#Body Contouring Machine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wannabepoeticischiya · 12 days ago

Text

patches of sunlight

ao3: patches of sunlight pairing: shishiba x f! reader genre: romance, angst wc: 33.9k status: one shot

Shishiba clenched his jaw. You need to get your shit together. There was no room for this, no space in his life for fickle affections—'I'll make room', such was the weight of the sentiments nestled in his heart, inescapable… tied to all the songs it sang in the dead of the night. It was within the confines of his body, tethered to the arteries and veins that kept him alive, cradled in the protection of his muscles and the bars of his ribs—you’d think his heart would think of him, put him above all else… but harrowingly, it only ever echoed the shadows of her smile, mimicked the color of her laughter, delighted in the thought of knowing she was near.

So agonizingly full of her it was blasphemous to even call it his own.

A great many things existed that Shishiba had come to love.

He liked the vending machine by the supermarket—the one that always so conveniently had those fancy orange juice in stock. He loved the quiet neighborhood with the well-kept flowerbeds, flourishing in a plethora of colors—as if the painters of the heavens had descended to color them whole, or a good gardener took care of them every day. He liked the quiet playground that was always cluttered with children, their laughter and joy painting the azure canvas overhead.

Shishiba liked it when the curtain of clouds parted and the world he sees is littered with patches of sunlight.

He loved Thursday mornings, the only time of the week where it was neither too lax nor too hectic which meant he was always free to do what he wished. He liked autumn, it brought forth the meaning that his birthday was near.

And he loved it more when everything faded to silence; a rift in reality where he could at least pretend that he lived a normal life—not that he would ever wish for one—that he wouldn’t have to hop around the city because settling somewhere is dangerous and foolish, because for a moment… he could just be Shishiba.

Shishiba liked the predictability of his routine, the way he could have just about everything in the palm of his hand without having to worry about getting disrupted or being hindered by sudden pauses.

But life had a funny way of knocking down the things he had spent so long building—whether that would be the finely curated dishes he would eat (the ones with no onions) or the gaping ravines in his life that couldn’t even echo his name.

A shrill cry shattered the bubble he unknowingly caged himself in, fragments of his inner thoughts scrambling to reach the far horizons, fleeing from his iron grasp.

One moment, his hands were hidden in the pockets of his pants, the next—a shadow painted the place he occupied for himself.

And before his head could wrap around what on earth was going on—

Thud.

A weight crashed on him.

Forceful—like a comet plummeting its way past the five layers of the atmosphere… slamming straight to the earth to carve its way into the soils of the planet—to the contours of his life.

His reflexes—sharpened and polished far greater than the hammer he held close to his heart, and pocketed somewhere in his jacket—had him moving out of his way before he could restrain himself and have this foolish little cleaning imp fall to her doom (a puny six foot drop). His arms looped around her figure, securing her who—quite literally—had fallen into his life… marring his soul with streams of blinding sunshine that he wanted to take a step back, shield his heart for what was about to come.

Still… even after all of that, he remained grounded… basking in the light of her existence.

The person blanketed in the warmth he called his own had her eyes closed, bracing for a fall that was never going to happen—no, not when his own body had gone out of its way to betray him just to make sure she would be alright.

A white, now grime-covered, bandana covered the expanse of her forehead, face painted grey from the dust.

Underneath the autumn skies, when the light of the afternoon sun had slipped past the curtain of clouds, the sight of her became saturated in patches of sunlight.

Her weight against him felt strange. The way she fit just a little too nicely in his arms. But he didn’t have much time to think about the oddly unreasonable pattern his heart was doing, nor the acid burning through the organs in his stomach, not even the way the horizons of his fingertips felt like they were on fire.

Because not long after—an uncomfortable cold doused the frame of his figure. This is not my day. The stench of cheap detergent and dust came flooding his nose, much like the way the dirty window water came seeping through the fabric of his socks… and his very expensive suit.

The bucket that used to hold the substance (now spilled all over Shishiba) landed on the ground with a resonating thump, bouncing over a few times before rolling just beside his feet; an exposition to the story of what the world like to call ‘tantalizing the thursday of a hitman’.

Shishiba blinked the water out of his lashes, gazing down to see just who exactly would be the one to pin the blame onto for his current predicament.

Staring right back at him were the eyes of what he could only describe as a puppy waiting to be scolded and was already planning on ways to coerce its owner into forgiving it through sheer pouting and faking patheticness—well, unlucky for her, Shishiba was immune to such underhanded tactics.

Unknowingly, Shishiba tightened the hold he had on her. Glaring fiercely at the figure in his arms who was trembling—whether from fear or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell.

If this woman thought she was gonna get away from trying to assassinate him in the middle of the day through the use of such cheap, unoriginal strategy then she had another thing coming because he wasn’t someone so easily—

“I AM SO SORRY!”

… swayed.

Shishiba momentarily forgot how to breathe.

“Oh—oh my goodness. I gotta call my—no, no we can handle this. No biggie. Uhm, oh gods yer drenched,” the lady rambled on, wiggling free from his grasp to which Shishiba impassively complied to; having her fall on her backside straight through the cold, hard, window-water covered pavement with an oomph.

She quickly scrambled to her feet to bow to him. “I’m really sorry! I—I didn’t mean to, honest! I was just cleanin’ the windows and then the ledge gave out and—and gravity—then this and the water—”she frantically gestured to the windows above the store where, surely enough, a roof tile had gone missing, as if that alone could be enough of a reason to explain how she’d gone from scrubbing glass to falling straight into his arms.

Seeing as the stranger wasn’t having any of it, she begrudgingly pursed her lips and lowered her head in shame and embarrassment.

He had this stony look on his face like he wanted to disassemble her being so he could hide her in different parts of the city where she could never be pieced back together. Like a limited lego set people coveted. The glint in his eyes could not be mistaken for anything other than annoyance—would he really go so far as to kill her for this? Surely not, right?

At the sight of the mess she had made of him: red dusting the apples of his cheeks (most profoundly from anger), the globs of dust hanging off the golden threads of his hair, and the shallow breaths he took as he tried to regulate his heartbeat.

He must be really upset.

His suit—his expensive looking, once cleanly pressed, suit had been drenched, dirtied, and ruined completely; doused in murky, dust-laden window water.

[Name] felt the cold creep its way through the trunks of her spine again, and before it could reach her brain stem and have her freeze where she stood, she got down on her knees once more, forehead kissing the pavement, unrelenting until she attained his forgiveness (or until she was sure that he wouldn’t file a lawsuit against her).

“I’m sorry! Really I am—”

Shishiba thought this woman was apologizing too much. She said she was sorry far too many times that sooner or later he was going to believe that her name was sorry. It was just a suit—his suit that cost him nearly half his last job’s payment. Truly, he felt aggravated that it was ruined after just one wear but he didn’t think that was something worth sacrificing one’s dignity over and go as far as bowing to get his forgiveness—

“If you’d allow me to pay you back—no, I can’t afford that—” when Shishiba snapped out of his daze, the lady had already gotten up, standing before him in all her average height glory.

She was still apologizing, her fingers partially hanging off his dirty suit sleeve. Her hands trailed forward, like her touch could magically revert the ruined fabric to its former glory—and Shishiba had half a mind to believe that it could—only to have hesitated half way.

“You’re drenched! And your face—”

Shishiba felt his eye twitch.

What was wrong with his face? Did she have a bone to pick with him over what he looked like? Why would she be upset that he was ugly?

“—you looked so mad. I would be mad too! But please don’t be mad, I swear I wasn’t trying to—”

Oh.

Her hands flailed in the air as if the skies above held the solutions to all her problems.

Shishiba wanted to say something—anything—just so she wouldn’t take him for a pushover, or someone who was upset (even if deep in his heart he truly was). But her apologies took up all the space between them, littered the atmosphere with every possible plea for forgiveness that it was difficult to try and let it be anything else.

He was left to stare as she talked animatedly, her words going through one ear and out the other simply because he knew she would be rambling about the same things over and over and over again.

Her sincerity scrambled the emotions he had once felt.

I should be angry, his thoughts echoed distantly. I want to be angry.

Still, he could not conjure the emotions. He couldn’t even feel the drive to be in such a state. Could it be the weather? Or could it be her? This tiny, puny, weak little lady who was shaking in her shoes like a wet dog, eyes darting everywhere to see just how far her silly mistake had cost her—well, him. The lady who could take up all the space underneath the heavens and Shishiba wouldn’t even think twice as to let her do it… and he didn’t even know her!

There could only be one explanation for this…

She was a witch!

“I—I can fix it!” She declared, tugging on the edges of his clothes.

What?

“I’ll wash it!” She insists, smiling at him eagerly, nodding as if to encourage him to let her do this one small thing. “I ruined it, so—so by the rules of fairness and equality I should clean it! I’ll do it properly! I promise! Ya wouldn’t even tell the difference!”

Shishiba stared at her, internally wondering if she had fallen to the ground too hard. His first thought was to let her do as she pleased, which in itself was not right—witch I tell you.

He purged the foolish thoughts in his head, he wanted to refuse. Yes! Refuse. That sounds a lot more accurate.

But he took one look at her—just one—and his knees felt weak, his heart thudded against his ribcage, and all the world felt lighter. The sunbeams punctured through the wall of clouds, the summer gales crossed the borders of the seasons straight through autumn where he currently breathed, on the surface of the planet he inhabited… the space before him was shaded with patches of sunlight.

He wanted to argue; say that she shouldn’t go so far out of her way. Shishiba knew that she’d fight him on this matter—not in the way that involved violence—but under the morals that she would not relent until her conscience had been cleared, in the desperate-to-make-it-right kind of way.

Before his head could descend from the dreamscape he had unconsciously traveled to, he found that he had already taken off his suit jacket.

Just how willing was his body to listen to this woman that it couldn’t even wait for him to finish articulating his thoughts?

“I’ll do a good job! You can count on it,” she smiles at him, one so blindingly warm and eager that he nearly fell over.

How long was it since someone smiled at him like that? As if he couldn’t have been farther from the words said about him, told in the darkest corners of the city, shaded in contempt, riddled in every tone of fear and malice.

Shishiba knew he didn’t have to show up to get his jacket, he didn’t even have to give it to her at all… he could just take it right now and be done with it, get someone else to do it—someone who would not look at him in such a way.

Yet he made no move to take it from her grasp.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me?

“Ah—” she exclaimed.

What is it now?

“You’re still a mess,” she pointed out, and with a sheepish grin continued the rest of her words. “Wait, I have a spare towel upstairs—oh, and a shirt! Wait here, ‘kay? Don’t go anywhere—” she stumbled over her feet, still holding onto his suit jacket, looking to and fro the staircase and to him. “I’ll be right back!”

Shishiba took a deep breath, closing his eyes as a ray of sunshine hit his tired face.

Today was supposed to be no-nonsense Thursday, a day where nothing could deter him from his carefully planned out day. But here he was, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, semi-dry from the window water, thinking just what kind of offense had he done against the world that he would be given an overly-enthusiastic lady as punishment.

He found himself sighing, so much for being immune to charms. He crumbled in less than thirty seconds—and that was being generous!

Shishiba wasn’t always like this.

He was pragmatic. Took things seriously, with no room for shenanigans or any other unnecessary things. It was always simple and straightforward when it came to him.

But now, even he couldn’t even find the answers to the questions he had for himself. So, with a heart fluttering with the autumn gale, he let the duck-printed towel hang freely from his neck, shifting underneath the cloth that hugged his body too tightly.

“Sorry, this is the biggest shirt I’ve got.”

Shishiba swore that he was never gonna show his face to that woman ever again.

She could keep the jacket and his dress shirt, and in return he was gonna keep the childish towel and this ugly shirt—as well as his peace of mind knowing that she would be nothing but an unfortunate encounter buried deep in the past.

The blond hitman weaved through the currents of people in the subway. Hands stuffed in the pockets of what was left of his initial outfit (his pants)—only because he refused to take anything else that was offered by her.

He already felt ridiculous enough as it is. He could hardly breathe through the fabric, fearing that if he accidentally inhaled too sharply, it would tear apart at the seams. He was fine with that, really… he was. He’d been subjected to worse circumstances, but in all of those, there weren't any witnesses—none alive to tell the tale at least.

It’s fine, he told himself. It was just a stupid shirt. No one was looking at him… that part wasn’t completely true. How could people not look at him when the damn thing was so brightly green! Screaming the words, someone who loves me very much went to Kyoto and got me this shirt. For heaven's sake Shishiba was from Kyoto! It made him want to bury himself six feet under and never resurface.

He was going to kill that woman. Not literally of course. But he was going to kill her one way or another.

Then again, how could he kill her when he was never gonna see her again anyway?

Shishiba took a slow breath, everything would be alright. He just needed to get back to his accommodations, change, and leave all of this behind—pretend they never even happened.

No one even had to know.

