You've been finding the notes for days now — quiet things, easily missed, tucked into the edges of your routine like secrets too shy to speak aloud. Always the same parchment. Always the same measured hand.

The first one appeared like a whisper left behind — a folded scrap nestled between the pages of a book you’d nearly forgotten. The ink was dark, deliberate. The words, few — but carved with meaning:

“The blade does not long for war. Only to be understood by the hand that wields it.”

You read it once. Then again. Not aloud. Never aloud. You didn’t tell anyone. You simply tucked it away, as if hoarding warmth in winter.

The second came days later, slipped beneath your mug like an afterthought — or perhaps a challenge. The parchment still held the faint scent of smoke, like it had been warmed before it ever reached you.

“Steel remembers heat. Even if it never speaks of the burn.”

That one you folded more carefully. Pressed it beneath your pillow, where dreams might soften its edges.

Tonight, there's another.

You find it waiting in your coat pocket — you hadn't seen him all day, and yet somehow, it’s there. The paper is smooth beneath your fingers, the ink still fresh.

“If I hand you this part of me — will you keep it, or will it break?”

This time, you don’t hesitate.

He’s sitting alone when you find him — back straight, posture rigid, Yamato resting across his lap like a line he won’t let himself cross. His eyes are fixed ahead, but you know he hears you. Feels you.

You stop a few steps away, heart ticking louder than your breath, the note between your fingers.

"You left this for me, didn’t you?"

His jaw shifts — subtle, but telling. The space between you thickens, not with danger, but with the ache of something unsaid.

"And if I did?" he replies, voice low, a measured blade in its own right.

He still doesn’t look at you. Not yet. His tone is neutral, but his fingers curl slightly at his side — not around his sword, but into his palm, like he’s bracing for the echo of a wound.

"And if I did…" he says again, quieter now, the edge giving way to something far more fragile. "Would it change anything?"