Underneath the sun-warmed air and the lazy, melting bubblegum flavor clinging to her tongue, Fatiba felt something else stirring inside her—a quiet, coiled fear that refused to loosen. Not the kind that shouted, not the kind that made you run. It was the slow kind. The kind that watched and waited. The kind that nested behind your ribs and whispered, What if?"
She looked at Shotaro as he complained about French people, as he kicked a loose pebble into the Musashi River and squinted at the sun like it had personally offended him. He looked like a teenager. Just a guy. But somewhere behind that silver hair and quiet strength was something older. Something not born of this world. Something that didn't always blink when the rest of humanity did.
He was trying—God, he was trying—but that didn't mean he wouldn't slip.
She had seen what people become when they slip.
She wasn't naïve. She had already learned what hate looked like—had tasted it, choked on it. Especially after that incident. That moment in her life had taken the soft, warm faith in people she once held like a balloon string and burned it to ash. She knew how filthy people could get. What they would do when no one watched. What they would justify under the banners of power, pain, or fear.
And now, standing beside a boy who had once called himself a god, who had confessed to things most couldn't say even in nightmares, she wasn't sure if making this bond was a mistake. If she was trying to stitch herself to a landmine.
She didn't need him to be perfect. She didn't need a savior.
But she did need to know if the monster inside him was truly caged... or just asleep.
She shifted slightly, her scarf catching the breeze, brushing against her cheek. She looked at him, really looked this time, and wondered if she had the right to ask. If she had the courage to know the answer.
He was laughing again—muttering something under his breath about how if Vanilla ever goes missing next, he'll file a lawsuit with the Dessert Gods. But even in the way he joked, there was a kind of tiredness, like every laugh was a sandbag holding back some deeper tide.
She glanced down at her cup. The pink ice cream was melting fast now, pooling into syrup at the bottom.
"Hey," she said, her voice softer now, almost careful. "Can I ask you something... not as a joke?"
The ice cream was already starting to sag under the summer sun—pink syrup dribbling along the paper cup, sticky and warm between her fingers. But Fatiba barely noticed.
She had asked it. The question. The one she'd been carrying like a stone in her gut since the first time she looked into his eyes and saw something that didn't belong in a boy's body—something too old, too quiet, too haunted.
"Are you truly redeemed?" she asked.
She said it plainly, like asking for the time. But the silence that followed was anything but casual.
Shotaro paused, spoon in hand, eyes still. The air thickened around him like a weight pressing from the inside out. It wasn't the question that hurt—it was that he had hoped not to hear it. Not yet. Maybe not from her.
He didn't look away. He didn't deflect. He didn't even laugh, like he so often did when the world pressed in too close.
"No," he said.
One word, and the warmth drained from his face.
"No," he said again, more gently now, as if she were someone precious and this truth might break her. "Whatever I did... I did it out of free will. No one held a gun to my head when I burned those kittens alive. No one made me destroy that swan's nest. I was a child, yes. But I was aware. Curious in the cruelest way. And I wanted to see what would happen."
His voice wasn't loud. If anything, it was tired. Like he'd rehearsed this a thousand times in mirrors and dark rooms and empty train cars.
"I'm lucky—so lucky—they kept me by their side anyway," he continued. "But I don't think redemption exists. Not really. It's not a thing you earn, or find, or win like a medal. It's a story we tell each other so the world feels less heavy."
Fatiba blinked, her lips parted just slightly. Not from surprise, but from the way his words settled like dust in her chest.
"Sometimes," he went on, "I think every bad thing that ever happened to me… maybe it was karma. Maybe the world wasn't punishing me—it was just keeping score."
He exhaled, shaking his head.
"All I can do now is accept it. That's the only path left if I want to keep calling myself a man instead of a god. To stay human, I have to take responsibility for every life I damaged back when I thought I was untouchable."
His eyes flicked toward the river—slow, dark, moving.
"You know," he said, his voice quieter now, "a person could flood a city, ruin a thousand stories that were just beginning, and leave entire bloodlines erased. And even if that same person later saves a nation, the city's still drowned. All those futures, still gone. That's not something you redeem. It just is. It becomes a scar the world wears forever."
Fatiba's mouth went dry. There was a coldness blooming under her ribs now, but it wasn't from fear—it was the weight of reality pressing against idealism.