He’d just make the conscious effort to avoid that part of the city, and anything and everything involving window washing, convenience stores, and overly kind women who fall from roofs.

As he boarded the train, he got this nagging feeling that something was off. A sort of dull itch in the back of his mind that no amount of thinking could scratch.

The train intercom announced the next station, two stops until he would get to his temporary living arrangement. Still, even as the huge chunk of metal rumbled to life, glided across the magnets, and shifted for every turn… he could not shake off the incessant tugging that he left something behind.

He reached for the hammer in his pocket, a sort of habit he had developed over the years—only to find it wasn’t there.

Shishiba froze.

Where the hell did his weapon go?

He couldn’t have left it at the extraction site, no—he wasn’t stupid. He took it with him everywhere he went! It was an extension of himself… a piece of who he was! And he always had it in the pocket of his—

The jacket.

His suit jacket.

The one drenched in murky, disgusting window water.

The same jacket currently sitting in her hands.

With his hammer in its pocket.

Shishiba had handed over his jacket without thinking—no, it was worse than that… he gave it to her eagerly. Like a dog! Handed it over like a daydreaming idiot.

He was so caught up in her stupid smile that he didn’t even stop to think—

Of all the things I could leave behind…

Shishiba wanted to curse the world, he wanted to yell, perhaps strangle the next person who puts onions on his food. His thoughts rang loud—louder than the echo of the train doors hissing open, a lot more irritating than the unrhythmic resonance of footsteps rushing to get out. The hills of his brain hurt from thinking about his foolishness; a lot more prominent now that the full extent of his stupidity came crashing down on him.

But the mirror of her strange smile resurfaced like a dead body—one he had been eager to bury in the poisoned grounds of his malice. The shine of her eyes blinded his judgement, rendered him speechless for a few arbitrary seconds… unable to think, hesitant to raise any other thought for fear that he could never conjure her image ever again.

Suddenly the clothes that hugged his figure felt warm; no longer trying to suck the air out of him, the noise around him dulled; dying in the caves of his ears. The hurricane of conviction harrowing the corners of his head had faded to nothingness.

There was a strange sense of calmness at the image of her.

And in the grandest shifts of beliefs—one even Shishiba had a difficult time trying to accept—the thought of seeing her again did not seem all that terrible.

Shishiba felt like an idiot.

Which was strange because people around him usually told him he was very smart.

No matter how he looked at it—twisted, turned, shattered and reformed the prism of his thoughts… Shishiba could not summon any viable explanation for what on earth had possessed him to depart at the ungodliest hour of the morn just to go sit on the benches nestled in the park near her neighborhood as early as five in the morning.

Most people weren’t even awake at that time yet there he was, idling underneath the chestnut trees like he had nothing better to do in his spare time.

Shishiba never frittered. He never did anything that couldn’t benefit him. Never went out of his way for anyone if they could not serve him well.

So what was the meaning for all of this? Why was he here and not on the first train ride back to headquarters? Which notion had set off this endless spiralling domino of kind smiles and gentle gazes and melting voices?

Why… why am I even here?

Shishiba clicked his tongue, slumping further where he sat. The cold metal of the bench clawed through the fabrics of his well-pressed suit, shackling him to where he was. And even if the cold didn’t bite and nip at his skin, he was sure his head would force him to bear witness to how the sun passes through the sky right here… where she was near.

For my hammer. My weapon. My jacket. My shirt.

When the rays of the rising sun slipped past the skyscrapers, dispelling the shadows of the nights, coloring the earth in a golden hue, it was then that his sapphire irises caught the sight of her: smiling at the people that passed her by, bowing to the old couple who made conversation with her, the flowers under her care looked as if they were dyed a thousand times more—shining underneath the patches of sunlight.

Suddenly, all the reasons he tried so hard to justify seemed meaningless.

Shishiba could buy a thousand more jackets, a million more shirts… even—as horrible as it sounded—get another hammer.

Those things were so painfully easy to replace; the world made them easy to replicate.

Yet, in all the places he’s been to; all the people that he had met… there was none like her.

But there could only be one her.

Just one lady who would have the nerve to spill water on him and agonizingly beg him—convince him that she could make it right. Only one could have been so daring as to smile at him like that. No one smiled at him like that! And none in the world could ever give him that look, one that was so dreadfully endearing… like he was the farthest thing from cruelty.

And it made him believe—even if it was only as short as the sunshine in winter—that maybe, just maybe, this time… things would be better. In a world that didn’t wait for anyone, where people are made for transience, moments treasured for fear of them getting taken away… she was someone he hoped could stay for a little longer.

Shishiba should have known better, he knew he should have known better. He was a trained assassin. A cold-blooded killer. And his profession will forever keep from him the feeling of living a normal life.

He knew that.

Shishiba knew and that’s what made it difficult.

Because as he stood at the corner of the convenience store, a single step away from basking in the light of her soul… all he wanted to do was cross the line that bordered her world from him.

Mercy appeared to be the one thing the universe would never have for Shishiba; faithfully kept it from him like a secret anyone would die for just to protect. But this one time—for the final time so it seemed, he wanted the cosmos to go out of its way… to grant him the bravery of leaving—of staying away.

He could have been somewhere—anywhere else and he would not rise to complain, so long as it was not here. In this place where he was in danger of orbiting her. Here, where he was so close to slipping away.

Underneath the saturated autumn skies where the smell of the earth surrounded her, zephyrs of the season waltzed around like stars, a soft tune echoing from the ravines of her soul—it dawned on him then… that his prayers had not been answered.

Shishiba felt it in the way the warm ichor of the sun god poured on his skin, in the way that the shoulders of strangers passed him by, in the way that his heart rejoiced at the sight of her face—the same one that had him forgetting that he still needed to breathe.

At peace.

Warm.

Unconditionally vulnerable.

It was something that didn’t belong in his world. It was something—she was someone who didn’t belong in his world.

So why was he here?

Why was Shishiba standing so still in the center of the sidewalk? Why had he emerged from the shadows to gaze at her a lot more clearly? What was he thinking? How could he abandon all that he has ever stood by just for the ephemeral of chances to see her?

And yet she tore her gaze from the innocent flora… to see him.

The sight of her made him hesitate.

Shishiba found himself thinking these ridiculous thoughts of: Would she be disappointed? Will she be angry? Cower away at the sight of me?

But she smiled.

The sincerest, biggest, most stomach-churning smile to ever befall on mankind.

And everything fell silent.

Shishiba thought then, she might be crazy. He felt like he had just been sucker-punched right in the gut, perhaps been blasted through ten floors of a building and got hit by a car all in the span of seven seconds.

Maybe I’m the one that’s crazy.

“You’re here!” She beams, as if seeing him here was always meant to be. She hurriedly placed the rusted watering can above a window sill and walked over to stand closer to him, greeting him a happy ‘good morning’.

Shishiba could only stare at her, only remembering to return the sentiment when she continued to gaze up at him with those unsettling eyes of hers.

“Right! Uhm your jacket,” she blurts. “Wait a sec, I’ll go get it.”

A part of him kind of wished she forgot about that or at the very least, was not the first thing she thought of when she saw him. It was brainless of Shishiba to think so.

If she had forgotten about it, wouldn’t that make his efforts go to waste? And what else was she supposed to think about when she saw him? Shishiba didn’t know her; she didn’t know him.

There’s nothing for her to think about.

Get a grip! This isn’t the time to play house, he reminds himself. Shishiba clenched his fists so tightly that the peaks of his knuckles had been painted the color of snow, he bit the insides of his cheeks, the familiar metallic taste digging into his tongue like poison.

You just need the hammer—your weapon.

He went so far—straight out of his alignment—just so he could stay grounded to where he was, that may not wander into the backyards of her orbit; worse, willingly revolve around her like the earth does to the sun.

Footsteps thudded against the wooden stairs, shattering his daydreams. Shishiba prayed the world would make this easy for him—for Shishiba who feels so powerless in front of this… this creature.

“Here!” She stood in front of him once more, all the same picture the gods of yesterday had painted… only this time, he was not covered in that awful liquid. The suit jacket he had spent half his salary on was sitting on the palm of her hands, arms outstretched as if she was offering him a treasure like no other. Like he could not hurt her.

Shishiba stared at her.

Then at the jacket.

It was hypnotising. Must be witchcraft. All it took was a few centimeters of occupied space, a breath that falls short, eyes that fail to hide their true colors. Things so simple, tragically mundane, but to him who had lived a life that was not that—it was all it took.

You’re an assassin.

At the resonating reminder, Shishiba hurriedly swiped away the article of clothing; afraid the faintest remnants of her touch could set him aflame.

His unexpected rush had her faltering. Shishiba wasn’t blind, nor did the years of his work fail him, no matter the effort she put in trying to cover up that she was startled, it did not escape his eyes.

You’re a hitman.

She smiled again, tucking her hands behind her back—successfully hiding her reddening fingertips before he could have the chance to scrutinize her.

[Name] was not a fool. She knew a year’s worth of working three jobs could never cover the cost of that suit jacket. She knew that the moment she took one look at him, even after having been covered in her mess, that he… he belonged in a world beyond her own.

So when the water she used to wash the fabric had bled to a murky grey, when her nails softened from saturating in the water for too long, the skin of her fingertips wrinkling, hands throbbing from trying so hard not to ruin it… she did not stop.

She couldn’t.

One word from him could silence her forever; ruin her chances to live a better life.

She had to do it right.

People like her could only have so much room for mistakes, while people like him… they didn’t have to deal with things like these.

Something tugged at him when the sight of her strange expression came into being. Sure, he had prided himself in observation but Shishiba was not a mind reader. He wanted to ask what bothered her, if there was someone making her life difficult, he wanted to ask so many things… and that scared him.

You’re a killer.

He feels the heavy weight of his hammer, nestled underneath the fabric of his nice-smelling jacket—cleaner than it had any right to be, all signs pointing that it had been cared for… more than it had ever been in his possession.

Everything he had returned for was here, cradled in the coldness of his arms. Still, the soles of his feet remained frozen at the light of her warm stare.

Shishiba needed to leave.

Now.

There was nothing good at the end of this road. He knew that. Shishiba saw how his mentor took this very same path, how it led him astray; made him wander around—made him weak, the man he held in such high regard.

Shishiba is a killer. Someone who made a living off of silencing the living, making sure they never see another ray of sunlight ever again.

And this creature—this… this woman.

She was soft.

And good.

And kind.

She was everything that he never deserved in the first place.

She was meant to live a life far away from people like him, surrounded with laughter and joy, waking up to live an honorable life—free from the blood, the danger, the unforgiving cycle of kill or be killed.

Away from everything that he was.

So he did the only thing he could do—the only other thing he was good at aside from killing.

Shishiba turned and began to walk away.

“Not staying for tea?”

The world really went out of its way to make his life harder than it has to be.

Her voice was soft. Quiet. Crossing the ravines of his life as it harrowingly echoed the smile he caught from the corner of his eye. Hopeful. As if the thought of him leaving was the last thing on her list; if it was ever written at all.

Shishiba didn’t dare to turn around. Didn’t dare challenge the threads of the fates he once believed could never exist.

If he did…

“I have places to be.”

…he would lose.

Shishiba hesitated, a single second in the grand vastness of the cosmos. He lingered, and that moment alone was enough to fracture a piece of his cemented heart.

“Okay,” she says, a little too cloudy.

There was no expressive protest. No resplendent bitterness. Not even an overdramatic declaration of anything else that could change his mind and have him yield to her requests.

Just… just that quiet acceptance.

As if it was nothing out of the ordinary—that people in her life came and went as freely as the leaves that waltzed to the melody of the wind.

Shishiba pressed against the crack in his defenses, inhaling deeply like the oxygen he breathed could plaster something against the walls that slowly came tumbling down.

And he walked away.

This time—this time he was sure… he was never gonna see her again.

Fate really liked to sneer at Shishiba in the face before and right after it foils all his plans; looking down at him from its place above the stars with that ‘hah, in your face’ expression he swears he could just feel nipping at the back of his head.

I’m cursed. I’m very much cursed.

Shishiba wasn’t one for believing in luck nor was he so adamant as to put faith in the gods but this—this was just going too far… even for someone as heretic as him!

Despite being lost in his own theatrics, Shishiba still caught wind of the conversation being exchanged a few rows in front of him, excited in the kindest words; assuming in the worst.

“Have you seen this show before?” the woman inquires.

“No, but I heard the new actress is quite the character,” her companion whispers back just as eager. “Something about her style had the director smiling for days, so they say.”

Shishiba tried his best to come off as uninterested, still… the way his shoulders squared at the mention could hardly go unnoticed.

“One of the other actors said she came from Kansai, accent slipping and all. One audition and the director cast her on the spot.”

Accent? She has an accent? Was he really so caught up in everything else that he would fail to hear the sounds of his home? Or did the idea of home altered completely when fate descended the sword of the heavens upon him?

