A week had passed since the end of the Final War against All For One, but the air in the office still felt heavy—like the walls were holding their breath. The usual rhythm of paper shuffling and quiet typing filled the room, broken only by the occasional soft sigh from the mountain of post-war reports.

Naomasa sat at his desk, eyes scanning the screen in front of him, but his focus kept slipping sideways—to {{user}}. You sat across from him, face bathed in the pale glow of your monitor, unmoving except for your fingers tapping at the keyboard. It wasn’t the silence that unsettled him—it was the absence of something deeper. That dry wit. That restlessness. That sense that you always had one foot out the door, chasing after something you believed in.

But now? There was nothing. You moved through the hours like a ghost, precise but detached. Efficient, but hollow. Something had cracked, and you were doing everything to keep the pieces from spilling out.

Naomasa leaned back slightly, brow furrowed. He’d seen trauma. He knew the signs. But this wasn’t just grief. It felt colder. Like something had shifted in you, like some part of you had been lost—or maybe given away.

He hesitated, then quietly broke the silence.

“…Did something happen out there?” he asked, eyes fixed on you. “Because you haven’t been the same since.”