He wasn't done.
"Maybe the devil already has a chair with my name on it," he said, smirking bitterly. "But if I end up there, I'll look him in the eyes and say, 'At least I tried.' That's all I've got left."
A bird called from somewhere over the water, sharp and echoing. A train murmured in the distance, crossing the bridge behind them.
"People don't get redemption," he added. "Their choices ripple too far. Too many lives. Too much change. Karma always catches up."
He looked at her now—really looked, the weight of all his years pressing behind his crimson eyes. And there was no shame there. Just acceptance. Like someone who had already tried every road and chosen the one with the most honest suffering.
"All I can do now is keep moving forward," he said. "Because if I really want to be a human instead of god… I must also carry my karma. Every step."
Fatiba didn't say anything. Not yet.
The breeze along the river picked up, carrying the scent of sun-warmed stone, murky water, and street food frying in some distant alley. It tugged gently at Fatiba's scarf, lifting one corner like a hand brushing through her hair. Her gaze remained on him—on the silver-haired boy with godblood in his veins and soot in his past—who was sitting cross-legged on a stone bench, melting strawberry ice cream still dripping unnoticed onto his pants.
She didn't speak.
Because she was still thinking about what he had said.
Redemption doesn't exist.
Not the way people pretend it does. Not the way teachers or preachers or fairy tales promise. And for the first time in her life, she didn't flinch from that idea. Because in his voice, there wasn't despair. There was... clarity. Like someone who had walked far enough to see the edge of the map and decided to keep going anyway.
Shotaro tilted his head slightly, reading her silence. He spoke again, quieter now.
"If you were expecting some white knight who saves lives because he was a monster once, then sorry, I am not a hero," he said, scooping one last curl of ice cream onto his spoon. "I'm an immoral person playing the hero. That's all."
He wasn't trying to shock her. Or provoke guilt. He said it like someone describing the weather. Like it was simply true.
"I can't be redeemed. I don't deserve to be. But I can still choose. And so can you. Anyone can. That's the whole thing. You can be a hero, then turn around and burn everything you just saved. You can be a monster, then spend a lifetime fixing the roads you cracked."
His eyes narrowed, thoughtful now—not cold, not hard, just burdened by the weight of thinking too much.
"And in the end, the world doesn't care what your intention was. It only remembers the wake you leave behind."
Fatiba said nothing. She just watched a leaf fall and skid along the ground, caught in little eddies of river wind. Her heart was twisting in ways she couldn't name. Not because she feared him. But because, in that moment, she understood him—and it terrified her how much.
He went on.
"We all play roles," he said, eyes forward, voice softer now. "Hero, villain. Victim, savior. It's not true. It's theater. And we pick these parts out of free will. Not because they're true, but because we need something to be in this world."
He lifted his hand and spread his fingers, as if holding the idea in his palm.
"These masks we wear—they're not solid. They're liquid. Shifting. Sliding between the cracks of who we are. A good person can become evil. An evil person can become kind. But the mask itself never disappears. We're never just one thing."
He looked over at her now, not smiling, not frowning. Just... honest. His eyes, always so impossibly red, seemed softer in the afternoon light. Less like fire. More like rust. Like old blood.
"I'm not asking you to trust me," he said. "Just to understand me. That's all."
And that—that strange, fragile truth—was what Fatiba had wanted all along.
Not comfort. Not heroism. Just the honesty to say, yes, I'm a storm, but I'm trying to hold myself in my own hands.
And maybe that was enough. Maybe that was more than most could give.
....
At that moment—under the uneven light of a half-clouded sun, with the sound of the river running slow and the ghost of ice cream still clinging to the corners of his lips—everything she had thought about Mugyiwara Shotaro unraveled.
It didn't collapse. Not like a building crumbling under its own weight. No, it was slower than that. Stranger. Like a paper lantern soaked in rainwater. Something soft, beautiful, and carefully made, melting at the edges until what was left was just raw flame and dripping pulp.
He's not what I thought.
He was supposed to be the shining one. The strong one. That larger-than-life kind of good—untouchable and radiant. He had always moved through the city like he belonged to it, like a well-kept secret everybody knew. Children waved. Adults nodded. Strangers remembered his name even when they had no idea who he was. He helped people, smiled like it cost nothing, and looked too much like a fallen star trying to blend in.
But now?