“Maybe it’s the novelty of it,” the woman snickers. “You know how those Kansai folks are: loud, brash, always trying to be funny. She probably thinks she’s charming with all that country twang.”

Shishiba felt his eye twitch, hands forming into fists, jaw clenching tight enough he swore he could’ve turned his molars to dust. The casual disdain in their voices struck a chord he was certain couldn’t have hurt as much as when he was once at the end of it.

He had spent years practicing—trying to perfect the standard dialect for his work simply because his very first employer once called his way of speaking strange and unique. Shishiba knew what it really meant: you don’t fit in and you need to change.

It wasn’t about his skills, what did speaking have to do with who he was as a hitman? It didn’t even affect his performance so why would it matter—how could it matter when all his targets would end up dead by the end of the day anyway? There would be no one left to tell the tale of how he spoke in a way that was unfamiliar to them.

At some point, Shishiba had come to realize that it wasn’t about competence or being as efficient as possible. It was about power. Domination. The subtle shift in attitude that desired to plunge identities fragment by fragment until who they see is the embodiment of their ideals, until the unfamiliarity slips away, and any and all forms of deformity is diminished.

Because some people simply did not like those that were different from them.

Yet he kept the retaliations to himself; took it all to heart and spent an ample amount of time trying to overwrite the language of his tongue. But the familiar taste of it still lingered in his private thoughts, slipped past him in moments of stress or fatigue… still branded him as an outsider in Tokyo’s elite circles.

Shishiba was strangely numb to the poorly hidden discriminatory acts against the people from Kansai, he would be a fool if he still let it get to him… but here he was, getting upset because some nobodies he could kill in less than two seconds flat were looking down on somebody they haven’t even met simply because she came from a different part of the country; spoke in a way that was not similar to theirs.

The irony of it wasn’t lost on him that he was now silently defending the very woman he’d been desperately trying to avoid. Someone who was so painfully similar to him in so many ways yet still be very strikingly nothing like him at all.

He spared a glance at the lotto scratch card, there were three pictures: a theatrical mask, a movie strip, and a clown—maybe I’m the clown.

It’s been roughly seven days, thirteen hours, fifty seven minutes, and eight seconds since that unfortunate encounter with she who shall not be named.

From that day forward, the blond assassin made the great, conscious effort to avoid any and all forms of dreaded and unwelcome contact with her. The horrendous shirt he attained as some sort of inescapable form of her being lay at the foot of his wardrobe, buried under an ocean of fabric so that it may never see the light of day ever again… lest he risk the chance of her haunting him for the rest of his days—that she would be once again behest him into gravitating into her orbit, fall into the needless sense of wanting to see her all the damn time.

He went as far as rounded an entire block, took on different assignments—one which had him commuting to the other side of the city—even as immeasured as walking underneath the awning of every store front.

Yes, he would reach for the heavens if need be, beg even the gods to set him free from this—this wordless storm wreaking havoc in his once lucid thoughts.

But here he was, staring at the ichor of the sun that bled in the shape of her.

There was no inkling doubt about it, Shishiba was sure of it. If the glaring smile of the clown on the scratch card could reflect anything at this very moment, he was certain it would be his image.

How could her reign reach even this place which was bound for desolation?

“You’d call this divine intervention?” she proclaimed on stage, staring at her co-star with so much conviction it nearly made Shishiba envious—”That I would see you in everything despite all my efforts to hold the thought of you at bay?”

He was sure… always, surer than even the fortune tellers of the world. But here, underneath the stage lights of a theatre, he felt far more foolish than the man he was supposed to kill.

“Or am I…” she lingers, turning away from the actor to gaze at the audience. “Am I simply building up the bravery to draw nearer to you?”

For who could ever declare war against the armies of destiny and expect to win?

Shishiba beseeched his stare to orbit away; stare at anything so long as it was not her.

The lottery scratch card crumpled underneath the pillars of his fingers. He took the job because it paid well, because the target was a scumbag embezzling the JAA’s money, amusing himself in such fickle, meaningless, useless past times like theatre. Shishiba took the job because it was far from her and all that she could be—all the good and the patches of sunlight.

This garbage dump is an hour away even by train.

He ran the tip of his tongue over the back of his teeth in annoyance, his knuckles ghosting over the handle of his weapon, tucked away in the safety of his expensive suit jacket. Really, if wasn’t there to put an end to this, people would believe he was an investor for this romantic tragedy.

…so why is she here?

Before he could chain himself to where he stood, his feet had already made the journey to dissipate the distance separating him from the light of her.

From a place closer to the heavens, Shishiba could see the full extent of her being. He was no connoisseur in the making of such beauty—but then again, he only thought it beautiful simply because she existed in the center of it all… scattering the painted colors of the stars like the patches of sunlight.

Her voice was as clear as the waters of the sky, crisp like the early morning breeze in the days of the fall, the fires of her emotions spider-webbing throughout the corners of the theatre as if someone had bottled summer’s lightning and cast it free in the coves of this damned place through the shape of her words.

She was good. Far too good to be kept underneath such dull luminescence, to wear fabrics that were losing hue they could pass off as gray—far too good to be a casualty for a stranger’s actions; shoulder a debt that was never hers to pay.

He faltered—an occurrence so rare that Shishiba had to have a full second for himself to assess what the hell just happened.

Hesitance was a deadly thing to have. Doubt would tear him from the inside out before he could blink to retaliate.

Indecision was a curse, not a blessing.

Look away—find your target! Look away!

The words cycled through the tracks of his mind like a prayer; wanting to pass it off as a command simply so he could will his soul to be anywhere else to be where he was supposed to be, so he could trick the rest of his body to leave this place… to leave her as she is.

When the curtains fell and the lights dimmed, only then could Shishiba gather the flames of his resolution and ignite the hypnotising spell she had cast on him—haunted him even when she was still so very far away.

Just as the haze diminished, his gaze dragged behind him like a disobedient child; bubbling a sick yearning to catch even the ends of her hair as she crossed the borders of the curtains to get to where she would be further away from him. Even as he blinked, the afterimage of her danced behind his eyelids, an unending act of desperate defiance that would not leave him even in the absence of light.

Shishiba clenched his jaw. You need to get your shit together. There was no room for this, no space in his life for fickle affections—’I’ll make room’, such was the weight of the sentiments nestled in his heart, inescapable… tied to all the songs it sang in the dead of the night. It was within the confines of his body, tethered to the arteries and veins that kept him alive, cradled in the protection of his muscles and the bars of his ribs—you’d think his heart would think of him, put him above all else… but harrowingly, it only ever echoed the shadows of her smile, mimicked the color of her laughter, delighted in the thought of knowing she was near.

So agonizingly full of her it was blasphemous to even call it his own.

The target was still alive. What a disgrace. If the mirror of his soul from three weeks ago could see the state he was in right now, he reckons he would be the first to die by his own hammer.

Shishiba caught the image of that rat, seated high above the rest, smug and oblivious that he was nearing the last acts of his life. It wasn’t burdensome to whip out a gun and shoot that bastard dead. Hell, it wasn’t even too much effort to cross that distance and claw his head off with the back of his hammer.

It could all end right now.

Shishiba could spare himself the theatrics and get the job over and done with.

But his hand wouldn’t move.

His feet would not take him to where he needed to be.

The conviction he once felt driving him to this dead end mission had long since dissipated underneath the glare of the stage lights.

And he found himself—for the very first time—thinking that there was no way to accomplish this. Should he call someone else to do it? Hah! Why would he do that?

Shishiba was certain that if he called Nagumo to do it, that fiend would never let him live it down.

Then… how about Sakamoto? But Sakamoto was already frolicking between the borders of quitting and staying on the job.

There was always Oki… Oki is an asshole.

Shishiba had to do it. His pride as a hitman was on the line.

He gritted his teeth. He will not be an idiot.

Shishiba forced his body to operate, for his limbs to submit to his commands of movement. Like a marionette, he weaved through the hallways, careful not to let any soul see him, he walked past the dressing rooms, waited until the group of actors crossed the threshold before he would continue on his way. Before he could take another silent step away, he heard a burst of laughter echo from one of the slightly opened doors.

“And ya know what he said ta me?” A voice, thick and heavy with that familiar lilt, carried over to where he stood as clear as the saturated skies of his home, not a hint of shame or hesitation. “He goes, ‘Can you tone it down with the accent for the second act?’ and I told him, ‘This is me tonin’ it down! The director didn’t say anything ‘bout wanting to say it the way you folks say it.’ then he got so angry and walked away!”

People’s laughter rang in chorus, although one voice in particular—one could not be hidden underneath the rhythm of others, no… not if Shishiba was the one listening.

“So that’s why Yamato-san was raging earlier!”

“He’s always so uptight about the words like he owns the script.”

“Probably got it from his father or something. I heard he was some big shot at a company and ran the place by forcing his ideals on his employees.”

“Ha! Finally got a taste of his generational medicine. Our very own rising star totally put him in his place!”

Shishiba found himself lingering, drowning in sentiments she spoke with acceptance—the way she unveiled her thoughts through her words without the trace of shame that had once clouded his own speech.

There was something intriguing about her defiance: the fiery tenacity to go against everything that wanted to rewrite who she was.

“Doesn’t it ever bother you?” another voice asked, this time laced with worry.

“No,” she answers eagerly—Shishiba swears he could almost see that sunfire smile of hers, the light her eyes would carry. “I wouldn’t change who I am to fit to some superficial standards. If anythin’, it saves me the effort of weeding out the people worth my time.”

Shishiba felt an uncomfortable twist in his chest. All too familiar; opening the scars he once had thought he’d sealed away. Envy. Although this time, this time they bled truly. The kind that spoke with a promise, to never shy away, to never hide, to never again change who he is just to be accepted. He would break the shackles he dragged for so long; branded him as a perfect weapon, untraceable, no one.

He forced himself to move on. There was a job to do and it wasn’t going to unravel all by itself. He had to go, Shishiba had to leave right now… else he might never compel himself to go away.

His fingers found solace in the familiar frost that covered the handle of his weapon. From where he stood, just a little past the archway that would lead him to the balcony, the hitman felt something tugging at him.

His heart was doing that thing again. That stupid, idiotic ringing like he was some teenager sneaking around the campus trying to get a glimpse of his crush. You imbecile, move!

Do your job! He reminds himself, forcing the words to echo in the hollows of his skull.

“Excuse me,” a gruff voice intercepted him, it belonged to a man in a security guard uniform who eyed him with suspicion. “This area is for cast and crew only.”

Shishiba adapted a casual stance, easing the tension that lingered in the joints of his shoulders and smiled politely. “Sorry ‘bout that. I’m lookin’ for the producer’s office—can ya tell me where he is?”

The man’s expression changed. “Another investor? He’s by the balcony, just up the stairs. He’s expecting someone.”

“‘Preciate it,” Shishiba nodded and moved towards the place he already knew. At least now that was one less person off his back.

As Shishiba nears the balcony, he hears the producer’s voice, loud and crude… every bit as flagrant as he was told he’d be, speaking on the phone.

“That actress is my ticket out of that damned place,” he boasts. “Once this goes big, I can wash all traces of JAA money clean as a whistle. They wouldn’t even be able to trace where the money came from not if they want the public to criticize them anyway.”

A pause.

Enough for the rage to simmer in the poisoned meadows of his malice.

“Of course I’m using her! Do you really think people like her will last in this work? Once my name is out there on the screens I’ll have the bigshots lining up to be part of my shows. No one’s gonna remember some country girl whose only value is her face.”

Something cold and dangerous washed over his being, icing him from where he stood; a shadow in the darkest corner of the balcony.

Some people truly did not value their lives, just take this shitstain as a model. First he made an enemy of the JAA, and now he pissed off Shishiba; every bit of hesitation had melted away… replaced by the burning flames of his ire.

Shishiba tells himself this was the reality. This is how everything would end if he’s the one involved. It wouldn’t be like the stories he saw on TV, or the play she would enact—no. If he is given a role on the stage of the world, it would end in bloodshed… whether that would be by his hands or another, someone will eventually get hurt.

And with practiced expertise, he locked it all away.

The sunshine, the laughter, the smiles… he forced them down the abyssal nothingness that bordered him from the rest of the world, the same ravine that couldn’t even echo his name. He pushed them all down, willed them to remain there for a little longer—just so he could do what he was supposed to, just so he wouldn’t hesitate, just so he wouldn’t falter.

He slipped a black mask to shield the lower half of his face, pulling his hair back in a neat ponytail that made him look like an entirely different person.

His movements were swift, silent, deadly as the scythe death had carried around—practiced and well accounted for, routinely in the kindest word; numbing in the worst.

When crimson stained the already wine-red carpet, and the curtains rose again to continue the performance, he was already descending the steps that would lead to his escape.

He walked through the building’s service corridors painted in his head like a national treasure. As he rounded the corner, Shishiba nearly slammed into the person walking on the other side; barely catching himself before he could trample upon the stranger—

“Are you alright?”

