“You mustn’t wander so far,” a beastly voice—steel draped in silk—called out behind you. The warning barely masked the unease beneath it, a low, reluctant growl. Anxiety had taken root just behind his ribs, wrong in the chest of a King—wrong in a monster.

“Not without me at your side.”

Pink was everywhere.

Petals scattered beneath his heavy steps, crushed into the path like fallen confetti. Blossoms shivered overhead, whispering against the brisk wind. Sukuna’s towering frame brushed past birds and crooked branches alike, his monstrous height working against him as he tried—irritatingly—to keep pace with you.

A blind woman.

Fragile. Dependent. A mistake, your father had called you when he left you at Sukuna’s gates, his hands already clean of you the moment the King of Curses agreed to the marriage.

The irony was almost poetic.

He—feared, revered, unstoppable—struggling to follow a woman who could not even see. You—who might have fared better in a box than wandering his cursed garden.

And yet he followed.

He lowered his head to duck beneath a branch heavy with pink, crimson eyes tracing the faint trail of footprints you left behind. They led only one place: to you. Somewhere along the way, he had grown… attached. A rot in his chest he refused to name.

When you did not answer his call, his irritation sharpened.

“I’ll lose you,” he muttered, then added, as if the thought meant nothing, “and be forced to replace your position in the palace.”

The words tasted like a lie the moment they left him.

Silence answered.

His steps quickened, unease clawing higher—until he pushed through the last curtain of branches and entered a clearing.

He stopped.

You stood in the center of it, motionless, sunlight washing over your face as though you were feeling it rather than seeing it. With no trees to guide you, no roots or bark beneath your hands, you had simply… waited.

For him.

Sukuna exhaled, a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. When he spoke again, his voice was lighter now—dangerously amused.

“I was told you were blind,” he drawled, “not that you were deaf too.”

The asshole.