Now she saw something else.
Not less. Just... more.
Not the poster hero with the easy charm and ridiculous strength and too much humility to fit his own legend. Not the one you point to and say, That's a good person. That's someone who would never do wrong.
But a boy.
A boy with old eyes and a mind like an unfinished war. A boy who'd once hurted people for joy and fun, who carried every act of cruelty like a blade in his ribs, and who still—still—chose every single day not to fall back into the arms of godhood.
A monster who chooses to walk like a man. Or a man who remembers how it felt to be a monster. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
She didn't know what scared her more—that he was capable of great evil, or that he was honest about it. That he didn't ask for forgiveness. That he believed redemption was a fairy tale, and yet still woke up every morning and decided, I will help today.
He wasn't doing it to be loved.
He wasn't doing it to be saved.
He was doing it because it was right—and only because it was right. Not for forgiveness, not for recognition, not for salvation. But because something inside him had long since decided that to keep moving forward, he had to walk as a man. Not the idea of a man—not the polished figure people could pin their hopes to—but a real one. Flawed. Bruised. Bleeding in places nobody would ever see.
A god who tries, every single day, to be a man who gives.
A man who was once a god who took.
And it wasn't the godhood that made her afraid anymore. It was the choice. The way he still bore the weight of his past with no excuse, no revisionist story, no bright-eyed lie that time makes monsters better. It doesn't. But people can try. And some do. And of those few, even fewer keep walking with the full knowledge of the harm they caused.
That was what shook her. That, more than any divine power or legends etched behind his name.
He wasn't just a beacon. Wasn't only a light to guide or blind. He was a scar that learned how to walk upright. A wound that never closed entirely, but learned to stay open without spilling over. And somehow, impossibly, that made him more real than any hero she'd ever believed in. Because he didn't want to be a hero. He didn't need to be.
He just chose.
She watched him now as he animatedly argued about dessert hierarchy with the poor ice cream lady, his words flaring like he was defending national honor. The wind tugged at the ends of his coat and flared through his silver hair, making it glow like something only half-mortal. He moved like someone unaware of the weight he carried, or maybe someone who'd gotten used to it. The kind of man who had learned to live with chains without letting them slow his steps.
And maybe that's what it meant to be free.
Fatiba blinked slowly. Something heavy settled in her chest—not dread, not fear, but a strange, aching recognition. A quiet acknowledgment that she'd been walking beside something—not someone—something bigger than her ideas of right and wrong. Of safety. Of goodness.
He wasn't perfect. Not even close. He wasn't safe, either—no matter how soft his voice could be or how stupid his jokes were or how many people waved at him when he passed by.
But still, despite herself, despite everything...
She trusted him.
Not because he promised to be good. Not because he sparkled like a star fallen to earth.
But because he knew the price of his cruelty. Because he had looked into the hollow face of who he used to be and didn't look away. He didn't run. He didn't beg for love. He just kept walking. Owning it.
And maybe that's what it meant to be human—not a clean slate, but a bloodstained page you keep writing on anyway.
She took a breath, deep and full of dust and river air and the sickly-sweet scent of bubblegum ice cream.
She trusted him more than any god.
More than any hero.
Because he didn't run from his past.
He wore it.
He didn't carry it like a badge, or a burden, or even a penance. He carried it like breath—natural, ever-present, part of him now. The weight of who he was, the devastation he once called a game, the lives he shattered before he understood what a life was—they lived inside him. Not as ghosts. Not as regrets. But as architecture. Bones and scaffolding beneath his skin, shaping the way he stood, the way he spoke, the way he offered kindness without expectation, and mercy without pride.
And still, with all of that in him, he moved forward—not to escape the past, not to atone like some washed-out saint hoping to be made whole—but to carry that story somewhere better. To prove that even the ugliest beginnings could still walk toward something more honest than purity.
Because if anyone could teach a monster how to walk like a man, it was him. A child who was born to become a god. One who could have ruled, who could have torn reality to shreds on a whim, who could have turned every temple into an altar built in his name.
And yet he chose something smaller. Harder.
He chose limits. He chose weight. He chose consequences.
He chose to live among people who could bleed, who could die, who would forget him the moment the danger passed. He chose to give knowing it might never matter in the grand story. And he did it not because it redeemed him, not because it made him feel good, but because it was right.