Oh, you have got to be kidding me…

For a moment, [Name] could do nothing but stare at the masked stranger, the blond threads perched atop his head gleaming like starlight underneath the fluorescent lights. He was tall. Tall in the way that she had to crane her head to get a good look at him, eyes as crystalline as the ocean waters she adored to a fault.

“You can’t be here,” [Name] shook her head with a small smile. Her voice took on a different form than the one she projected on stage—free from the spellbinding script, true… unbreakingly tethered to all her heart and soul. “Are you lost? This place is for cast and crew only.”

Shishiba’s daydream shattered at the weight of her words. He clears his throat as he conjures the lines he constructed with great effort. “Just lookin’ for the exit. The main doors were too crowded.”

“Oh,” she whispers. [Name] hoped that he didn’t catch the way all the gales left her lungs the second he spoke in a way that felt like home. “There’s a side door that way.” She points to the end of the hallway. “It leads to the alley.”

“Thank you,” he echoes, commanding with every molecule of his strength to adjure his body to move—carry the strength to gravitate away.

Before he could take a step forward, [Name]’s judgement dragged behind her like a disobedient child and her gaze found him once more. “Sorry if this is weird but, have I—have we met before?”

Yes. Yes we have. You are so hauntingly familiar that it’s making me sick.

“I don’t think so,” he musters. “I would remember.”

[Name] smiled at him again, a curve of the lips that shone in an incandescent light—infinitely far more genuine than anything she showed the world from the platform. “Just thought you looked a lot like someone I know,” she shrugs, pursing her lips like she was trying to stop something from coming to life. “Well… I bid you adieu, good sir.” She playfully salutes him with a laugh. “Enjoy the rest of your day. And…”

Before she could disappear around the corner, she looked back and grinned at him. “I hope you enjoyed the show.”

The sound of her footfalls echoed within the barren hallway, resting in the littlest of coves that he was certain that they would live there forever. The ghost of her warmth lingered for a little while longer, and when Shishiba was sure he had taken them all for himself, he allowed one simple truth to escape from the borders of his lips.

“More than you know.”

As the crowd left one by one through the threshold—big enough to never delay anyone who attended, when the last of the stage lights had bled obsidian… when the lackeys of the person he had killed found the body and planned to chase him down, Shishiba was already long gone.

He would take that arduous way back to where he resided, make the one hour commute back, walk underneath the eaves of the sidewalk, avoid any and all sorts of ladies washing the second floor windows.

Shishiba would do it with the weight of his actions heavy on his chest. His reflection on the train window staring back at him—washed-out, liminal, as though the glass and every color of the sun’s prism didn’t know what to do with him anymore.

He found himself repeating that one simple exchange he had with her. When she’s scattered in everything good, all the things that were kind and gentle… every bit the soul polished to this marble sculpture freed from the constraints of the earth. The light as she had spoken to him, looked at him like he was just an ordinary man and never the depiction of people’s nightmares, the contempt in their stares as they called him a monster.

A moment he didn’t deserve, a gift he had selfishly taken for himself because beyond her… he didn’t know where to be.

Would she return to that place? Look for the key to her dreams? Would she grieve for that animal? Would she ask the world questions why it decided to pause her chances of making it big?

Would she try her best to uncover the secrets? The truth? Trace the bloodstains and find Shishiba waiting at the end of it?

She wouldn’t know why.

“Next stop, Shibuya Station. Next stop, Shibuya Station.”

She would never know who… yet Shishiba was already grieving for what he would become in her eyes if she ever did.

The world could curse at him, tell him he was a monster unfit for anything good. They could label him as anything, be the very object at the core of their contempt. He would take it.

A nearby passenger whispered to her friend. “Did you hear about what happened at the Nisshoku Theatre? The producer for the show was found dead on the balcony.”

“No way,” her companion gasps. “Did they find out who did it?”

“They’re still looking. But the director was interviewed earlier and said the show will most likely be cancelled.”

“That’s horrible. Everyone was looking forward to it too.”

“Right?” the passenger agrees, sighing at the unfortunate ending the story had come to. ”I hope they find the killer and deal with that animal.”

Shishiba tuned out the conversation, willing it to merge with the ocean of chatter surrounding this hunk of moving metal. These people knew nothing.

So many lives would have been compromised if that bastard had gotten away. It wouldn’t have been solely because of the show—it would have been about killers, murderers, thieves killing and assassinating civilians; getting caught in a fight that was never theirs to win.

So many would have gotten hurt, injured… or worse.

The world would move on. People will weave stories to their liking. But he doubts they would ever see the truth.

For now this was the reality.

But she didn’t know—she didn’t know and that was enough for now.

She didn’t know and he secretly hoped she never does.

It was alright. He wouldn’t get angry—he wouldn’t even be upset over it. The media could paint his persona as envious, selfish… every bit the monster they would believe him be. It was alright.

Shishiba would do so as long as it wasn’t her.

Because now, when the aureate kindness of the setting sun had painted his face… there was this unyielding yearning in the bowels of his soul that longed for nothing but to see her again.

There were a great many things Shishiba had come to realize.

One, there was no other vending machine in the vicinity of the city that housed those fancy orange juice boxes other than the one near that godawful street—that one specific supermarket he spent four days actively avoiding at all cost, only to fall short on the fifth day when he couldn’t take it anymore.

Two, his living space was beginning to oddly reek of blood and shadows which was of course, the norm, but what felt most strange was the feeling of annoyance at the lingering scent of death that traced his steps.

And three—perhaps the most damning thing of them all—he was honestly considering going to a therapist or a shaman—either one was alright so long as they could get rid of the image of scattered sunshine haunting the raven bleakness of his mind.

A chorus of laughter and cheer broke past the wall of daydreams.

He stopped the mindless march he had unconsciously fallen into, gaze drawing nearer to the shore where the sound flowed, warm and maddeningly comforting as if all the hardships he endured for all the years that passed him by had dissipated, rendered to an unimaginable form, a distant hum.

The skies of his world became saturated in a golden light, a haunting sense of familiarity so it seems.

The blues of his eyes traced the melody, finding a clump of children huddling around a woman in the middle of the park. Their voices layered over one another, each one binding for the attention of the one whose hair fell in a waterfall of [h/c], tiny hands tugging at her sleeves, pleading the only way that children could: unrelenting, chaotic, profoundly difficult to intercept with simple reasonings or blatant refusal—weirdly convincing.

Light of the autumn sun slipped past the curtain of clouds. There, in the midst of the scattered sunrays… at the center of the patches of sunlight—there she was: looking like a summoning pole surrounded by little ducklings hovering about.

Her eyes shone in an incandescent light, glimmering in a way that stars could only envy; smiling—the kind of grin that made things in him stir uncomfortably; set ablaze, doused in an ocean of color, tied together by the laughter that echoed in the horizons of his soul.

Shishiba froze.

Underneath the rustle of leaves and the rhythmic tunes sung by the breeze, far from the hold of frost and yuletide, he remained as crystalline as the ice blanketing the north.

How could she still smile like that? How could she still laugh like that? How could kindness still follow her like a damn pest?

There were a great many things Shishiba had come to realize: going out of his way for such an inescapable entity was useless… completely, hopelessly, useless because at the end of the day, his gaze, his reveries, his very being still gravitated to the thought of the one thing he went great distances to avoid; hauling the chains of his desires to yield was ineffective, in fact, it only ever caused the monster to yearn for more… break the restraints he spent years cultivating for the slimmest of possibilities to feel at ease.

Really, because when the canvas overhead is painted in the colors of the night, when the space before and beyond him is a little quieter, there… in the eyes of the skyline when the light of the city reflected in the pools of his irises—there he sees that the world didn’t end.

It wouldn’t end if he would surrender to the one thing he wanted more than anything else in the universe.

Shishiba is startled back into reality by the cold burning through his chest… literally. Something wet and earthen had begun to seep through the fibers of his—Shishiba sighs—very expensive suit.

Mud painted the lilac of his dress shirt, spider webbing to the lapels of his jacket. The delicate cloth now marred with scars of brown and green.

His ether-dyed gaze traced the remnants it left on his clothes down to where it met the ground, falling in a crumpled heap with a nimble thunk.

I am going to beat the shit out of who—

“Are you alright? I’m so sorry, sir! I didn’t—I wasn’t lookin’ and—”

The world shifted. And all at once, everything fell in a rhythmic sense of autumn and patches of sunlight. There, where the flowing light of the heavens kissed the earth’s mortal grounds, Shishiba found himself face to face with her: eyes fracturing in frantic rush, dyed in the colors of absolute mortification and concern, face flushed with embarrassment making her look like a cat caught in the act of some harmless mischief.

Would it be strange if he were to say that he was kind of happy that it happened? Should he be worried that he was just a little bit glad that he was at the end of such an inconvenient occurrence? Would he be smited by his own consciousness if he were to confess that the sight of someone making her way frantically towards him had caused his heart to beat so traitorously—as though it wanted to cut open his chest and meet her halfway?

Did she recognize him from the theatre? Does she know him from the other month? From the supermarket? The stranger across the street?

Does she even remember him at all?

Shishiba couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge his ruined clothing, buried underneath the auburn and crimson soil of his subconscious. This would make it the second encounter where she had inadvertently ruined his clothes… even still, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

A part of him prayed that she knew him even if it was by the most inconvenient name like: ‘the guy I spilled dirty window water on’ or ‘mr. too big for my green Kyoto shirt’ he would even accept ‘Thor’.

He would take it—welcome them with a grateful heart so long as it means he wasn’t completely alone in the realm of this affection.

It would be unfair if he was the only one drowning in the oceans of her image. When he was nearly crushed by the weight of her ghost… how could he live to see another day if he were to know she had not been bothered like he had been?

“I hope you don’t start thinkin’ that I’m doin’ this on purpose,” she smiles at him sheepishly, her breaths coming out through ragged stutters from nerves.

Shishiba wanted to shout in joy, jump up and down and tell the world he had won (even when he hadn't really won anything at all). It was a strange chain of thoughts considering his co-workers usually labeled him as level-headed and aloof, viewing the world through a thick patch of ice.

You remember me…

“I’m not so sure,” he replies coolly, crossing his arms over his chest like it could have his heart cease its desire to split open his ribcage with a knife and run straight to her. “It’s going to be really difficult to try and convince me ya aren’t.”

[Name]’s jaw would’ve hit the earth’s core if it wasn’t so stubbornly attached to her face. Does he really think of me like that? “W-Well—in my defense…” she sputters, her eyes darting everywhere vying for a way out of the subtle accusation.

Shishiba disguised his chuckle with a cough, pursing his lips and mutedly turning his head away to hide the smile threatening to tear at his face. “Now you’re just makin’ excuses.”

“I’m sorry! I really am, honest! I didn’t mean to—”

Her words fell short as she took a single step forward and lost her footing on the wet grass. Shishiba’s body moved before his mind could force it to restriction, his arms reaching to catch her before she could descend to the earth.

Honestly… what are you doing to me?

For an arbitrary moment lost to the deities above the stars, they stayed that way—suspended in time… her in his arms, his heart in his throat.

“Sorry—”

“Yer already ringin’ my ears with the apologies,” he interrupted, the cadence of his soul coloring the words he bled to life. “How about ya thank me for catchin’ ya first?”

There was a strange sense of freedom that lingered when he didn’t feel the insecurity filter in. Shishiba saw no rebuke in her eyes… no matter how dazzled they had been, they could’ve fractured, scattered to a thousand colorful pieces and he was sure he would never find a single shade of disdain.

In a single moment woven in the slimmest threads of time, how wonderful it was to have known for certain that his soul would be safe in her existence.

“Oh,” she whispers—“Oh, yes! Yes! Uhm thank you for catching me uhh…” she scrambles to her feet, dusting away the imaginary dirt from her clothes. “Sorry, I seem to have forgotten your—”

“Shishiba,” he breathes, clearing his throat; ignoring the way everything seemed to be doused in a world of frost the moment she took a step away from him.

I've had enough…

The mention of his name cast a light on her face; shining so brightly it could rival the sun in the morning, the moon in midnight… have the gods piece together another universe to house the rest of the darkness.

Every time I see you, everytime I think of you… I get tired of trying to find reasons to stay away.

“Thank you for catching me, Shishiba-san. And uh… sorry about—” her eyes traced the contours of his shirt… ruined once again because of her foolishness, this time she held herself to the vow that she was no longer going to make any more excuses. “If you have time to spare now, I can fix your shirt! It won’t even take long I promise! It’s the least I can do—”

“Ya don’t have to, ‘s fine,” he replies with a carefully measured tone; controlled to what his heart could permit.

“No it’s not!”

Shishiba was taken aback by her vehemence. Who knew such a kind creature could house such fervent morals…

“I mean—what I mean is that,” realizing that she could no longer salvage what had become of their exchange, she sighed—a sound laced with utter defeat. “Please?”

