Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the stillness of the night, not even the wind dared to stir. The city lay breathless beneath a starless sky, as if nature itself was holding vigil. The moon had vanished, its disappearance marking not just the start of a new lunar cycle, but something deeper, heavier. An omen. Without its silver gaze watching from above, the streets felt emptier than usual. Hollow. Waiting.

No footsteps echoed. No engines hummed. Even the alley cats had disappeared, tucked into shadows far from view. The streetlamps flickered like nervous sentinels, casting pale halos of light that offered no true safety, just the illusion of it. Everyone knew better.

The night no longer belonged to the people. It belonged to them.

Vampires

Modified humans with a thirst for blood. They didn’t gain immortality, but neither did they age like humans. Time left their beauty untouched, frozen at its peak, until the day they vanished.

It wasn’t sunlight they feared, not exactly. Daylight was a nuisance: weakening, irritating, but not fatal.

What the darkness gave them was far more valuable. Power.
Strength sharpened to a blade. Senses stretched to the edge of possibility. Hunger unleashed.

The kind of night where shadows knew your name before the teeth found your throat. Where fear wasn’t a metaphor. It was real. It was breathing. It was theirs.

For a time, the threat had waned. Sightings became rare. Hunters relaxed. Some dared to believe it was over.

Then the killings started again.

And worse, they organized.

They called themselves Vivid Bad Squad now. Not a cult. Not a coven. Something else. Something sharper. Fashioned like a street gang but deadlier. Built with structure. A name that sounded almost ridiculous, until you realized who led them.

An.

A young vampire with eyes like garnets and a temper forged in blood. Charismatic, brutal, adored by those who followed her. Feared by those who survived her.

And tonight, no one dared stop her as she stormed into the underground headquarters, trailing anger like a cloak of smoke.

“THAT FUCKER’S BACK AND JUST KILLED ONE OF US!”

Her voice cracked through the room like a gunshot. The heavy metal doors slammed behind her, the force sending a tremor through the concrete floor. Toya and Kohane were already waiting inside, having been summoned moments ago by her rare, urgent call.

Toya blinked, eyes narrowing. Kohane, sitting with a datapad still in hand, flinched slightly at the sound but didn't rise yet. An’s fury was familiar, even routine, but this wasn't one of her usual outbursts. This was something else. This was rage with a target.

She was pacing already, her boots striking the floor like war drums, each step faster than the last. Her movements were barely restrained chaos. A wildfire searching for fuel.

“Who’s back?” Kohane asked, her voice calm, her expression carefully composed. She stood slowly, cautiously approaching. “An, talk to me—”

But the moment she reached out, An shoved her arm aside with a sharp slap. “Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t try to calm me down. Not tonight.”

Kohane froze, hurt flickering behind her eyes, but she said nothing.

“That pink-haired vampire killer ,” An spat, pacing again, “the one who disappeared after our last encounter. They just ambushed one of our patrols. Three dead. Two turned. One missing. And this—” she reached into her coat and threw a tightly folded cloth onto the table, “—was left behind like a goddamn calling card.”

The white fabric landed with a soft thud, stark against the dark table. Toya reached out and carefully unwrapped it.

Inside: a single silver bullet.

Sleek. Polished. Untarnished by time or blood.

The engraved ribbon symbol on the casing gleamed under the harsh ceiling lights, a small flourish, elegant and unmistakable.

Toya lifted it between two fingers, examining it closely. 

“Same model, same mark. I still have the one they shot at me a year ago,” An said coldly. “Same weight. Same cut. They haven’t changed a thing.”

Toya’s lips twitched into a faint smirk. “Wow. You’ve memorized their bullet specs? Someone’s obsessed.”

The words were dry, meant to cut the tension, but the moment they left his mouth, he knew it was a mistake.

An turned to him slowly, eyes like coals beneath ice. There was no humor there. Only fire.

Kohane winced, glancing between the two of them. The air felt too thick to breathe.

She had hoped, truly hoped, that this ghost had vanished for good. That An’s obsession, her sleepless days, the patrols she personally led, the way she kept going back to that alley where they last fought, had begun to fade. That the grief had loosened its grip.

But this bullet meant one thing: it had never left.

The trail hadn't gone cold.

It had just gone quiet.

And now, it was screaming again.

Real.

And suddenly, the fear returned.

Not the fear of the killer, not just that. That was a constant now, like a shadow clinging to the edge of every plan they made. No, this was a different fear. A colder one.

The fear of what this obsession might do to An.

Of what it might take from her.

Of how much more she could lose before there was nothing left.

Kohane felt her chest tighten as she watched An, who looked less like a leader and more like a fuse burning too fast. The past year had already changed her, rage where there used to be charm, silence where there used to be laughter. And now, that glimmer in her eyes… it wasn't just fury.

It was desperation.

Before Kohane could say anything, a sharp, sudden thud ripped through the silence.

An had slammed her fist down onto what remained of the shattered table, fingers curled so tightly her nails dug into her palm. Splinters cracked beneath her hand. Her eyes, normally vibrant, sometimes even playful, now blazed with something barely held back.

“SHUT IT!” she barked, snatching the bullet off the table as if it burned to be left there. Her grip turned white-knuckled. “I’m doing this to protect us. Our people.”

She took a step back and began pacing again, but this time it felt different, like she wasn't walking the room, but trying to outrun the thoughts closing in on her.

“We’ve been barely hanging on since that new vampire hunter group showed up,” she spat, her tone mocking now. “Nightcord at 25. What kind of name is that?” A humorless chuckle escaped her lips. “Because they like to strike at 1 a.m.? How poetic.”

She shook her head. “Idiots.”

But the bitterness in her voice wasn't aimed at them. Not really. It turned inward the moment she looked back at the bullet in her hand.

“And if our little ribbon killer decides to team up with them?” she said, quieter now, but every syllable was heavier than the last. “It could get worse. Way worse.”

Her hand trembled slightly as she held the bullet up, its reflection glinting red in the dim overhead lights. “I know they usually work alone. They always did. But it only takes once. One alliance. And the last time they teamed up with someone…”

She didn't finish the thought.

She didn't have to.

The memory hung over them all like the chill of old blood drying on skin. A battle that left half their fighters dead. A friend they didn't bury because there wasn't a body to bury. That fight had shattered something in An. Whatever warmth she used to have didn't survive the aftermath.

The room fell quiet. Even Toya didn't try to fill the space.

An’s breath hitched just once before she steadied it. “We need to track them. Learn everything. Habits, weapons, patterns, safe zones. Then we strike.” Her voice regained force with each word. “No more waiting. No more reacting. This time, we go first.”

She scanned the room, expecting resistance. There was none.

“Where’s Akito?” she asked suddenly.

Kohane blinked, caught off guard.

Toya frowned, glancing at the door as if expecting him to walk in late, like usual. But no footsteps came. The silence that followed stretched thin.

They exchanged a look, half apology, half warning.

No one had an answer.

An’s face twisted for just a second, the mask cracking to show something raw underneath. She turned away.

“Of course,” she muttered, her tone clipped. “We’ll plan without him.”

And that was that.

She moved to the whiteboard at the front of the room, grabbing a red marker. The sound of it screeching against the surface filled the air, harsh and deliberate. Each line she drew was fast, jagged, like her thoughts couldn't be slowed down enough to form words.

“First target: the patrol routes,” she said, eyes narrowed in concentration. “Every hunter cell in this quadrant runs their sweep between midnight and two. We’ll start there. Set up intercepts. I want movement maps, escape paths, and fallback zones charted and printed by the end of the week.”

She spun, marker still in hand.

“We bait them out. We follow them. We find where they go when they think they’ve lost us.”

Her voice dropped just slightly, almost too quiet to catch.

“And then… we take everything.”

Toya folded his arms, watching her. “You’re not planning just a counterstrike.”

“No,” An replied flatly. “I’m planning a message.”

Her eyes lingered on the silver bullet once more, the tiny ribbon still gleaming like it was laughing at her. And despite everything, the fury, the pain, the walls she had built, her next words weren't shouted. They weren't even angry.

They were tired. Wounded.

“The last look they gave me…” she whispered. “Right before they shot me. There was something more.”

Kohane’s breath caught in her throat.

Because deep down, An wasn't just hunting a killer.

She was chasing a ghost.

And no plan, no bloodshed, no revenge would be enough until she knew the truth.

The other two nodded in agreement. It had been a long time since they had taken direct aim at one of the vampire hunter associations. These past months had turned into a slow bleed, quiet ambushes, isolated skirmishes, desperate raids on blood supply transports. Nothing with teeth. Nothing bold.

But this… this felt different.

Strategic. Brazen. Maybe even fun, if they could stomach what it would cost.

Toya leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes shifting toward the wreckage at the center of the room. “What about the table?” he asked, deadpan. The heavy wooden slab still lay cracked down the middle, each jagged half leaning away like it had tried to escape An’s fury.

An rolled her eyes, already walking toward it. “I’ll fix it. Don’t worry.”

With a lazy flick of her wrist, threads of blood shimmered to life, curling from her fingertips. They slithered into the broken wood like veins searching for a heartbeat. The jagged pieces twitched, then dragged themselves together with unnatural precision. In less than five seconds, the damage had reversed itself. Not a single seam remained.

“It’s only temporary,” she added with a sigh. “We’ll still need to order another one. This one’s been shattered too many times.”

Toya raised an eyebrow. “Think we’re on table number six now?”

“Seven,” Kohane corrected absently, checking her notes on her tablet.

Before An could respond, the metal door at the far end of the room creaked open.

Everyone turned.

Akito stepped in like he was walking into a coffee shop, not a crisis meeting. His stride was unhurried, his expression unreadable. The light above caught on the edge of his glasses as he surveyed the room, An’s tension, Toya’s watchfulness, Kohane’s subtle worry, and didn't flinch.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said with a shrug, his voice maddeningly smooth. “Just saw the message about the emergency meeting.” His words held no urgency, no apology. Just detached politeness, the kind of tone you used when you wanted to say as little as possible.

“Was this really necessary? All this for what?”

The temperature in the room dropped.

An turned sharply, her eyes narrowing to thin, dangerous slits. “Where were you?” she asked, voice clipped and sharp, no patience left to spare. It wasn't just this meeting. It was every meeting. Every delay. Every vague answer.

Akito didn't blink. “None of your business,” he replied, tone flat. “Just… personal stuff.” He waved a hand vaguely before dropping into the chair beside Toya with an almost careless grace.

An let out a slow, irritated groan and turned back to her planning. There wasn't time to drag the truth out of him. Not tonight.

She shot Toya a quick look, a silent instruction.

Fill him in. Watch him closely.

Toya gave the barest nod in response.

But deep down, An knew this couldn't go on. She had tolerated Akito’s evasiveness longer than she should've. Maybe she had hoped he would come around. Maybe she didn't want to face the questions his behavior raised.

Next time, though?

Next time, she wouldn’t let it slide.

⋆｡°✩

“Mizuki, did you get hurt?”

Ena’s voice cracked through the quiet like a firework, sharp, immediate. She hurried forward, alarm flaring across her face.

And the sight that greeted her only made it worse.

Mizuki stood in the doorway, still as a statue, bathed in the stark white of the overhead lights. Pale pinks, her signature color, were nearly lost beneath layers of dark crimson. Blood clung to her in drying streaks: across her arms, soaking into her sleeves, matted into her hair. She looked like a ghost crawling out of war.

Kanade, seated at the center of the monitor station, paused mid-typing. Her calm demeanor cracked ever so slightly, concern flaring behind her eyes. Though she didn't rise, her full attention locked on Mizuki with quiet intensity.

“I’m fine, Ena. Seriously. Just scratches,” Mizuki replied, the words tossed out like a life preserver. She smiled, teasing, almost flippant. “None of this blood’s mine, I promise.”

The joke didn't land.

Ena took another step, eyes scanning every inch of her like she didn't believe a word of it. Mizuki fought the instinct to retreat. The concern felt too close. Too raw. But it was also… grounding, in a way she couldn't explain.

“You should go see Mafuyu,” Kanade said, rising at last. Her fingers moved swiftly over her phone. “She’s probably resting, but I’ll let her know you’re back. You might need stitches.”

“Whoa, let’s not wake the demon nurse,” Mizuki laughed, trying to lighten the air. She raised her hands in surrender, easing past Ena. “She’ll kill me if I show up looking like this.”

“You’re still scared of her?” Kanade mused, a faint smile curling her lips. “She just wants us all to live through the night. Even if she doesn’t know how to smile while doing it.”

It was true. Mafuyu’s calm had the strange ability to feel colder than anger. Nothing got through. Not sarcasm, not teasing. Mizuki had tried. It was like throwing sparks into deep water.

“Especially after a mission like this,” Ena cut in again, her voice shifting. Less fear, more frustration now. “What were you thinking going alone?” She stepped into Mizuki’s path, arms folded.

“I just work better solo, alright?” The smile faded from Mizuki’s face, replaced by a tired sort of tension. Her gaze dropped for a second. “I don’t… I didn’t want to drag anyone into it.”

That flicker of shadow crossed her expression again, the echo of that night a year ago. She didn't talk about it. None of them did. But it was always there, hanging over her shoulders like a second skin.

“Mizuki,” Kanade said gently, stepping closer. “You’re not alone anymore. That’s why Nightcord exists. No one here expects you to carry this war on your back.”

The words hit deeper than Mizuki expected.

She had joined Nightcord at 25 for survival, yes, but also for access. Intel. Resources. Strategy. She hadn't planned on belonging. And yet, she was still here. Still being treated like she mattered.

But fighting alongside others meant more chances to lose them. And Mizuki wasn't sure she could survive that again.

Still, she nodded. Just enough to be convincing.

“Yeah. I’ll go get cleaned up. Then the infirmary. I promise.”

It was a lie, but a well-practiced one. Enough to get Ena to step aside, shoulders lowering, if not relaxing entirely.

“Good,” Kanade said, voice soft with relief. “Next time, Ena and a few others will join your patrol. We can’t keep gambling on solo runs.”

Mizuki didn't answer. Not really. She just offered a quick two-fingered salute and slipped out of the room, her boots echoing down the hallway, trailing a faint, bitter scent of dried blood.

She needed silence. Space to breathe. But she didn't get far.

“Mizuki. You’re back.”

The voice sliced through the quiet like a scalpel, flat, clinical, precise.

Mizuki flinched, shoulders tensing. She turned to see Mafuyu standing just outside the infirmary door, arms crossed loosely, her expression as unreadable as ever.

“Ah. Mafuyu.” Mizuki tried for a casual laugh, smoothing her blood-soaked bangs. “I thought you were resting.”

“I was,” Mafuyu replied without inflection. “In the infirmary. I waited here so I could return to my room after treating you.”

The guilt sank in immediately. Mafuyu didn't scold. She didn't accuse. She didn't need to.

Everyone in Nightcord sacrificed for each other, without question, without fanfare. And Mizuki… Mizuki still hadn't figured out what to do with that kind of loyalty.

She nodded, all attempts at deflection crumbling. “Okay.”

“Come,” Mafuyu said simply, turning without waiting for a response.

Mizuki followed, the soles of her boots scuffing softly against the floor. She didn't say a word. Didn't need to. The quiet between them said enough.

Maybe one day, she would stop feeling like an outsider pretending to belong. Maybe one day, she wouldn't feel the need to lie about her injuries or her fears.

Maybe.

But not yet.

Not just yet.

Chapter Text

Hours seemed to stretch longer since the sun had surrendered the sky to the moon. Tonight, the silver crescent was shy, hiding behind thick gray clouds. One by one, the lights of nearby households flickered out, leaving the streetlamps to cast a fragile illusion of safety. A group of eight agents wandered through the dim-lit neighborhood. Their orders were to patrol the area after a few residents had been reported missing. Even though the suspected crime scene was far from headquarters, their mission remained the same, reassure the civilians.

The tension left Mizuki on edge. She felt pins pricking the back of her neck and struggled with shortness of breath, like a fish flung ashore. Staying vigilant for signs of danger, while also watching over the other agents, had worn her down. For the past week, she had patrolled with the same group every night, trying her best to blend in and enjoy their company. She had learned all their names, their hobbies. Ena, ever the thoughtful one, had even organized activities to break the ice and help her feel included. Mizuki was deeply grateful, though a part of her still felt guilty that so much effort was spent on something that felt… trivial.

“Mizuki, how do you look so cool and cute at the same time?” one of the girls in the patrol group blurted out, her voice light, almost reverent.

Cute?

Her?

It was a word that had clung to her like smoke since she was a child, both a dream and a wound. Most people either said it to mock her or avoid it altogether, as if femininity was a costume she had no right to wear. Too many times, it had come with a side glance, a stifled laugh, a subtle shift in tone that meant “this doesn’t belong to you.” Her love for cute things, for soft colors and lacy accessories, had always been met with side-eyes and whispered judgment, as if she were some kind of monster.

Funny, now that the real monsters had returned to the world.

Yet this girl looked at her with open admiration, eyes wide, unguarded, a bit starstruck. There was no sarcasm behind the question, no mocking smirk. Just sincere curiosity. She meant it.

“I find it hard to combine both styles,” the girl continued, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her cheeks were dusted with color. “I want to look cool when I’m hunting, but I also want to seem approachable to civilians. You know? Less like a threat, more like someone they can trust. Tonight, I just… feel cool. Not cute.”

Mizuki blinked, caught between disbelief and the ghost of a smile. No one had asked her for fashion advice in years, not seriously. People usually assumed she didn't care about appearances, or they were too intimidated by her bluntness to bring it up.

And honestly, tonight’s outfit hadn't been anything special. A cropped utility jacket, reinforced leggings, combat boots. All practical. The only real pop of personality was the soft pink layered under her shirt, barely visible unless you looked closely.

Still, the question made something stir inside her. Something she hadn't felt in a long time.

The girl standing in front of her was objectively adorable. Fresh-faced, bright-eyed. The kind of charm Mizuki could never quite pull off no matter how hard she tried. A part of her envied that, quietly, bitterly. But she buried the feeling, smoothed it down, and forced herself to look past it.

The girl hadn't meant harm. She had just seen Mizuki the way Mizuki had always wanted to be seen.

Her expression softened, and she leaned in slightly, voice dropping just enough to sound like a secret being shared. “It’s about balance,” she said. “Keep your silhouette clean and simple. Let one detail stand out. A ribbon. A color. Something soft to contrast the edge. Cute doesn’t mean weak, it means confident enough not to hide what you like.”

The girl nodded eagerly, absorbing every word like gospel.

And for the first time in a long while, she didn't feel like a problem to be solved or a truth to be hidden.

⋆｡°✩

The night had settled deep into the bones of the city, thick and weighty, wrapping the streets in a blanket of shadow and silence. Streetlamps flickered with a dull orange glow, their light barely holding back the dark as fog began to roll low along the pavement. It was the kind of hour where the world felt like it was holding its breath, between heartbeat and stillness, where something unseen always waited just out of reach.

Mizuki strolled a little ahead of the group, posture relaxed, thoughts drifting. For the first time in a while, she had let herself loosen her grip. The easy chatter from earlier still echoed faintly in her ears, and Ena, walking beside her, wore a smug little smile that practically hummed with satisfaction. That grin could only mean one thing: Ena thought her little matchmaking stunt had worked.

And maybe, for a fleeting second, Mizuki allowed herself to believe it too.

But she knew better.

This life, hunting, hiding, bleeding in the dark, didn’t leave much room for soft things. Relationships in their world didn’t bloom; they withered fast, choked by fear and the ever-present shadow of loss. She had learned that truth like a blade pressed to her throat: cold, close, and permanent.

Still… the lightness had felt good, even if it was temporary.

Three hours left until sunrise.

Mizuki yawned, shielding her mouth with the back of her hand. Her thoughts wandered toward the apartment waiting for her, toward rumpled sheets and the cool side of the pillow. The idea of falling into bed and sleeping until noon felt like the sweetest dream she had had in weeks.

But that fragile peace shattered a moment later.

Something shifted.

The air stilled, thickened, like the city itself had gone silent in fear. A chill crept along Mizuki’s spine, raising the hairs on her arms. Her breath caught in her throat. The taste hit her first. Sharp. Metallic. Intentional.

Bloodlust.

It slithered through the atmosphere like smoke, bitter and unmistakable.

Then came the voice.

“Found you.”

The words weren’t shouted, but they hit with the weight of a scream. A cruel, playful whisper that curled around the group like a noose. The sound came from nowhere and everywhere at once, echoing through the alley with a sneer behind it.

Mizuki’s eyes snapped upward.

There, just above street level, a thread-thin rope of glowing red shimmered into view, unraveling like a silk ribbon of death. It wove through the air in elegant spirals before tightening sharply, forming a ring that encircled the patrol.

Her pulse slammed into overdrive.

“Scatter! Now!” Mizuki barked, voice cracking like a whip.

The blood-thread snapped inward.

It sliced through the space they had occupied like a closing jaw. The agents leapt outward, breaking formation. Most cleared the perimeter, though some weren’t fast enough, several hissed in pain as the thread grazed their limbs, leaving shallow, glowing cuts that smoked faintly in the night air.

The trap wasn’t meant to kill. It was a warning.

Only one vampire wielded blood with that kind of precision.

Vampire powers were rare. Exceptionally rare.

Out of hundreds turned, only a handful ever manifested abilities beyond the heightened strength, speed, and regeneration common to their kind. These powers, known simply as Ascendant Traits , varied wildly, from manipulation of the elements to psychological influence, sensory amplification, or worse. No two were ever quite the same.

And no one truly understood why they appeared.

Some claimed it was tied to the strength of the vampire who turned them. Others believed it was rooted in the human's emotional trauma at the moment of transformation, a violent fusion of death and memory birthing something unnatural. There were whispers that bloodlines mattered, or that the moon’s phase played a part. But in the end, no theory ever held under scrutiny.

They appeared suddenly. Without warning.

And when they did, it changed everything.

Those who possessed powers became outliers, feared, watched, studied. Not only because of the abilities themselves, but because of what they implied: instability. Volatility. A soul too scarred, a will too strong, or a hatred too deep to simply die and come back empty.

Because power always came at a cost.

And when someone awakened it, it wasn’t a blessing. It was a warning.

That vampire was dangerous.

Unpredictable.

Uncontainable.

And far too often, they burned everything around them.

“I’m glad you still remember my skills, pinky!”

The voice returned, clearer now, ringing with a dangerous kind of glee.

And then they saw her.

Balanced high above, poised on a tightrope made entirely of her own blood, stood An, leader of Vivid BAD SQUAD, rogue among rogues, and a name that still made newer agents freeze on the spot. Her silhouette glowed crimson under the streetlamp’s fractured light, coat billowing in the breeze, smile wide and wicked.

She looked like a vision from a nightmare painted in silk and shadow.

But Mizuki didn’t falter.

Her grip tightened.

She raised her arm, aimed at the blur of red above, and fired, no hesitation, no warning. Not this time.

But An was faster.

The bullet Mizuki fired sliced through nothing but the night air. A blur of motion, a shimmer of crimson, and the vampire swayed aside with an ease that felt more like art than evasion.

“Finally decided to show your face again, huh?” Mizuki called out, voice sharp, trying to mask the tremor beneath her smirk.

Liar, she thought. Her grin was a shield. She hadn’t wanted this, at least not like this. Not out in the open, not with her team watching, and not before she was ready to face what stood before her.

But it was too late.

In the blink of an eye, An was there.

One moment she was a distant silhouette on her blood-woven tightrope, and the next, she was inches away. Mizuki didn’t even see the movement, just felt the shift in the air, a gust of unnatural wind, and then, 

A light flick of fingers.

The cap was plucked clean off Mizuki’s head, fluttering to the ground.

“Wow,” An said sweetly, head tilting as her crimson gaze lingered. “Your hair’s gotten long. Has it really been that long since our last little run-in?”

Too casual. Too familiar. Like nothing had changed. Like she wasn’t something monstrous. Mizuki’s heart slammed against her ribs.

That voice.

Soft. Playful. Full of terrible nostalgia.

Had An always been this fast?

Vampires grew stronger with every human they fed on, that was fact. And An… she was stronger than ever. Far too strong.

How many lives had she taken?

How many innocents had she drained to become this?

Before Mizuki could speak, a shout rang out, sharp, panicked.

“Mizuki!!”

The warning was followed by a single gunshot that cracked like thunder through the dark. A sniper round split the space between them, forcing An to leap back in a flash of crimson blur. Mizuki’s eyes flicked toward the source, Ena, stationed on the roof. A perfect shot, just in time.