Maybe that's why they call him the child who changes lives. Maybe it's not just because he helped them. Maybe it's because, every time he walks into someone's life, he brings that weight with him. Not to share it. Not to dump it. But to remind them that survival is possible. That becoming better isn't always beautiful, or clean, or certain—but it's still a choice.
And he made it.
Every day.
Including for himself.
Fatiba looked at him again—still grumbling about ice cream, the wind teasing his silver hair, eyes bright with a kind of ordinary mischief that felt criminally mundane for someone who once called storms with his fingers. And yet, somehow, that was what made her chest ache. Not the god he used to be. Not the sins carved into his history. But this—this boy arguing over flavors, who'd earned the right to a quiet day, and still wore every scar like it was stitched into his shadow.
He changed lives, she thought. Including his own.
And maybe that's what hope really looked like.
Not a light.
But a scarred hand still reaching forward.
....
The sun had barely cleared its morning haze when they wandered through the narrow alleys behind the old train station—graffiti-laced walls on either side, the kind of art that only existed because someone had nowhere else to scream. Shotaro knew the place like the back of his hand, pointed out a doodle of a lion with devil horns and said, "That's my self-portrait back in middle school." Fatiba laughed, in spite of herself, eyes skimming over the rough brush strokes. Her scarf fluttered behind her like the quiet hesitation still holding onto her ribs.
They played tag between rusted vending machines, her laughter spilling like water over cracked concrete, and for a second—just a second—she forgot the world. Forgot his past. Forgot hers.
....
They found a cat café tucked between two hardware stores, where the walls were moss green and the air smelled like warm fur and forgotten tea. Shotaro pretended to hate cats but ended up with three asleep on his lap. Fatiba sipped her iced matcha and watched him stroke the smallest one behind the ears with exaggerated care.
She noticed how gentle his hands were. How he never moved too quickly. Like he was always aware of how easily things could break. That thought lodged in her throat like a splinter.
He looked up and smirked, a soft little upturn of the mouth that didn't need any words.
"I swear they're stalking me," he muttered.
She didn't say it out loud, but it was the first time she thought: Maybe I like that they do.
....
At a hilltop bench in Midori Park, surrounded by windchimes that tinkled with every breeze, they watched two elementary kids roll down the slope screaming in joy. Shotaro leaned back on his palms, staring into the sky like it held answers only he could read. Fatiba sat upright beside him, hands in her lap, every nerve aware of how close he was. Their shoulders brushed and neither of them pulled away.
"You know," he said, "the clouds move even when we don't."
She turned to him. "That supposed to be poetic?"
He grinned. "Nah. Just stalling 'cause I forgot what I was gonna say."
She smiled too long at that. Too gently.
And her heart betrayed her in the silence that followed.
....
They bought skewers from an old couple near the market, who called Shotaro "boy with the bleeding heart." The woman pressed an extra one into Fatiba's hand with a wink, saying, "He never brings anyone. You must be special."
Fatiba didn't respond. Just watched Shotaro stuff his mouth like he hadn't heard it.
But she did.
And it echoed louder than any love poem.
....
By the Musashi River, they sat barefoot by the water, shoes off, sleeves rolled. He skipped stones with supernatural aim—each one flying like it had a destination. She tried once, missed entirely, then made a face like she'd just insulted physics.
"Not bad," he said.
"You're a terrible liar."
"I didn't say it was good either."
Their eyes locked then, and she caught herself mid-breath.
She looked away first.
....
They ended up sitting cross-legged on the faded old rug of the bookstore's back corner, their backs propped against a slanted shelf of translated philosophy texts and water-stained encyclopedias that hadn't been touched in years. The air smelled of mildew, old pages, and the faintest trace of someone's forgotten cologne. Outside, the evening light had softened into that tender orange hue that made the dust dance visibly in the sunbeams falling through the cracked glass windows.
He flipped through the pages of a worn comic—something about a dragon that refused to fight unless it was absolutely necessary, which he described as "based"—while she leafed through the book of poetry she'd stumbled on earlier.
She didn't notice it at first—her eyes had been following the sunbeam inching its way across the floor tiles, catching on motes of dust and the warm leather of old encyclopedias. But there, nestled beside his hip like something too precious to be left behind, was a stack of hardcovers tied together with a fraying red ribbon, like a gift someone forgot to give.