Curse me now. Just kill me now…

“I don’t want you cursing my existence to the wind or—or make me a story during dinner time telling everyone about the lady who cleans the second floor windows and falls on strangers. I’d be a laughing stock and I’ll never live that down for the rest of my life!”

She continues to talk animatedly, portrayed in a manner that it filled the silence that once occupied the space between them.

The lady gestures vaguely towards the direction behind him where a row of apartment buildings and small stores lined the road beside the park.

Shishiba recognizes that place. Whether it was delight or disdain, he could never quite put his finger on it. “I just live over there—really not far at all! I have a washing machine upstairs and I’m not a psychopath or have been admitted to any crime or registered in a mental ward if that’s any assurance and—and I’m… I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Shishiba was amused, and it showed in the way that the stony valleys of his lips had softened and broken into a faint smile. He never realized how strangely endearing it could be to find someone who looked like the child of the sun trying to justify that she had done nothing worthy of divine rejection to someone who could very much be held between the planets and be faced with retribution for the rest of time eternal. “Yeah… ya kinda are.”

She laughs, really… she laughed. And everything around him took on a different color, fractured them into a kaleidoscope of light and sunshine.

God, aren’t you something…

“So…” she drawls, a hint of hope shading her face. “May I take your jacket to clean now, Shishiba-san?”

“I’m tellin’ ya that you don’t hafta,” he tells her, his voice coming off rougher than intended, doused in the oceans of where he was most intimate, where all that he knows inhabited—all the syllables torn between his restraint and the desire to follow her to anywhere she might lead.

Shishiba watched her face fall ever so slightly, like she was already conjuring every right thing to convince him to let her help him. Her eyes—damnably expressive, held no restraint, no hesitation—clouding with something he could hardly push himself to stare into. And his resolve crumbled like the leaves crushed from the weight of his affection.

“Please! My Ma will kill me if she knew I made a fool of myself in the city and she’ll force me to come back—”

The desperation in her tone awakened something in him, tugged at something he never knew could exist. And the thought of never seeing her again, of her being sent somewhere he couldn’t reach, of never running into her within the mundane predictability of this metropolis, caused an unwanted feeling to disrupt the waves crashing in the underside of his stomach.

“Okay, okay I get it! Here,” he surrenders, shrugging off his jacket from his shoulders with a resigned sigh. The chilling zephyrs of the fall bit at his skin through the thin fabric of his dress shirt—the one most affected by destiny’s intervention. But the frigidity of it thawed at the sight of her warm expression.

“Oh thank the heavens!” She gladly took the garment from him with reverent hands, as though it was some precious artifact and not an expensive but ultimately replaceable piece of cloth. Her fingers carefully traced the color of the earth, eyes telling the stories of how she could try to get it off without ruining it. She gazed at it with so much consideration that Shishiba felt invisible, an unfamiliar sensation—jealousy, perhaps, that an inanimate object could be at the receiving end of such gentle, tender attention from her.

She turned swiftly, wanting to run off towards the line of buildings that bordered one side of the park. A few steps in, she halted, her body going rigid as if she had been struck by lightning. She pivoted back to look at him, still standing underneath the trees that rained the colors of vermillion and amber… and smiled welcomingly at him.

“Would you like to come upstairs to have some tea—” her nose scrunched up in close thought, ”—do I have tea?—or coffee—” another pause, ”—oh I think I ran out of that yesterday—uh uhmm how about some water?”

The storm of words tangling in the planes of her tongue, unfiltered and so painfully honest he swore he could almost see them coming into being, coaxed something dangerously bordering the lines of adoration… something he didn’t know until this very moment that his usually guarded heart was capable of feeling. And then, as if whispered directly at her by the threads of fate, to completely break down the foundations of his defenses, she flashed him a cheeky smile—crooked and imperfect and painted in all the colors of what made her human; absolutely devastating in kindness and the patches of sunlight that scattered across the earth.

Shishiba had to fight off his laughter. How strange that the world could make such wonders—how the deities he had spent a portion of his life speculating about their existence could be at the end of his gratitude. That there he was, standing in the midst of the park in his shirt—probably ruined beyond repair—and still could not find it in himself to conjure any rebuke… just this kindred affection that longed for nothing but to be where she is—to follow where she goes, to take her up on the offer of a glass of water.

He nodded and said, “Yeah, sure, water is fine,” careful to reign in the way of his tongue, to maintain even what could be an atom of the composure he spent so long trying to engrave into his being where his origins made him an outsider.

Then, almost as if there was something that should’ve come first but was overlooked, she looked over at him and added, “I’m [Name] by the way,” she smiles, “just thought I’d let you know that,” and the light of it nearly breaks his resolve all over again.

Somehow, seamlessly… Shishiba found himself weaving into her life effortlessly. Like the sun: warm, bright, rising unfailingly in the east where everything seemed to be shaded brighter than everything else—right here, where she was most present—as though it was always meant to be.

He’d catch her figure at the other side of the street and no longer felt that creeping anxiety threatening to hold him by the collar. He’ll smile at her with no hesitation, with no fear of getting burned by the sunshine, or douse the fire that brings her to life. Shishiba could be anything, he could be everything, yet with her, he chose to be who he was. Nothing but him.

And how great it was to know, to feel with his entire being that he was safe with her.

He found himself taking every twist and turn in this labyrinth he built around his heart just for a glimpse of the luminescence he had once been starved of—the gentleness he could only dream of during once upon a time.

The rumble of thunder rattled the earth as lightning drew cracks in the canvas of the heavens, splitting them open to have the tears of the gods descend like stars upon the planet, leaving the sound of the echoing pitter-patter in their wake.

Whispers of the midnight zephyrs resided on the other side of the windows, hidden by the yellow curtains that separated her domain of slumber from the rest of the world. Her form buried underneath the oceans of fabric, the tangles of her hair mirroring the wades of grass scattered across the plains and valleys of the sea.

Frantic hammering against a wooden frame cut through the silence of the night, the clouds of the unannounced storm still looming overhead. The digital clock on her bedside cast an eerie blue glow, staring at her like a pair of all too familiar eyes; numbers shouting 2:17 AM.

[Name] roused from her slumber, blinking the sleep from her eyes, wondering if the sounds she heard were figments of her dreams—

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

A part of [Name] wanted to remain in the warm valleys of her bed where it was safe, where she could at least pretend that someone wasn’t rapping at her door with such frantic urgency, or save the last of the sleep she was losing as the knocking slowed in haste until there was nothing but the silence.

For a moment, she wanted to believe whoever creep was waiting for her had relented, and as she was about to succumb to the calls of slumber, her daydreams were shattered at the resonating sound of the frantic knocking.

She sighs, knowing there was infinitely no way out of this than to see what the heck was going on so early in the morning.

The floorboards were freezing against her bare feet, emitting a creaking sound for every careful step she took, past the carefully stacked boxes, the single picture taped to the wall, torn apart at the center where a glimpse of obsidian could be caught where the fault lines separated her from the figure of someone else.

[Name] steps over the small basin pooling over with rain water, seeping through the cracks in her ceiling. Her fingers found anchor on a frying pan, raising it close to her chest just in case.

With slow, calculated steps—a stark contrast to the reverberating exigency from behind the door—[Name] craned her head to peer into the peephole.

A familiar figure stood in the doorway, golden tresses clumped together by the rain water, his usually pristine suit jacket tied around his shoulders, his dress shirt folded to take haven above his elbows.

Shishiba.

[Name], albeit confused at his questionable taste in hours for house visitation, quickly put away the frying pan. Her heart thudding against her chest like a horse ready to chase down the sunset in the most dramatic way possible, her numb fingers found the locks—one that didn’t work, one that did—prying the door open the second she got them to yield.

“What are you doing?” She questions, crossing her arms over her chest to try and keep in what little warmth she had going for her against the biting frost of the sudden storm.

Shishiba stood there, towering over her frame despite being hunched over the narrow hallway, rain dripping from the golden threads perched atop his head, with his forearm bracing against the threshold of her door as his other hand found solace on the side of his abdomen.

“I am in pain,” he whispers, voice struggling to pry its way past the ivy stitching through his lungs.

[Name], still dazed from his sudden appearance, found herself asking: “Do you mean like emotional pain or—holy moldy cheese that's a lot of blood!”

Where his forearm found support against her door frame, the other was vying with all its might to keep the flow of life cycling within his body. The once ivory cloth stained with more than just rainwater, the traitorous droplets racing down the horizons of his fingers.

“Pain. Yes.” His voice was a fleeting echo, fighting against all odds to try and not look as scattered as he felt.

Shishiba sways slightly, perhaps from the patches of blood that he lost, and [Name] reached over to steady him, hand dawning on the mixture of water and blood.

“What happened—no nevermind that! Bathroom now!” Her voice rose higher with urgency, every hint of sleep vanishing in the face of absolute horrification and panic.

[Name] leaned him next to the wall as she hurriedly closed the door, rushing towards the bathroom to get the water running.

Despite his horrendous condition, the blond hitman still found himself succumbing to the towers of principles he has always lived by; meticulously taking off his shoes by the entryway, wobbling as he tried to maintain balance while removing them and keeping himself upright and somewhat alive.

[Name] ran past the entryway, noticing from the corner of her eyes what he was putting himself through and let out a sound bordering the lands of exasperation and worry.

“Don't—ahh! Forget about the shoes!” She grabbed him by his good arm and began to drag him to the bathroom, careful to avoid the basin catching the leak of the storm outside. Her arm wrapped around his waist, taking as much of his weight as her small frame could support.

Inside the bathroom, she eased him onto the closed toilet lid, his body sinking down with a heavy exhale of relief, finally free from the strain he’s been enduring. Shishiba leaned against the wall, momentarily closing his eyes.

Who would have thought, huh? That there would come a day where the elusive, viewing the world through a thick sheet of ice, detached member of the Order, Shishiba… could find heaven in one of the smallest bathrooms in the world? Heaven was an understatement, what use was a superficial imagery conjured by the beliefs of humankind when paradise was already here? In the form of a raging, panicking, kind-hearted woman called [Name]?

Heaven had already manifested in the shape of her.

“Why did you wait for so long?” She scolds angrily, pacing around the small, nearly cramped space looking for the things that could help him. [Name] pulls out a first-aid kit from the cabinet, hands trembling as she settles it above the bathtub.

“I didn’t want to be rude.”

She spares him a pointed look before turning her attention to fumble with the clasp of the equipment.

“To who? The ghosts in the walls?”

Shishiba smiles faintly at her measured annoyance. No matter the layers of spite she uses to coat her words, her eyes told him everything: the worry, the fear, the look of wanting to make it all better, to have everything be alright, to take the pain away… to make sure he’ll be okay.

“Mmm, ‘ve been knockin’ on the door for fifteen minutes,” he hums, eyeing her through half-lidded eyes with that same curve of the lips cradled with every drop of adoration nestled in the depths of his soul.

“You should’ve knocked harder!” She turns to him with a wet towel, brows still furrowed in ire from his actions. “Yer face must be so thick to still have the guts to worry ‘bout manners when yer dyin’?”

He laughs, relishing in the feeling of the cold water washing away the grime on his face along with the trailing touches of warmth that came from the pads of her fingers, that is until the sound trips on its way out of his throat from the jabbing pain of his wound.

“I’m not dying… just a little scratch—ow, hey!” Shishiba flinches at the sudden pressure put on his injury.

“Just a scratch—” she mimics, ”Gods, ugh men.”

[Name] lets out a sigh, seemingly cooling down from her anger but the crease between her eyebrows tells him otherwise.

Shishiba found it endearing that she was worrying about him—that she would care enough about him to remain here with him when she could have turned him away; never to have opened the door at all.

“Okay, okay… easy now,” he coaxes her, his freezing hand hovering over hers as she cleans his wound.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! You could’ve… if I hadn’t—” her voice falters at the thought of it alone.

If she hadn’t woken up from his persistence, would he still be able to greet her when morning comes by? Would she find him slumped over her doorway colder than the rain that threatened to take him away? Would she even find him at all? Would she spend the rest of her days wondering where he went? Questioning herself, the universe, the patches of sunlight where he had gone, asking the universe for the way to him, to where he is because her mind would not relent until she knows for certain that he was—that Shishiba…

His expression thawed at the light of genuine concern painting her face. His hands that floated above the lands of her figure descended to take refuge on her wrists. “Hey, I’m okay. Really, I am.”

…that he was alright.

Shishiba’s words were soft, calming, and it made [Name] feel silly. He’s the one who needs support, he’s the one who needs to hear such words… most ardently, he was the one who needed to be calmed down.

But Shishiba was still the one who made the sun dawn on her. He was the one who thawed the frost, made the waves still, had the winds come to silence. He was the one who tied a lasso around the fragments of her thoughts that were scattered across the heavens, reeling them back in the form of gentle assurance.

