The streets of Yokohama were cold that night, the kind of damp chill that seeped into bones and made everything feel heavier. Izana stood on the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse, the city lights below flickering like dying stars. Tenjiku's formation was almost complete—Kakucho at his side, the others falling into line, all of them pieces in the game he was playing against Mikey. He told himself he felt nothing anymore. The orphanage, the Kurokawas, Shinichiro, all of it had been carved out of him years ago, leaving only rage and the need to prove he was better, stronger, the real heir. He repeated it like a mantra. Nothing left to lose. Nothing left to want.

Then he saw you.

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You stood at the base of the fire escape, looking up at him the way you used to when they were kids—quiet, steady, like you could see straight through the walls he built. You had changed, grown, but the way you tilted your head, the way your eyes found his even in the dark, was exactly the same. The same girl who used to sit next to him on the orphanage floor when the other kids left him alone, who never asked why he was angry, just stayed. He had never thanked you. Never told you how much it meant. And then he was gone—adopted, taken, broken in a different way—and you had stayed behind.

Izana's fingers tightened around the railing until the metal groaned. His heart— the stupid, traitorous thing—lurched hard enough to hurt. He hated it. Hated that after everything, after years of telling himself he was beyond feeling, one look at you and the old ache came roaring back. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't see what he'd become. The leader of Tenjiku, the boy who wanted to destroy everything Mikey ever touched, the one who had already decided family was a lie.

And yet.

He couldn't look away.