Curious, she reached out and tugged gently at the loop. The ribbon came undone with a sigh, and the topmost book leaned forward just enough for her to read the spine.
"The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft."
She blinked, then tilted the book so the title caught the light, the embossed gold lettering dulled by time but still legible. The weight of it. The weird intimacy of it.
She turned slightly toward him and whispered, the way kids do in libraries when the world is suddenly too quiet.
"You like that?"
Shotaro didn't even look up from his comic. He just gave a soft "Mm-hm," and then, "One of my favorite writers. If we exclude his choice of cat names, of course."
She snorted into the back of her hand, then grinned despite herself. "You read cosmic horror in your free time?"
He finally looked at her now, closing the comic with a lazy flick of his fingers. "Most people turn Lovecraft into powerscaling slop. You know, 'This guy transcends dimensions, this guy eats galaxies,'—but that's not what he wrote about."
He tapped the book in her lap lightly, like passing her a thought. "The truth is, his writing was wider than the world he made. His monsters weren't scary because they were strong. They were scary because they didn't care. Because they couldn't be understood. Darkness wasn't just the absence of light in his work—it was the absence of comprehension. Of meaning."
He paused. "I can at least figure that out."
There was a weight in his voice then, the kind that pulled at the atmosphere like gravity, like his own orbit had shifted. She leaned in a little without realizing it.
He turned his head, quoting like it had lived inside his mouth for years. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
She nodded slowly. She'd heard that one before. Everyone had. But the way he said it—it wasn't performative. It wasn't even intellectual. It was like an old ache. Like something he whispered to himself at night.
"And that," he added, "is right, in a way. But what I think is…"
He trailed off for a second, then continued, softer.
"People aren't afraid of the unknown. Not really. We're curious about the unknown. We chase it, try to name it, build myths around it, send telescopes after it. What we're really afraid of…" he paused, his eyes darkening just a shade, "...is the unfathomable. The things we can't grasp no matter how long we look. The things that break our minds just by existing."
His hand curled slightly over the corner of the book, thumb brushing its spine like the contact grounded him to something—maybe to the page, or maybe to the version of himself he was trying to show her now. His gaze wasn't on her anymore, but off somewhere else, down the dim stretch of old library carpet and beyond it. Into thought. Into memory. Into something too large to be named.
"That's why we're more afraid of God than we are of aliens," he said softly, like the sentence had lived in his bones too long not to escape.
Then, his voice shifted—sharper now, like a truth carving itself out.
"And the reason for that," he said, "is our pitiful pride."
Fatiba turned to him fully, no longer pretending to skim the Lovecraft anthology. His words weren't casual anymore. They were cut from something deeper, older—bitterly personal.
"We've lived on this planet for what—a blink?" he said, his hands now folding together in his lap. "A fraction of time compared to the trees, the seas, even the bones of the mountains. Dinosaurs ruled this place for millions of years. Now they're chickens. Chickens, Fatiba. And yet here we are, thinking we've figured it all out because we built cities and learned how to split atoms."
He chuckled then, low and sharp. Not amused. Self-aware.
"Then we got prideful. 'If we conquered Earth,' we thought, 'surely we can conquer the skies. Understand the stars. Name every mystery.' We started thinking understanding was our right. Like it's something owed to us."
Fatiba watched him carefully. His voice was still quiet, still library-appropriate, but the heat behind it made the space between them feel almost too warm.
"And when something comes along that we can't understand—something bigger, something indifferent to us, that doesn't give a damn how long we've walked upright—we panic. Not because it threatens our lives. Because it threatens our illusion."
His voice softened again, but it didn't cool.
"There's no 'indomitable human will.' We're not Prometheus. We're kids who built a campfire and convinced ourselves we invented the sun."
He leaned back against the bookshelf now, head tilted up toward the ceiling like he was addressing a judgmental god hanging somewhere in the rafters.
"It'll take a rock," he said. "Just one. Some random piece of celestial trash slinging through the cosmos—and boom. Lights out. Game over. And what will pride say then?" His eyes narrowed, dark with thought. "Nothing. Because pride doesn't die screaming. It dies in silence, too stunned to believe the world didn't revolve around it."
Fatiba shifted slightly, heart caught somewhere between awe and unease. He wasn't ranting. He wasn't even trying to convince her. He was just telling the truth—the kind you say only when you think no one else will understand.