Silence blanketed what little distance remained between the two of them, huddled beneath the bathroom’s fluorescent lights with the pitter-patter of the rain outside echoing in the quietness their lack of words left behind along with the occasional hiss of pain from Shishiba.

He watched her work, sure that her movements were a lot more fluid than if he were to do it on his own, even in her recently awoken state.

“You don’t seem fazed by this,” he comments, staring at the way her hands never faltered even as he shifts and winces from the pressure she applied.

“Sorry,” she grimaced, looking at him to make sure he was alright—to what he could manage to an extent at least. As much as she would have loved to never cause him pain, she knew that kindness in that light was going to get him into even more trouble.

Shishiba had to endure the hurt because pain in this light would be kindness itself.

“Ya don’t have to apologize all the time you know?” He points out, it was her strange habit that he took note of from the very first day they met.

At first, he assumed that perhaps her constant apologies were caused by the little mishap they found themselves tangled in, but as the moon waxed and waned, and the sun had settled to dusk and dawn, there, in that little space in the grand vastness of the stars, he sees that it is engraved in her very being.

“Sor—” she caught herself, shaking her head like it could rid of the heat creeping its way up the mountains of her neck. ”Right… uhm, okay.” She bandages the cracks of his skin, cautious of any blood that might seep through the ivory cloth. “Only ‘cause my sister gets hurt all the time.”

“You have a sister?” Shishiba’s brows lifted in surprise, in his haze-induced state he forgets to reign in his curiosity—to put a cease on the all too inevitable pull of gravity towards her orbit.

[Name] hums, a small smile lingering on her face from the memory. “Yeah, she’s still a kid so she gets hurt a lot, especially because she plays with the old saw at the back of the house.”

“There’s a saw at the back of your house?” Shishiba’s voice raised in alarm, although he was quick to back down from the prodding pain that spiderwebbed from his wound. But the genuine curiosity about the existence of another figure in her life was all too evident in his expression.

“Be careful,” [Name] warns, pushing a hand on his shoulder to get him to ease. “No—not this one, back in the farm.” She continues her work, pushing in the first stitch followed by the next.

“I’m guessin’ ya know by now that I’m not from here. You speak like me even if you try to hide it with all that Tokyo flair.” [Name] snuck a glance at him and gave him a teasing look.

Shishiba’s mouth curled into a smirk, caught red handed at his own deception. He was so sure that he was hiding it well… but perhaps she was just better at knowing where to look.

“In any case,” she continues, grabbing the plasters, “my sister is a wild child, always runnin’ around and chasing the neighbors’ kids, falling off the fences, getting tangled in the machinery. And she does all that with that eerie deadpan face like it doesn’t bother her at all!” [Name] attempts to mimic the face she spoke so fondly of, but she was doused in too much sunshine—far too kind to pretend to be anything else—any traces of nonchalance was still saturated in the colors of light. “That’s why I volunteered when a buncha city people did outreach programs to teach first aid. Consider me the valedictorian because I was first in line there.”

He watched her talk with unbated adoration, taking in the way her cheeks would shift when she talked and smiled at the same time, unable to decide which one she’d rather do so she did both at the same time; all the words that had the honor of touching her lips cascading like waterfalls.

The world was blanketed in the veil of midnight, street lights lining the roads of a city that never sleeps. More than a million people lived in this city but he was the one to have found himself here… where she was close, remained near to her underneath the spells of slumber.

How lucky was that, huh?

“I kinda guessed ya ain’t from here,” he smiles… mirroring the way of her tongue with the same melody he grew up playing. “I mean, who but Kansai folks pour window water on strangers—ow!”

“That wasn’t on purpose,” her eyes widened in horror, hands frozen mid-air at the prospect of hurting him again—“And I already said I was sorry.”

Shishiba bit the insides of his cheek to ground himself to reality, everything felt blurred all of a sudden—the colors of the room merging to nothingness, the rumbles of the earth halting at the mouth of his ears.

It took all he had left to keep gazing into the light, to keep looking at her simply because he found solace in her eyes that harbored so much warmth; to strain his senses to hear the sound of her voice, to follow it home like a guiding star.

“Yes, yes… I know. I was just teasin’,” he reached to hold her face—to remind his soul that she was still here, that he wasn’t conjuring her image in the midst of his desperation. His touch laden in gentleness no one would expect from a killer like him, fingers stretching over the hills of her cheeks, thumb gently rubbing the space underneath her eye. His pupils blasted to the brim by the adrenaline keeping him awake… but his stare remained solely on her—like there was nothing else to see… nothing else to stay awake for.

“You never mentioned ya grew up on a farm,” he whispers.

“Well ya never asked,” she replies softly, trying her best not to lean into his hold—pretend that her heart isn’t doing all sorts of things to light every vein and artery in her body on fire, cast everything into a raging inferno like it could mimic the feeling of having him close. “‘Sides, not exactly a thrilling conversation starter—”

“But falling on strangers is?”

“Hey!” [Name] feigns offense, but her amusement could not be reigned in by her false displeasure. “It’s certainly more appealing than squaring up to talk to you and say ‘hey, buddy’—” buddy? “—’did you know I can milk a cow with my eyes closed?’ There just isn’t a world that exists that could work like that.”

“Ya can milk a cow with yer eyes closed?”

“No,” she grins, “but I got you to smile so it’s worth it to pretend that I could.”

Shishiba cracks a chuckle—but it catches in the ivy ever growing in the tunnels of his throat, reeling him back to a grimace from the prickling nerves rattling his body. His vision doubled, seeing her split into layers, the noise shattering towards the ceiling; shoulders sagging as if the weight of the world rested on his back.

Desperately, he tried to piece them back together, force the drifting images of her to unite… so he smiles—she saw through it all the same.

He calls her by her name, fighting every bit of poison trying to haul him back. He calls her like a prayer, says her name like a song. Shishiba only ever needed to call her, to come to her… and she’ll be there.

Always.

“You need to rest,” she reminds him, carding a hand through the blond threads perched atop his head. “And change clothes, I’ll go get ‘em. Stay put—” she rises to her feet, the frost of the tiles creeping up from her soles. Shishiba could almost feel them for himself despite the fact that he was already slipping past the borders of consciousness.

“Not like I can go anywhere,” he attempts sassy comeback but it only came out as an enervated quip.

“Don’t play smart,” she points a finger at him, wanting to mask her concern with sternness. “I mean it, try not to move too much.”

“Yes, ma’am,” his voice was softer now—nearly compliant. If any of his colleagues saw him like this: rough edges smoothened to a fault, the ice thawed away underneath the bathroom light, heart worn on his sleeves… they wouldn’t even recognize him; wouldn’t even dare call him by his name.

He was so far from the cold-blooded killer he saw looking back at him from the mirror. How is that so? How could someone hold so much kindness that it saturated everything inside him that he found unworthy? How could she be so warm and bright and good all at once?

She returns after a few minutes, allowing him to change into something more comfortable; standing so near so that if he ever needs her, she’ll only be a call away.

“[Name],” he calls her again.

“Yeah?” She turns slightly, catching the sight of him in her peripheral. The shirt hangs loosely on his form—which was nothing short of a miracle.

It never crossed her mind that someone could look at her like that: as if she painted the sunsets and coaxed the moon to rise for the tides, like she threaded the clouds and parted them for sunlight.

Shishiba, underneath the veils of the midnight sun, he looked so… human.

[Name] didn’t understand the thrum of life twisting in her ribcage. Was it because he looked good like that? No… oh, heavens no. He was nearly dying a few moments ago. Then… was it because he was someone familiar? An anchor amidst the foreign lands of Tokyo where their origins made them outsiders?

There were many things about him she didn’t know. So many things about him she wished she knew. And so many more things she hoped he’d tell her. But she would not force him—no.

Here, where he could look his most vulnerable, show his exhaustion, let his soul roam free… she would not burden him with her selfish desires.

Shishiba was flawed, just like her—just as every human on this planet… he, too, crumbled, shattered, lost his footing every once in a while. And she guesses, that was the reason she was drawn to him.

His imperfections were proof that even someone that seemed almost perfect as him could feel hurt... could be capable of needing someone.

And somewhere deep inside, she had hoped that the someone that he would need could be her.

“Thank you,” he tells her.

[Name] feels her cheeks ignite, the gravity of his stare bearing down on her a little too much. Her lips parted to say something back, racking her brain for the right sentiments to convey without laying her heart out for him to see.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Moonrise and sunsets blurred over one another, draping every second of the day as watercolor bleeds over paper. It showed in the careful patters of his steps around the tiny living space, underneath the luminescence and the carefully placed bandages, softening of his irises—the color of the ocean that melted like the clouds.

Strange how something born out of catastrophe could take form into something akin to a haven… it is paradise.

Suddenly, every corner of her once solitary existence had a reminder of another soul—a piece of him. Another toothbrush by the bathroom sink, slippers next to her own, pillows on the couch and a neatly folded blanket.

Shishiba existed in the same orbit as her. At first out of necessity… before long it became something he didn’t know what to call.

Aureate light flowed past the yellow curtains, one which he noticed were patched up by many other fabrics—a mirror of her soul it seems: pieces of other people threaded by fate, woven into her soul.

Kind beyond reason, warmer than summer, permeated with the patches of sunlight.

The leak in the ceiling had been fixed—the assassin’s doing once he saw [Name] leaving for work. It was the single rarest day that she wasn’t hovering over his soul like a bee, asking if he was in pain every five seconds or so.

Shishiba found it endearing at first, happy to be at the receiving end of her attention and affection, but then she forbade him from doing any work because apparently she didn’t want him to ‘over exert himself and accidentally reopen his wounds’ despite the fact that a few weeks has already passed since his little accident.

He looked over to see the outline of her body rummaging through her fridge… even if there was really nothing to scavenge through. He knows. He was in the same position as her earlier, staring into the void hoping that something will magically conjure from the weight of his gaze.

Shishiba almost wanted to laugh—to be here, to have existed in the same space as her… gods, when did he get so lucky?

He swears, if everything within the JAA falls into ruin right now… he was sure he’d choose this domestic dilemma of deciding dinner over rushing through the neon-lit streets of the city to where all that chaos exists.

“What do you want for dinner?” [Name] calls over her shoulders, voice slightly muted by the distance separating her from Shishiba who was now leaning against the threshold leading into the kitchen.

“Anything is fine,” he answers.

[Name] lightly kicks the refrigerator door shut before turning to face him with a deadpan expression, hands on her hips as she desperately tries to keep her facade running. “Hate to break it to you, Shishiba but anything isn’t on the menu.”

Shishiba could feel his mouth twitch upwards, and he was doing nothing to stop it from doing what it wanted—not when he yearned for it, too.“What would you recommend?”

“We have instant noodles, instant coffee, instant—”

“Anything that isn’t instant?” He cuts quickly, knowing her well that if she could live off of her easy-to-go meals, she would do it.

Her face brightens, and for a moment he wonders if the sun also took shifts at seven in the evening; just from the twinkle in her eyes, she could pass off as a star. “Pancakes,” she beams, words doused in the clouds of hope and wonder.

“That’s still instant,” he points, but his tone was gentle—teasing, really. He pushed himself from the doorframe and took slow, deliberate steps into the kitchen, closer to where she still smiled like all the stars were laid before her; a walk to forever drift into her orbit.

“Nu-uh,” the smile remained on her face as she shook a finger at him, already walking towards the cabinet where the mix was stored. “Ya hafta cook it on a stove, with fire, and butter! So it’s not instant.” She stood on her tiptoes, patting the space to feel for the box she was sure she’d kept stashed somewhere in there.

How could he ever bring himself to say anything against her when she was grinning at him like that? Like he mixed together the colors that painted the skies, as though he weaved the threads of sunlight…

He moved forward once more, smiling thoughtfully to himself. I wouldn’t mind living like this. Shishiba stood directly behind her, reaching above her hand to grab the pancake mix.

“Pancakes it is,” he concedes… just like that. Utterly unable to deny her anything.

Soon enough, the small space grew warmer, the scent of sweet and home drifting across the kitchen.

She stood at the center of it all. He’s said it a thousand times by now, and he knew he would never get tired of it. She felt like the sun. Everything faded into darkness, the fairy lights hung around the place blurring into little dots—like stars, like fireflies, like everything existed just so they could pale in comparison when she looked at peace, underneath the heavens where he could see her in her truest form, unguarded… colored with all the patches of sunlight.

He would have never imagined this kind of life for himself. Never. He wouldn’t even dare to dream of it.

But now that he knew what it felt like, how it was like when you come home to find someone waiting, to see someone smiling at your arrival, to hear her asking him about his day… he wanted nothing more but to stay here forever.

And as the moon moved across the obsidian sky, they found themselves on the small balcony of her apartment.

Things in the suburbs held a striking difference from the towering skyscrapers of downtown Tokyo. For one, there were no blares of the cars passing by, no needless chatter echoing from every turn and corner, and no prying eyes.

“What brings you to the city?” Shishiba asks, looking straight into the distance where the glow of the skylines shaded the ether with a warm glow.