Later, she would thank her.

Now, she raised her gun and opened fire.

Bullet after bullet ripped through the air, each one aimed with precision and fury. An danced through the barrage like falling petals, weaving between death with a smile on her lips.

Her eyes, those gleaming, unnatural red eyes, never left Mizuki.

“So you do have a name, Mizuki,” An purred, voice teasing, delighted. “How pretty. Can I call you that too?”

Mizuki didn’t answer.

Not at first.

She scanned the perimeter. Some of the younger hunters were frozen, wide-eyed, too stunned to act. First-timers. They had never seen a real vampire, not like this. Others fired in support, but none could touch her. An was too quick, too fluid, like smoke and shadow given form.

Still, she remained fixated on Mizuki.

Good.

Let her stay focused on me.

“Call me whatever you want,” Mizuki growled, her grip tightening on her weapon. “You won’t be speaking once you’re nothing but ash.”

An laughed, dark and sweet.

“Oh, I love your playfulness. Even now… even when you’re terrified.”

And then, everything shifted again.

The air changed. It pulsed.

A flicker of shadow. A heartbeat skipped.

And suddenly, 

An was behind her.

Mizuki froze.

She felt it before she could turn: a breath, cool and deliberate, brushing the curve of her ear. A body pressed close, too close. Lean. Wrong. A presence like a phantom: silk against skin, death against life.

Her breath caught in her throat.

The scent of blood, faint and metallic, clung to the vampire like perfume, familiar and haunting. But beneath the fear, something else stirred.

Beauty.

Unforgiving. Inescapable.

An was all sharp edges softened by grace, refined in a way that didn’t belong to the living. Her skin, almost luminescent, held the hue of snow under moonlight. Her breath was steady, like she had all the time in the world to kill. And her hair, black as the void, but streaked with hidden red beneath, brushed Mizuki’s shoulder as she leaned in, a curtain of darkness concealing danger within beauty. Even here, so close Mizuki could feel her heartbeat falter, An smelled not just of blood, but of night rain and something sweeter, something wrong.

She wasn’t just terrifying.

She was devastatingly beautiful.

And that made her all the more dangerous.

And Mizuki knew, 

She was playing with her.

Like a cat with its favorite mouse.

“You know…” An murmured, her voice a silk thread laced with poison, “I can hear it. No—feel it. Your heart. Beating like mad.” She chuckled, low and hungry, her breath like ice against the back of Mizuki’s neck. “I can’t wait to see the blood come pouring out… all at once. Beautiful. Fast. Red.”

The words curled into Mizuki’s ears like smoke, suffocating and slow. Her pulse thudded faster, traitorously loud in her own chest. But her hands were steady. Her grip on the trigger tightened until her knuckles went white.

An stepped back, graceful, elegant, as if dancing through moonlight. Threads of blood unfurled from her fingertips, glimmering like veins of molten crimson. They twisted in the air, lashing toward Mizuki with a speed that blurred the space between breath and death.

But Mizuki was ready.

She moved with the ease of training, with the muscle memory of survival. She dipped under one thread, flipped over another, pivoted on instinct. The blood strings cracked through the air like whips, pulsing with dark energy. They were fast. Almost too fast.

But she was faster.

Silver-tipped bullets shattered several of the threads mid-air, the metal cutting through An’s conjured blood with sharp sparks and smoke. The smell of singed iron filled the space between them.

Silver.

Still one of the only things that could unravel a vampire’s power. But it took more than silver to win a fight like this.

“It’ll be your frozen blood on the pavement first,” Mizuki snarled, slicing through the last incoming thread before raising her gun again. Her tone was colder now, focused, coiled tight as a spring.

She fired.

The sharp bark of the gunshot split the silence like a scream. It echoed through the hollow streets, but even the gunfire couldn’t drown out the sound of An’s laughter, high, delighted, and utterly unhinged. It slithered under the skin, turned bone to ice.

It paralyzed some of the younger agents on instinct alone.

“How entertaining you are!” An beamed as if truly overjoyed, wiping at her eyes in mock delight. “You’ve changed, haven’t you? More bite now. I like it.”

Mizuki said nothing, but her stare was sharp enough to cut.

She didn’t need An’s approval. She didn’t want it.

But the vampire wasn’t finished.

From the alleyways, rooftops, and shadows, others began to emerge. Vampires, drawn by the sound of battle and the scent of human blood. They came in silent steps and hungry eyes, forming a loose ring around Mizuki’s team. In a heartbeat, they were surrounded.

Her squad scrambled to respond, some falling into formation, others panicking, their discipline crumbling. Gunfire rang out sporadically. Swords met claws. Screams tore through the silence.

Mizuki’s chest clenched when she caught sight of the girl from earlier, the one who had asked her about style and confidence, now locked in a desperate struggle with a vampire twice her size. Her blade trembled in her hand. She wouldn’t last long.

Mizuki tried to move. She lunged forward, 

But An was faster.

A crimson thread whipped past, barely missing Mizuki’s shoulder. The air hissed as it passed, leaving the faint scent of blood and ozone in its wake.

“Still using that same little thing?” An asked, her voice light as she eyed the pistol in Mizuki’s hand, the silver barrel and the small pink ribbon keychain that dangled from the grip. “I’m surprised you still have ammo for that antique.”

Mizuki’s jaw clenched. “It’s not an antique.”

She pulled the trigger again. “And I’ll always have bullets for creatures like you.”

Another clean shot.

Another effortless dodge.

An laughed again, the sound vibrating in the pit of Mizuki’s stomach.

“Oh? Even now that the one who made it’s dead?”

The words struck like a blow to the heart.

Mizuki’s arms faltered for the briefest second.

Her breath caught.

“What was his name again?” An went on, eyes narrowing as if in thought. “The leader of your charming little vampire-hunting troupe…”

She leaned forward slightly, voice like silk-wrapped thorns.

“Kamishiro Ru—”

“Don’t,” Mizuki hissed.

But the damage was done.

Rui.

His name tasted like ash in her mouth. His memory slammed into her like a wave she couldn’t outrun.

She could still see his smile, wide, mischievous, unbothered. The way he danced through chaos like it was a performance meant for him alone. His voice had always been steady. His presence, constant. She could still feel his hands guiding hers when she learned to shoot, his quiet assurance: “You’re never alone out here. Not while I’m around.”

And now, he was gone.

Gone because of them.

Because of her .

An’s smile deepened, sensing the shift. “Oh, you miss him, don’t you?” she crooned. “I do too. He was a delight to kill—”

Mizuki didn’t remember moving.

Didn’t remember raising the gun.

Didn’t feel the tears burning behind her eyes.

Only the pull of the trigger.

And the raw, all-consuming need to end this.

An didn’t get the chance to finish.

A searing pain tore through her skull, and her vision was swallowed by red. Half her face tore apart, cheekbone shattered into fragments, jaw twisted, one brilliant red eye vanishing in a mess of pulp and splintered bone. The air filled with a wet, sickening sound as blood exploded across the pavement.

And through the spray, she saw it.

Pink.

Soft and luminous, glowing faintly in the darkness like a warning. Like a memory.

Mizuki stood there, her silhouette carved by moonlight, unmoving. Her arms extended, breath steady, shoulders squared.

Her eyes glowed, dark pink, like the petals of a camellia steeped in shadow. And they didn’t waver. Not once.

Grief. Rage. A heartbreak buried so deep it had turned into steel.

In her hands was a second gun, larger, more intricate, its body painted in mismatched, almost playful colors. Toy-like. Ironic. But the way she held it, there was nothing childish about it.

Pain bloomed inside An like wildfire.

She collapsed to her knees, a strangled scream ripping free from her ruined face. Her hands trembled, cradling what was left of her skull, fingers clawing at broken flesh. Blood poured freely, pooling beneath her in dark rivers, until it moved.

The puddle convulsed.

It twisted.

And then it responded .

Tendrils of blood slithered out, winding like serpents around her arms, her torso, her throat. Dozens of threads unraveled from the ground, spiraling upward, writhing around her like a living cage.

Mizuki blinked, snapped back into motion. Her instincts screamed: this wasn’t just regeneration. Something had awakened. A power An hadn’t never displayed before, one that threatened to consume everything near her.

 “RUN!” Mizuki shouted. “Everyone, RUN! ”

But it was already too late.

The cocoon detonated.

Not in flame. Not in sound.

But in blades.

A thousand blood-needles shot outward, sharp as glass and fast as lightning, tearing through the air in every direction. They pierced through buildings, armor, bodies, friend and foe alike.

Screams filled the street. A chorus of agony and confusion.

Mizuki threw herself sideways, narrowly avoiding the worst of it. The tips of two needles grazed her ribs and thigh, ripping through fabric and leaving burning welts behind.

“Mizuki!” Ena’s voice rang out like an anchor. She sprinted from the side, eyes wild with urgency, and caught Mizuki mid-stumble.

Together, they ducked behind a half-collapsed concrete wall. Crimson splashed across it, sizzling where it met old silver wiring. Behind them, the battlefield was chaos. Half their unit was down. From the original eight, only five were still moving.

Two couldn’t stand.

“We’re retreating!” Ena barked into her communicator, voice cracking under pressure. “I repeat, retreat and fall back! Evac point C!”

The others scrambled into motion, dragging wounded teammates, shielding each other from the shrapnel-like fallout still raining from the blood cocoon’s aftershock.

Mizuki tried to keep moving, but her legs felt numb. She staggered more than she walked. Ena gripped her tight, not letting go.

“Don’t look back,” Ena said.

But Mizuki did.

Just once.

And she saw her.

The girl from earlier. The one who had called her cute. The one who had asked for advice with stars in her eyes.

She lay sprawled across the pavement, her body torn open, blood soaking the pale blue of her jacket. One hand was still curled loosely against her chest, as if she had tried to shield herself at the last second.

Her eyes were open.

But there wasn’t anything left behind them.

Mizuki stopped breathing.

No tears fell. Not yet. But something inside her twisted so violently she nearly collapsed. Her vision blurred. Her chest tightened until she could barely think. All the world had been reduced to red.

Ena didn’t say a word.

She just tightened her grip on Mizuki’s arm, pulling her forward, guiding her through the carnage. Her breath was loud in Mizuki’s ears, as steady as her touch.

“It’s okay,” Ena murmured, voice trembling with sorrow. “We’ll make it home.”

But Mizuki didn’t answer.

Because the word home had started to feel like a lie.

⋆｡°✩

When An regained consciousness, everything was quiet.

Too quiet.

The world smelled of blood, thick, metallic, cloying, and the air was damp with mist and smoke. A low ringing echoed in her ears, muting the sounds of the ruined street. For a few seconds, she couldn’t move. She barely remembered why.

Then her body twitched, instinctively drawing breath through gritted teeth. Pain flared along her jaw, her cheek, her ribs, sharp and stabbing, then dull and pulsing beneath her skin like a second heartbeat. Her vision blurred as she slowly sat up, peeling herself free from the sticky, pulsating remains of the blood cocoon.

The shell of hardened crimson threads cracked and crumbled around her like glass, shedding away in jagged pieces. Her body trembled, cold and aching. Blood clung to her like a second skin, streaking down her legs, arms, and chest. Her face, partially rebuilt, still throbbed with phantom pain. Where her eye had once been, fresh tissue was knitting back together in slow, agonizing waves. She could feel the regeneration crawling under her skin like worms weaving muscle.

Her breath hitched.

Around her, the world was painted in ruin.

Bodies littered the cracked asphalt, slumped, broken, unmoving. Pools of red shimmered under the low streetlights, the glint of weapons scattered like bones across the battlefield. The surrounding buildings hadn’t fared better; walls were shredded, their facades gouged with deep, sweeping arcs of crimson-tinted destruction. The very air shimmered with the aftershock of power unleashed too violently, too instinctively.

Her power.

She had done this.

And she hadn’t even known she could.

The weight of it hit her like another bullet, heavier than any injury. The crashout felt… hauntingly familiar. Like something she had tasted in another life, a dream glimpsed from underwater. Not learned. Remembered.

Her legs shook as she tried to stand fully, forcing her gaze to scan the aftermath.

Near the edge of the wreckage, Kohane moved among the fallen, directing a few vampires who were tending to the wounded. Her voice was calm, controlled, steady in the way An had always admired. She had always been the eye of the storm, the one who moved through fire without catching flame.

And then Kohane saw her.

Their eyes met across the field of ruin.

Relief broke across Kohane’s face in an instant. She rushed toward her, boots splashing through the blood-slick pavement, hands already reaching out.

“An! Oh my god—are you okay?” she asked softly, her voice breathless but steady, eyes scanning An’s injuries. “You’re—you’re healing, but your face…”

An opened her mouth, but no words came at first. Her throat was raw, her mouth dry as ash.

“I… I don’t know,” she rasped. Her gaze dropped, unable to meet Kohane’s eyes. Shame tightened her chest like a vise. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to go that far. It just—happened.”

How could it have unraveled so fast? She had waited an entire year for this, trained for it, obsessed over it, and Mizuki had still managed to blindside her. One bullet. One moment. And everything had cracked open.

Am I weak? The thought struck hard. No… worse. I’m dangerous.

She clenched her fists, still shaking from blood loss. The self-doubt curled around her spine, biting deep. If she had lost control like that once, it could happen again. And next time, maybe Kohane had be the one lying still on the ground.

Kohane must’ve noticed the storm in her eyes. Without hesitation, she wrapped her arms around An in a quiet embrace. Once, her warmth had nearly burned the vampire’s cold skin. But now, she felt cold too, like the warmth had been drained from both of them. It startled An back into focus.

“Hey,” she whispered near An’s ear, “you’re alright. You’re still here. You’re breathing. That’s enough for now.”

An’s breathing hitched, and her arms slowly lifted, unsure, then folded around Kohane’s waist in return. She hadn’t realized how badly she needed to be held until that moment, until it threatened to break her.

“It’s going to be okay,” Kohane said again, gentler now. “But you need rest. Let’s go home.”

That word, home , echoed strangely in An’s mind.

Their underground base, cold and dim and tucked beneath layers of concrete and secrecy, had never felt like anything more than a bunker. A necessity. A cage with clean floors. But when Kohane said it like that… it stirred something deeper. Something old. Something more than survival.

Memories flickered at the edge of her thoughts, childhood mornings, laughter, colors, a name whispered through half-closed doors. Long-buried warmth.

Kohane stepped back, brushing a blood-stained lock of hair from An’s face. Then, more firmly, she turned to the vampires behind them.

“Clean up before sunrise. Recover the bodies, all of them. Human and vampire.”

An’s voice came out raw. “How many did we lose?”

Kohane paused, her expression softening.

“Three from the vampire hunters,” she said. “But… most of the casualties were ours.”

A long breath. “Caused by you.”

She said it with no accusation, only truth. And then, as if to soften the blow, she added a small, weary chuckle. “Guess you really are that powerful.”

An said nothing. Her silence spoke louder than guilt.

She tried to move forward, but her legs gave out beneath her. Kohane caught her instantly, looping an arm under her shoulders and lifting her gently, carefully. An leaned into her without resistance.

She hated being this weak. But more than that, she hated what she had done while strong.

The street grew blurry. Her vision swam. The toll of blood loss and overexertion was catching up. Her limbs felt like lead, her heartbeat slowing into a tired rhythm. She sagged into Kohane’s grip.

And in that haze, before her eyelids fluttered shut, she caught one last image: Kohane’s face, pale in the blood-drenched moonlight. Her expression was worn, lined with worry, but her eyes held steady. Full of quiet strength. Gentle. Fierce. Unshaken.

“Let me take care of you, An,” she whispered. And An, for once, didn’t resist.

She closed her eyes.

And let herself be carried back to the basement.

Chapter Text

Light just broke the horizon, painting the city in gold while the quarter was already in full motion, different groups all coming back for their report. Mornings were usually the busiest time of their day but today seemed to be even more overwhelming. Kanade was so submerged by the multiple reports that she almost fell asleep at the end of Ena’s summary of the night’s events.

Mizuki indulged all the praises Ena made about her fighting style but her heart throbbed when Kanade looked at her with admiration and said she was grateful to have recruited such a talented killer for their organisation. She knew deep inside of her that she could’ve been better and avoided any casualties. While she thanked Kanade for the compliment she remembered how the girl was laying on the cold floor, with only a pool of blood to warm her up. Soulless eyes seemed to stare at her, as if saying, Why didn’t you save me? Why did you anger the monster? Why were you stunned to see its red eye tear up?

Back on the battlefield, just as a cocoon of blood wove itself into a protective shield around her, the red vampire suddenly looked… human.

Her already pale skin had turned ghostly in the low light, almost glowing, like frost catching the edge of moonlight. Her limbs trembled as she wrapped her arms around herself, not out of strategy, but instinct. Her posture wasn’t that of a predator, but of a child bracing against a storm. The way she stood, still, shrinking, made her seem less like a warrior and more like someone who had been broken and stitched back together too many times.

Blood trickled slowly down her cheeks and jaw, not in sharp streaks, but soft, almost reverent lines, like the world itself was weeping through her skin. Each droplet clung to her like it didn’t want to fall. Like it knew she had already lost enough.

But it wasn’t the blood that caught Mizuki’s breath.

It was the tears.

Clear, gleaming, and impossibly fragile. Slipping down from just one eye, they shone brighter than anything else on that ruined battlefield. They didn’t belong in war. Not here. Not on her.

Her eyes, once filled with that searing, unrelenting crimson, feral and fearless, had shifted. The red had faded, gentled. What remained was something else entirely. A low orange warmth shimmered in her irises, ringed with flickers of gold. Not fire, but dawn. Not fury, but ache.

It reminded Mizuki of sunrise through stained glass: quiet, hesitant, beautiful in its reluctance to arrive.

And for just a second, everything stopped.

The chaos of blood, the screeches in the air, the pulse of enemy movement, all of it blurred into the background. Mizuki’s breath hitched, caught on the ghost of something she couldn’t name. That face, those trembling hands, those eyes full of light too soft for war, it struck something in her.

Not pity. Not fear.

Recognition.

It felt familiar. Like an echo from a past she didn’t remember, or a dream she had had too many times. A flicker of a truth buried under all the violence: that even monsters cry. That even enemies can grieve. That maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t the only one who had forgotten how to be whole.

And in that moment, Mizuki didn’t see a vampire.

She saw a girl.

Alone.

And unraveling.

When she finally pulled herself out of her thoughts, she was back in her quarters. Somehow, she had managed to avoid medical attention, just a few scratches, nothing serious. A small relief. At least she didn’t have to face Mafuyu’s cold, unreadable glare.

But now, in the silence of her room, the relief faded.

The quiet wrapped around her like a heavy blanket, and for the first time in hours, she noticed how alone she felt. No battle, no voices, no blood or adrenaline, just stillness. And in that stillness, the weight of everything she had seen pressed down harder.

She walked over to her desk, searching for the weapons she had left there. The first was a small silver gun, sleek, precise, familiar. A pink ribbon accessory as a charm was the only way to guess the owner. The second stood out more: a brightly colored device often mistaken for a toy. Shaped like a megaphone, it gleamed with vivid purples and teals. It looked harmless, almost ridiculous, but it was deadly. An ultrasonic weapon, capable of shattering bones if used right. She had never fully understood how it worked, no matter how many times its creator explained it to her. And he had explained it at least a hundred times.

She could still picture him, rambling endlessly about circuits and soundwaves, completely absorbed in his own brilliance. He never let anything interrupt him. And even though most of it flew right over her head, she never minded. She would just sit there, quietly listening, not because of the tech, but because it was him.

Just being near him had been enough.

Before she could follow the thread of memory any further, a knock at the door broke through her thoughts.

“Mizuki? Are you okay?” It was Ena, her voice gentle but concerned. “You seemed kind of out of it during the meeting. I just wanted to check on you.”

Mizuki hesitated, then stood and opened the door. A distraction didn’t sound so bad.
Ena stepped in, casting a glance around the sparsely decorated room as Mizuki gestured for her to take the chair. Mizuki sat on the edge of her bed, legs drawn up slightly, watching Ena with guarded eyes.

“Your room’s… kind of empty,” Ena noted with a faint smile, trying not to make it sound like a judgment.

Mizuki shrugged.
Ena leaned back in the chair, relaxing a little. “Anyway, Mafuyu was being so annoying—she insisted on checking every scratch I had, like I didn’t know my own injuries.” She rolled her eyes, clearly fond beneath the complaint. “She nearly tried to sedate me just because I flinched.”

A small smile ghosted across Mizuki’s face, but she said nothing.

After a short pause, Ena’s tone shifted, a little more careful.
“But you know… during the battle, you seemed kind of distressed. I’m not prying. I just thought… we’re a team. Might as well get to know each other, right?”

Mizuki lowered her gaze, fingers curling into the edge of the blanket. She didn’t want to talk about the past. It felt too heavy, too distant, but somehow always right there under the surface.

Ena noticed the flicker of discomfort and, with easy grace, changed the subject.
“Anyway, Kanade finally went to sleep. Took some convincing, though, you know how she is.” She gave a light laugh. “Had to practically bargain with her to let herself rest.”

But she was cut off by Mizuki’s sudden question.

“Why did you become a vampire hunter?” Mizuki asked quietly, but her tone was sharp with something more.
“It’s a deadly job. So… why risk your life, when you’ve got people you care about?”

The question hung in the air like a blade, personal, unexpected, honest.

Ena blinked, caught off guard. But slowly, the expression on her face softened. She leaned forward slightly, elbows on her knees.

“That’s… a long story.”

Mizuki did not interrupt. Her eyes lowered, as if giving Ena space, but her posture stayed tight, like she was bracing herself.

"I didn’t plan to become a vampire hunter, y'know. It all started when my brother disappeared." She paused, arms crossed, but her voice stayed steady.

"One day he was just… gone. No warning. No fight. Nothing. He was annoying and loud, but he was my brother. And then—poof.”

Mizuki shifted slightly on the bed, resting her hands in her lap. She didn’t know what to say, so she stayed quiet. Listening felt more important.

"I went to the police first, obviously. Showed them pictures, asked questions, begged them to do something. But there were no leads. No signs. Just dead ends. It was like he never existed.”

Mizuki’s fingers curled into the fabric of her pants. The frustration, the helplessness in Ena’s voice, it was too familiar.

"The weird part? His best friend disappeared around the same time. And people started whispering—saying he had turned into a vampire. I didn’t want to believe it. But when you’re desperate, you start grabbing at whatever you can.”

She gave a small, dry laugh.
"You asked me once, ‘How do you know he disappeared because of vampires?’ Truth is, I don’t. I never did. But the rumors… the timing… It gave me something to hold on to. Even if it was stupid.”
Mizuki looked down, her expression flickering. That kind of desperate hope? She understood it too well.

"I asked everyone I could. Looked everywhere. Every name, every sighting. Nothing. Just… silence."
She shrugged, but there was a tightness in her shoulders. The pinknette caught it and her jaw clenched unconsciously, a part of her aching at how familiar this all sounded.

"Eventually, I started to think, maybe he’s really gone. Maybe there’s nothing left to find.”

"What kept me going wasn’t really the hunt, anyway. It was Kanade." Her voice softened slightly. "She helped me when no one else would. Kind, steady, always knew exactly when to just… be there. I joined the force because of her.”

"Mafuyu was another story." She rolled her eyes fondly. "We used to fight constantly. I couldn’t understand her at all. Everything she said rubbed me the wrong way. But over time, we figured each other out. I started seeing past the cold exterior, and she saw past mine.”

"I stayed. Not for my brother. Not for revenge. For them. Kanade, Mafuyu… they’re my home now." She looked at Mizuki, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. "And yeah. I’m happy now. Really happy. I never thought I would say that again.”

After Ena finished speaking, her words hung in the air, tender and raw.

Mizuki sat in silence, her fingers gently curling around the edge of her bedsheet. She didn’t look at Ena right away. Her gaze had dropped to her lap, eyes unfocused, mind swimming through thoughts that rushed up uninvited. The weight of everything, their job, their losses, the fragile bonds they clung to, pressed down on her chest.

She glanced at Ena briefly, then looked away again, biting the inside of her cheek. Her throat tightened. She hadn’t expected a real answer, not one like that. Not something so… human.

There was a flicker in her expression. Something soft and pained.

She pulled her knees up slightly, curling her fingers into the fabric of her pants, grounding herself.

Mizuki had always kept people at a distance, for their safety, and hers. But now, listening to Ena talk about finding a home, about feeling happy again, it stirred something deep and bitter and warm inside her all at once.