"A lustful woman knows what she is," he continued. "She may justify it, maybe even celebrate it, but she knows. A greedy merchant, a wrathful soldier—same thing. Hell, even sloth, people try to fix it. They go to therapy, take meds, wake up and try again."
"But pride?" he turned his head and looked her in the eyes now. "Pride is different. A prideful person is hollow. Insecure. Wrapped in this illusion of invincibility. They live in their own heads where they can do no wrong. That's why it's the deadliest sin. It's the only one that convinces you it isn't one."
"And when someone like that meets something they can't control… something they can't define or predict…"
His voice dipped to almost a whisper.
"…they break. Not bend. Break."
There was a silence between them, thick with understanding. Not fear, not awe—just a shared truth neither wanted to name too quickly. She looked at him—really looked—and in that moment, he didn't look like a god pretending to be human. He looked like a man who had already broken once, and was holding the shards of himself together by the spine of an old book.
"We fear God," he said, almost to himself now, "because we know—deep down—that if something truly divine stood before us, it wouldn't hate us. It wouldn't love us. It would simply not care. And that's what we can't accept."
She opened her mouth to say something, but found nothing worthy. Instead, she studied the way his fingers pressed lightly against the book again, as if it held a prayer no faith could offer.
He exhaled finally, slow and steady. "Prideful people don't change," he said. "Because they think there's nothing to change. That's the curse."
And in that heavy, honest quiet, Fatiba suddenly realized—
This boy, this god, this walking contradiction beside her?
He wasn't prideful.
Not even a little.
She didn't reply right away. The silence stretched—but not awkwardly. It stretched like cloth being tailored, like something was being sewn together between them in that dust-drenched, book-scented air.
There was something deeply human about how he said it. Not dramatic. Not cold. Just… experienced. Like a man who had stood in front of something too big, too incomprehensible, and felt himself shrink into a thought inside it.
"What do you rea—wait. Is that Warhammer 40K?" Shotaro's tone shifted like a vinyl skipping from melancholic jazz to high-energy punk. He leaned over, eyes scanning the dusty jacket in her lap with genuine interest. "Damn," he muttered with a grin, "I had the Emperor's figurine painted when I was a kid. His gold armor looked like melted butter in sunlight. A little wobbly around the pauldrons, but I was proud of it."
Fatiba's eyes lit up in that way that always gave her away—shoulders straightening, pupils widening just slightly, her body language whispering finally, something I can talk about. She forgot for a second that she was with someone like Shotaro Mugyiwara, the person who flew through storms and left craters where his feet landed. In that instant, she was just a nerd with another nerd, and the world shrunk down to lore and dice and painted miniatures.
"You painted the Emperor?" she gasped, half-scandalized. "Did you do the cape in crimson or that weird marbled grey from the heresy-era design?"
"Crimson," he said immediately, then narrowed his eyes. "Wait, what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing," she said, pushing up her sleeves, "if you like being historically inaccurate."
He scoffed, playful. "Please, you talk like the history of a fictional future dystopia is sacred."
She clicked her tongue. "Lore is sacred."
And just like that, they fell into it—an easy rhythm of heated nerd-speak that would've baffled anyone walking by.
From Warhammer 40K, they spiraled into D&D and the time her Tiefling sorcerer burned down an entire elven embassy because she rolled three nat 1s in a row. He laughed so hard he snorted. Then it veered into Vampire: The Masquerade, where she'd once been part of a Tremere blood cult campaign that was so intense her GM quit mid-session.
Shotaro actually leaned in, chin resting on his palm, absorbing her tales like a monk at a storytelling temple. He didn't interrupt much—just peppered in bits of trivia, asked for clarifications, even mimicked a goblin voice at one point that made her spit water all over her library copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Philosophy of Loneliness.
And then, somehow, as it always did, the conversation shifted. A curveball tossed at just the right angle.
"Okay, but have you ever tried cultivation novels?" she asked, already knowing he hadn't. "Like real xianxia—not the ones that get turned into soul-crushing harem bait but the good ones. Where the MC fails, trains under a waterfall for seventy chapters, gets betrayed, starts again... the pain, the poetry...?"
His face twisted slightly, not unkindly, but the way someone does when tasting bitter melon for the third time, still unsure why people call it a delicacy.