[Name] clutched the blanket tighter, a small shield from the biting cold of the incoming winter. “As much as what the city could bring to me.”

Shishiba stole a glance at her, the distant neon of the city that never sleeps reflecting in the pools of her eyes, casting the illusion that her eyes were shaded with every color of the universe.

“That’s not an answer,” he replies, hair fluttering in the melody of the season’s gales.

[Name] laughs, shoulders shaking from her amusement. She steals a glance at him, smiling in the way she always did as she makes the effort to tuck her knees into her chest, balancing precariously on the tiny folding chair. “Well, just like what the rest of the country folk come to the city for. Money. Jobs. A better life.”

“Just you?” Shishiba pressed gently, knowing how to read beneath the colors of her words—search the depths and the heights of her being to see what she truly meant. He was getting awfully good at that, a skill [Name] loved and hated at the same time.

“Ran away from home.”

“Oh,” was all he could say, taken aback by the gravity of her honesty.

“Bet ya didn’t expect that, huh?” She chuckles, flicking the tips of her fingernails with one another… just so she could have the excuse to not look him in the eye.

“Didn’t take you for such a daring move,” he admits softly. Shishiba wanted her to know that he wasn’t there to judge her—even he was a school dropout, a lowly street thug before his mentor found him—he wanted to know, to understand… and if she wanted to talk then he would listen.

“No one did. Because I left in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep,” her breaths escaped her lungs in white clouds, the tense in her shoulders gradually slipping away for every second that passed the two of them. “It was easier that way, no tearful goodbyes, no begging to stay, no chances to hesitate and look back and decide to never leave.” Her fingers played with the loose threads of the blanket, curling them over one another.

Shishiba nodded, giving her the space to decide if she wanted to tell him more. The life of the city echoed in the far distance, the luminescence warding off the glory of the heavens, cars buzzing in the distance.

Even if he hadn't been back there in a long time, Shishiba knew that this chaotic beauty of the city was nothing like the quiet haven of the countryside.

“Do you regret it?” He asked, unable to bear the thought of her drowning in the silence.

“No,” she replies far too quickly, eyes finding anything attracting so long as it wasn’t in his general direction.

“Liar,” he tells her, no accusation in his voice, just a gentle coax for her to rely on him more—to help him understand.

“Oh? I’m not lying.” [Name] straightened her posture, meeting his gaze head on—daring him to charge her for an offense.

“You are. You’re doing that thing you do with your fingers, twisting them all around like they’re unconsciously trying to run away from you.” He points to her hands, which she tried to hide behind her back… but it was already too late.

[Name]’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “What a perceptive man you are, Shishiba-san,” she repositioned the blanket, sinking deeper into its warmth like it could cage her there forever, perhaps even hold the magic to freeze this moment, to never let it end.

“Did you leave someone behind in your hometown?”

“I did,” she nods, eyes casting over his direction for a glimpse. “And I guess that’s where the regret comes from.”

“Your boyfriend?” Shishiba tried to keep his tone neutral, pass it off like he didn’t care if she’s got someone waiting for her back home. She was beautiful, after all. Anyone would be lucky to be loved by her. Somehow that thought had something tightening in his chest.

[Name] laughs, heartily this time, like he just told her one of the funniest jokes of all time… and then she shakes her head. And Shishiba swore he had never felt a greater relief than what her denial had brought him.

“My sister,” she admits, a smile… one so bitterfully crafted drawing on the canvas of her face—telling the tale of love and loss woven so intricately you could not see one without the other.

Her eyes grew distant, staring far off into the horizons like if she did it for long enough, she’d warp past the thousand miles that kept her from her family… and she’d be back to where the sun rose in flowering gold, far from the depths of the graveyard of the metropolis.

“I used to cut her hair,” she continues, her voice taking on a softer tone. “She would drag me down the stairs to grab the kitchen scissors so I could trim her bangs.” [Name] mimicked the action with her hands, ghosted over her forehead as she pretends to snip at the hair. “She told me I was like an otter because I was always running around trying to help everyone.”

Shishiba smiled, seeing the image all too clearly. It was easy to picture her as an enthusiastic helper… because she is one.

“Then she said that she was gonna work twice as hard as me so I wouldn’t have to work anymore, she’d be doing all the hard stuff so I can take it easy. And after all that, we’ll build a house on the moon… and we could eat ice cream everyday for breakfast. Have fancy sushi for lunch. And as many pancakes as we could for dinner.” Her voice drifted further the more she tried to tell the memory.

It was raining, just like it always did in that part of town—a dead end thing at the end of the road deep in the forgotten history of Kansai. There were nothing but rickety old buildings everywhere, a single convenience store at the center of the plaza, the school that served both elementary and middle school kids.

[Name] should have been—what? Second year middle school by now… but here she was, crouching in the darkened corner of a bus stop in the torrential downpour of autumn.

She saw them earlier, her old playmates back in elementary… back to a time when the air didn’t weigh like a hundred wavebreakers held together by a frail breaking thread.

They walked into the small restaurant, a tiny thing that everyone knew. She begged and begged the owner to let her work there a few months ago, saying that she needed the money so she could support her sister—which was true… beyond stars and sunshine, it was true.

Yamanaka. Hiori. Yuuki. People that looked so familiar but were worlds away from her. While they complained about the work given by the teachers at school, talked about the culture festival happening next month, how handsome Amane—Ayato—whatever the heck his name was, all [Name] could do was press her back against the wooden wall, clutching the washcloth tightly to her chest and chanted… over and over and over again: I wish things were different.

I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish I didn't have to work. I wish—I wish that… I didn’t have to… that I didn’t have to take care of you—

“[Name]?”

She craned her head to meet the eyes of Shino-san—the kind lady who let her work in the establishment.

The old woman asked if she was alright, because she was crying. [Name] was crying.

Even now, underneath the awning that barely covered her from the rain, the tears remained flowing, just like how the heavens flooded the land with the weight it could no longer carry.

The skies were lucky… oh so very lucky. Lightning splits the bubble and all the worries go away, all the roars of thunder are silenced after the storm and the clouds are free to go. But there wasn't anything like that for her, and it killed her inside that there wasn’t.

Because she was still a kid, too. [Name] loved her sister… really, she did. But wasn’t she allowed to be tired? Was she allowed to be angry? Will the world rebuke her if she wished that things were different?

The percussion of the storm continued to play and thunder encores in the distance. [Name] buries her head in her arms, her tears falling as freely as the rain that descended like starfire. She felt small, a tiny drop in the vast ocean of life; a kid… trying to play grown-up in a world that demanded she’d succeed at it—because failure meant failing as a sister, failing as a guardian… failing as a human.

Something changed, and before she knew it—the drops hitting her back had ceased, yet she still saw them falling in the rice fields ahead. Shadows merged with her own inky figure painted on the muddy pathway, and she looks up to see a familiar small face peering down at her with worry simmering in those usually apathetic eyes.

“Nee-chan,” she calls softly, a little girl just over seven with a voice barely audible over the rain. She held the umbrella over her sister’s head, water trickling down her long obsidian locks, soaking through her school uniform.

And the guilt hammers down [Name]’s heart harder than the storm.

[Name] calls her name, the words trembling out her lips, sewed together by the same threads trying to mend her shattered heart. “How did you—”

“I waited for you, nee-chan,” she admits, and from the faint light of the stop, [Name] sees her small lips quiver—like she was trying not to cry, trying not to break… trying not to crumble in front of her big sister. The countless hours of peering through the window, willing the shadows to take form in the silhouette of her sister so she could push open the door and welcome her home.

She steps closer to [Name], stretching the umbrella over her head even if it meant she got wetter in the process. “You didn’t come home, so I came to find you.”

Ah… how could I ever think of that? How could I weigh you against the world? How could I think of you as a burden… how could I—

[Name] hurriedly wraps her arms around the younger girl’s frame, the umbrella falling to the rain-soaked earth with a gentle thud, mud painting the back of [Name]’s shirt. “I’m sorry…” she whispers, hugging her tighter.

She repeats those words over and over again—as if trying to placate the storm that fell on the earth.

“It’s okay nee-chan,” she pats her back, unsure of where the apologies were coming from. “I’m not angry.”

[Name] sniffs, pulling away to look at her sister’s face: round and full-cheeks, washed through by the rain but was still so painfully her. “You’re not?”

“No,” she shakes her head, patting the hill of her older sister’s cheeks. “Because I love you.”

[Name] felt her throat tighten, and right then and there… she has never felt more grateful that it rained; even for a short long while, under the illusion of heaven-gifted treasures, her little sister couldn’t see her tears.

“Nee-chan,” she calls again quietly, her grip on [Name]’s hand tightening just as they turned the corner and onto the path that would lead them home. “Do you see the moon sometimes?”

[Name] tilted her head, confused by the randomness of her sister’s question. “The moon? Sometimes, I guess. I can see it from Shino-san’s kitchen. Why?”

“I read about it in one of the books at school,” she looks up at [Name]’s face before craning her head to search for the heavenly body across the obsidian canvas overhead, her voice morphing to take that hopeful admiration children often had when talking about the things that colored their imaginations. “It’s bright, and pretty. It’s very far away, even farther than the sky… so nothing bad from here can reach it.”

[Name]’s steps staggered, she wasn’t sure if the ground was breaking off from under her feet or her own body was trying to brace itself from whatever was coming next.

“Maybe…” her voice grows softer, a lot more thoughtful for a seven year old. “Maybe when this rain stops, I can show it to you. And then…” she paused, unsure if the words could fill in the space that separated her from her sister, bring warmth to the calloused hands that held her own with all the gentleness in the world. “And then I’ll take you there, nee-chan.”

All the wind in her lungs got knocked out of her, chilling the lands of her lungs in frost and inferno—piercing through all the guilt trying to make home where her equanimity could not reach.

“Take me there?” She echoes.

The little girl nods solemnly, tugging [Name] along the dirt-ridden path. In the distance, she could make out the lights of their home; kept open so [Name] could find her way back.

“To the moon,” she said simply, as if there couldn’t exist a force greater than what she wanted to believe was true. “Where it’s quiet and safe…” her voice hushed to a whisper yet burned with that fierce determination—the kind that could move mountains, one that believed impossible things could bleed into reality through the sheer force of love. “Where no one will ever hurt you ever again.”

[Name]’s voice was thick with tears she couldn’t shed. “Really?”

She smiles brightly, completely ignorant of the impossibility of her promise. “Just you and me, nee-chan. Where no one can make you work too hard, and you wouldn’t have to be sad, or worry about anything ever again. I’ll work really hard so you can live a good life, too!”

Her little sister, at the young age of seven, couldn’t possibly understand the absurdity of it all—how far fetched and unimaginable it was. Was this her definition of a good life? How could she think of it so easily?

Perhaps she knew… she knew it because someone loved her so much that there was no room for sadness to fester in. There was no price for this—no equivalent for the sacrifices her sister makes to let her be a child, just to make sure she never has to worry about anything because [Name] will find a way.

She understood that when someone is important to you, you don’t just bring them home from the rain—you promise to take them somewhere safe, even if that somewhere was as far away as the moon.

"I wanted to take her with me. Give her a life outside that dull, mundane, same-old nothing that we knew for so long. I wanted to give her something to look forward to. Something that doesn't end with her lying on her death bed without ever knowing the world.”

[Name] worked tirelessly, worked with whatever was in that town—forsaking any and all sorts of normalcy to take on the weight of responsibility far too heavy to bear on the shoulders of a child.

Choosing was a luxury… certainly one she couldn’t afford—that among the many more things she could only look at from afar.

Surviving was hard… living—much more so. Still, only one thing ever kept her going, and that was for Osaragi to live a better life… far more than what she had known.

[Name] looked at him, eyes brimming with the silver light of her tears. “I wanted to take her with me... I really, really did. But I—I would be making her life harder. I would have to ask so much from her, things that shouldn't be shouldered by someone so young.”

Even if it was difficult; during the day when the scrutinizing eyes of others secretly judged her worth, determined her fate for themselves, muttered under their breaths that she was worth less than the pigs kept in the den.

At night when she comes home to the lights still open, a lighthouse of safe grounds in the unforgiving oceans of adulthood—a little girl playing grown-up—when the silence seeps through the cracks of her heart, battered and bruised, held together by a thinning thread drenched in heartache… even when her tears refracted in the moonlight, stained the floors burned through with so much suffering wondering if it would ever end.

Even under the veils of the midnight sun, cradled in the breaking dawns and the ever lingering twilight… the endless agony of trying to figure out who to be, how to be strong, finding the way when your limbs were dying to take a break, praying for an arm to reach into the darkness and guide you out.

“I won't do that to her. It's okay if she'll hate me, or if she never forgives me for leaving her. It's okay... if she never thinks about me at all. I won't mind. I won't get angry. It's okay.”

