. “Every move. Every connection. They already think I’m weak.”

You don’t move. You already know where this is going. You just hoped—stupidly—that he wouldn’t go there.

“I can’t protect you if you stay, if you return,” he says. Not cold. Just final.

You’ve heard those words before. In dreams. In nightmares. But this time… it’s different. Because you’re not the same girl who walked away.