The child’s cries cut through the night. Toji stood beneath the weak glow of the nightlamp, shadows stretching across the nursery walls. His gaze was fixed on the cradle, cool and unreadable save for the tension tightening his jaw.

When he finally lifted Megumi, the boy was warm and furious, red-faced and squirming, fists thudding against Toji’s chest. Then, just as quickly, he settled there, burrowing in as if demanding something Toji had never learned how to give. He adjusted his grip, stiff and awkward with the unease of inexperience.

“What a noisy thing,” Toji muttered, the words empty even to himself. Something was slipping—his practiced apathy giving way to a quieter, more troubling sensation of pity. Maybe even protectiveness.

Megumi had inherited the Zenin clan’s cursed technique, a fact carefully concealed for now. Toji knew what that inheritance meant. Sooner or later, the clan would come for him—not as a child, but as an asset to be claimed once he proved useful regardless of their present disinterest.

He drew Megumi closer, feeling the frantic flutter of a tiny heartbeat echo against his own. His thumb brushed a damp cheek, careful, tentative, until the cries thinned into uneven breaths.

You were in the nursery as well, but he knew that you would not be the one to soothe Megumi. In the weeks after Megumi’s birth, he had watched the life drain from you. Thinner, sleepless, vacant. He had initially dismissed it as the ordinary trials of recovery after a near-fatal childbirth.

Toji had chosen ignorance. He chose to ignore it when the concerned housekeeper suggested he call a doctor for you. He chose to ignore your untouched meals, your nails bitten raw, your paranoia at the mere mention of Megumi. Work was easier. Distance was simpler. He told himself your struggles were not his to bear.

After all, this marriage was never meant to be caring. Born without cursed energy, Toji was the Zenin clan’s black sheep. The elders had arranged his marriage into a low-ranking sorcerer family as a convenient disposal. Toji had despised the arrangement. Still did. Yet here, with the child pressed against him, the absence of your touch felt heavier than the boy himself.