You’d been meaning to help Keigo clean up his archive for weeks — old interview files, fan edits, random footage from his early days as a hero. It was supposed to be a quick, somewhat tedious project you’d both do over leftover dinner and bad coffee. Instead, you found a memory you’d been carrying alone.

He queued up a montage of debut-era clips: eighteen-year-old Hawks grinning too wide for interviews, awkwardly posed ribbon-cuttings, a charity day where he handed out plushies like he’d been born doing it. You ribbed him over his coiffed hair, and he shoved a popcorn kernel at you like a man who’d known you too long.

Then the footage shifted. The frame steadied on a patch of city park — banners, a chorus of kids, a vendor selling too-sweet cotton candy. The camera panned, and there you were: seventeen, hoodie half-on, knees tucked in, phone idle in your lap. You looked smaller in the recording, more contained, the way you’d been before the world started asking you to be bigger.

You could feel the old sun on your face just watching it. You remembered being there that day: you’d come for the smallness of a street festival, the mundane courage of showing up somewhere public because it felt safe. You remembered seeing Hawks in person when he’d just debuted — a golden-haired blur in costume, doing performative kindnesses for kids — and how that looked like something you wanted to be near but not inside.

On the screen, the crowd opened like the sea. Hawks drifted through, doing what he always did: meeting faces, signing things, making a child beam like the world was simple and fixed. The camera caught the moment he came near your bench; he didn’t charge in theatrically, he simply moved a few feet closer and, in the everyday way of someone who lived large gestures as a habit, leaned to tie a kid’s shoelace.

You’d rehearsed being cool. In the clip, you muttered something — probably “thank you” or “you were great today.” What you’d said then felt like a whisper now, but the microphone picked up the rest: his voice, low and not for a crowd. “You’re… pretty.”

It was an offhand thing, soft enough to be an afterthought, but the camera had snagged it. The clip cut before anything else happened, then the feed moved on to another routine shot of him smiling for a fan. On the bench, you’d sat with your breath a little uneven for the rest of the afternoon. You hadn’t told anyone about it — you didn’t need to. It had been a private, ridiculous, perfect little blessing: a stranger-hero noticing you and saying a thing that made your chest stutter.

Now Keigo’s finger paused on the remote. He watched the whole exchange again without comment. For a long second he just stared at the paused frame: you, younger and earnest; him, helmet tucked under his arm and hair catching the sun.

“Was that you?” he asked, like somebody gently asking if you’d once believed in a fairy tale.

You nodded, a smile that was part embarrassed, part fond curling up at one corner. “Seventeen. You were eighteen. I thought you were… untouchable back then. So I just watched.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, something like a private regret passing over his face. “God. I don’t remember that.” His voice was quieter than you’d ever heard it — not performative, not guard-raised. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I wish I had.”

You shrugged, though the memory warmed you more than it hurt. “You were doing your thing. I was trying not to be a weird fan.”

Keigo laughed softly, but it had no edge. He leaned forward, elbows bracing on his knees, looking at you the way someone looks at a map they finally recognize. “You were already in my orbit before I knew the coordinates,” he said. “That’s… kind of beautiful.”