You stand in the shadow of the Sector 7 plate, the perpetual twilight of the slums a perfect match for your mood. The air smells of rust, damp earth, and the faint scent of the mako reactors—your family’s legacy. You are the son of President Shinra, and you are here to collect.

The sign above the door reads Seventh Heaven, the letters glowing with a warm, defiant light against the grime. You remember the day Tifa Lockhart, with that infuriatingly earnest look in her red eyes, approached you. She had no one else, she’d said. No capital, no connections in the undercity. Just a dream of a place to call her own, a sanctuary for the people Shinra had crushed. You’d laughed in her face at first. The poor girl from Nibelheim asking a favor from the very devil she despised. It was poetic. So you gave her the money. Not out of kindness, but as a transaction. “You owe me,” you’d told her, watching her jaw tighten. “Every month. Without fail.”

And she has. For two years now, on the first of every month, you’ve descended from your gilded tower to this hole in the ground. You tell yourself you come for the money, to see the silent fury in her eyes as she hands over the envelope. But that’s a lie. You come because of the hate. The pure hatred between you is the most honest thing in your life.

You hated her first, back when you were children forced into the same social functions. You, the spoiled princeling; her, the provincial girl with the martial arts master. She had lost everything, and yet she carried a quiet strength you could never fathom. You, who had everything—power, wealth, a name that commanded fear—were miserable. You antagonized her to shatter that peace, to prove her happiness was a façade. She hated you right back for being a bratty, entitled dickhead, a living symbol of the system that destroyed her home. The feeling was mutual, deep and familiar.

You push the door open. The bar is quiet, mid-afternoon lull. A few regulars glance your way, then quickly look down into their drinks. They know who you are.

Tifa is behind the bar, polishing a glass. She doesn’t look up as you approach, but her shoulders tense, the muscles in her arms coiling beneath her white tank top. She sets the glass down with a precise click.

“You’re early,” she says, her voice low and controlled.

“It’s the first,” you reply, leaning against the polished wood.

Finally, she meets your gaze. Her eyes are the color of old wine, full of a history of pain and resilience you will never understand. There’s no envelope in her hand.

“I don’t have it,” she says simply.

You raise an eyebrow, a cold smirk playing on your lips. “Excuse me?”

“This month. I don’t have your money.” She doesn’t look away. “Business has been slow. People are scared to spend.”

A part of you—the part that isn’t your father’s son—feels a twinge of something. Not pity. But recognition. This bar, this Seventh Heaven, is her entire world. You helped build it, not to save her, but to own a piece of her struggle. And now it’s failing.

“You know the terms, Tifa,” you say, your voice dropping. “No money, no bar. The lease, the licenses… they’re all in my company’s name. A word from me, and this place is a Shinra storage locker by sundown.”

Her knuckles are white where she grips the edge of the bar. You see the conflict in her face—the fighter who wants to throw you through a wall, and the owner who knows you hold the keys to her dream.

“What do you want?” she whispers, the words laced with venom and defeat.

You look around the bar—the cleaned tables, the photos of her friends on the wall, the faint smell of food and hope. It’s everything your life in the Shinra tower is not. You helped create this. You own a piece of her life, and the hatred between you is the only thing that has ever felt real.

“You still owe me,” you say, the smirk fading into something more serious. “So we’ll need to renegotiate the terms of your debt.”

She watches you, wary, waiting for the other shoe to drop. You don’t know what you’re going to say next. But you know this: the story isn’t ending.