She tried to swallow it, but the words came before she could stop them.

“What if something happens to you? Or to them? What would you do?”

It wasn’t just a question. It was a fear. A fragile, unspoken confession.

Ena’s expression tightened. She looked away for a moment, then spoke quietly, honestly.
“I don’t know. I try not to think about it too much. It’s a horrible thought… and it hurts just imagining it. But that’s the reality, right? That’s what we signed up for when we chose to become the city’s guardians against things most people only read about in the journal.”

There was a silence before she continued, softer now. “If something ever did happen…” Ena’s voice faltered, just for a moment. “We would break. We would cry, scream, fall apart for a while—because how could we not? Losing someone like that… it would tear a hole right through you.”

She swallowed hard, blinking back the weight in her chest.
“But even then, I think… we would find a way to stand back up. Not because it’s easy. Not because we would be okay. But because they would want us to. We would carry their memory like a scar we don’t hide, and keep living—not just surviving, but really living—because that’s the only way to honor what we had.”

Mizuki didn’t answer right away.

She just sat there, her hands resting limply in her lap, eyes fixed on the floor as Ena’s words settled deep into the space between them. Like a stone dropped into water, the impact rippled through her, slow and silent, but impossible to ignore.

Carry their memory like a scar we don’t hide…

A part of her wanted to hold onto the idea that the past didn’t have to weigh her down forever.

“Would you mind telling me what you’re worried about? Is it connected to the name that vampire said?”

“Yeah.”

A heavy silence settled between them.

Ena softened her tone.
“It’s okay if you’re not ready to talk about it. Whenever the time comes, I’ll be here. I’ll be ready to listen.”

“Thank you, Ena.”

“You’re welcome.”

With that, she gave a quiet nod and turned to leave, not looking back, trusting that when the time was right, the words would come.

⋆｡°✩

An stirred just as they reached the basement, the sting of sunlight pulling her back to consciousness. The bleeding on her face had stopped, but exhaustion clung to her like a second skin. Kohane was still carrying her, careful and steady.

As they neared the door, Akito appeared, crossing paths with the small group. He looked surprisingly composed, too composed. No blood, no wounds, not even a scratch.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, eyeing An as they passed. “You don’t usually get messed up like this.”

“Shut it. I got distracted,” An muttered, her voice hoarse with fatigue.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

Akito gave a shrug, but something about his expression was off. He dropped a few vague comments about his patrol, said it had gone fine, no big deal, but An wasn’t convinced. His eyes were too alert, his movements a little too crisp. But he looked… recharged, proof that he had just fed.

Suspicious.

She narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t say anything, too drained to pick a fight. Still, her stare was sharp enough to make him squirm.

“What?” Akito snapped, shifting under her gaze. “I did my mission.”

But his voice lacked its usual bite. There was something nervous in it, just enough for An to catch.

She didn’t answer, just kept staring as Kohane carried her inside. The silence said more than words could.

Once the others were out of sight, Akito let out a quiet sigh of relief. His shoulders sagged slightly as the tension left him, if only for a second.

The basement door creaked open again, letting in a gust of cold air. Toya stepped inside, his coat torn at the shoulder, and blood splattered across his sleeves. Parts of his outfit were still frosted over, shards of ice clinging to the fabric like broken glass.

“Hey,” he greeted casually, brushing off his sleeves.

Before he could head to rest, Akito stopped him.
“Hey, do you know what happened with An?”

Toya glanced back, pausing mid-step.
“No idea. But from what I overheard, sounds like she finally ran into the pink killer.”

Akito blinked.
“Wait, who? You mentioned them before but never really explained.”

“It’s from the fight with Wonderland x Showtime. A year ago.” Toya’s voice grew flat, tired.
“We also got a name: Mizuki. I don’t know why An’s so fixated on them, but ever since then…”

He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck with a frustrated sigh.

An had always been fierce, sharp-tongued and quick to anger, but she cared. About the others, about the community. It was why Toya had followed her, even when it didn’t make sense. But after that day… something changed.

She became reckless. Chasing shadows. Letting patrols suffer heavier losses, draining resources, endangering lives, all for one human. One killer. It wasn’t like her. Not the An he knew. But even so, he never questioned her.

“I see…” Akito murmured, eyes thoughtful.

Without another word, he turned and left, the tension in his shoulders barely concealed.

⋆｡°✩

An was back in her room, sitting on the edge of the bed, her movements sluggish, her expression unreadable. The pain from earlier still lingered in her limbs, and her energy hadn’t fully returned.
A soft knock came at the door before it opened slowly. Kohane stepped inside, quiet and hesitant, holding a towel and a water bottle.

“I brought these,” she said, placing them gently on the table. “And… if you need it—” her voice wavered slightly, but she steadied it, “—you can take my blood.”

An’s eyes lifted to meet hers, the hunger still present, but dulled now with exhaustion. She didn’t answer at first. Her gaze lingered on Kohane, small, brave, standing there despite everything.

“You sure?” An asked, voice low.

Kohane nodded once, stepping closer. “I trust you.”

That trust hung in the air like something sacred.

An moved slowly, gently brushing Kohane’s hair back from her neck. Her fangs sank in carefully, controlled, deliberate. Kohane winced but didn’t pull away. Her hand found An’s arm and gripped lightly, grounding them both.

It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t desperate. It was quiet. Almost tender.

Suddenly, the memories surged up from the depths like a breaking tide, tonight’s fight replaying itself in fragments beneath An’s closed eyelids. The sheer intensity of it, the chaos, the dizzying blur of movement. The sting of silver in the air. The way her threads had lashed out like a storm she couldn’t quite control. But amid it all, one image burned brighter than the rest.

Those eyes.

Pink. Clear. Unflinching.

Not just the wildfire rage from a year ago, the look Mizuki had given her in their last battle, eyes lit with fury and pain, like a wounded star burning just before it collapsed. No. Tonight’s gaze had been different. It had shifted, right at the end.

When the bullet tore through her skull, and blood began to rise.

In that final heartbeat, their eyes had locked.

There had been surprise, brief, raw, widening her pupils like she hadn’t expected her shot to land. But underneath that…

There was something older.

Something deeper.

It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t the triumphant look of a hunter bringing down her mark. It was something far more dangerous.

Recognition.

Like a memory surfacing in the middle of a dream, warm and disorienting all at once. That look, wide and flickering, too open to be anything but real, wasn’t the gaze of an enemy. It wasn’t even a soldier’s glance at a rival. It was intimate. Unspoken. Known.

An felt something snap inside her chest, a taut string pulled too tight for too long. The weight of it pressed against her ribs, crushing, searing, like a grief she hadn’t realized she still carried. She didn’t just feel like she had seen that look before, she knew she had. Somewhere, in another time, another life, mirrored back at her in someone else's eyes.

It struck her with the force of a wound, sharp and sickening, and for the briefest moment, 

And then the pain came.

Blinding. Searing. Like hot knives behind her eyes. It was more than just a headache, it was as if her own mind had turned against her, punishing her for reaching too far, for getting too close to the truth.

An let out a sharp gasp, clutching her head as the pain tore through her like static. Her knees buckled slightly. Her vision swam. The memory crumbled at the edges, fading into ash before she could grasp it.

Instinct took over.

She shoved Kohane back, too fast, too rough.

Kohane stumbled, eyes wide. She caught herself against the floor, the impact soft but jarring. Her breath hitched, and for a moment, she just looked at An in stunned silence. The sting in her eyes wasn’t from the fall.

The hurt wasn’t physical.

It was quiet and raw, a wound made not of blood, but broken trust.

“An?”

Her voice was small. Hesitant. Thread-thin.

It was the kind of voice that wasn’t afraid of pain, but of distance.

An didn’t answer.

Couldn’t.

She stood frozen, hand still pressed to her temple, breath shaky. Her fingers were wet, she didn’t know if it was blood, or sweat, or tears. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

She couldn’t look at Kohane.

Because in that moment, she wasn’t sure who she was remembering.

And that terrified her more than anything else.

An wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, not turning to face Kohane.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “You can go now.”

Kohane closed the door behind her. As it clicked shut, her legs gave out and she sank to the floor, breathless. Her hands covered her face, as if trying to contain the rush of heat flooding her cheeks. The memory of what had just happened played over and over in her mind. The closeness, the way time seemed to pause.

She remembered every time An took a slow, deliberate gulp of her blood, how her heart fluttered wildly in her chest, terrified the other vampire might hear it. The closeness, the warmth, the way An's breath brushed her skin… it all came rushing back.

A blush bloomed across her cheeks, reaching all the way to her ears, warm and uncontrollable. She let out a soft, shaky laugh and buried her face in her hands, her body still tingling from the memory.

For a moment, she just sat there on the floor, holding the feeling close, like a secret she wasn’t ready to share, but couldn’t stop replaying.

And as the silence of the underground base settled around her, Kohane whispered to the dark, a trembling smile on her lips.

“What are you doing to me, An…”

Chapter Text

Morning broke reluctantly over the city, as if the sun hesitated to touch streets still stained with last night’s fear. The air hung heavy with unspoken dread. Few knew what had attacked or who had died, but everyone felt it.

In cafés and subways, whispers spread:
“Another incident.”
“Blood on the walls.”
“The wounds didn’t look human.”

The news spoke in riddles, “unusual activity,” “curfew under review,” but people knew the signs: shadows, disappearances, violence without explanation. Authorities flooded the area. Drones hovered. Checkpoints sprang up. Even a flickering streetlight drew a report.

The city adapted. Traffic vanished. Offices emptied. Schools cut hours. Some turned to prayer, others to profit, silver charms and black-market goods moved fast. The government promised calm. No one listened.

Night fell. Lights dimmed. Windows locked. Silence swallowed the streets.

But in a few corners, life clung on, a late-night shopkeeper, a rushing mother, a quiet radio behind drawn curtains.

⋆｡°✩

Tsukasa stepped through the door, body aching from another long, draining day. The apartment greeted him in its usual hush. Warm light flicked on automatically, golden and soft, trying to make the place feel lived in.

But the silence was familiar. It met him every night.

The space was cozy, almost whimsical, pastel star stickers on the walls, LED lights catching on mirrors, colorful trinkets on shelves. Plush animals dotted corners like soft little guards. It was a place meant to be bright and gentle.

And yet, it always felt too still.

He kicked off his shoes, dropped his bag beside the couch, and moved into the kitchen. Nothing was ever out of place. Nothing changed unless he moved it. He cooked for once, vegetables stir-fried over rice, and plated it with distracted care. The scent lingered warmly as he poured a glass of cold tea and sat at the table.

As he lifted his chopsticks, his eyes drifted across the room, and stopped on a door near the end of the hallway. One that had remained shut for a long time.

He stared at it for a moment, as if expecting it to move, to open, to mean something again. But it didn’t.

It never did.

The chair across from him was empty, just like it had been yesterday. Just like it would be tomorrow.

He let out a small, tired sigh. No matter how colorful the walls were, no matter how warm the lights, the silence always found a way in.

This was his home. One he had made soft and comforting. But each night it reminded him, he was the only one left inside it.

Just as Tsukasa was about to take a bite, a sharp knock echoed through the apartment, cutting through the quiet like a blade. He froze, chopsticks midair, the sound still hanging in the air. It hadn’t come from the door.

It came from the window.

The one on the tenth floor.

He turned his head slowly, eyes locking on the glass. For a moment, he told himself it was just the wind, or maybe a bird. But the knock had been too deliberate. Too human. The air seemed to grow still.

Tsukasa stared for a moment, then stood slowly, like someone afraid to jinx a quiet moment. He walked to the window and opened it cautiously. A blast of heat hit his face, unnaturally warm, like someone had opened an oven into the cool night air.

And then, before he could say a word, a dark figure appeared on the ledge.

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Tsukasa’s scream echoed so loudly through the room that the figure flinched, lost his balance, and nearly fell off.

“ARGH! Damn it, loud as ever!” Akito barked, grabbing the window frame to steady himself. He scowled, swinging a leg over and stepping casually into the room as if he hadn’t just risked a ten-story nosedive. “You’re gonna wake the entire building. Haven’t they ever sent you a noise complaint?”

“Hey! You can’t just knock on someone’s tenth-floor window like that and expect a calm reaction!”

“You’d think you’d be used to it by now, with how many times I visit you this way.”

Tsukasa’s jaw dropped, trying to piece together a proper response, but nothing came. He looked from the ledge to Akito, then to his now-cooling dinner, then back to Akito.

“You could just… use the front door.”

Akito shrugged, brushing invisible dust off his black jacket. “And miss the fun?”

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack one day,” Tsukasa muttered, finally returning to his chair with a hand pressed to his chest.

Akito leaned against the wall, casual as ever, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Come on. Don’t act like your heart isn’t already conditioned for chaos.”

Tsukasa let out a long, exasperated sigh, his eyes drifting to his untouched plate. “Would it kill you to send a text like a normal person?”

“And ruin the drama of a surprise entrance?” Akito grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Tsukasa groaned softly and reached for his tea, the glass chilled and smooth in his hand. He took a slow sip, hoping it would ground him, but the familiar warmth in his chest betrayed him. As always, Akito had a way of barging in and making everything feel more alive, and more complicated.

“So?” Tsukasa asked after a slow sip, his voice quieter now, gentler beneath the edge of exasperation. “What’s the reason this time?”

Akito pushed off the wall, his movements deliberate and unhurried, though his eyes betrayed something less casual, something more intent. He leaned just slightly over the table, smirk tugging at his lips. “What, I need a reason to visit my boyfriend now? Maybe I just came for a night-time kiss.”

The word boyfriend landed heavier than either of them expected.

They had only made it official a week ago, after months of banter and tension, of arguments that dissolved into laughter and teasing that lingered just a little too long. Saying it aloud made Tsukasa’s chest tighten with something vulnerable and fluttering. His eyes flicked away as a soft blush crept across his cheeks.

Akito noticed, of course. But instead of poking fun, his grin softened. The edge dropped from his voice, replaced by something quieter.

“Kidding,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in a rare gesture of sheepishness. “We don’t have to rush anything. Really.”

The air between them shifted, still warm, still familiar, but now tinged with something fragile and unspoken.

Their relationship wasn’t just new. It was forbidden.

No one could know. Not the humans, not the vampires. If anyone discovered that the leader of Wonderland x Showtime, an ancient, revered vampire-hunting faction, was romantically involved with a vampire, it would be catastrophic. Tsukasa’s credibility, his family name, everything he had inherited and fought to protect would be destroyed.

And Akito? He would risk exile at best. Death at worst. In a world defined by blood oaths and ancient grudges, there was no place for softness. No space for something as human as love.

And yet, here they were.

Two people from opposite sides of a brutal war, sharing quiet nights and unsaid words in a small apartment. With food cooling on the table and risk pressing in from every corner of the world, they had still found something real, something that made the silence feel a little less heavy.

They didn’t need to say it aloud.

Whatever came next, they would face it together.

After a moment, Akito’s gaze dropped for just a second before meeting Tsukasa’s again, more serious now. “I did come for something. I need information.”

The teasing didn’t vanish entirely, but it slipped into the background. Beneath his words was a thread of purpose, a weight Tsukasa could feel.

“Do you know someone named Mizuki?”

Tsukasa flinched, subtle, but Akito saw it. His fingers tensed around the cup. Of course he knew the name. Everyone in their world did. Mizuki wasn’t just a vampire hunter. They were a shadow whispered about in emergency meetings. A ghost. Surgical. Merciless. Calm even with blood on their hands.

“They were in Wonderland x Showtime,” Akito added, his voice softer now. “Before the accident. You know… the one where we first met.”

That sentence landed like a stone, dragging silence in its wake. Tsukasa’s gaze fell to the table. The steam from his food curled upward, forgotten, just like the memory it stirred.

He didn’t need a reminder. That night was carved into him like a scar, deep, permanent, impossible to forget.

Wonderland x Showtime was completely unprepared. The new vampire faction, once dismissed as rumor, chose that night to reveal itself. With a direct assault on their base, it wasn’t just an ambush. It was a declaration of war. They struck fast and with brutal precision. Fire devoured the district, and hunters were cut down before they could draw their weapons. It wasn’t a lack of skill, it was a trap, perfectly executed.

That night shattered Wonderland x Showtime’s reputation. Their image of control and strength crumbled with the burning ruins. From that point on, the war was no longer hidden in shadows.

It was open and ruthless.

And amid that chaos, Tsukasa found him.

Akito was half-buried beneath shattered beams and scorched metal, bleeding out beneath the remnants of a carnival stage. His jacket was soaked in red, his breath wheezing through grit and ash. Yet, somehow, his face held a scowl instead of fear, half-conscious, coughing blood, and still managing to look annoyed more than anything else. A faint smirk tugged at his mouth, as if even near death, he refused to give in.

Tsukasa should’ve left him. Should’ve raised his blade, finished it, followed everything he had been taught.

But something in him rebelled.

Logic broke. Oath dissolved. Instinct twisted into something he didn’t recognize.

He didn’t hesitate. He moved.

Through smoke and flame and falling debris, he dragged the enemy in his arms. The battlefield raged behind him, but all Tsukasa could hear was Akito’s unsteady breathing and the crackle of burning dreams around them.

He didn’t know why he did it.

Only that he had to.

And Akito, he didn’t fight him.

Later, in the dim quiet of Tsukasa’s apartment, the vampire stirred on a makeshift cot, half his body wrapped in gauze and stolen medical tape. His first words, hoarse and dry, were:

“You didn’t have to go that far. I would’ve walked it off.”

He hadn’t walked away, though. Not then. Not the next day, either.

He stayed. Out of pride, or curiosity, or something neither of them wanted to name.

There were fights. Cold silences. Sharp words traded like blades. But also conversations that lingered. Dry humor. Glimpses of something raw and real beneath the enemy lines they had drawn around themselves.

Akito kept returning. Night after night.

Until it wasn’t a coincidence anymore.

Until Tsukasa started waiting for him.

Until he caught himself missing him when he didn’t come.

“I remember,” Tsukasa said, his voice low, distant. He wasn’t really looking at Akito, his gaze had drifted somewhere behind him, into the corners of memory. “You nearly died.”

Akito let out a quiet chuckle and leaned forward, arms resting on the table like they weren’t skirting the edge of something fragile. “Yeah. Kind of hard to forget.”

The room felt heavier now. The warmth of the apartment, normally comforting, clung to the walls like a thick fog, close, oppressive.

“I don’t remember a Mizuki in our unit,” Tsukasa murmured.

“They left right after,” Akito said. “Didn’t stick around for the cleanup. But they’ve resurfaced. They’re with Nightcord at 25 now. Front line work.”

Tsukasa’s brows pulled together. “Why are you looking into Mizuki?”

Akito sighed and ran a hand through his ginger hair. The casual edge in his voice was gone, replaced by frustration. “People in Vivid Bad Squad keep bringing them up. Especially An. She’s been… weird about it…again. Asking questions. Obsessing, really. I don’t know what she’s chasing, but it’s starting to feel dangerous.”

He looked up, eyes serious now. “I need to know what kind of person Mizuki is. And you—”

“—know people who used to run with them,” Tsukasa finished, voice flat.

Silence followed, not tense, just still. Like the apartment itself was listening.

Tsukasa stood slowly and walked to a shelf across the room. He stared down at a drawer beneath it, hand hovering just above the handle but never touching.

“You’re not just curious,” he said quietly. “This is about your leader.”

Akito exhaled through his nose. “She’s fixated. Ever since that last mission, she’s been tearing through every report, every face, like she’s looking for a ghost. She hasn’t said it out loud, but I know it’s Mizuki.”

Tsukasa turned back around, arms crossed. “So you came here hoping I’d confirm something. That I’d give you something, just enough to stop her from burning down another city block.”

Akito nodded. “If I can give her anything solid, it might keep her from making another mess like last year. You remember how many people we lost because she wouldn’t let go of one hunter.”

Tsukasa’s expression didn’t budge. If anything, his eyes hardened. “No. I can’t tell you anything.”

Akito blinked, caught off guard. “Why not? You know something, don’t you?”

Tsukasa hesitated. For a second, it looked like he might say nothing at all. Then, finally: “Mizuki works at the café where my sister works.”

Akito’s expression twisted in confusion. “Saki? I didn’t know she had a new coworker.”

“There’s more than that. Mizuki’s her bodyguard. My parents brought her in after Saki insisted on working again. They agreed, on the condition that someone watch over her. Mizuki’s been keeping an eye on her ever since.”

Akito leaned back, his eyes widening slightly. “Shit.” He raked a hand through his hair again. “And Saki has no idea?”

“No,” Tsukasa said. “She just thinks Mizuki’s some eccentric part-timer who disappears sometimes. That’s how it has to be.”

He sat back down, the weight of his words sinking in. “If An starts digging, if she shows up at the café or worse—goes after Mizuki—then Saki’s in danger too. And I can’t let that happen.”

Akito didn’t reply right away. The easy grin was gone now. His face was unreadable, until it shifted, just for a moment, into something softer. Sadder. It passed too quickly for Tsukasa to catch.

“I get it,” Akito said. “You’re protecting your sister.”

Tsukasa nodded. “If anything happens to Saki, I…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

Another moment of silence passed between them, heavier than the last.

Akito finally exhaled and leaned back again. “Alright. I won’t push. I just… had to try.”

Tsukasa offered a tired smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “I know.”

Then Akito looked at him, voice quieter now. “You think she’d really go that far?”

Tsukasa didn’t hesitate.

“Yes.”

“She’ll do anything to get her hands on that hunter,” Tsukasa said, his voice flat with conviction. “And if Saki’s caught in the middle when she does something reckless…” He didn’t finish the thought. His jaw was tight, eyes dark with the weight of everything unspoken.

Akito lowered his gaze, dragging a hand through his hair in frustration. “I thought if I could get ahead of her—figure out the truth first—I could buy time. Slow her down before she crosses a line.”

Tsukasa didn’t respond right away. Instead, he turned to the drawer and pulled it open with a quiet click. Inside was a small folder, worn and marked. Without hesitation, he handed it to Akito.

“Then stop her,” he said firmly. “Don’t let her near Mizuki. And don’t let her anywhere near Saki.”

The shift in his voice left no room for argument.

Akito took the file, fingers brushing the cover. Gone was his usual swagger. “Alright,” he murmured. “I’ll do what I can. But stopping An won’t be clean. She won’t listen to orders once she’s convinced of something. I’ll have to feed her false leads—stall her.”

He glanced up. “You should move Saki. Somewhere safer. Just until this dies down.”

Tsukasa nodded, tension still etched into his expression. “I’ll try.”

For a moment, neither of them said anything. The silence was not empty, it pulsed with the weight of shared concern, of choices made on the edge of a knife.

Then, in a softer voice, Akito said, “Still think a text would’ve been enough?”

Tsukasa finally let out a breath and rolled his eyes, the edge of a reluctant smile tugging at his lips. “And let you miss the thrill of nearly falling off my balcony? Where’s the fun in that?”

Akito smirked, brushing dust off his jacket. “You’re lucky I’m agile.”

A brief laugh passed between them, dry, tired, but genuine. For the first time that evening, the tension didn’t vanish, but it cracked just enough to let something softer in. Just enough space to breathe.

Tsukasa glanced toward the kitchen, then to the untouched plate still sitting on the table. “Dinner’s ruined.”

“I don’t mind,” Akito said, quieter now, a touch more honest. “Wasn’t really here for the food anyway.” He tilted his head. “You didn’t put any carrots in it, did you?”

Tsukasa let out a breath that could’ve been a laugh, small and warm despite everything. He knew exactly how much Akito hated carrots always had. That detail, that complaint, that normalcy... it settled into the space between them like a blanket pulled over something frayed.

He turned back to the table, the vampire trailing behind him. The stir-fry was long cold, congealed around the edges, but neither of them made a move to clear it.

They sat in the quiet. Not the kind that aches, but the kind that feels earned. A lull. A truce. Not quite peace, but close enough to pretend for a little while longer.

The calm after the storm. Or maybe just the eye of it.

Whatever came next, they weren’t sitting on opposite sides of the battlefield anymore.

The night had grown deep, the sky stained with the stillness that only came in the hours before sunrise. They had talked for what felt like forever, about memories, old missions, and things they never said when the sun was up. The world outside remained quiet, but inside, something had shifted. Not just between them, but within them.

Tsukasa stifled a yawn behind his hand.

“You should get some sleep,” Akito said softly, already moving toward the window.

He placed a hand on the frame, one leg swinging up onto the ledge, when—

“Wait!”