"I mean… it's not really my thing," he admitted slowly, scratching the back of his neck. "There's only so many reincarnated underdog sect heirs I can take before it feels like spiritual Dragon Ball filler. Endless power-scaling. Heaven-slaying techniques. 'I spit blood on your ancestors' arc thirty-five.' You get me?"
Her smile fell.
Her arms folded.
She leaned away.
He winced.
"Don't you dare compare Reverend Insanity to Dragon Ball filler," she hissed, scandalized like he'd just kicked her favorite dice bag into a fireplace.
"I'm just saying—"
"No," she cut him off, voice low and dangerous. "You were doing so well. I thought we were connecting. And now I find out you have the taste of a Reddit mod with terminal Western bias?"
Shotaro raised both hands in mock surrender. "I am deeply sorry for my sins. Will a box of resin miniatures and a PowerPoint presentation on Lorgar's fall to chaos be enough to redeem me?"
She considered this with great solemnity. "Only if you promise to read at least thirty chapters of Way of the Devil. No skimming."
He groaned. "That's basically homework."
"You're lucky I like your hair."
He blinked. "Wait, what?"
She stood up and busied herself with restacking books as if the words hadn't escaped. "Nothing."
Outside, the sun had dipped a little lower. A soft gold spilled across the wooden floor, touching the red ribbon that now lay loose between them, as though marking not just books—but this exact moment. A quiet middle chapter. A memory warming between shared stories and contradictions.
He sat there, stunned for a second longer, then quietly reached down, picked up the ribbon, and pocketed it without a word.
Somehow, she knew he'd keep it.
....
"Hey?" he asked, his voice cutting through the hum of library air and the soft creak of old wood under their chairs. "Your scar... why do you hide it?"
The way he asked—soft, but not soft in the way people usually are. It wasn't pity. It wasn't curiosity. It was just… honest. Like the words stepped out of his chest without armor. Like he was asking where she kept the part of herself that hurt the most because he didn't want to step on it by mistake.
Fatiba froze.
Her fingers had been lazily turning the corner of a page—The Pale King, he was reading now; she was pretending to read beside him, mostly just rereading the same paragraph about tax collectors and ghosts. But at his question, her hand stopped. Completely. She didn't lift her head, didn't answer.
The scarf around her forehead, a soft charcoal-grey cotton blend, shifted a little when she moved, and in that flicker of motion, the faintest crescent of pink skin peeked through. A scar shaped almost like a moon pressed too long into the earth. Barely there. Barely visible. But he'd noticed. Of course he had.
She didn't speak right away. Didn't deflect or joke or roll her eyes. She just lowered the book a little, eyes fixed on the words but seeing nothing.
Outside, the window beside them was filled with the kind of light that filtered through leaves—warm, flickering gold caught in green veins. The kind of light that doesn't ask for attention but earns it anyway. She watched it for a second, long enough for her silence to grow roots between them.
There were so many answers she could've given.
Because it made people stare. Because it reminded her. Because sometimes the pain of old things is safer than the touch of new questions. Because boys at her last school had once tried to rip her scarf off to see if the rumor was true—that she had a jagged burn beneath it, like a curse.
But she didn't say any of those things.
Instead, she did something so small most people wouldn't even notice.
She turned her head a little—just enough for the sunbeam to catch the edge of her face, not away from him, but slightly toward him. The scar stayed hidden, but her posture changed. She didn't retreat. She didn't flinch.
She just sat there, bathed in silence, letting him hold the question without pushing it away.
And then she smiled. It wasn't a big one. It didn't show teeth. But it cracked open the edges of something she didn't even realize she'd been holding shut all afternoon. Something fragile and red and unspoken. And in that moment, she looked at him—really looked at him—not like someone who could fix her, or someone she wanted to save, but like someone she wanted to give a piece of herself to.
Not because he asked.
Because he asked gently.
She reached for the book again. Let the scarf fall exactly where it had been. Didn't answer. Didn't need to—not yet.
The page turned with a whisper. He didn't press. She didn't retreat.
Somewhere between them, a truth settled quietly, unnoticed. A seed dropped in soil. The first wind-blown hint of something tender, waiting for the right season.
And the chapter ends there. No grand declarations. No confessions.
Just a girl hiding a scar and a boy who saw it—and didn't look away.