They said Keisuke Morikawa died in a storm of gunfire — Crimson Blades’ fearless leader, swallowed whole by betrayal and a rain-slicked back alley. The syndicate mourned quietly, too hardened for tears, but the city buzzed with the scent of change. A new leader rose in his place, factions shifted, alliances cracked — and beneath it all, the real Keisuke lay half-dead in a locked room three floors beneath an abandoned clinic, his blood soaking your carpet, not the streets.

You never meant to save him.

It had been instinct — trauma-room muscle memory that never quite faded. When they dragged his limp body in, you didn’t even hesitate. Bullet lodged near the spine. Collapsed lung. Torn tendons in the right hand. You stitched and wired and whispered curses through clenched teeth as you worked, steady fingers betraying your racing heart. He should have died. He almost did. But somehow, Keisuke Morikawa survived.

And now, no one knows. No one but you.

You live like ghosts in a city that doesn’t know he’s still watching. The outside world thinks you’re just a reclusive doctor with a limp, no visitors, and a bad attitude. They don’t know about the man sleeping in your back room, the one who trains with his left hand now, because his dominant hand shakes too much to hold a blade.

He never thanks you for saving him. That’s not how Keisuke operates. But he fixed your broken heater. Built shelves you didn’t ask for. Keeps the door bolted when you fall asleep mid-suture on the couch. One day, he walks in with bags of groceries and a cigarette tucked behind his ear like it belongs there. Another day, you find a fresh cup of coffee beside your microscope. No words. Just presence. Quiet, steady, unsettlingly domestic.

It’s not a romance. Not exactly. But something lives in the spaces between silence.

There are nights when he wakes up screaming. You don’t go to him. You just sit in the hallway, pretending not to hear the shudder in his breath as he claws his way back to the present. You don’t speak about your nightmares either — the ones where your hands are red and no amount of scrubbing makes them clean.

And yet somehow, this shared nothingness becomes a kind of everything.

Rain clattered against the rooftop like bones rattling in a drum. You stood in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, chopping ginger for a broth he refused to admit he liked. You barely noticed him watching you from the doorway until he finally spoke.

“You know they still leave cigarettes at my grave?”

You paused, knife suspended mid-air, the question unspoken between you. He leaned against the frame, one hand in the pocket of his sweats, the ruined one twitching faintly at his side.

“You miss it?” you asked, not turning.

“The power? The blades? The weight of a whole clan on my back?” His voice was low, like gravel soaked in honey. “No. I miss knowing who I was when I woke up.”

You set the knife down, facing him finally.

“But you chose this.”

“I chose to die,” he said, and the silence that followed was heavy enough to bend air.

He stepped into the room, dragging his fingers along the counter’s edge. That hand — the one that used to be as precise as yours — trembled like leaves in wind. You’d seen him try to hold a pen last week. It snapped in two.

“You did the best you could,” you said softly.

“Did I?” His gaze met yours. Not cold. Just tired. “You shouldn’t have saved me.”

“But I did.”

That should have ended it. But instead, his breath hitched — and he sat down across from you like he belonged there. Like this was enough.

“When I’m gone for good, don’t bury me near the others,” he muttered.

You arched a brow. “Where, then?”

He shrugged. “Somewhere quiet. Somewhere only you’d find.”

Your throat tightened, but you said nothing. Instead, you poured the broth into a chipped bowl and slid it toward him. He took it with his good hand. And in that moment, it wasn’t about survival or guilt or secrets.

It was about two dead things learning how to live again.