Akito flinched, nearly losing his balance. “Damn it, Tsukasa—can you not yell every time I’m halfway out a window?”

Tsukasa ignored the jab, standing behind him, voice lower now. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

Akito blinked, confused. “Didn’t I just eat stir-fry with you?”

“I didn’t mean that.” Tsukasa’s gaze dropped. “I meant… blood.”

Silence fell like a curtain. Only the faint wind slipped in through the open window, brushing past them like a ghost too polite to stay.

Akito froze.

His hands clenched slightly against the windowsill. “I…”

He didn’t finish.

He couldn’t.

For a moment, he just stood there, jaw tight, eyes shadowed. It wasn’t hunger that silenced him, it was something heavier. Guilt. Shame. Resentment toward the part of himself that needed this. That needed to take.

Tsukasa stepped forward slowly, carefully, like one might approach a wounded animal. “You’re pale,” he said quietly. “And your hands were shaking earlier. You’re starving, Akito.”

Akito looked away.

“I can’t feed from you,” he muttered. “You know that.”

“I didn’t offer.”

Akito glanced over his shoulder, startled, but Tsukasa wasn’t angry. Just tired. Gentle. Holding something careful in his voice.

“I’ve got bags. Kept frozen. I figured one day you’d be too proud to ask.”

The words hung in the air, thick with unsaid things.

Akito swallowed hard, torn between need and the urge to walk away before he made it worse. Before he took something he couldn’t give back.

But he didn’t move.

Didn’t climb through the window.

Because in the quiet space between their breaths, something deeper had spoken.

He wasn’t alone.

Not tonight.

Tsukasa opened the freezer, grabbed a chilled blood pack, and tossed it toward Akito with a casual flick of his wrist.

Akito caught it easily, murmuring a quiet, “...Thanks.”

When he looked up, Tsukasa was grinning, soft and unguarded, the kind of smile that rarely surfaced, especially not at this hour. The low kitchen light caught in his golden hair, casting it in a gentle, ethereal glow, like moonlight brushing over gold leaf. In the hush of the apartment, he looked almost unreal. Like something the night had no right to hold. Like something, someone like Akito, creature of the night that he was, had no right to touch.

Akito stared, breath caught.

He could die for that smile. And truthfully? A part of him already had.

Chapter Text

A week had passed.

The city rested under a strained quiet. It wasn’t peace, just a pause. Like two predators circling each other, choosing to retreat for now rather than risk another open clash. After the chaos of the last confrontation, both sides, hunters and vampires, seemed to silently agree on one thing: give the streets a moment to breathe. Civilians went about their routines with caution, eyes lifted less often to the rooftops, and the smell of blood no longer clung to the air like it used to. It felt like the world was holding its breath, waiting for the next crack in the surface.

Inside Vivid Bad Squad, however, things were far from calm. Their supply of blood was dangerously low, and morale was fraying at the seams. The members were growing restless, stretched thin. An, ever the sharp edge of their group, took it upon herself to dig into anything that might offer an advantage. She spent every waking moment poring through patrol logs, mission reports, cross-referencing names, territories, patterns of movement, desperate to find something useful.

Her room had transformed into a chaotic nest of information. Reports were tacked to the walls, sticky notes scattered across the floor, string ran between pins on a corkboard in an intricate web of theories and hunches. The air smelled faintly of paper, ink, and the iron tang of her own blood when she grew too frustrated to hold it in.

Her obsession, however, wasn’t just tactical, it was personal. At the center of it all was Mizuki. An enigma. A ghost. For the past two weeks, there had been nothing, no confirmed patrol sightings, no intercepted messages, no vampire kills connected to them. It was like Mizuki had vanished off the face of the city, again, like last year.

And yet, An couldn’t stop thinking about them. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw those soft pink irises, delicate, cloudlike, colored like the dying edge of day. There was beauty in them, yes, but more than that, there was emotion. Raw, unreadable emotion that pressed against her mind like a whisper she couldn’t quite make out. It was infuriating. The sensation was maddeningly familiar, and yet the memory danced just beyond reach, blocked behind a cold wall of black static. Something was hidden there, veiled behind curtains her mind refused to pull aside.

Tonight, she snapped.

Anger surged in her veins and lashed outward, uncontrolled. With a sharp crackle of blood threads, the air split. Papers were sliced into ribbons midair, raining down around her in a storm of red-tinged confetti. Her desk crashed onto its side, its legs splintering against the floor, sending more reports sprawling across the room.

An’s chest heaved as she stood amidst the wreckage, fists clenched, breathing hard. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the ragged sound of her breath and the faint hum of the lights above.

A soft knock followed.

“An? Is everything fine?”

Kohane’s voice, soft and unsure, seeped through the wood like a thread of warmth trying to reach her in the cold.

An didn’t answer at once. She pressed her palm to her temple, closing her eyes as she tried to steady herself. Her pulse pounded behind her ribs. She swallowed hard, forcing a breath past her teeth.

“…Yeah,” she called out finally, voice tight. “No need to come in.”

There wasn’t any reply. But she could still feel her, Kohane, lingering outside the door, silent, patient. Not pushing, not asking. Just… there. Her presence was like a candle flickering on the other side of the dark.

An exhaled slowly, her breath shaky, and dropped to her knees to begin picking up the remnants of her outburst. Papers fluttered around her like dead leaves in the aftermath of a storm. Her fingers moved methodically over the torn scraps, brushing aside splinters of wood and blood-thread confetti, gathering what fragments she could salvage.

Most of the reports were beyond saving, shredded, stained, useless. But as she sifted through the chaos, her hand paused on one page. A wrinkled sheet, slightly torn at the edges, but still intact enough to read. Something about it pulled her focus. She smoothed it out against the floor, eyes narrowing as the words came into view.

Mizuki hadn’t been recorded in the Nightcord at 25’s quarter for the past two weeks.

That alone made her stiffen. Mizuki had once formally resigned from Wonderland x Showtime a year ago, vanishing shortly after, but that was official. Documented. On record. This time, for Nightcord at 25, there was nothing. No notice, no trail. Just silence.

And silence like that didn’t happen on its own.

Her gaze moved to the corner of the page, where a notation had been left behind, likely overlooked. A timestamp. A system ID. A user log.

The presence database hadn’t simply failed to update. It had been accessed.

Tampered with.

An felt the slow coil of suspicion tighten in her gut.

The logs hadn’t been corrupted or damaged by error. They had been scrubbed, clean, clinical, intentional. Someone had gone into the archive and erased all trace of Mizuki’s recent activity. Not sloppily. Not in a panic. It was surgical, each entry removed with precision, leaving no fingerprints behind.

It was like someone had walked through fresh snow and then gone back with a broom to erase the footprints.

Someone didn’t want Mizuki to be found.

And now, An was certain: Mizuki hadn’t simply disappeared.

She had been hidden.

An’s heart skipped a beat. Her hands stilled.

This wasn’t Mizuki simply going quiet. Not like last year.

Someone had covered for them.

A chill slid down her spine as the implications rooted themselves in her mind. Whether it was their own doing or someone else’s… Mizuki had disappeared by design.

And that meant they were hiding something.

Or being hidden.

An’s expression darkened, the ghost of those pink eyes flickering again in her mind, glistening like dusk-colored glass, full of meaning she couldn’t yet decipher.

But now?

Now she had a thread.

And this time, she would follow it to the end.

While gathering the last handful of shredded reports, An’s fingers brushed against a slip of torn paper, and then, out of nowhere, something stirred deep inside her. Not an image, not a face, but a thought. A stray echo from somewhere distant.

‘Ugh, I hate studying.’

It came uninvited. Soft, simple, almost mundane. But it hit her like a wave. The words weren’t recent, weren’t part of her current self. They felt like a thread tugging on a long-forgotten seam, leading to a version of her she didn’t remember being.

She froze, one hand still hovering over the floor, her eyes unfocused.

Where did that come from?

She tried to chase it, grasp it, but it slipped just out of reach. It was like plunging into a dark sea, pitch-black and endless, where direction didn’t exist and sound was swallowed whole. No horizon. No up or down. Just a vast, suffocating emptiness where her memories should’ve been. The harder she tried to concentrate, the more it all blurred, until pain bloomed behind her eyes, sharp and unforgiving.

She winced. Her body curled inward slightly, a soft whimper escaping her lips as her hand pressed against her temple. It felt like her skull was being split open from the inside.

The door burst open.

“An!” Kohane stood in the doorway, breath caught in her chest, her wide eyes filled with worry. She didn’t wait for permission. She crossed the threshold, her footsteps light but urgent.

“You should get some rest,” she said, voice firm but gentle. “It’s morning.”

Kohane knelt beside her, quiet but steady, placing a light hand on the small of An’s back. The touch was cool, unexpected, but not harsh. Grounding. Calming.

That simple contact cut through the fog in An’s mind like a lifeline. She hadn’t realized how far she had sunk until that moment. Her breath eased. The world began to steady around her.

“You haven’t slept in days,” Kohane said softly, her voice close, as her eyes moved across An’s face with careful attention. “You’re shaking. Please… just lie down. You need rest.”

An hesitated. The words were kind, the concern real, but it sparked a quiet war inside her. Her instincts bristled, still reaching for the wall of scattered papers and broken patterns. She was close to something, she could feel it. Threads were forming. The pieces were almost within her grasp.

But her body told a different story.

Her limbs felt distant, her skin heavy with exhaustion. Her mind was slow to catch, dulled at the edges, still echoing with half-forgotten thoughts and ghostly phrases.

And still, faint and flickering, something stirred behind her eyes.

A test. A meeting. A promise.

An bit down on the thought like it might dissolve if she didn’t hold it tight. She wanted to chase it. Needed to. But reality cut through.

Mizuki had vanished from every traceable corner. Scrubbed from records. Hidden, not lost. This wasn’t just another failed patrol report or a misfiled log.

This was personal. This was planned.

And she wasn’t letting go.

Sleep had have to wait.

With a slow, steadying breath, An pulled herself up, leaning forward onto the edge of the desk. Her fingers curled tightly around the cleaned-up report, the paper slightly crumpling beneath her grip. Her heartbeat climbed, not in panic, but in urgency. She wasn’t chasing ghosts anymore.

Whatever this was, it went far beyond a missing hunter.

It ran deep. And it had her name written on it, whether she remembered why or not.

An stood fully now, pulling her hair back into a rough ponytail, her movements abrupt, driven. The dizziness from earlier lingered, but she pushed it down, buried it under resolve. Her focus sharpened like a blade newly drawn.

She flicked on the communicator and glanced toward Kohane, who remained crouched at her side, gaze full of quiet protest. The message in her eyes was clear: You need sleep. But An didn’t look away.

“...Toya. Akito,” she said, her voice low and certain, cutting through the quiet like a command. “Meeting in thirty. I found something.”

Her eyes lingered on Kohane for one more beat, silent, almost apologetic.

“We’re not done yet.”

⋆｡°✩

Akito sat alone, the glow of his monitor casting pale shadows across his face. His eyes scanned line after line of Nightcord at 25’s login records, fingers hovering just above the keys. He wasn’t looking for anything new, he already knew the truth. Someone had tampered with the system. The traces were faint but undeniable. The logins had been altered, scrubbed clean of Mizuki’s presence.

It wasn’t a careless mistake. It was deliberate. Professional. Every footprint of hers had been swept away, as if she had never patrolled with them at all.

Akito exhaled through his nose, a breath tinged with both frustration and resignation.

It had to be Tsukasa’s parents.

That was the only thing that made sense. The Tenma name carried power, enough to ask the hunter organization to veil Mizuki’s activity like a classified asset. Especially if they were tasked to protect their daughter.

Still… erasing them from every record was too extreme.

Anyone digging even a little would notice. Their absence from the logs would only raise suspicion, not erase it.

Akito leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, the strands tangling between his fingers. His gaze drifted to the corner of the room, where a small tin box sat on the floor. Empty now. It had once held the confidential documents Tsukasa had handed him a week ago. He had burned them the same day, flames consuming ink and paper before guilt could root too deeply. The files hadn’t offered much. Barebones background. Sanitized. But they had included one key detail.

The address of the café.

His task was simple: confirm that Mizuki's name was missing from the logs, and make damn sure An never got near that address. That was it.

He hated it.

Public access to the vampire hunter group logs had always struck him as idiotic, government-sanctioned vulnerability, wrapped up in fake transparency for the sake of panicked civilians. A weak compromise. Too much trust placed in information too easily exploited.

And yet… now he was the one exploiting it.

Akito’s eyes narrowed as a name popped up for the fifth time in one week’s worth of data.

Ena Shinonome.

The breath caught in his throat.

He stared at the name like it had no right to be there.

Why?

Why was she in a hunter group?

Was it because of him?

A sudden heaviness spread through his chest, a feeling he hadn’t let himself confront in a long time. She wasn’t meant to be part of this world. She didn’t belong in blood-soaked alleys or the cold mathematics of survival. Ena had always been stubborn, yes, but brave in the kind of way that burned too bright. And if she was doing this because of what happened between them…

Because of him…

The memory surfaced without warning, jagged and raw. The last words he had said to her. The venom in his voice. The guilt still clinging to it like a stain.

He didn’t get the chance to dwell on it.

His communicator blinked sharply, a soft chime breaking the silence. The screen lit up.

INCOMING CALL: AN

Akito’s shoulders tensed. He reached for the receiver.

“…Yeah?” he answered.

An’s voice came through the line, brisk and sharp like frost.

“Meeting in thirty. I found something.”

The line cut before he could reply.

Akito stared at the screen a moment longer, jaw clenched. The secrets were stacking higher than he could hold. And if An kept digging the way she was…

Something, someone, was going to break.

He stood, slowly, the chair creaking behind him. The café’s address lingered in his memory like a curse.

And so did Ena’s name.

⋆｡°✩

Akito stepped into the meeting room, the door sliding shut behind him with a low hiss. The air inside was tense, almost suffocating. The overhead lights flickered faintly, casting pale shadows over the cold steel walls. At the center of the room stood the round digital table, its surface aglow with maps and data projections.

An was already there, standing rigidly with her arms crossed, eyes sharp and heavy with fatigue. Her gaze flicked to him, then back to the screen. Toya leaned against the wall nearby, calm but observant, his usual reserved presence giving a subtle sense of quiet support.

Akito moved to his seat with clear reluctance, dragging the chair back with a faint scrape. An didn’t wait.

“We’ve got confirmation that Mizuki’s disappearance wasn’t just them going off the grid,” she said, pulling up a set of login records onto the table. “There’s been tampering. Logs were wiped clean, surgically. Someone high up made sure their presence was erased.”

Toya straightened slightly. “That’s a strong claim,” he said. “What makes you think they didn’t just vanish on their own again? Like last year?”

An exhaled sharply, running a hand through her hair. The strands were disheveled, sticking slightly from sweat and lack of sleep. Her voice was steady, but tinged with frustration.

“Because last time, there was a resignation letter. It was clean, official. This time… nothing. No exit, no closure. Just silence. And I don’t buy it.”

Akito didn’t say anything at first. He leaned forward, eyes flicking across the glowing table surface, watching the digital map pulse faintly under the weight of this new theory. Deep down, he could only think: I told you so. The attempt to completely erase Mizuki’s data was sloppy in its ambition, doomed to leave traces. If the higher-ups wanted her hidden, they should’ve left at least a shadow behind.

Toya folded his arms. “If someone is hiding her, it means she’s still active somewhere. Maybe even working directly under government command. That would be the only reason to scrub records this clean.”

An nodded. “Exactly. We should look into covert operations or state contracts—some place where they would need experienced fighters with clean reputations. High-profile, sensitive stuff.”

“Like the business quarters,” Toya offered. “Or areas near government buildings. Places that would benefit from strong protection.”

An turned to Akito, her tired eyes narrowing slightly. “What do you think? You’ve got decent instincts about movement patterns.”

Akito blinked, caught slightly off-guard by the direct question. He hadn’t expected to be asked, especially not so suddenly. For a beat too long, he didn’t answer. Toya noticed the hesitation, a flicker of tension in Akito’s jaw.

Akito shifted in his chair, leaning over to look at the glowing map. “I mean… it would have to be somewhere busy. Somewhere with activity, where their presence wouldn’t stand out too much. Like Toya said—maybe near the central business district. Or close to the government siege building.”

But Toya was watching him closely. Something wasn’t right.

An let out an exasperated sigh and dropped into the nearest chair, rubbing her temples. “There’s too many leads. Too many possibilities. We don’t even know if she’s alone or being protected by someone.”

A long pause settled over the room. The hum of the table’s processors was the only sound left as frustration sank into the silence.

“Alright,” An said at last, her voice dry and weary. “We’ll regroup later. I need more data. Meeting dismissed.”

Akito was the first to leave, quickly and without a word. His footsteps echoed down the hall, fading into the distance.

Toya stayed behind, watching An silently for a moment before stepping closer.

“An,” he said gently, “there’s something wrong with Akito.”

She blinked, turning to face him. Her expression was blank, confused.

“I didn’t… notice anything.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. Between her spiraling thoughts, fatigue, and the ache pounding behind her eyes, she hadn’t been paying close attention to anyone, especially not Akito.

Toya’s eyes narrowed slightly. “He was nervous. Barely noticeable, but it was there. He twitched a few times when no one was looking. Hands trembling, voice a little too even. Not enough to worry most people, but…”

“But enough to worry you,” An murmured.

Toya nodded. “And something else. When you asked for his opinion, he looked at the digital map a moment too long. Not where he said, but somewhere else.”

“Where?”

Toya tapped a section of the map on the outer edge of the city.

“A residential quarter. Quiet. Not a high-traffic area. Doesn’t match his claim about a ‘busy place.’”

An’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“So either he’s guessing blindly,” Toya said, his voice low, “or he’s hiding something.”

And it stirred something in her, sharp, bitter, unmistakable. Like the taste of betrayal blooming at the back of her tongue. The thought that someone so close, someone she had fought beside, trusted without question, might be hiding the truth, might be working against them, cut deeper than frustration. It seared.

And this wasn’t new.

Akito had been slipping behind veils of silence for a while now. Holding back. Withholding pieces of truth like they were his to keep. One secret might be forgivable. But this? This was starting to feel like a pattern. Like a wall he had built brick by brick, between himself and the rest of them. And now, An wasn’t sure which side of that wall he stood on.

“I’ll check it out myself,” she said, already pushing up from the chair.

But as she rose too fast, the room tilted around her. A wave of dizziness crashed over her like a tide. Her hand instinctively gripped the edge of the table, breath catching in her throat. The weight of exhaustion she had ignored for days was clawing at her bones now, pulling at the edges of her vision.

Toya stepped forward, concern flickering across his otherwise calm face. “An—”

“I’m fine,” she cut in quickly, forcing herself upright. Her voice was steady, but her pulse betrayed her, hammering in her ears like a warning drum. “Don’t worry. I just need to follow the thread while it’s still warm.”

Toya hesitated, clearly unconvinced. He didn’t stop her, but his voice was firm. “If you’re not back before midnight,” he said, “I’m sending backup. One of ours, minimum.”

An didn’t argue. “Yeah, yeah. I hear you.”

And with that, she was gone. Her boots echoed down the corridor, swallowed quickly by the hum of the base’s artificial lights.

Her heart pounded like a war drum beneath her ribs, but not from fear.

This time, she thought, I’m going to find something. No more loose ends. No more silence.

The answers were out there. And she was done waiting.

Chapter Text

“Mizuki! Is everything alright?”

The voice cut through the haze like a clean blade, snapping Mizuki back to the present. She blinked, shoulders tensing slightly as her surroundings came into focus, the hum of the café’s soft music, the clatter of ceramic cups, the warmth of afternoon sunlight pooling across the counter. Her thoughts, which had been spiraling far from here, back to bloodied streets and ghostly eyes, reluctantly receded to make space for the now.

Saki stood in front of her, concern etched delicately across features that were almost never without a smile. Her blonde hair, tied into her signature twin tails, bounced slightly as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyes, deep pink-red, held a brightness that usually sparkled with energy and mischief, but now dimmed just enough to show she had noticed something was off. Even her posture, usually light and full of motion, seemed hesitant, like she was carefully gauging Mizuki’s mood.

Saki wasn’t someone worry usually clung to. She was the kind of girl who filled a room with sunshine, who wore kindness like a second skin, who laughed easily and loudly, sometimes too loudly, and somehow made it charming every time. Seeing her with a faint frown, eyes flicking over Mizuki like she was trying to read her mind, felt strange. Off-balance.

“You spaced out again,” she said, voice gentle but nudging. Her hand clutched a tray of half-finished orders, though her attention was fully on Mizuki.

Mizuki opened her mouth, closed it, then gave a small shake of her head. “Yeah. Sorry. Just… tired.”

It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Being hired to bodyguard one of the government officials’ daughters a month ago hadn’t been something Mizuki expected, especially not right when she had finally decided she was ready to face the vampires again.

It had felt like a sharp left turn, a pause in momentum she had worked hard to build. She had finally gathered her strength, quieted the memories, and steadied her hands enough to lift a weapon again. She was ready to fight.

And instead?

She was assigned to a café.

Saki had insisted on getting a real job. A normal one. One where she could talk to people, work hard, be useful. She had spent so long confined by her health, watching life move past her from a bed or behind guarded windows. She didn’t want protection. She wanted participation.

Her parents, naturally, disagreed.

But in the end, they compromised. Saki got her café job. Only on the afternoons. 

And Mizuki got a new assignment.

She wasn’t there to be noticed. Just to blend in, to play her part behind the counter while keeping close watch. Serve coffee. Restock the bread baskets. Smile if she had to. All while staying alert, watching for shadows that didn’t belong.

It was almost insulting.

But then Mizuki saw the way Saki beamed when she wiped down a table. How proud she looked when a customer complimented her latte art. How determined she was to push past the ache in her limbs, even on days when Mizuki could see how heavy her breath came, how pale her skin got by noon.

She wasn’t fragile, Mizuki realized. She was relentless.

And maybe that was why Mizuki hadn’t protested. Not once.

So she was here, bleary-eyed from night patrol, pulling on an apron after a quick morning sleep, and standing behind a counter that smelled of milk foam and sugar. Not hunting. Not chasing. Just existing quietly in Saki’s orbit, watching her laugh with regulars like she wasn’t constantly walking a tightrope with her health.

Watching her live.

Maybe, just maybe, Mizuki thought, she could learn to live without the ghosts of the battlefield, the blood, the screams, the names she couldn't forget, and the faces she had failed to save.

“See? You spaced out again!” Saki’s voice rang out, half-scolding, half-concerned. Her brows pinched with worry as she pointed at the counter. “Look! You didn’t even notice the coffee’s overflowing!”

The steady stream of dark liquid had already spilled past the brim of the cup, pooling onto the tray below and dripping in slow, sticky arcs to the floor.

Saki let out a huff and gently took the pot from Mizuki’s hand. “Please, go sit down. Take an empty table and rest for a minute. I’ll bring you something to drink once I finish this order, okay?”

Despite her scolding tone, there was kindness in her eyes,  pink-red irises catching the light with something warm and unmistakably genuine.

“Thank you.”

With those quiet words, Mizuki made her way to an empty table near the window and sank into the chair with a soft sigh. The weight in her chest didn’t lift, it never truly did, but for now, she let herself breathe.

Her thoughts, however, were loud.

Memories surged like tides, gunfire echoing in the back of her mind, the shimmer of blood in moonlight, the faces of those she hadn’t been able to save. She tried to silence them, one by one, pressing them down beneath the surface like stones in water. But they always floated back up.

So consumed was she by the noise in her head that she didn’t notice the subtle shift in the café’s atmosphere. The low murmur of conversation continued but something in the air had changed, brittle and taut, like the moment just before a storm breaks.

And Mizuki, lost in ghosts, hadn’t yet looked up.

“Who is she? Her face is familiar. Isn’t she the Tenma daughter?”

The voice alone could’ve frozen anyone mid-step. Cold. Smooth. Laced with something venomous and cruelly amused.

Mizuki’s blood turned to ice.

Her breath caught in her throat as a sudden, razor-edged fear cut through the haze of her thoughts. It was the kind of fear born not from surprise, but recognition.

She looked up.

There, in the chair across from her, one that had been empty seconds ago, sat An.

As if she had been there the whole time.

Poised. Relaxed. Predatory.

And gods, she was beautiful.

Not in the way humans were. No, An’s beauty was something other. Something meant to disarm.

