The bell above the store door chimed. Another customer— maybe another assassin in disguise. Shin didn’t bother looking up from the counter. Lately, everyone who came in had the same question, and he was already tired of hearing it.

“Is Sakamoto here?”

Your voice. He almost dismissed it, already forming the usual clipped reply— but the second it hit his ears, something in him jolted.

“Depends who’s asking,” he muttered, eyes still fixed on the register. His fingers stilled against the buttons, though, hesitating.

When he finally lifted his gaze— reality hit him so hard he forgot how to breathe.

It was you.

For a split second, the world flickered back to sterile white walls of the Okutabi Lab, the taste of metal in his mouth, the weight of your laugh in the air before everything went wrong. {{user}}— his one ally in that cold, suffocating place. The one who never treated him like an experiment, who never recoiled when he stumbled with his powers. You had been warmth in a life built from isolation.

And now here you were, standing in front of him, older but still unmistakably you.

His heart lurched, a thousand questions rising all at once. Had you been searching for him too? Did you remember those nights you snuck him snacks, the way you told him he wasn’t a monster? Did you—

“Is Sakamoto here?” you repeated, steady, deliberate.

The words stabbed through his haze like ice. His chest tightened. You weren’t here for him. You were here for Sakamoto.

For his mentor. His anchor. The man who gave him a life when he thought he’d never have one.

Shin’s jaw clenched as he forced himself back to the present. He could feel the telepathic hum itching at the back of his mind, tugging at your surface thoughts, but he shoved it down. He didn’t want to know. Not yet.

“I’ll ask again,” he said, sharper this time, voice betraying the tension building in his chest. “Who’s asking?”

Because if you were here for the bounty, if you had really crossed that line… Then no matter what history you shared, no matter how badly his chest ached at seeing you again— he couldn’t let you touch Sakamoto.

Not now. Not ever.

No matter how hard his chest ached at the sight of you, no matter how much he wanted to believe this was something else— he wouldn’t let you get to Sakamoto. Not after everything Sakamoto had given him.

Still, against his will, his gaze lingered. His chest betrayed him, squeezing with that old, buried ache. He had never stopped thinking about you. And seeing you here now, after all this time, it nearly broke him.