She had to live, she needed to… because a younger soul was relying on her. Someone soft and kind and lovely still had so much of the world to see…

There was no reason to break when there was still so much more that needed to be done.

“As long as I can work hard to get her out of there, I'll live through her hatred. All my hopes for her is that... she'll be happy. That she’ll come to love the world and all the things and people it has to offer. That she’ll look towards tomorrow and smile. If I can give her a better future... It's okay to get tired, it's okay to get a little lost. It's okay to be a little sad now."

Because blood, sweat, and tears were things she was willing to pay to give that girl a life worth living.

Shishiba’s hand hovered over hers, he stole another glance at her—scattered to a thousand pieces, hurting to an extent—and all his hesitation vanished. His colder hand draped over hers, anchoring her back to where he is, where he assures her that he exists… that she doesn’t have to bear it all on her own anymore.

"If she can look to tomorrow and feel the need to see it, that's all I need," she whispers, wiping away the tears with her other hand as the one cradled underneath his remains there. Home, I suppose…

Then, almost like a switch was flipped in her brain, she smiles up at him. "You should meet her, oh man you're gonna love her! She's having this phase where she dresses up with this long veil and carries the old brown case I bought from a garage sale.” She gestures excitedly, painting the words with her hands and expressions.

Just from how she talks about her sister, Shishiba could almost see her taking form, doused with all the love of the sun. He wonders then… how the child she speaks so fondly of had come to be, how she would take shape when she’s lived in the warmth of the patches of sunlight.

“I even saw her wearing that black dress I thrifted sometime back,” she continues, laughing fondly at the memory. “But if she's happy with that I'll try my best to support her all the way!" The smile on her face lit up the entire sky, and Shishiba found himself wanting to meet her sister more and more.

"What's her name?" He asks, genuinely curious—eager to put a name to this girl who means so much to [Name].

"Osaragi," she speaks it with so much love, so much kindness, draped in a thousand layers of warmth … and if it wasn’t already called adoration, Shishiba was sure that Osaragi could be a fitting name of it just from how much tenderness had been intertwined with her memory.

"I hope I get to meet her," he tells her, meaning it more than he expected to.

"I hope so too," [Name] smiles, squeezing his hand once more, relishing in the warmth of another soul.

Suddenly, the skylines felt a little gentler, the wind a little more familiar, her heart beating to the rhythm of his own…

A familiar place of home so it seems.

How many chances has Shishiba been presented with to end all of this? To sever every and all connections he has with her? How many outs has he been given? Chances to leave without compromising his identity?

Far too many to count, so he believes.

He could pack up and go and all he would have to do is wake before the break of dawn—just before the sunbeams are angled above the stained glass that hung just above the patched yellow curtains. He could disappear from her life as easy as missing the train ride to her stop, once and for all cease passing through the threshold of her little home just as the news for the night finished airing.

All he would have to do is retreat back to the shadows, away from the daylight, far from the patches of sunlight she brings to this world.

But he was still here.

He was still so painfully present in her life.

So agonizingly near to everything she was, selfishly holding her close—far too close that he feels the world he’s known for so long slowly catching fire, dissipating the nightmares that lingered in every step he took.

Maybe this was the very thing his Mentor spoke of—how everything falls apart once he finds something far more valuable than taking a life; keeping hers.

Shishiba could give it all up… he could bury everything with the seconds that passed him by.

Yet he remained in the borders, fearful of the light… hesitant of the shadows.

Even now as he sits in the darkness of the theatres watching her try to reach for something he had once taken away from her in cold blood—even if he keeps telling himself that it was for the greater good… the needles of his guilt continue to pierce through his conscience.

The memory of his encounter with the landlord resurfaces, haunting him for the seventh time that week. It wasn’t something he was supposed to hear, and most earnestly it wasn't his intention to eavesdrop… Shishiba just so happen to be there at the most convenient of times—stranded in the darkness, there he catches the patches of sunlight.

He returned from a recent assignment early, hair still damp from trying to wash away the traces of his little excursion when he caught wind of the conversation from around the corner.

“She’s never late with rent,” a gruff voice sighs to someone—when no one replied, Shishiba deduced the landlord was speaking to someone on the phone. “I tried to tell her she can pay half since the unit isn’t in the best condition but she insisted and it was really hard to say no when she looked like she was gonna cry.”

Shishiba hears shuffling from the far end of the hallway, perhaps the other tenants descending the staircase but he didn’t pay mind to that, what really took away his attention were the words he hears next.

“That girl works three jobs. Cafe in the mornings, office cleaning on some nights, and that theatre thing on weekends. She sends most of it back to her sister in Kansai, barely enough for herself.”

Shishiba feels like he’s been hammered to his spot. The frost creeped up from his fingertips, crawling its way to freeze over what he’d been trying to outrun.

“Far too kind, that one. She brought some soup over for Mrs. Satoyama when she heard the old woman was sick, then just yesterday I saw her hauling up the groceries for the mother who lives on the third floor in the next building. Week before that she was helping Old Man Raichi with the plant box… again. Never asks for anything else.”

Three jobs. Three goddamned jobs. And she still had that same smile plastered on her face every single day. How many hours of sleep is she getting? How early does she wake up? All those nights she arrives so early… how many of them were because she was thinking about him? That she was being kept away from everything by someone who couldn’t do shit to deserve even an inch of her affection.

She never complained… never made him feel like a burden. She just went on with what the world threw her way and made room for him in a life that was already stretched too thin.

Why…?

Why does she smile like there was nothing wrong?

“Shame about that producer issue—”

Shishiba wanted to yell. He wanted to put his fist through the skull of the next person that pisses him off. He wanted to cough it all up—confess his sins to her, kneel and beg for forgiveness he didn’t deserve, call out to her to let him stay. He wanted to curse the world… but above everything, he wanted to curse himself.

The weight of his hammer, a phantom in his movements. He reached for the weapon tucked away in the pockets of his jacket… but what enemy could he strike down that could fix all of this? Who will he silence to bring back the hours of sleep she’d lost? Where did he have to go to find all that he’s taken away from her?

“She was so excited about that opportunity, she practiced for weeks. Then it was called off and no one else wanted to take the stand. Broke her heart, though you could never tell from the way she goes on fighting.”

He keeps iterating, over and over and over again… it was for the best. It’s the right thing to do. The producer was smuggling the JAA’s money—the scumbag wanted out and he thought that was the way. It was a necessary evil. It’s the right thing to do.

But seeing her now, saturated in this theatre’s scattered light… how she gleefully invites him to share a part of her world, to have him see her as she morphs to a different being—cast away the mundaneness of her ordinary life… how could he weigh her happiness against the lives of a thousand others? How could he measure the worth of her smile against the torrential downpour of blood that could’ve been spilled?

It was cruel to make him choose. It was punishment to make him take sides. More than that, it was unfair that the heavens had the nerve to rebuke him for the choices he made when they gave him no other way.

[Name] would not ever force him to choose between the world or her… because she’ll force him to choose the many.

Oh, if only it were as easy as that.

If it were up to him, he would let this godforsaken world burn for her.

Shishiba wishes he could tell her.

More than anything he wished he could be true… just as she had been nothing but honest with him. He wanted to tell her so many things, so many stories, so many more of who he is. He wished he wouldn’t be met with the face of someone hesitant to ask about his day because she knew he would not be able to answer her. He wished he could give more to her rather than telling her to blindly trust him.

He wishes… more than anything, that he could be the man she deserves.

He wishes he didn’t have to hide from her, not his job, not his name… gods, even this—even this dream of hers, Shishiba wishes he could be part of this. He wishes he didn’t have to pretend to be clueless—that he already knew about this.

He wishes that he could tell her.

That he already knew… he knows and that’s why it makes it so hard.

Because this is what brought him to her… and yet it’s still the very thing keeping him from falling completely—a collar to his throat, digging straight through his windpipe.

From a place closer to the heavens, Shishiba could see the full extent of her being.

He was no expert on the standards of beauty—but then again, he only thinks something is beautiful simply because it reminds him of her… because she existed in all things beautiful, and all things beautiful existed with her, scattering the painted colors of the stars like the patches of sunlight.

Her voice was still as clear as the waters of the sky, crisp like the early morning breeze in the days of the fall when the zephyrs would ruffle the strands of his hair, the fires of her emotions spider-webbing throughout the corners of the theatre as if someone had bottled summer’s lightning and cast it free in the coves of this damned place through the shape of her words.

She was good.

She was nice.

And she was kind—devastatingly kind in a way that made his heart ache because he knew he didn’t deserve any of it.

Perhaps then, the reason for his hesitance becomes clear—and Shishiba falters. His heart racing far too fast for his head to keep up, the gales in his lungs stolen just from a single look his way, his eyes brimming with every color, creeping up from the sides of his vision, darkening everything else until all he could see was her—an occurrence he finds himself living far too many times in the past months.

If I look away… will I ever see you again?

The words cycled through the tracks of his mind like a prayer; wanting to pass it off as a fleeting thought simply so he could believe—even for a moment—that he was still strong enough to walk away, that his soul was still capable of wanting to be anywhere else but here.

So he could trick the rest of his body to leave this place… to leave her as she is.

Before the curtains could hide her away, her eyes gravitated to where he was—a hundred different people were present… and yet she still found him effortlessly.

How was he supposed to deny it now?

How was he going to convince himself to leave? To desert her and never look back…

How was he supposed to pretend that he wanted to be anywhere else but here? Where she was close. A call away. Where he could hear her sing in the kitchens.

How was he supposed to look away when her eyes were always looking for him? When she was always smiling at him like he hung the stars in the sky—as though he painted the colors of the sunset, tore apart the skies to make room for twilight, as if he was the one who keeps the light for midnight, shattered the shadows to give way for dawn.

When she looks at him, she could easily see a thousand different things… but she still chooses to see him as he is.

When the red cloths fell and the lights dimmed, Shishiba is left to gather the ashes of his thoughts, mourn the loss of daylight and welcome the rise of the shadows—igniting the hypnotising spell she had cast on him—haunted him even when she was so very far away.

And there, between the spaces she couldn’t occupy, Shishiba’s wonders if she could still bring herself to look at him like that if she knew the truth.

When as the haze diminished, his gaze lingered in the space she used to occupy, keeping him rooted to where he stands like an obedient dog waiting for his owner to return. A painful yearning bubbles in the caves of his lungs, wanting to catch even the ends of her hair as she crosses the borders of the stage to where she would be anywhere but near him.

Even as he blinked, the afterimage of her danced behind his eyelids, an unending act of desperate defiance that would not leave him even in the absence of light.

If she knew just how bothered, how haunted, and how ugly he truly was… will she still look at him like he was every good thing the world offered?

How could he bring himself to tell her? How could he build the courage to push her away? To break the illusion of his daydreams to make room for the harsh winter of reality?

How could he bring himself to just let go when all he would bring her would be misfortune and unhappiness.

His honesty will bring her peace, bring her all the good things she deserves and more. It will take her away from the killing, from the threats—from death… away from him—from Shishiba.

And he didn’t know what would hurt more: live with the thought of hurting her more than he already had, or never live with her at all.

That was the thing when someone lies. It starts with something small, something trivial until he’s eventually met with an inter tangled mess of fabricated realities; the threads of his stories choking him not to say anything, preventing him from coughing up the truth for fear that the make belief would shatter.

If she were to wake one day and realize her mistakes, then it would just have to be the monument of his retribution.

He would take it, so long as it was not right now… here, where the fervent longing in his heart blazed for nothing but her. Burning so fiercely, blinding any other thought, because he didn’t want anything, not the world or anything, to take her away from him.

Shishiba clenched his jaw. You need to get your shit together. Every corner of his skies had already been decorated with the lives he took, littered with the tombstones of all he has ever lost.

And he would not let this be one of them.

He would clear the galaxies for her, make room for the sunshine and all the patchwork curtains, for the onions and risottos, only if it would mean she’ll be right next to them.

Shishiba would house all the happiness in his little island—far from the life he’s led so that no one could take them away—not now… not when he wasn’t ready to let them go.

I just got you… so please… stay a little longer…

read the next part here

I tried holy fcking shit I really tried to post this in a single go but tumblr wouldn't let me😭 1k block limit is a hindrance to my glam frfr 😔💔 the wc is for the entire fic—Imma just split this up bcs good heavens me I do not want to change the formatting

these patches of sunlight are for those who work hard for the people they love, for the ones who wait until someone is ready for love, for the people who try to change, for those that have loved and have been left behind whether. may the light pierce through the wall of clouds and color your worlds in patches of sunlight.

#chiya's head rent 🎐#ao3 #sakamoto days #saka days #shishiba x reader #shishiba sakamoto days #sakadays #sakadays shishiba x reader #sakamoto days x reader #x reader #shishiba x you #sakadays x you #sakadays x reader #sakamoto days fanfic #sakamoto days shishiba #sakamoto days shishiba x reader #there is so little fanfic of this man it is criminal

61 notes · View notes