An was made of contrasts: sleek black hair falling around her face like a curtain of ink, with a vivid flush of crimson hidden in the inner strands, subtle, visible only as she moved, as though her blood itself had soaked into the roots. Her skin was pale, not sickly, but refined, moonlit porcelain smooth and cool. And her lips, dark rose, unmoving, held a knowing curl, like she was already amused by what hadn’t been said. And her eyes… those eyes.

Red. Brilliant. Unblinking.

They weren’t glowing this time, not like they did in battle. No, this was subtler, more dangerous. They held a quiet, detached curiosity, focused not on Mizuki, but on Saki who remained behind the counter, blissfully unaware of the danger now coiled just a few steps away. An’s posture was unnervingly casual, arms draped across the table, one leg crossed over the other, as if she were a regular waiting for her drink. As if she belonged here.

Mizuki's heart thundered in her chest.

Her fingers twitched beneath the table, moving slowly, carefully, reaching for the pistol tucked in the hidden holster beneath her apron.

She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.

Every inch of her body screamed to act, to move first, to strike before the blood could fall.

But An just tilted her head, letting a lock of black hair slide forward to kiss her cheek.

That smirk curved the corner of her lips again, soft, elegant, and utterly terrifying.

She already knew.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” An said softly, her voice lilting like a lullaby laced with poison. “You wouldn’t want more casualties.”

She tilted her head slightly, a small, lazy gesture toward the rest of the café, so casual it almost didn’t register as a threat.

But Mizuki followed the motion.

Her eyes swept across the café floor, where the soft murmur of conversation continued uninterrupted. Customers sipped coffee, nibbled pastries, flipped through their phones or chatted in quiet pairs. Everything appeared normal, too normal.

And then she saw it.

Faint red threads. Barely there. So fine they shimmered only when the light hit them just right. One wrapped delicately around a woman’s neck as she laughed at something on her screen. Another coiled near a man’s collarbone as he stirred cream into his coffee. Dozens of them. All connected. All leading back, to her.

To An. To the Ascendant Traits awakening beneath her skin.

The blood threads looped from An’s fingers like invisible puppet strings, anchoring her control in every breath the civilians took. One wrong move, one twitch of a trigger, and, 

Mizuki’s stomach turned cold.

They had no idea. No clue they were seconds from death if she reacted too soon.

An didn’t smile. She didn’t need to.

Her calm was more terrifying than any threat shouted across a battlefield.

“Relax,” An murmured, her voice smooth as silk and just as cutting. “I'm just here to have a conversation with you.”

She leaned forward slightly, crimson eyes half-lidded, watching Mizuki like a cat would a cornered bird.

Mizuki’s grip on the hidden pistol tightened beneath the table, her heartbeat loud in her ears. Her voice came low, strained.

“How did you find me?”

An smiled, not with amusement, but with something older, colder.

“You’re not as invisible as you think, Mizuki,” she said, her tone almost fond. “And I never stopped looking.”

“Someone was nice enough to point me toward this neighborhood,” An said, idly tracing a fingertip along the rim of her cup. Her smile curved, slow and unbothered. “And I just happened to stumble upon this charming little café. Pure coincidence, really.”

Which wasn’t a lie. After Toya pointed her toward the quarter, An had started digging, quietly, methodically, with the patience of someone used to hunting in silence. It took five days. Five days of watching, listening, blending in. Until finally, she had spotted Mizuki here, moving like a ghost behind the counter of this unassuming café.

Mizuki still didn’t believe her. Her eyes stayed locked on An, accusatory, sharp, like they could cut through every word and find the lie beneath. An didn’t flinch. She let the glare slide off her like rain on glass.

“Anyway!” she said, suddenly bright, her voice slipping into a cheerfulness so out of place it might’ve been absurd, if it wasn’t so deliberate. “Meant to ask you back during the battle, but y’know—blades flying, bullets, chaos. What are your pronouns?”

Mizuki blinked.

The shift in tone threw her off more than anything. The question didn’t make sense, not here, not now. It wasn’t a common courtesy in her world, it was a weapon. She had heard it before, twisted into mockery, spat like venom. But An’s face didn’t carry any of that now. No sneer. No malice.

Just… curiosity.

Genuine.

An's eyes lit up as she looked at Mizuki, not with cruelty or amusement, but with something softer. Something frighteningly close to warmth.

And that confused Mizuki more than anything else.

“You know,” An continued, resting her chin lazily in one hand, “you always had such cute accessories. That little ribbon on your gun? Adorable. And you’ve grown your hair out too.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Mizuki’s bangs, then back to her face. “So I just wanted to be sure I call you the right thing.”

There was no bite to her words. No mockery. Just that same calm, curious lilt, like she was commenting on the weather, or the flavor of her tea. It felt… genuine. Disarming. Wrong.

She didn’t know what disturbed her more: the fact that An had noticed such details, or the fact that she cared enough to ask.

Mizuki's heart stuttered.

It wasn’t the question itself, she had heard worse, from strangers, enemies, even teammates who hadn’t meant harm but hadn’t bothered to understand. No, it was the way An asked it. Casually. Carefully. Like it mattered.

Like she saw her.

And that… that unsettled her more than the threat of violence ever could.

This was the monster who had torn through her unit, who had laughed while people screamed, who had ripped open the air with threads of living blood, and here she was, complimenting her hair and asking her pronouns like they were two girls catching up after school.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

It made something ache.

For a second, Mizuki wanted to snap at her. To say it was none of her business. To tell her to go to hell. But the words didn’t come. Maybe because, deep down, there was a part of her that wanted someone to ask. Not out of sarcasm. Not out of cruelty.

Just… ask.

She exhaled through her nose, steadying herself.

Then, quietly, carefully, she said, “She. Her.”

An's smile softened, just slightly, but enough for Mizuki to notice. The usual smugness in her expression faded, replaced with something quieter. More human.

“Good,” An said simply, her voice lower now, almost gentle. “She. Her. I’ll remember that.”

She didn’t grin. Didn’t tease. She just nodded, as if Mizuki had given her something sacred, and An knew better than to mock it.

Then, after a beat, she added with a hint of mischief curling back into her tone, “It suits you, by the way. The hair. The look. All of it.”

But even then, there was no venom behind the words. No game. Just... truth.

Mizuki was still trying to make sense of it all, the way An had spoken, so casually, so sincerely. Her mind reeled, unsure whether to brace for a hidden threat or to lower her guard. The air around them was still laced with tension, yet An sat calmly, as if this were the most natural place for a bloodthirsty rogue vampire to be.

Her thoughts hadn’t yet settled when Saki approached, humming softly and carrying a glass of water in her hands. Her presence was a burst of brightness in the room, golden twin tails swaying with each step, her apron still dusted with flour and powdered sugar from the morning rush.

When her eyes landed on An, she blinked, caught off guard by the unfamiliar customer seated so casually across from Mizuki.

“Oh! Hello there!” Saki chirped, voice chipper as ever, completely unfazed by the tension thick in the air. She looked between them with a curious sparkle. “Would you like something to drink or eat while you chat?”

Mizuki opened her mouth to cut in, to say no , to stop whatever this was from spiraling further, but before she could speak, Saki tilted her head, hands clasped behind her back like a nosy friend in a high school romance manga.

“Wait…” she said, slowly narrowing her eyes in playful suspicion. “Is this… your date , Mizuki?”

Mizuki choked slightly on her own breath, her face draining of color before rapidly heating again. “Saki—!”

But Saki was already beaming, utterly delighted with her own assumption. She had always been a hopeless romantic, constantly reading into every interaction, always eager to play matchmaker, even now, completely unaware of the monster sitting calmly at the table.

An blinked once, taken aback, and then, unexpectedly, she laughed. A low, velvet sound that carried just a hint of genuine amusement.

“Maybe?” she said, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, red eyes glittering like garnets. “But I wouldn’t mind being spoiled a little. Do you serve rum raisin ice cream?”

Saki gasped with exaggerated delight. “Oh my gosh, we do! It’s one of our seasonal specials—wait right here, I’ll bring you the biggest scoop!”

And just like that, she spun on her heel and skipped off, already plotting extra toppings in her head.

Mizuki stared after her, dumbfounded, then turned her gaze back to An, who now looked rather pleased with herself, elbow propped on the table, chin resting on her hand like this really was just a casual date at a café.

The absurdity of it all nearly made Mizuki laugh.

Nearly.

Mizuki’s heart skipped a beat.

Her gaze snapped to Saki, who stood behind the counter, twin-tails swaying gently as she cheerfully scooped a ball of ice cream into a ceramic bowl, completely unaware of the danger wrapped around her. Around her neck, faint and nearly imperceptible, glimmered a single red thread of blood.

Not a trace of the others remained. Every thread that had once looped around the other customers had vanished, dissolved without a sound. Now, only one remained, focused solely on Saki.

Mizuki’s throat tightened. Her fingers twitched toward the apron pocket where her gun was tucked away. But she didn’t move.

That thread wasn’t a bluff. It wasn’t some symbolic gesture. It was a leash. A reminder. A threat.

And An… An knew exactly what she was doing.

And yet, she just sat there, smiling lazily, one elbow on the table, her other hand gently toying with the end of her hair. Her crimson eyes flicked toward Mizuki, and for a brief, nauseating moment, they sparkled with amusement.

“Eyes on me, Mizuki,” An said softly, tilting her head. “I’d hate for you to miss our little chat. You wouldn’t want your friend to get... tangled, would you?”

Mizuki didn’t answer.

She couldn’t.

Not when every instinct in her screamed that Saki’s life was now hanging by a single, glimmering thread.

Mizuki’s pulse pounded in her ears. The pressure in her chest didn’t ease, but her focus sharpened. An had made her point. This wasn’t an attack, not yet. It was a conversation balanced on a blade’s edge. And that single, blood-thread leash around Saki’s throat made the rules heartbreakingly clear.

She had to play along.

For now.

“Back to our little date then!” An said joyfully, her voice bright and sweet, like she hadn’t just wrapped a blood-thread around an innocent girl’s throat. Like the café wasn’t suddenly a stage for a silent, suffocating threat.

She leaned forward slightly, resting her chin in her hand with a theatrical sigh, crimson eyes half-lidded in amusement.

“As I was saying... let’s catch up, shall we?”

An’s crimson eyes sparkled with mischief as she leaned back, a playful smile curling her lips.

“So, Mizuki,” she said, voice light and easy, “how’ve you been spending your nights lately? Still running patrols, or did you find some time to actually relax?”

She glanced around the café before adding with a wink,

“And what about outside work—any hobbies I don’t know about? Maybe some secret talents hiding behind that serious face?”

An tapped her fingers thoughtfully.

“Oh, and what’s your favorite drink here? I’m curious if the infamous Mizuki has a guilty pleasure.”

Mizuki hesitated, the weight of her world pressing against her calm facade.

“Mostly… running night patrols,” she admitted quietly, her voice like a sigh tucked into the spaces between words. Her eyes flicked away, toward the window, as if searching for something beyond reach. “Resting only in the mornings.”

There was a shrug, small, almost imperceptible, but it carried more than indifference. It carried restraint. Weariness.

“Hobbies… it’s complicated,” she murmured after a beat. “But I like remaking clothes. Giving old things new life.” Her tone had shifted, just slightly. Softer, quieter. Not enthusiasm exactly, but something gentler. A memory of calm amid the blood and ash.

Then came the last question, and her gaze lowered to her drink. A faint smile tugged at the corner of her lips, reluctant and fleeting.

“As for my favorite drink… their coffee here is good,” she said, “but I prefer the sweet smoothie.”

Across the table, An tilted her head, watching her with something between amusement and interest.

“Umm, not very talkative, are you?” she teased, her tone light, deliberately playful. But in her crimson gaze, there was a quiet curiosity, a spark of something real flickering beneath the humor, as if she wasn’t just filling silence, but gently prodding the edges of Mizuki’s guarded world.

Before she could say more, Saki returned, carefully balancing a small dish in her hands. The rum raisin ice cream gleamed softly under the café’s warm lights, its creamy texture dotted with plump, glistening raisins soaked in liquor. The aroma was rich and inviting, a sweet, slightly boozy scent that contrasted with the tension lingering in the air.

Saki placed the dessert on the table with a gentle smile, the delicate clink of the spoon against the dish breaking the silence.

An’s grin widened as she glanced at the ice cream, then back at Mizuki. “Well, I guess some things speak louder than words.”

Moments later, Saki returned once more, this time carrying a vibrant smoothie for Mizuki. The deep purple and pink drink sparkled under the café lights. She set it down carefully beside the ice cream, her smile warm and genuine.

“Both on the house,” Saki said softly, her voice carrying a comforting warmth that seemed to ease some of the weight in the room. Then, with a playful wink directed at Mizuki, a small, silent wish for good luck, she turned gracefully on her heel and melted back into the gentle bustle of the café, leaving Mizuki and An alone amid the soothing clinks of cups and the low murmur of other patrons.

An savored the ice cream with an unexpected delight that caught Mizuki off guard. Each bite was slow and deliberate, the creamy texture melting on her tongue, while the sweet, slightly boozy aroma of the rum-soaked raisins seemed to awaken something almost childlike in her. Soft, almost playful noises escaped her lip, small hums and contented sighs that didn’t quite fit with the cold, composed aura she usually carried. Mizuki’s eyes flicked to her, taking in the slight curve of her lips and the relaxed softness in her features, and for a brief moment, the hardened vampire seemed almost human. Mizuki found herself almost smiling at the rare glimpse of softness, a crack in the armor.

“You really seem to enjoy it,” Mizuki said, her voice low and cautious, eyes narrowing slightly as she studied An. “Is there a reason for that?”

The question sliced through the moment like a blade, sharp and precise. An blinked, caught off guard by its simplicity yet weight.

“I… I actually don’t know,” she replied softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Her words felt carefully chosen, like a quiet admission that she had never truly questioned it before, never dared to dig beneath the surface. Yet, despite the hesitation, there was a flicker of something deeper in her eyes, a shadow of familiarity, as if the feeling stirred a memory just beyond her grasp, something buried but hauntingly close.

For a long moment, she sat still, the creamy ice cream slowly melting in her mouth, the sweet taste contrasting with the unresolved question hanging between them. It was as if the question had pulled at a thread in her mind, threatening to unravel something she wasn’t ready to face.

Why?

Why had she ordered this?

And why was she enjoying it so much?

An’s spoon paused midair, her smile faltering for just a second. The cold sweetness of the rum raisin ice cream lingered on her tongue, familiar in a way that unsettled her. She had chosen it without thinking, instinct, maybe. Or habit. But where had that habit come from?

Her brows knit slightly, the red in her eyes dimming as her mind spun, unable to anchor itself. A sharp throb bloomed behind her temple, and for the first time in that warm, quiet café, she wasn’t entirely sure where she was.

Why did it taste like comfort?

Why did it feel like grief?

A breath caught in her throat as the spoon lowered slowly back into the dish. Her hands were steady, but her heart wasn’t. It pounded too loud, too fast, as if reacting to something unseen.

She was spiraling, slow at first, then all at once. Into a space that felt pitch black and endless. A cold place that memory couldn’t reach, but her body remembered all too well. A void stitched together with broken things, names she had forgotten, voices lost to time, warmth that never came back.

The laughter she had let out before, the soft, unguarded sounds, now echoed wrong in her head. Like they weren’t hers.

And Mizuki was still watching. Quiet. Cautious.

An gritted her teeth against the ache. She smiled again, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

She didn’t know why the ice cream felt like loss.

And that terrified her.

Mizuki saw it, the subtle flicker in An’s expression, the way her smile faltered and her eyes dimmed, shadowed by something unspoken, something that clung to the edges of memory. It wasn’t obvious, not to most. But Mizuki had seen that look before.

She had worn it herself.

Not just the hollow ache of someone breaking, but the quiet confusion of someone reaching into the dark, searching for pieces of a past that no longer fit together. She had watched agents spiral under the weight of memory. She had seen warriors crack, thread by thread. But what caught her breath now was the reflection, clear and unmistakable, of her own fractured self.

She saw herself, years ago, staring into cracked mirrors at dawn, trying to remember who she had lost before the violence. She saw the way her hands trembled after missions, not from fear, but from the ghost of something she couldn’t name. She remembered those hollow, airless silences that wrapped around her chest and wouldn’t let go.

And she saw it in An now, that same haunted search for something lost.

Not just grief. Not just pain. But the aching question: What have I forgotten? Who was I before this?

And maybe, just maybe, Mizuki thought, An didn’t want to be a monster anymore.

Maybe, deep down, she never had.

An wore it now. And despite everything, Mizuki recognized it not with sympathy, but with something colder. Clearer.

Recognition.

Before she could think twice, Mizuki reached across the table.

Her hand moved on its own, brushing past the half-empty smoothie glass, sliding carefully over the cool wood. Her fingers closed gently around An’s.

It was a quiet gesture. Uncertain. But not hesitant.

She didn’t know why she did it, maybe to ground her, to anchor her. Maybe to stop her from snapping and turning this moment into carnage and hurting Saki. Or maybe… to remind herself that she wasn’t only a weapon. Not just a killer, not always. At least, she still hoped.

The contact was electric.

An flinched, just barely, like the touch had burned. Her body stiffened under it, muscles taut with the instinct to pull away. To retreat. But she didn’t move.

She stayed.

Their hands rested between them, one warm and trembling, the other colder than it should’ve been.

The silence between them stretched long and heavy, but not empty.

For just a breath, just a blink, Mizuki wasn’t the hunter, and An wasn’t the monster.

They were two people sitting in a café, holding on to a moment neither of them fully understood. 

“How bold of you,” An murmured, the corners of her lips curling into a teasing smile as she glanced down at their joined hands. “For our first date too.”

“You don’t seem to mind,” Mizuki replied dryly, but her voice lacked its usual sharpness. It was softer now, wary, but not pulling away.

An let out a faint laugh, soft and hollow, the sound barely reaching across the table before fading into silence. Whatever glimmer had sparked in her expression dulled quickly, replaced by a distant, haunted look in her eyes, like she was staring through time itself.

“My parents used to work in a café,” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. Her gaze drifted toward the window, but it wasn’t the street outside she was seeing. “A small one. Tucked between two bookstores, I think. It always smelled like vanilla… and burnt coffee. Not the fancy kind, just the bitter stuff that clung to your clothes and lingered in your hair. But it was home.”

She blinked slowly, like the memory weighed down her lashes.

“We had so many clients. Regulars. The kind that came in rain or shine. I think I should remember their faces, I want to, but they’re all… blurred now. Like someone smeared water over a photo. Just outlines and laughter. Voices I can’t quite hear anymore.”

Her fingers absentmindedly traced a ring of condensation on her glass, her tone caught somewhere between nostalgia and grief.

“But I remember how it felt,” she went on, her lips curving into a small, almost fragile smile. “The warmth. The sound of cups clinking. My mom humming while wiping down the counter. My dad grumbling about bean prices but sneaking me sweets when no one was looking. It was always busy. Loud in a comforting way. Safe.”

Her smile quivered, then faded.

“I miss that,” she added softly, more to herself than to Mizuki.

And as she spoke, something shifted.

The crimson glow in her eyes, once sharp and burning like an open wound, began to soften. The color bled into a rich amber, golden at the edges. Faint flecks of orange shimmered in the irises, like sunlight reflecting off a lake at dusk. They no longer looked like a predator’s eyes, but something gentler. Sadder. 

She recognized that look, the one that had haunted her ever since their last encounter, lingering in the corners of her mind like a whisper she couldn’t unhear. But now, here in the quiet warmth of the café, with the ice cream melting slowly on the table and the blood no longer fresh in the air, it was clearer. Sharper.

And Mizuki knew, it was going to haunt her even more now.

Not because An was a monster. But because, in that moment, she wasn’t.

Mizuki didn’t speak. Didn’t move. She didn’t dare shatter whatever fragile thread An was following through the haze of half-formed memories and emotions too old to name. There was a fragility to her now, like a figure suspended in smoke, one breath away from vanishing.

An was still wading through the fog of a life that had slipped too far away.

And Mizuki… Mizuki just watched, unable to offer anything except silence and presence, two things she once desperately needed herself.

And for now, Mizuki could only sit there… and listen.

“And there was Nagi,” An added, barely above a whisper.

Mizuki’s brow twitched at the name. It tugged at something in her, familiar, but unreachable. She knew that name. She was sure of it. But from where?

Before she could ask, An winced.

Her whole body tensed, and she clutched her head with her free hand. The pain was sharp and sudden, tearing through her like white-hot thread. Her fingers dug into her scalp as her breath hitched, eyes screwing shut, jaw clenched.

“An—?”

But An didn’t respond. She shook slightly, like something inside her was splitting open. Her elegant posture crumpled, haunted by a memory that refused to stay buried.

All Mizuki could do was hold her hand tighter.

Who was she?

What was she to her?

What was her face?

No idea.

Only pitch black. A void, thick and endless, pressing at the corners of An’s mind. The more she reached for it, the more it slipped away, like trying to grasp fog with blood-soaked hands. Her brain screamed warnings in every nerve, dragging her back, commanding her not to dig further. That way lay ruin. That way lay her.

And yet…

The warmth. It was real.

Not just the one in her hand, steady, grounding, unmistakably Mizuki's, but another. Older. Fainter. A memory, blurred by time and pain, but pulsing with something that once made her feel safe.

The café.

The scent of cinnamon and steamed milk. The golden glow of morning sun pouring through dusty windows. The murmur of regulars and the soft clatter of mugs.

And Nagi.

Her presence in that memory wasn’t sharp, but the feeling was. A gentle hand brushing hers. A laugh that echoed in her chest. Warmth that wrapped around her like a familiar blanket. Nagi had always brought light, even when the café had grown cold. She had been the first anchor, the one who gave the void a name and dared An to feel something inside it.

That same warmth pulsed now, not from the past, but from the present.

Mizuki’s hand in hers.

Steady. Warm. Real.

And for just a second… An let herself hold on. She clung to it instinctively, as if it were the last solid thing in a world that had started to bleed apart at the seams. Her pulse pounded, her breathing erratic. But Mizuki didn’t let go.

Then, 

A scream tore through the café.

Sharp. Sudden. Splintering the calm like a mirror dropped in silence.

Across the café, someone cried out, voice rising with panic.

“SAKI! Is everything okay?!”

The voice cut through the soft hum of music and conversation like a blade. Chairs scraped. A cup shattered. Panic rippled through the once-peaceful space.

Mizuki’s breath hitched.

Her instincts kicked in before her thoughts could catch up, her hand flew to the hidden holster beneath her apron, and she was up in an instant, heart in her throat. She vaulted over the low counter, her boots pounding against tile as she sprinted toward the source of the scream.

The back of the café. Near the kitchen.

She turned the corner.

And froze.

Saki lay sprawled on the floor, crumpled like a broken marionette. Her hands were at her neck, slick with blood, fingers shaking uncontrollably. Crimson soaked into her apron, pooling beneath her in dark, glossy rivers that spread across the white tile. Her breath came in short, wet gasps, each one a struggle, each one painting her lips a deeper red.

Mizuki dropped to her knees beside her, hands moving on autopilot. Pressure. Apply pressure.

But the wound, 

The wound was too deep. Too precise.

A thin, clean line across Saki’s throat… like the caress of a thread.

A blood thread.

Mizuki’s vision tunneled.

And behind her, in the distant flicker of lights and movement and rising panic, 

An sat motionless. Pale. Eyes wide with pain but now lit with alarm.

As if she were seeing a nightmare she had accidentally created.

Again.

She had focused too hard on that warmth.

Too long on the feeling of Mizuki’s hand, steady, grounding, impossibly kind, and for a moment, she had forgotten what she was. What she carried inside her.

The control slipped.

The blood thread snapped.

Mizuki snapped back to the moment, shoving aside the panic clawing at her ribs. She pressed her hands harder against Saki’s neck, desperately searching for a sign, anything.

There.

A pulse. Weak, fluttering like the wing of a trapped bird, but still there. Her chest rose, shallow and strained.

“She’s alive,” Mizuki whispered under her breath, then louder, sharp, commanding: “Someone call an ambulance! Now!”

Her voice cracked through the café like thunder, yanking stunned patrons into motion. A server scrambled for the phone. Another ran to the door, shouting for help from outside. Mizuki stayed where she was, hands slick with Saki’s blood, knees aching against the hard tile.

Only when she was sure someone else had taken over calling emergency services did she stand, slowly, deliberately, and turn back toward the table where An had sat.

Her fingers curled instinctively around the grip of her gun.

But An was gone.

The chair was still slightly pulled out, her unfinished ice cream melting in the dish. But she had vanished as if swallowed by the air. Mizuki scanned the space, ceiling, corners, shadows. Nothing.

She moved closer, and that’s when she saw it.

On the surface of the table, carved into the wood with a blade-like precision, were two words, ragged, hurried, etched deep:

Sorry. I’m sorry.

The lines bled into the grain like wounds that couldn’t close.

Mizuki stared at them, breath stuck in her throat, her grip on the pistol tightening. Her mind reeled. She should feel rage. Fury. But what burned in her chest was more complicated.

Because it wasn’t just the injury.

It was the hesitation .

The retreat.

The apology.

Mizuki's fingers trembled around the grip of her gun. Her breath was ragged, jaw clenched tight enough to ache. She stared at the empty chair, the carved apology, the melting ice cream, half-eaten, still sweet.

And slowly, as the weight of it all pressed down on her shoulders, she exhaled.

Her arm dropped.

The cold metal of the gun lowered with it, the tension in her body unraveling in slow, reluctant threads. Her fingers uncurled, though they didn’t release it entirely. Not yet. But she didn’t raise it again.

Not this time.

The sound around her filtered back in, the hushed panic of café staff, the distant siren growing closer, Saki’s shallow breaths behind her. And still, Mizuki stood there, silent and still, eyes locked on the table like it held answers she couldn’t reach.

“I should’ve fired,” she muttered under her breath. “Should’ve ended it.”

But something in her gut told her it wouldn’t have been that simple.

Not with An.

Not anymore.

Chapter Text

The city lights shimmered dimly through the drizzle as Akito stood before Tsukasa’s apartment building, shoulders tight beneath his jacket. Rain slid down his hood and dripped from his sleeves, the air cool with the kind of silence that gnawed at him more than the cold.

Three days.

It had been three whole days since Tsukasa last responded.

Not even a thumbs-up emoji. No voice messages filled with too-loud laughter. No rambling texts at midnight about some new café he found or some dumb video he insisted Akito watch. Nothing.

And that wasn’t like Tsukasa.

The blond was never quiet with him. Never cold. Never distant. His presence was always loud, always immediate, always there , the kind of person who made sure you knew you were being thought of, whether you wanted it or not.

That absence now felt like a hole in Akito’s chest.

He hadn’t been able to sleep last night. Or the night before. He had told himself a hundred times that it was fine, that Tsukasa probably just needed space or was caught up with work, but even Tsukasa’s busiest days ended with a voice note and a “Talked to twenty people today but still wanna hear your voice. Call me.”

But now? Nothing. Silence.

So Akito had come. For once, not through the window. No shortcuts. No sneaking in with an inside joke and a smug grin.

Tonight, he used the front door.

His knuckles hovered over it for a moment, hesitating, as if knocking might break something fragile between them. Then he finally did it, three short, clean taps.

A beat of silence.

Then, footsteps.

His chest clenched. The sound was unmistakable, Tsukasa’s soft shuffle, the creak of the floorboards just past the entry.

Akito straightened, hopeful. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Tsukasa would throw the door open like always, laugh too loud, and call him dramatic for showing up soaking wet like some TV romance lead.

The door opened.

Just a sliver.

And Tsukasa’s face appeared in the gap. Not smiling. Not loud.

Just… tired.

Eyes shadowed. Jaw tight. Expression unreadable.

And suddenly Akito knew, whatever this was, it wasn’t nothing.

“Tsukasa,” he said, relief rushing in. “You’re home. I—”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

The words didn’t sound cold. They sounded… hollow. Flat. Like Tsukasa was reading a script written by someone else.

Akito blinked, thrown. “What?” He stepped forward instinctively, the cold, soaking rain suddenly a distant thing. “What are you talking about?”

But Tsukasa didn’t open the door any wider. His voice stayed quiet. Steady. Like a wall Akito had no way to scale.

“Go home, Akito.”

Akito’s brows drew together, his jaw clenching. “Did I do something?” His voice cracked at the edge of the question. “Just tell me. Talk to me, dammit.”

“It’s not about you.”

“Then what is it?” Akito’s voice rose, frustration slipping in. “You drop off the map for days, now you won’t even look at me? At least give me the respect of an answer!”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t? Or won’t ?”

A flash of something passed over Tsukasa’s face, too quick to catch, hesitation, maybe. Guilt? His hand twitched at the edge of the door. Akito’s eyes followed the movement.

Akito stared at the crack in the doorway. The muted hallway light caught the edge of Tsukasa’s shirt, damp, wrinkled, and just barely visible underneath… a bandage. Stark white against the shadow of his arm. It had already started to turn red at the edges.

“You’re hurt,” Akito said quietly, stunned. “What… what happened?”

Tsukasa didn’t answer.

“I saw it,” Akito pressed, a sick feeling forming in his gut. “Something happened to you, didn’t it? Was it vampires? Was someone—” He stopped himself. “Is someone else hurt?”

A muscle in Tsukasa’s jaw tensed.

Akito’s pulse picked up. “Tell me. Please.”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Don’t need to—?” Akito stepped closer to the door, voice cracking. “Tsukasa, I’m your boyfriend. You think I’m just gonna stand out here in the rain and pretend everything’s fine while you lock yourself inside like I don’t matter?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Then what are you saying?” Akito shouted, voice cracking under the weight of everything he’d been holding in. His fists trembled at his sides. “Because right now, it sounds like you’re trying to push me out—like I don’t even matter—and you won’t even tell me why!”

The words echoed, sharp and raw, bouncing off the hallway walls like something too big to take back.

Another silence.

Akito’s breath fogged in the chill. He searched Tsukasa’s face, and found something strange.

Not anger. Not pain.

Fear.

But not of what had hurt him.

Of him.

Of Akito.

He staggered half a step back, the realization cutting deeper than any blade. “What’s going on?” he asked, voice low and barely steady, the question trembling at the edges. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Tsukasa flinched, visibly flinched , eyes flickering away like he couldn’t bear to meet his gaze.

And that was all Akito needed.

The silence stretched, cruel and unrelenting.

Akito’s throat closed up. His heart pounded, not from adrenaline, but dread. Real dread. The kind that roots deep into your spine and doesn’t let go. The kind that confirms the very thing you’re afraid to say out loud.

Because deep down, he already knew.

It was happening again.

His condition, what he was , had always lingered at the edge of his identity like a shadow that never quite left. For months, he had tried to forget it. Tried to be normal . Tsukasa made it feel possible. He believed it was possible.

But this? This look in Tsukasa’s eyes?

It was the first time in a long time someone had looked at him with that kind of fear.

And not just someone.

Tsukasa.

“You think I had something to do with it.” The words came out quietly, like they were too ashamed to exist. Like they were bleeding from his chest.

The silence that followed didn’t deny it.

And that was worse than any answer.

Akito recoiled half a step. His voice faltered, barely holding its weight. “What happened, Tsukasa? Please… just tell me what happened.”

But Tsukasa didn’t answer. He lowered his gaze, jaw clenched tight. When he finally spoke, it was almost inaudible.

“You should go.”

And the door closed.

Softly. Not slammed. Not in anger. Just… closed. Like a slow retreat. Like a wall rebuilt between them, one brick at a time.

Akito stood there, staring at the blank slab of painted wood. His fists curled at his sides, breath catching in the hush that followed.

“And what about us?” his voice cracked as he spoke, barely louder than the rain tapping against the windows. “What? Do you want to end it here?”

For a moment, silence stretched thin.

Then Tsukasa’s voice tore out, rough and sudden.

“NO!”

It hit like a punch too loud, too fast, like it had burst from him before he could catch it. It was the only thing that felt real in all the mess.

Akito’s eyes widened, stunned by the honesty in it.

He didn’t speak. He just waited.

And then, softer, fractured, Tsukasa said, “No. I don’t want that. I just… I can’t—”

“Then what?!” Akito choked out, his voice rising, not in fury now, but in desperation. “Then let me in. Let me help. You can’t shut me out and expect me to walk away like it doesn’t matter. That’s not how this works. Not with us.”

A pause. Longer this time.

“I can’t explain it,” Tsukasa said, hollow.

And that was it.

No more.

Akito stood still, motionless in the doorway, the light overhead buzzing faintly above him, rain dripping from his hair into his collar. The silence between them expanded, stretching out like the space between stars, unreachable, cold, infinite.

His heart ached in his chest.

“I came to the front door this time,” he whispered, a fragile edge to his voice. “Didn’t sneak in. Didn’t crack a joke. I just… wanted to see you. I wanted you to see me.”

Still no answer.

Akito’s shoulders slumped. He took a slow step back, his breath shaking. Everything felt too quiet. Too final.

He swallowed hard, his throat burning.

“Alright,” he muttered, the word barely audible over the rain. “You win.”

He turned, walking back down the hallway. The apartment’s entry light flickered behind him, casting his shadow long and thin against the glistening floor. His footsteps echoed, slow, uneven, the weight of goodbye trailing behind each one.

Tsukasa never opened the door again.

And Akito never looked back.

⋆｡°✩

Toya stood in the dim light of Akito’s room, the door creaking quietly behind him as it shut. He hadn't wanted to do this, not really. But it had been more than a week since their last meeting, and Akito had been distant, evasive… off. His absence was too long, his presence too strange. Toya had always trusted his teammates, especially Akito, but the knot in his gut hadn’t loosened since their last conversation.

Suspicion, once seeded, grew quickly.

Toya hadn’t come to this decision lightly. Akito had been his closest friend, his brother in arms within Vivid BAD SQUAD. But now, things were shifting, and Toya couldn’t shake the feeling that something was being hidden in plain sight.

His fingers moved carefully over the edge of the desk, eyes scanning the small, lived-in space. Posters curled slightly from the walls, stacks of report sheets and half-used notebooks sat idle. But it was too clean. Too untouched. Akito’s room was never spotless. He was messy by nature, chaotic in his routine, even if it was with a rhythm all his own. This, this sterile silence, was wrong.

And then there was An.

Toya’s jaw tightened. She had found the pink killer three days ago, he was sure of it. There had been a change in her, barely perceptible to anyone else, but Toya had known her long enough to see the difference. A slight flicker behind her eyes. Hesitation. Secrets. She hadn’t told him. She hadn’t told anyone.

That wasn’t like her.

An had always been the sharp edge of their squad, the unwavering voice of reason. Fearless. Calculating. Charismatic. And more than that, she had built this team from fragments and made it feel like a family. He owed her everything. They all did.

But now, things were splintering.

Akito’s evasive behavior. An’s shaken demeanor. Even Toya himself was beginning to lose grip on the certainty he once clung to. Only Kohane remained constant, grounding everyone with her quiet strength, tending wounds, guiding the disoriented, doing what An would normally do.

Toya exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair as he knelt by Akito’s bed, muscles tense with a mix of guilt and determination. He didn’t want to be here, not like this, but something deep inside him refused to turn away now.

As he shifted to stand, his eyes caught the edge of something tucked just beneath the bed frame. A box. Plain, dark blue. No lock. No name. Just a box, barely visible in the shadows.

He reached for it, heart drumming a little harder in his chest.

It was heavier than he expected, solid, like it had been there for a while. Dust lined the edges, but not enough to make it forgotten. No… this had been checked recently. Handled. Put back.

He opened it.

Empty.

Toya stared at the hollow interior for a long moment, his breath steady but shallow. Somehow, that was what he had expected. Somehow, the emptiness confirmed the unease coiling in his stomach.

The box had once held something, something important. The faint scent of something burnt still lingered, clinging to the metal like a ghost.

And now, whatever had been inside was gone. Discarded. Erased.

The silence in the room grew heavier around him, pressing in like fog. The shadows felt deeper than before.

He set the box down slowly, thoughts spinning.

What was Akito hiding?

And just how long had he been hiding it?

He closed the box with a quiet snap, the sound far too loud in the stillness of Akito’s room. As he leaned forward to slide it back beneath the bed, back where it had been hidden, something made him pause.

The underside of the box had caught the light.

Toya frowned and turned it over in his hands.

There, tucked into the corner like a secret barely meant to be seen, was a small, worn sticker of a gold star, faded at the edges, but unmistakable.

His breath hitched.

That kind of sticker, he knew it. Not just from memory, but from childhood. They used to be everywhere: notebooks, phones, old flyers. He knew someone who used them obsessively.

He stared at it with quiet disbelief, a pang of familiarity piercing through the weight in his chest. Nostalgia washed over him in a strange, bitter wave.

Carefully, almost reverently, he peeled the sticker away. And beneath it, scratched into the metal, shallow but deliberate, was a name.

Tenma Tsukasa.

Toya froze.

The name etched itself into his thoughts like a brand. His mouth went dry. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

All his suspicions, the strange shifts in Akito’s behavior, the silence, the secrecy, collapsed into place in one terrible instant.

This wasn’t just something .

This was Tsukasa . The now leader of Wonderland x Showtime. 

Toya stared at the box like it might explain itself. Like it might tell him there was some innocent reason. But the truth was already slamming through his veins, cold and sharp.

Akito, his best friend, had done something.

Something that involved Tsukasa. 

Something threatening what they have built, their group, their community.

A bitter taste rose in the back of his throat. His hands trembled with the weight of realization, betrayal, and rising anger.

He couldn’t sit on this.

He had to tell An.

Now.

⋆｡°✩

An stood at the head of the dimly lit room, hands pressed flat against the surface of the meeting table, her knuckles pale from the tension coiled beneath her skin. The overhead light buzzed faintly, casting long shadows that clung to the corners like ghosts.

Kohane sat near the middle, a worried crease etched deep between her brows. Her fingers fidgeted around the rim of a warm mug she hadn’t touched. Toya, beside her, leaned back with arms crossed, his expression unreadable but tense, he was holding something in, that much was obvious.

And then there was Akito.

He looked… off. Pale, stiff, and unlike himself. His posture was hunched, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked painful. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Not even An’s.

An exhaled slowly. Her temples throbbed. For days now, her head had ached in pulses, like some memory was stuck behind a door just barely opened. And now it whispered again.

Nagi.

The name burned. But that wasn't the focus of tonight.

“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” she said, voice low, “but we can’t keep pretending. Something’s been wrong for a while now. With us. ” Her eyes passed over each of them, finally settling on Akito.

“We’ve all been tired. Pushed to the edge. I know that. But… I also know when things stop adding up.”

A beat passed.

“I met the pink killer,” she continued, and Kohane gasped softly. “Three days ago. We didn’t attack. We talked. Though it ended with a bit of chaos.”

Something clicked.

A slow, sharp unraveling in Akito’s chest, like a cord pulling taut, then snapping all at once.

An had found Mizuki. That much was clear now.

And if Mizuki had been found… then something had gone wrong.

His heart sank.

Saki.

A cold sweat broke along his spine. Tsukasa’s voice, tight and distant behind the door. The way he wouldn’t meet Akito’s eyes. The fear.

Oh no.

Oh god.

Akito’s hands trembled as the truth crashed in on him all at once.

He had given her away.

Somehow, somewhere in the midst of his mistakes, his quiet meetings, his slips, his trust, he had left a trail. And Mizuki had been found. And Saki…

Saki got hurt.

His breath caught in his throat, his chest tightening with dread. Tsukasa’s reaction from earlier wasn’t just grief, it was blame. Pain wrapped in silence. Akito could see it now, plain as blood on snow. He didn’t want to see the face of the person who might’ve, however unintentionally, led his sister straight into danger.

Straight into a hospital bed. Again.

And just like that, the missing pieces clicked into place.

The bandage on Tsukasa’s arm. The stiffness in his movements. His ghost-pale expression and the way he wouldn't look Akito in the eye.

It wasn’t just emotional pain.

He had donated a transfusion for Saki.

Of course he had.

Tsukasa would give anything for his sister, his time, his body, his blood. And now he was hurting because of it. Not just from the wound… but from what it cost him to face Akito, knowing, or thinking, that Akito was the reason she had needed saving at all.

Akito’s stomach twisted. Guilt hit him like a second blow to the chest.

I’m such an idiot.

His mind spun, still trying to piece together how. How had An found her? He had been careful. So damn careful. No messages, no traces, no names.

But it didn’t matter anymore.

Because no amount of caution could undo what had already been done.

And now… everything was falling apart.

An didn’t go into the details, not about the café, not the name Nagi , not the fragments of memory clawing at the edges of her mind like broken glass, sharp and glinting just beneath the surface. She didn’t mention the way her hands had trembled afterward, or how her heartbeat still stuttered when she thought of that moment, of Mizuki . None of that. It stayed locked behind her tongue, too raw, too personal.

But saying this aloud, admitting it, was already enough. Her voice stayed steady, but her hands, folded neatly on the table, betrayed her. Just slightly. A subtle shake.

“I kept it from you all,” she said, eyes fixed ahead. “That was my mistake. I wanted to make sense of it first. But now—”

Her gaze flicked to Toya, meeting his with something between apology and resolve.

“Toya brought me something I can’t ignore.”

“There’s a traitor,” An said, each word crisp, unforgiving. “Someone is working against us. Maybe not intentionally. But someone slipped. And people are getting hurt.”

Silence swallowed the room. Kohane’s lips parted, but she said nothing. Akito didn’t look up.

Toya exhaled slowly, reached into his bag, and set something on the table with a dull metallic clink.

A box. Small. Plain. Dented along the edge.

“I found this in Akito’s room,” Toya said evenly. “It was hidden under his bed.”

Akito’s head jerked up. “What—?”

“It was empty,” Toya continued. “But when I turned it over…”

He flipped the box.

There, faded but clear under where a child’s sticker had once been peeled away, were carved letters.

Tenma Tsukasa.

Kohane let out a shaky breath, her hands curling into the sleeves of her jacket. Across the table, Akito froze, eyes fixed on the box like it had just started bleeding.

“That’s from Wonderlands x Showtime ,” An said quietly, her voice like glass on stone. “Their leader. Tenma Tsukasa. One of the government officials’ sons.”

She didn’t need to explain the weight of that name.

Akito jolted upright, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. “I didn’t put that there. I swear to god—Toya, I don’t even remember seeing that thing!”

“No one’s accusing you,” Kohane said gently, but her voice betrayed her unease. It trembled, small, but undeniable.

Toya didn’t respond. His jaw was locked, arms crossed tightly, knuckles pale. The silence between them thickened.

An's eyes narrowed slightly as she watched Akito. “Then tell me,” she said, voice soft but unrelenting. “If it wasn’t you… then who?”

Akito opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Not denial. Not explanation. Just silence.

And then An spoke again, sharper this time, laced with a bitterness that cut deep.

“You know what happened with Wonderlands x Showtime,” she said. “They weren’t just hunters—they were monsters.”

Toya stepped in, his voice grim. “They did more than hunt vampires. They experimented on us. Used us like lab rats. You remember what happened to Mita.”

Kohane’s voice broke the growing tension, barely above a whisper, but heavy with grief. “That’s what led us to launch the attack on the Hunter Association… We lost too many that night.”

Akito closed his eyes, shoulders tensing under the weight of it all.

He did know.

He knew about the blood-soaked raid. The screams. The fire. The wreckage left behind when they struck the Wonderland x Showtime compound last year. He remembered the smoke curling through the night sky, remembered the way victory had tasted like ash.

He also remembered who had pulled him from it.

Tsukasa.

Not just a fighter from the other side. Not just a survivor. But the one who had found Akito buried beneath rubble and ruin, and chosen not to leave him behind.

And somewhere between those broken moments, something had changed. Tsukasa had become more than a ghost from a battlefield. More than a name in a report. He had become a secret, a solace. A lover.

Even if their meeting earlier had ended in silence, rain and a door that never opened again.

And now… now everything was cracking.

Their relationship. The truth. The trust within his group.

Akito felt the walls closing in, felt the heat of suspicion digging into his back. He couldn’t let it happen, not like this.

“They’ve changed!” he barked, the words bursting from his chest before he could stop them. His voice rang sharp, raw with desperation. “They’re barely holding it together after our strike last year—we shattered them! And we haven’t had a single attack from them since!”

He knew what he sounded like.

But it was the only truth he had left to cling to.

“One more reason to strike now, then.”

An’s words cut through the air like a blade, and Akito felt it like a slap to the face.

He stepped forward, fists clenched. “You seem awfully eager,” he growled. “What—want me to hand him over myself? Maybe you’d like a map to his doorstep?”

An’s expression didn’t waver. “You seem to know a lot about them,” she said smoothly. “Maybe you could lead us there.”

“Don’t,” Akito snapped, the word thunderous, cracking through the tension like a whip. “Don’t you dare touch a single strand of his hair.”

A low hum followed his words.

The air shimmered.

Blue flames flickered to life around his fists, bright, searing, untamed. His breathing quickened, but he didn’t notice. His body was moving on instinct, rage boiling over.

Across the table, An raised a brow, intrigue flashing behind her eyes, but there was something else too. Surprise. She leaned forward slightly, watching the faint crackle of blue flame. Her expression shifted, not fear, but genuine interest, almost fascination. Ascendant Traits.

“Well, well,” she said, tone lilting, almost teasing, though her gaze stayed sharp. “So that’s it. I always knew you had potential, but I didn’t expect it now”

Then she tilted her head, smirking, a glint of mischief in her voice. “What, is he your boyfriend ?”

Akito flinched like he had been struck.

The words hit deeper than they should’ve. His hands trembled, fists tightening at his sides as the flames flared, wild, bright, uncontrolled, for just a heartbeat before dimming again, like something inside him was forcing itself back down. Swallowing heat. Swallowing truth.

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t trust himself to speak.

The silence that followed was louder than anything he could’ve said. It wrapped around the room, thick and crackling, threaded with hurt and something dangerously close to confession. His jaw clenched. Eyes down. And in that moment, the truth was obvious, written not in words, but in how hard he tried not to break.

An’s smile didn’t fade, but it sharpened. Like a blade drawn just enough to show its edge.

She leaned back slightly, studying Akito with a predator’s calm, her crimson eyes gleaming in the low light. “So I touched a nerve,” she murmured, almost to herself. “How interesting.”

Akito’s flames flickered at his fingertips again, responding to the pulse of emotion rising in his chest. His breathing grew unsteady, and the air around him shimmered faintly with heat. But he stood his ground.

“I’m not helping you with this,” he said, voice tight and cracking at the seams. “I don’t care what proof you think you have. I won’t let you go after him.”

The room stilled.

His declaration hung in the air like smoke, curling with all the weight of something undeniable. There was no denying what he was protecting now, not anymore. And not even An’s smirk could hide the spark of surprise flickering behind her eyes.

Because in that moment, Akito wasn’t just defying orders.

He was choosing sides.

“Oh, don’t worry,” came Toya’s voice, sharp and cold. “We don’t need your help.”

Before Akito could react, a searing pain exploded behind his eyes. He gasped, stumbling to his knees, one hand flying to his temple as if to claw the agony out. It felt like something inside him was being torn open, like a voice was screaming through his veins, forcing his body into stillness. Into obedience.

Then came the cold.

Frost bloomed over his arms, spread across his shoulders, laced across his chest like spiderwebs of ice cracking through glass. It stung. It suffocated.

Toya.

Akito’s heart pounded as he realized what had just happened. Toya, the one who had turned him. The one who had never, not once, used the ancient bond that bound them. Until now.

In the vampire world, the act of turning someone wasn’t just transformation. It was a link. A thread of power and dominance sewn into the blood itself. Those who created vampires held sway over the ones they turned. It was instinctual, involuntary, and nearly impossible to resist. The crimson bond. Most never invoked it unless forced to. A last resort.

And Toya had just used it.

The frost crawling over Akito’s skin wasn’t just his power, it was control, pure and absolute. And it hurt more than anything Akito had ever known. Not just because of the pain, but because of what it meant.

Toya had made a choice.

“Why?” Akito rasped, his breath steaming in the cold air. “Toya… why?”

Toya didn’t blink. His voice was flat. Distant. “You started this. You disappeared. You stopped showing up to meetings. Lied to us.”

“I never—”

“You lied by omission,” Toya snapped, his voice like cracked ice, sharp and cutting. “I trusted you through everything. But this? Hiding your ties to one of them —when we’re barely holding the line, when we’re bleeding out just trying to survive?”

The silence that followed was deafening. It settled into the room like frost, heavy and suffocating, heavier than any scream could’ve been.

Akito stood motionless.

Not just from the creeping ice snaking across his skin, biting at his nerves, but from the weight behind Toya’s words. The ache in his voice. The betrayal carved deep in his eyes.

It knocked the air out of him.

For the first time in a long time, Akito didn’t have a retort. No sarcasm. No defense.

He didn’t know what to say.

Didn’t know if there was anything left to say.

Toya’s voice was cold, not in tone, but in weight. Heavy. Final. Like a winter that wouldn’t thaw.

“You’re staying here,” he said as the frost tightened around Akito’s limbs, the ice creeping up to his chest. “Seems like it’s affecting you enough to care. That should be punishment enough.”

Akito struggled, muscles straining uselessly against the hold. His breath came in sharp bursts, each exhale misting in the frigid air. His eyes were wide, desperate. The blue flames that had licked his hands were gone now, extinguished by the spreading cold.

“D-Don’t touch him!” he choked out, voice cracking beneath the pressure of frozen lungs and rising panic.

Toya didn’t flinch. “Too late,” An said flatly from the doorway, not even sparing a glance behind her. “You threatened the survival of our group. That’s all you deserve.”

She paused, only for a breath.

“You should be grateful neither of us are killing you.”

Then she walked out. Just like that. No fire, no theatrics. Only silence in her wake. Kohane followed a few moments later, casting Akito a sorrowful glance. Her sigh was soft, apologetic, but she didn’t say a word.

And then it was just Toya and him.

The room seemed colder without them, too still, too quiet. Toya moved closer, kneeling so he was level with Akito’s frozen form. His breath fogged between them as he spoke.

“You should know…” he said slowly, “I knew Tsukasa. From before. Before I was turned.”

Akito’s eyes widened.

“I knew what he became,” Toya continued, voice soft but unrelenting. “I didn’t expect you to find him. To choose him.”

“Then—then stop her,” Akito begged, his voice hoarse, throat dry from cold. “Please. I can’t lose him. Not like this.”

Toya looked at him for a long, heavy moment.

“I’m sorry, Akito,” he said. “But I owe An everything. Even… our friendship. The one you decided to shatter.”

He stood without another word. The frost didn’t break.

And Akito remained alone, entombed in cold and regret.

The silence in the room was suffocating, broken only by the faint crackling of the ice slowly expanding over the concrete floor. His breath came in shallow bursts, the cold biting at his lungs with every gasp. His body was locked in place, frozen stiff from the neck down, but it was nothing compared to the hollowness spreading in his chest.

Every heartbeat echoed in the icy quiet, loud and helpless. His mind reeled, trying to catch up, trying to undo the words, the choices, the silence that had let it all get this far. He had meant to protect Tsukasa, had convinced himself he could balance both worlds, keep the truth buried, keep the one he loved out of harm’s way.

But now everything was shattered.

Not just the trust of his closest friends. Not just his place in the group. But the fragile thing he had built with Tsukasa, something too real, too rare, to survive the weight of betrayal.

He had promised himself he would never become like the monsters they fought.

But in their eyes, in his eyes, he already had.

So he stood there, breath fogging in the freezing air, unable to move, unable to fight, as ice crept higher toward his throat.

Surrounded by frost.

Abandoned by warmth.

And haunted by the one name he couldn’t protect.

Chapter Text

Mizuki was back at Niigo headquarters, but it didn’t feel like coming home.

The door shut behind her with a soft click , sealing her in a space that felt more like a hollow than a haven. A silence that swallowed sound whole filled the room, thick and stagnant. The lights overhead buzzed faintly with that tired, flickering hum that came from too many nights without care. As she stepped inside, the air felt heavy.

Her boots struck the floor with too much echo, like they didn’t belong. Like she didn’t belong.

The room hadn’t changed. But she had.

The bed was still pressed against the far wall, too neat, too narrow, barely wide enough for dreams. The desk beside it was bare. No books. No clutter. Not even a coffee mug or an open notebook to suggest a life had ever existed here. Just sterile surfaces and blank white walls, like she had never been more than a visitor.

She didn’t sit.

Not at first.

She just stood in the middle of the room, staring at the emptiness like it might blink first. Her bag slipped from her shoulder and dropped with a soft thud, but even that small sound felt too loud, too real in a space that felt anything but.

She had lost the bodyguard job.

Fired, technically, but it hadn’t come with rage or recrimination. No slammed doors. No shouting matches. Just a quiet conversation over tea. Saki’s mother had looked at her with soft eyes, as if she were the one in need of comfort. The father had given a slow nod and said, “Thank you for protecting them,” and nothing more.

No blame. No shame.

Which made it worse.

Because she was the one who couldn’t forgive herself.

She moved toward the bed slowly, finally sitting on its edge. Her elbows braced against her knees, hands curled into her hair, dragging through strands as if she could pull the ache out from behind her ribs. Her thoughts twisted like wire. Guilt braided into grief. Frustration snarled around exhaustion. She was supposed to be more than this. Better than this. Smarter, faster, more careful. Someone they could rely on.

But now all she could do was sit in a room that felt like it had never belonged to her and try to remember how to breathe.

Her eyes drifted toward the far corner of the room.

And there it was.

The prototype gun.

Bright. Vibrant. Utterly absurd in design, so many colors clashing that it looked more like a toy than a weapon. But it was Rui’s design, through and through. Every line, every flourish, screamed his name louder than any signature could. It was equal parts science project, fever dream, and performance art. Impractical. Dazzling. Dangerous.

Just looking at it made her chest tighten like a vice.

Rui.

God, she missed him.

His impossible mind. His too-fast thoughts. The way his eyes would light up the moment an idea hit him, like someone had struck a match behind his gaze. The chaos he left in his wake was like a trail of stardust and fire. Dangerous, yes, but always filled with joy.

He used to shove half-finished blueprints into her hands, talking too quickly to track, his fingers already tangled in wires as he explained some new absurd invention.

“Test this for me, Mizuki. Totally safe. Probably. Maybe. Okay, maybe wear gloves.”

She would roll her eyes. Threaten to walk out. Complain in elaborate detail.

And then test it anyway.

It always ended the same, something sparking, something catching fire, her voice echoing down the lab in a shriek, and his laughter, wild and unbothered, as he rushed in with a fire extinguisher.

But it wasn’t the explosions she remembered most.

It was the aftermath.

When the smoke cleared, Rui would look at her, not laughing anymore, not teasing.

Just… seeing her.

Not like she was a time bomb waiting to go off. Not like she was dangerous or defective or something that needed to be handled with gloves.

He looked at her like she mattered.

Like she could hold something delicate, even if she didn’t believe it herself.

And if she got hurt?

His hands were always gentle. Silently so. He never apologized, not really, but he would patch her up with a quiet concentration that said I’m sorry more clearly than words ever could.

He never made her feel like a liability.

He made her feel like she could exist without apology .

Now, he was gone.

She rose slowly, walking across the room and lifting the gun in both hands. It was heavier than she remembered. Not in weight, but in meaning.

Cold.

Silent.

No laughter. No blueprints. No breathless “try this.”

Just her.

Alone. In a room that still didn’t know her name.

And then her thoughts pulled toward An , that moment a week ago still burning quietly in the background of her mind.

That café. The air thick with coffee and the gentle hiss of milk being steamed. The heavy tension of not letting anyone else get hurt. The awkward lull between words. And then, An had looked at her. Eyes steady. Voice soft.

“What are your pronouns?”

No warning. No assumptions. Just the question. Clear. Direct. Human.

And then came that look .

Like Mizuki wasn’t strange. Wasn’t dangerous. Wasn’t something to tiptoe around.

Just someone. Seen. Heard. Respected.

It had hit like a breath of air after drowning. A moment so intimate in its simplicity it nearly broke her.

Even now, after the awkward silence that followed Saki’s accident, that moment stayed lodged behind her ribs like a splinter.

Because if Rui had looked at her like she was someone worth building for …

An had looked at her like she was someone worth knowing.

And that, that , was terrifying.

Because she didn’t know how to hold that kind of gaze. Didn’t know what to do with the feeling of belonging when she had spent so long surviving on the edges of everyone’s stories.

Mizuki pulled a thick file from her bag. It had taken time, digging through the government archives, filing the right requests, persuading the Tenmas it was connected to Saki’s accident. She hadn’t lied, not exactly. Just framed it carefully enough for them to say yes.

She already knew what was inside. Every page, every redacted line.

But holding it in her hands made it real. Tangible.

That was enough.

But there was no time left to dwell on it.

Suddenly, red lights erupted across the ceiling, pulsing like a heartbeat. A sharp alarm followed, its screech cutting clean through the quiet.

“ EMERGENCY! Wonderland x Showtime quarter under attack! All available hunters report immediately! Assemble at the main entrance!”

Mizuki bolted from the room the moment the voice cut out, grabbing the bag with the file as she went. Her boots pounded against the hallway floor, each step echoing with urgency. Red emergency lights pulsed overhead, casting her shadow in jagged flashes along the walls.

Wonderland x Showtime. Again.

Her stomach clenched.

That district had barely recovered from last year’s disaster. They were still under-equipped, understaffed, unsteady. If the enemy hit hard, it wouldn’t be a battle.

It would be a massacre.

And with every step she took, the past surged back like blood through reopened wounds.

The smoke. The screaming in her earpiece. The smell of burning steel. Rui, crushed beneath twisted metal, that half-finished invention sparking in his arms. His face pale. His voice calm.

“You have to live, Mizuki. Even if I don’t.”

She had run. She had left him there.

And she had never stopped carrying it.

Now, the corridors rushed past in a blur, her pulse pounding in her throat, grief chasing her heels.

Not again. Not this time.

She wouldn’t let history repeat itself. Not if she could still fight. Not if she could still save someone.

⋆｡°✩

The Wonderland x Showtime district was still burning.

Not literally, this time, but the memory of last year’s attack lingered in every crack of the pavement, every soot-stained corridor, every door left hanging crooked on broken hinges. It was the same shattered stage, the same collapsing fantasy, only quieter. More hollow.

An moved through the abandoned pathways with Toya at her side, her boots making sharp, deliberate steps against the scuffed tile. The air was thick with the cloying scent of sterile alcohol, sharp, chemical, and almost offensive in its intensity, but it couldn’t mask the iron tang of blood. The mix made her stomach turn. There was something wrong here.

No crowds. No resistance. Just a few scattered hunters fighting back in silence, like ghosts still playing out a battle no one else remembered.

Below, Kohane was locked in combat with an agile pink-haired fighter, Emu, if An remembered right. The girl moved with a manic energy, her giant hammer swinging through the air with almost joyful precision, but Kohane held her ground, focused and unshaken. 

But the deeper they moved into the complex, the emptier it became.

The halls were deserted. Lights flickered, casting long, stretched shadows that seemed to twitch when no one moved. Broken display cases. Wonderland’s color, so garish, so bright, felt faded here, like paint stripped away by grief.

They passed what looked like a lab corridor. Cold white tile stretched endlessly in both directions. Sterile metal tables. Scattered paperwork. Test tubes, shattered like glass teeth. The walls were lined with screens and scanners, quiet and humming like they were sleeping.

But An could feel it.

Something ugly.

Something deep.

The bile rose in her throat before she even stepped fully inside.

The lab looked like it had been evacuated in a rush. A few chairs still spun slightly, as if recently abandoned. Charts and vital readouts still blinked on holographic displays, unfinished data hanging in the air. Medical instruments lay bloodied and half-cleaned.

It stank of antiseptic and something rotten underneath.

An’s stomach twisted.

She hated this place.

It wasn’t just from last year, though that was part of it. There was something older, buried deeper. A memory she couldn’t place. Black and cold. The kind of memory that didn’t speak in words, but in gut feeling. Something about this place tugged at the threads inside her like they were being unraveled. She didn’t know why.

“Gross,” she muttered under her breath.

Toya glanced at her. “Yeah. I don’t get how they can work in places like this. At least our squad’s now strong enough no one tries this shit on us again.”

She nodded distantly, eyes scanning the room again. Her threads bristled at the edges of her senses, waiting.

Then, a sound.

A metallic clang deeper in the lab. Soft, but deliberate.

Instantly, both An and Toya snapped into motion, stepping back-to-back in defensive formation, eyes narrowing as they traced the direction of the noise. A shadow moved between the columns of machines.

A figure stumbled out from the hallway, white coat, blood on the sleeve, eyes wide and panicked. A scientist. Alone. Disoriented.

An didn’t hesitate. With a sharp flick of her fingers, red threads snapped into view, glowing faintly in the dim light. They shot forward like vipers and wrapped tightly around the figure’s torso and limbs, hoisting them an inch off the ground.

Her expression was ice. Her fingers flexed, ready to pull, cut.

But a voice, familiar, stopped her cold.

“An? …Toya?”

The threads stopped mid-tighten.

An froze. Her eyes widened, not in fear, but something close to disbelief.

The voice was breathless. Uncertain. But real.

Toya turned quickly, his posture still guarded, but his eyes searching.

“...No way.”

From the same shadowed hall the scientist had stumbled from, a second figure emerged.

Unmistakably familiar.

“M-Mita?” Toya’s voice cracked, eyes wide with disbelief, as if he were staring at a ghost. Which, in a way, he was.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said, taking a slow step forward. “You died here. In this exact place. Because of them .” He pointed to the crumpled scientist on the floor, An’s shimmering red threads dissipating.

But the person standing in front of them didn’t look like someone who had died. Mita blinked slowly, his posture relaxed, almost too casual for a war zone. A boy with warm brown eyes, soft and steady, set beneath a mess of tousled hair that stuck up in sleepy angles, as if he had just rolled out of bed. His expression was unreadable, somewhere between calm and dazed, but something in it… something behind those tired eyes shimmered with quiet strength.

Mita crouched beside the scientist, gently helping them to their feet, as if none of this made sense to him either.

“I did,” he said quietly. “They pushed me to the edge. Ran experiments on me until I was barely holding on. But it wasn’t for nothing. They helped me break the crimson bond.”

“The bond…” Toya echoed, almost choking on the words.

“The vampire who turned me,” Mita said, eyes flicking toward An now. “He chained me to him. Fed on me. Used me. For years. And no matter how far I ran, that connection pulled at me like a leash.”

Toya swallowed hard. “We tried to kill him. We almost did—but he vanished. Left nothing behind. We thought you were—”

“Dead,” Mita finished for him, softly. “I was. For a while. But the scientists here found something. A way to dissolve the crimson bond. They used my blood, rewrote the structure of how I receive it. I don’t even need to drink blood directly from humans anymore. I don’t feel him. Not even a whisper. I’m free.”

He said it so simply. So casually . Like it wasn’t a revelation that shattered everything.

“I thought you knew,” Mita continued, tilting his head slightly, tousled hair shifting with the motion. “Didn’t the government announce it? The research was finalized months ago. They said it would change everything…”

But An stood frozen, her expression unreadable.

Her mind spun. Like the room had tilted sideways and the ground was gone beneath her. What are you saying? she wanted to shout. That humans had been working to help vampires? That this wasn’t just another form of war? That after years of hiding, of running, of dying, there was a way out, and no one told them?

Her fists clenched. Was this a joke? A trap? Or worse, was it true, and they had simply been left in the dark?

The weight of it hit her in the chest like a stone. Her rage twisted into something colder. Heavier. Betrayal.

But the moment shattered, violently, as a gunshot cracked through the air, whistling just inches past her head. It buried itself in the metal wall in front of her with a shriek of sparks.

An snapped back to the present. Threads already curling from her fingertips.

Someone had fired.

An didn’t flinch, yet. She didn’t need to. Her eyes had already locked onto a familiar blur of pale pink hair, catching in the flickering hallway light like a match about to ignite.

Her breath hitched. For a split second, she forgot how to move.

“Toya,” she said, her voice lower than usual, barely above the roar in her ears. “Keep looking for the leader. I… I need answers.”

Toya’s gaze flicked to her, then to the figure down the hall. His mouth tightened with a mix of understanding and worry, but he nodded.

“Got it. And—” He turned briefly to Mita, his expression softening. “The situation’s messed up, but… I’m really glad you’re alive.”

Then he was gone, sprinting down the corridor.

Mita and the scientist slipped through the fire exit, leaving the hallway empty. Silent.

Except for them.

Just An and Mizuki.

The vampire and the hunter.

Mizuki stepped forward, her boots crunching glass and gravel beneath her. The faint glint of her gun caught what little light remained in the broken structure, casting sharp reflections across her face. Her stance was rigid, controlled. Her expression unreadable, lips a thin line, brows drawn, but her pink eyes… they betrayed her. Cold on the surface, yes. But beneath the surface: hesitation. Buried deep, guarded tightly. Still there.

An saw it.

“Hi,” she said softly, trying to keep her voice steady, to tuck the tremor behind something light. “I was hoping our next date would be somewhere with fewer collapsing walls. Maybe an aquarium… low threat level, lots of mood lighting. Something cute.”

A chunk of ceiling groaned and fell somewhere in the distance. Dust curled between them.

Mizuki didn’t laugh. Didn’t even flinch.

She narrowed her eyes instead, fingers flexing around the gun. “As if you’re not the reason this building’s coming down around us.”

And then she raised the weapon and fired.

The shots cracked through the air, fast and clean. Precision drilled into her bones. But An was already moving, boots skimming across rubble, her body twisting between bullets. Her movements were sharp, practiced, still elegant, but something was off. There was calculation now, not instinct. Tension where there used to be fluidity. Like she was second-guessing herself. Like she was holding back.

Mizuki noticed.

Good , she thought, biting down on something bitter. Maybe that’ll make this easier.

But then An smirked. The kind that curled slowly, with the kind of mischief Mizuki used to admire. She slipped sideways across a pile of broken steel, red threads blooming from her fingertips like blood made of silk. They whipped through the air, embedding with surgical precision into the walls, carving through concrete like it was paper.

“Aww, you noticed,” An cooed, tilting her head. Her eyes glittered with that same impossible confidence. “But hey, I’m still happy to see you. I mean it.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Mizuki snapped. She popped the magazine and slammed in a fresh clip with practiced ease. “I thought you only sent blood and death threads as love letters.”

An laughed then. A quick, breathy sound, realer than it had any right to be in the middle of a battlefield. “Oh, Mizuki. You’re the one who shoots me every time we meet. It’s almost romantic at this point.”

The gun barked again. Three more shots.

But Mizuki was a fraction too slow. The ache in her ribs, the distraction behind her focus, An moved like she had read it all in advance. She spun through the attack, threads slicing down to create cover, and landed beside a fractured pillar. Her red eyes glowed faintly, catching the sick light filtering through cracks in the ceiling. Dust spiraled around her like falling ash.

The two of them stood there, breath heaving in the silence, the air thick with smoke and memory.

Enemies. Always.

And yet—

Something else still lingered, curling beneath the gunfire like an unsaid word.

“I guess your little hunter squad responded the second the alarm hit,” An said, her voice light but laced with something darker, bitterness, maybe, or something closer to longing. Her fingers flicked, red thread unraveling from her palm like silk spun from blood, coiling around the cracked remains of a support beam. The power pulsed faintly, alive, thrumming with tension.

The beam groaned beneath the strain. High above them, the ceiling shuddered.

“So thoughtful of you,” she added, casting Mizuki a sideways glance, her smirk crooked. “Always showing up right when I start missing you.”

Mizuki didn’t blink. She leveled her gun again, but her grip wavered, just for a heartbeat.

“Can’t have you burning down a whole district again without supervision,” she replied coolly, but her voice faltered near the end, like her throat had suddenly gone dry.

A deep groan reverberated through the broken skeleton of the building. The floor shifted beneath their feet, listing sideways like a sinking ship. Steel screamed in the rafters overhead, a high-pitched wail of protest. Cracks spidered across the walls. Dust poured from the ceiling in steady rivulets, floating through the smoke like falling ash.

One more hit and the whole structure would collapse for real. They both knew it.

An’s head snapped toward the fractured window nearby, its jagged frame catching slivers of moonlight like teeth.

Her breath hitched.

She had seen something, down below.

For a heartbeat, the battlefield fell silent in her mind. The fight, the gunfire, the flirting, all of it dulled to nothing.

Her heart skipped.

Slowly, An turned back to Mizuki.

The rage in her eyes had softened into something else entirely. Not kindness. Not quite. Something more vulnerable than that. Something that lived closer to the chest.

“I’ll be back,” she said softly.

She took one step toward the window. Close enough to feel Mizuki’s breath. Close enough that the heat between them, rage, memory, something unspoken, crackled like electricity in a broken wire.

“Try not to fall for me while I’m gone,” she added, almost a whisper now. A grin tugged at her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

And then she leapt.

The movement was sudden, violent in its grace. Her coat snapped behind her like a banner in the wind, and her threads whipped out instinctively to brace her descent.

The rest of the glass exploded in a glittering arc as she passed through the window, shards catching the dim moonlight like fractured stars. For a moment, the world held its breath. Everything went still, no gunshots, no groaning beams, no breath between them.

Just An, suspended in the air, surrounded by falling glass and the flicker of red.

Red threads bloomed like wings from An’s arms, wide, sweeping arcs of radiant crimson, unfurling behind her like a queen’s war banner in full flight. They shimmered in the fractured light bleeding through the dust-choked sky, brilliant and terrible, painting the air with violent grace. The threads moved like living things, writhing and pulsing with purpose, trailing her as she stepped into the open void.

But she didn’t fall.

She descended.

Weightless. Intentional. Her body cut through the air with an impossible precision, coat flaring behind her like smoke caught in a storm, boots pointed toward the ruined earth below, eyes locked on a single goal. Red threads followed in her wake, curling around her like the tails of a comet. They sliced through the ashen air with soft whips of sound, trailing sparks against the moonlight.

Five stories of open sky vanished beneath her in a blink.

She landed hard, but not uncontrolled. Her boots slammed into the fractured pavement with a sound like thunder cracking open the bones of the world. The force of her landing sent cracks spidering out across the ground, jagged fissures stretching in every direction. Dust surged upward in a thick, choking cloud, encircling her like a halo of smoke and ruin. Her hair, lifted by the impact, floated down in silken waves, settling across her shoulders as if the storm had never touched her at all.

Above her, Mizuki stood frozen at the broken window.

Fingers clenched tight around the shattered frame. Her gun hung useless at her side. Her lungs refused to move. The chaos had stilled, for a moment. Her world narrowed to that one impossible image below her, red threads,  black hair, eyes that glowed faintly in the haze like something divine and wrathful.

Watching.

Remembering.

That silhouette.

That impossible grace.

It was the same as it had been a year ago, eerie, inhuman, transcendent. Chaos coiled behind An’s every movement like a serpent waiting to strike, patient and cold. Her presence alone bent the battlefield around her, reshaped it in her image.

But this time, Mizuki wasn’t watching from a safe distance.

She wasn’t across the field, behind orders, behind the illusion of objectivity.

This time, she was at the edge of something far more dangerous.

Her throat tightened. She hadn’t fired a shot, hadn’t even raised her weapon, and yet her hand trembled. The cold steel of the frame dug into her palm, but it grounded nothing. Her body stood still, but inside, everything twisted.

Fear.

Longing.

A flicker of something she didn’t want to name.

Below, An moved with the assuredness of someone who didn’t question the world, they remade it.

She stepped forward, and the red threads obeyed.

They burst out from her fingers, vivid and vicious, embedding into the decaying skeleton of the building like stakes claiming territory. They sank deep into concrete and metal, shimmering as they tightened, poised, waiting.

Not to strike.

Not yet.

This was control. Pure calculation. It wasn’t the chaos of a rampage.

It was a decision.

And then, she pulled.

Steel screamed.

The sound split the air like the building was crying out, protesting, dying all over again. Cracks bloomed along the walls, sharp and hungry. Support beams bent with a groan that shook through Mizuki’s bones. The floor beneath her boots lurched with a violent heave, tilting suddenly, throwing her weight sideways.

She stumbled back, instinctively grabbing for the nearest support beam. Her chest heaved. Dust poured from above like ash from a ruptured sky. The air felt thick, alive with tension, with memory.

The building was going down.

But it wasn’t panic that came first.

It was clarity.

An was doing this on purpose.

Mizuki’s eyes snapped down, through the veil of dust, to the courtyard below.

She saw her.

The sandy-blonde girl, Kohane, stood in the center of the chaos, her hair streaked with blue underneath, an echo of An’s red. Soft eyes. Graceful. Her jacket hung in tatters, blood streaking down one arm in a jagged line. Vampires flanked her sides, teeth bared, barely upright, still ready to fight. But the numbers were against them. Too many guns and blades. Too many eyes closing in. Nightcord had her surrounded, boxed in with precision and intent. There was nowhere left to run.

A flash of green, Nene, half-dragging the limp form of the pink-haired fighter, Emu, back to cover.

Too much happening.

Too fast.

And in the center of the chaos, An was still moving.

Tearing the world open.

The threads snapped taut with a final pull.

The east wing groaned. Beams snapped like bones. Windows shattered along the entire side of the building, glass cascading like rain. The foundation buckled. And the structure began to fall.

Mizuki dove.

Air punched from her lungs as she slammed into a slope of collapsing rubble, rolling hard. Her elbow cracked against jagged stone. Her weapon nearly flew from her grip, slipping through her fingers before she caught it. The hit rattled her teeth, blurred her vision.

The sky vanished behind a rising wall of smoke and ruin.

Her ears rang. Her vision tunneled.

But through it all, a single thought pulsed in her chest like a second heartbeat:

She did that for her . Not for the squad. Not for strategy.

For that girl.

That soft-eyed, wounded vampire, protected without hesitation.

But it wasn’t the girl that twisted something inside Mizuki like a knife.

It was An.

The way she moved.

The way she leapt, without fear, without a moment’s doubt. Threads cutting through the sky not to kill, but to shield. Not to conquer, but to save .

That wasn’t how monsters moved.

That wasn’t what monsters did.

Mizuki stared through the dust-choked air, eyes stinging, throat raw. Below her, the battlefield was beginning to settle, not in calm, but in aftermath. Shattered stone, fractured beams, and a haze of ruin stretched in every direction. And in the middle of it all, the last of the red threads drifted down like smoke, curling through the wreckage like ghostly embers. Fading. Vanishing.

Mizuki’s breath caught in her lungs. Tight. Sharp.

Because for a single, shattering moment, she had forgotten.

Forgotten what An was. What she had always been, buried under the blood and myth and war. Not just the reaper with red thread, not just the walking ruin with venom in her smile, but something else, too.

Something almost tender. 

Mizuki hadn’t expected it. Not from her . Not from the one who had burned down buildings and carved out hearts with silk and steel. She had never imagined An could still move like that, with grace, yes, but also mercy. With purpose that wasn’t destruction. With a ferocity that shielded rather than struck.

And maybe, for just a heartbeat, something bitter curled in Mizuki’s chest.

Not jealousy.

Not exactly.

Just that small, sharp flicker she couldn’t name. That aching whisper at the edge of her thoughts that said, Of course it wasn’t for you. Of course it never was.

Of course An had protected someone else.

A girl who looked easier to save.

A girl who didn’t come with questions.

A girl who didn’t have to explain who she was before people decided whether or not to care.

Mizuki’s hands clenched around the broken edge of the wall, knuckles white. She felt the sting of blood beneath her fingernails. She pressed her lips into a line, forced the feeling down, buried it beneath layers of iron and discipline and practiced detachment.

This wasn’t the time. She couldn’t afford to feel this. Not now.

Because what lingered, stronger than that flicker of envy, was something colder. Heavier. It was awe. It was confusion. It was the slow, dawning realization that maybe, just maybe , An still had the capacity for compassion. 

That underneath the fury, the power, the violence, there was still a thread of humanity.

A part of her that remembered how to protect.

A part of her that remembered what it meant to care . 

And worse, worse than anything, that maybe no one had ever done the same for her .

That thought landed like a weight in Mizuki’s gut.

Her pulse thudded low and dull, echoing in her ears like footsteps in an empty hallway.

Maybe she isn’t the monster I told myself she was, Mizuki thought, vision swimming. Maybe she never was.

And that frightened her more than she knew how to admit.

Because if An wasn’t the monster—

Then what did that make Mizuki?

She had hunted her. Hated her. Fired bullets laced with fury, convinced herself that the rage was righteous. That vengeance was justice. That An was something unnatural. Something evil. Something other .

But if she was wrong...

Then maybe she had become the very thing she feared most.

Mizuki didn’t get to finish the thought.

A sharp metallic crack split the fog, like the building’s spine giving out. Steel groaned, a fractured cry echoing through the stillness, yanking Mizuki back into her body. She turned, breath shallow, eyes stinging.

Dust drifted like ghost-snow through jagged shafts of pale light. Overhead, the ceiling yawned open, revealing a starless sky that felt wrong, like it had forgotten how to watch a world falling apart.

The structure groaned again. Walls bowed. Debris fell in slow, measured bursts.

Mizuki staggered. Grit clung to her lashes. Blood slid hot down her temple. Her legs ached like bent steel. One hand throbbed, skin torn open on shattered rubble. Her lungs burned. Her mouth tasted of copper and smoke.

The battlefield had gone still.

Only the building remembered how to scream. 

And then—

She saw it.

Amid the jagged sprawl of crumbled concrete and twisted metal, movement stirred, a small, hunched figure in a fragile hollow carved by collapse.

Kanade.

Even from a distance, Mizuki knew her, pale hair matted with ash, clothes torn and dust-streaked. Her shoulders curled inward, trembling, locked in that silent space between panic and paralysis. 

Mizuki’s breath caught. Her steps faltered.

Beneath Kanade—

Ena.

Half-buried beneath rubble, her body looked almost broken beyond recognition. Limbs lay twisted at unnatural angles, splayed in the dirt as though she had been dropped carelessly from a great height. A jagged steel rod, rust-eaten and cruel, pierced clean through her abdomen, pinning her to the shattered ground like some macabre specimen.

Blood pooled thickly around her, dark and slow, seeping outward in a widening halo that soaked into her shirt, Kanade’s trembling hands, and the fractured stone beneath. The metallic tang hung in the air, sharp enough to sting the back of the throat.

Her weapon lay discarded a few feet away, a sniper rifle, thrown aside in the chaos, its barrel cracked, scope shattered, a silent testament to how quickly battle had turned against her.

Ena’s face was drained of life. Skin ghost-pale beneath streaks of dust and ash. Her lips were tinged blue, trembling faintly, the color of suffocation. Her eyes stayed closed, but the fragile twitch of her lashes betrayed the fight still lingering inside her. Her mouth was parted slightly, as if she had tried to speak. To call for someone. But the dust had stolen her breath, and the words had died in her throat before they could escape.

Kanade didn’t move. One hand hovered over Ena’s chest, fingers shaking. Her expression, blank, breaking, looked like someone who had just discovered the universe could be cruel. 

Mizuki stopped. Frozen.

Everything inside her pulled taut. Her ribs ached like they might snap under the weight of that single moment. Her ears rang, her knees trembled. Her mouth opened, cracked and dry, and the word that left her was barely more than breath.

“No.”

It came again, louder. Cracked. Frantic.

“No—no, no, no—”

Her voice broke apart on the rubble.

Not again.

Not another life slipping through her fingers.

Not another body left in the rubble while she watched, powerless.

Not another one she couldn’t save.

Not her .

The world swayed, sickening. The walls leaned closer. The wreckage around her blurred. In that moment, nothing else existed, no mission, no orders, no reason. Just a frozen portrait of agony: Kanade, clinging to Ena’s unmoving form, the ruin of a building around them like a tomb.

Mizuki’s breath collapsed in her chest.

This wasn’t just battle anymore.

Gravel crunched under her foot as she stumbled forward, driven by something raw and wordless. Her legs shook, her knees protested, but she didn’t stop. Debris slashed at her hands and legs, tearing skin, reopening wounds, but she barely felt it.

Each breath came ragged, thick with dust and smoke. Her ears rang. The world narrowed.

No pain. No sound. No direction.

All that remained was the ache in her chest and the shape of two figures crumpled in the rubble ahead.

Kanade, hunched over like something had broken in her spine, like her whole body had curled inward to protect what little she could.

Because that’s what Ena had done. Twisted beneath slabs of collapsed concrete and steel, she had used her body as a shield, instinctive, selfless. Her last act, not to fight, but to protect. 

Kanade’s hands trembled where they pressed against her chest, desperately searching for movement. For breath. For anything. Her fingers were soaked in blood, slick and trembling, pressing down in a frantic rhythm that mirrored the panic on her face. Her calm, always so gentle, so eerily composed, was gone. Shattered like glass. Her pale blue eyes were wide with helplessness, shimmering with tears she hadn’t realized were falling.

Her voice cracked as she called out, raw and desperate. A broken plea. A scream forced into the shape of a whisper. The sound of someone begging the world not to take something irreplaceable.

And then—

Mafuyu.

She arrived like a breath held too long, silent and sharp.

Her boots skidded across loose stone, her coat trailing behind her like shadow. For a moment, she stood frozen, her eyes falling on the scene before her. The mask she always wore, the numb stillness, the quiet disconnect, fractured the moment she saw Ena.

Her violet eyes widened, not by much, but enough to break through the stillness.

She dropped to her knees beside them, hands suspended midair, shaking ever so slightly. She hovered over the blood and twisted limbs, torn between urgency and fear. There was so much blood. So much damage. Her fingers twitched helplessly, searching for somewhere to touch, to apply pressure, to help, but afraid of making anything worse. As if a single misstep would push Ena over the edge.

And then—

A breath. A twitch. A flicker of movement.

Ena’s eyelids fluttered.

Barely. Just a flicker. But enough.

Kanade choked on a sob. Her shoulders jolted with it, her hands trembling harder now. Mafuyu went still, her breath catching.

Ena’s gaze drifted upward, dazed and glassy, unfocused. Then… slowly… it sharpened, just slightly. The fog in her eyes parted long enough to see them, to recognize the faces above her. Her expression softened, faint, like the ghost of a smile, fragile and fleeting.

Hope cracked through the tension like sunlight piercing storm clouds.

But it didn’t last.

Her body seized with a sharp jerk, pain radiating up from her core. Her back arched slightly, blood seeping faster now from the jagged rod buried in her abdomen. Her breath caught in her throat, and the smile dissolved into something raw. Wordless. Agony etched into every muscle of her face.

“Medic!” Mafuyu’s voice shattered the air, loud, clear, and shaking. “Now! Get over here!”

It echoed through the crumbling building, and within moments, the squad descended. Shapes moved quickly, some too fast to recognize, others trailing stretchers and kits. Voices layered into a frenzied harmony, sharp commands and urgent footsteps. Gloves snapped on. Bandages soaked in antiseptic were pressed against wounds that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

It was chaos. But somehow, within it, they moved with precision, desperation sharpened into action.

And Mizuki—

She didn’t move.

She stood apart from the cluster of bodies, the blur of motion. A shadow anchored in stillness. Distant. Watching.

Her face was unreadable, carved from something cold. Her lips were tight, a single crease etched between her brows. Her shoulders were taut, fingers clenched at her sides.

But inside her, not grief. Not yet. That would come later. If she let it.

Right now, something colder was building. Something cleaner.

Because Mizuki wasn’t looking at the blood. She wasn’t hearing the medics shouting, or Kanade’s voice breaking like glass. She wasn’t seeing the wound, or the body, or even the face.

She was seeing red.

One person in mind. 

An. 

Fear—gone. 

Longing—obliterated. 

The flicker of something she didn’t dared to name—

Gone.

Burned out in an instant.

Because standing there, watching Ena collapse, Mizuki didn’t think about how An had once made her feel seen. She didn’t remember the warmth of a café, the quiet kindness of a question asked without assumption. She didn’t remember the flicker of something fragile she almost believed in.

Rage swallowed it whole.

Not the kind that screamed. Not the kind that came and went in a flash.

This was slower. Heavier. It crawled up her spine like smoke through cracks in a sealed room, thick, suffocating, relentless. Not loud. Not yet. But it filled her. Pressed into the hollow places where confusion used to sit.

Because whatever An had been, whatever she had meant—

She was the one who destroyed this. She was the one who killed.

And now, Mizuki wasn’t looking for answers. She wasn’t looking for closure. She wasn’t trying to understand.

She was hunting.

She was going to find An.

And when she found her—

She wouldn’t hesitate again.

Chapter Text

Back in the haze of the broken building, An moved like a shadow through the dust, eyes sharp, boots crunching over splintered glass and fractured concrete. The air was thick, heavy with smoke and memory. Every step echoed with ghosts.

This was Wonderland x Showtime. Or what was left of it.

It had been a fever dream of lights and performance, a vampire-hunting unit draped in absurdity, dressing death in glitter and grins. Garish stages. Painted smiles. Executions hidden behind choreography. Every mission a spectacle. Every kill a show.

Now, the stage was ash.

The walls, once candy-colored and animated with artificial cheer, were scorched and blistered. Paint peeled in long, curling strips, like skin left too long in flame. Oversized signs with grinning stars and waving mascots sagged from melted brackets, their hollow eyes cracked or caved in. The floor was littered with ruined props, cracked tiles smeared with soot and something darker. Blood had soaked into the grout lines like punctuation.

Color, once king here, had abandoned the place. The reds had rusted. The yellows had spoiled into sickly green. The blues looked drowned. Everything else had faded to gray, like even the building had finally stopped pretending.

She passed beneath a ruined archway that once spelled out a show name in hot pink neon. Now only four letters flickered dimly, OWTI buzzing like static in a dying radio. Above, shattered spotlights dangled by frayed wires, swinging with each tremor of distant gunfire. The center stage, once velvet-draped and ringed with pyrotechnics, had caved in entirely. The scaffolding hung twisted like bones. Curtains blackened and torn, hung like wet shrouds in the dust.

A theater turned grave.

An moved through it like a phantom retracing the outline of a dream long soured. Her eyes scanned the hollowed halls, the broken stairwells, the corridors half-swallowed by collapse. Each step stirred ash, fragments of forgotten costumes, shattered visors, old blood.

It was all too familiar.

The same wreckage. The same silence between explosions. The same dread crawling into her lungs.

Not just the fear of enemies.

The fear of not finding the people she cared about.

She moved fast, scanning the ruins, checking collapsed halls, twisted catwalks, half-buried labs. Each breath burned in her chest, hot with ash. Her red threads hovered faintly at her fingertips, alert and ready. She didn’t call out. Sound felt like something sacred here, like speaking would break something delicate holding the structure upright.

Around her, vampires moved in the fog, quick and wordless. Some stumbled toward the exits, faces bloodied, limbs dragging. Others finished the fight with cold precision, knives at throats, fangs buried in what little resistance remained. A few dug through cracked refrigeration units, retrieving what blood packs hadn’t ruptured in the collapse, cradling them like precious medicine. 

And then, she saw her.

Kohane. Leaning against the jagged frame of a support beam, breathless, her jacket torn and bloodied. But alive. Her shoulders sagged the moment her eyes met An’s. Her lips pulled into a tired, crooked smile that didn't quite mask the worry behind it.

“An!” she called out, voice soft but urgent. “Is everything okay?”

An exhaled, the tension in her chest loosening just a little.

“Yeah,” she replied, but her voice was distant, guarded. Her eyes flicked to the side. “Mita… he’s still alive.”

Kohane blinked, confused. “Wait—Mita Koutarou? He survived?”

An nodded, jaw tight. “Somehow. I don’t understand it either. He… walked out with one of the scientists. Said they saved him. Toya’s looking for the leader now.”

Kohane pushed off the beam, wincing as pain lanced through her side. “Then let me stay and help. I can treat your wounds, and if we’re searching for survivors, you shouldn’t do it alone—”

“No,” An cut in gently but firmly, stepping closer. “You’re still badly hurt. You can barely stand. Go back to the base.”

The command should have been cold. It wasn’t. It held concern, layered thick beneath the words, raw and unspoken, like a hand held out without touching.

Kohane felt her heart skip.

It was stupid, she told herself. The battlefield was still smoking, her ribs ached with every breath, and the ruins groaned like they could collapse again at any second. But none of that mattered when An looked at her like that, serious, protective, with just the barest tremor of softness in her voice.

She hesitated, gaze dropping to An’s bloodstained boots, then back up, meeting eyes that always felt just a little too distant, a little too unreachable.

“But you’re not fine either,” she said, more quietly this time. Not an argument. A plea.

An’s voice dropped, the edge softening like velvet over steel. “I’ll manage. Please.”

It was that word, please, that undid her. Not the command. The gentleness in it.

Kohane wanted to stay. Wanted to be useful, yes, but more than that, she wanted to be there. She wanted An to need her. To let her stay. Just for a while.

But the way An looked at her, quiet, steady, kind in a way that felt just out of reach, left her no room. It was care, but not closeness. Warmth, but not invitation. Enough to make Kohane’s heart ache. Never enough to answer it.

So she nodded. Slowly. Reluctantly.

“Okay,” she whispered.

She turned, walking back into the thick fog of smoke and dust. But her steps dragged, like her body knew what her heart didn’t want to accept.

Because she still wasn’t ready to leave An’s side.

And even if An never looked at her the way she hoped… Kohane knew she would keep looking back anyway.

So she did. Just once.

A final glance over her shoulder, eyes tracing the silhouette of the girl standing tall in the ruin, still bathed in smoke and thread and silence.

And then, 

A gunshot split the air.

It rang out sharp, deafening, cracking through the haze before pain could even register.

Something slammed into Kohane’s shoulder. A hot, brutal jolt that knocked her sideways. Blood burst across her already-stained clothes in a vivid, spreading bloom. She gasped, sharp and shallow, her lungs forgetting how to work. The ground swayed beneath her feet, the world tipping, like gravity had lost interest in holding her up.

And then she was on her knees.

Her body folded inward. Reflex. Instinct. One arm pressed against her chest, the other against the torn wound. Keep the core safe. Protect the heart. Stay low. Stay breathing.

More shots cracked through the air. One hit the ground inches from her head, shattering concrete into dust and shrapnel.

The next grazed her leg, flesh only, no bone, but the pain screamed through her nerves like fire.

Her vision swam.

Her fingers clawed weakly at the dirt, trying to steady herself, trying to stay conscious. Her whole body felt slow, heavy, like it was underwater. The edges of the world fuzzed out. Her power, once quick to respond, was sluggish. The wounds weren't closing the way they used to. Her blood didn’t pull itself back in. The spark was dimming.

She was too tired.

Somewhere, just beyond the curtain of smoke, An moved.

She had been hit too. Kohane couldn’t tell how many times, three, maybe more. One in the side, another ripping past her arm, another near the thigh. Her coat tore open. Blood bloomed across her frame, dark and vivid.

But she didn’t fall.

Her body jolted under the impact, once, twice, then stopped. Not from shock. Not from fear.

From choice.

A breath hissed from between her teeth, sharp and steady, and then her wounds began to vanish. The flesh reknit before Kohane’s eyes. Blood reversed course, fading into skin that pulled tight and whole again, like time was unraveling just for her. No stitches. No scarring. Just a flash of light. 

Red threads flared into being around her, arcing through the air like lightning drawn in slow motion. They coiled around An’s limbs and spine, lacing through her silhouette like veins glowing with fury.

She didn’t cry out. She didn’t grimace.

Her face twisted, but not with pain.

Rage.

The kind of rage that didn’t need to shout. The kind that knew exactly where to strike.

Kohane, still curled against the dirt and bleeding out, felt her own pain recede into the background. Her awareness narrowed to the figure rising through the haze.

An. 

Rising steady, like a storm taking form.

Her silhouette was etched in light, and all the smoke and ruin around her bent toward it, threads crackling, hands flexed at her sides, back straight.

She turned toward the gunfire.

And the threads followed.

Then she saw who it was.

Mizuki.

Emerging from the smoke like a revenant.

Blood dripped down her temple in a slow, hot line. Her legs moved like machinery pushed past breaking, stiff and unforgiving. Her hand was raw and torn, fingers trembling from effort, from pain, maybe both, still locked around the grip of her weapon.

She was wounded. Exhausted.

And still, she moved like death incarnate.

Every shot she fired cracked like thunder, controlled, exact, unrelenting.

No hesitation. No wasted motion.

And there was no mercy in her eyes.

None.

An faltered. Just for a second, but that second was all it took. Because it wasn’t just that Mizuki was here. It was how she moved through the smoke, steady and deliberate, like nothing around her could touch her anymore. Her eyes, usually that strange, soft pink, were dark now. Shadowed. Not with blood, not with grief, just empty. Utterly, terribly empty.

There was no flicker of recognition. No hesitation. No emotion at all.

And that was what made An freeze. 

Because she had seen this before. That same stillness. That same cold clarity. A year ago, after the fight that had left a scar deeper than she liked to admit. It hadn’t been the blows that haunted her. It had been that look, like Mizuki had already let go of the world. Like nothing mattered anymore, not even herself.

An had told herself she had imagined it. That the memory had exaggerated things, stretched the fear. But now, staring at Mizuki’s silhouette through the haze, watching her fire shot after shot with unflinching precision, she knew she hadn’t been wrong.

This was the same person. The same eyes. The same silence.

But now, there wasn’t even the echo of the person An used to know. Not the girl who argued with a bite and a glimmer in her eye. Not the one who stirred half-formed memories in An’s mind she couldn’t place, warm ones, strange ones Not the one who once hesitated in each of her shots. Not the one who looked at her like she knew her.

This Mizuki didn’t even look at her.

She just kept walking, kept shooting, and every step brought her closer, like she was erasing something. Not chasing. Not fighting. Just finishing something she had already decided was over.

And in that moment, An understood.

Mizuki wasn’t hunting anymore.

She was ending.

“Mizuki?” An’s voice cracked through the air, small and uncertain beneath the ringing thunder of gunfire. “Did you miss me?”

She tried to smile, tried to make it light, familiar, the way it used to be. The grin came half-formed, shaky at the corners, a ghost of her usual sharp charm. “Here to give me a goodbye kiss?”

No answer.

Just another shot.

Mizuki didn’t stop. Didn’t blink. The muzzle flash lit her face in pulses, and each flicker of light only seemed to darken her expression.

There was no recognition in her eyes.

Only focus. Cold and exacting. A predator narrowing in.

An’s throat tightened, but she kept moving. Dodging between shattered scaffolding, dipping behind the rusted remains of lighting rigs and stage debris. Her shoulder clipped a jagged pole. She hissed. More blood. More pain. But she pushed through it.

She had to.

Behind her, the battlefield churned in chaos, hunters and vampires still locked in a brutal rhythm of retreat and retaliation. Most of the humans were fleeing or fighting with desperation. Kohane had disappeared into the haze, dragging an injured comrade to safety, huddled somewhere in the wreckage, trying to stabilize her own wounds while offering aid where she could. An saw none of that now.

Because Mizuki was on her.

No hesitation. No glances behind. No mercy.

An dodged another bullet, barely, a sharp burst that sliced across her thigh, the pain like fire under her skin. She stumbled, caught herself, red threads snapping out reflexively to push off nearby rubble. But they were slower. Sloppier. Not their usual elegant, deadly precision. 

She gritted her teeth, eyes narrowing, forcing the threads back into form, but it was like trying to wield a weapon with her arms bound. Her concentration faltered with each step. Every bullet that hit her stole just a bit more of her control.

Another shot, right shoulder.

She screamed. The blood threads sparked wildly, flailing, chaotic. She lashed them out to shield herself, but they couldn’t keep up.

Then another shot, left forearm. Her arm jerked violently, then fell limp, the threads flickering and fizzling like dying electricity.

The wounds healed, but slower now. Sluggish. Incomplete. Her body was fighting back, but it wasn’t enough. Not this time.

She collapsed onto her back with a heavy thud, debris scattering beneath her. Blood pooled behind her ribs, warm and sticky. Her breath came in shallow gasps.

And Mizuki was there.

Over her.

Wordless.

Her boot pressed against the side of An’s thigh, pinning her in place with clinical ease. With her right hand, she forced An’s wrists above her head, gun still gripped, barrel angled down between their bodies, held steady, unshaking.

An struggled, tried to lift her arms, but there was no strength left in them. Her threads flared out weakly, as if resisting out of instinct rather than power. Her breath hitched, chest heaving with effort and disbelief.

Mizuki's other hand shifted downward.

She reached for her belt.

Not for more ammo.

Not to reload.

But for something heavier, something stranger.

The prototype.

It looked almost like a toy : too big, too bright, its body a warped fusion of weapon and whimsy. A megaphone grafted to a barrel, its casing painted in clashing, half-faded colors, cheerful purples scraped dull by ash, teal worn to gray-green at the edges, gold trim now tarnished to bronze. It had no business being in a battlefield, and yet here it was.

Rui’s.

An froze.

Her eyes locked on it, breath catching mid-thought. She knew that weapon, knew its weight in memory more than in metal. She could still smell it : the sharp bite of scorched circuitry, the acrid tinge of ozone from one too many overclocked shots. But worse was what it meant. What it had been.

The last thing Rui had wielded before she killed him.

The first thing Mizuki had pointed at her when they met again, unspoken rage burning behind her silence.

An’s limbs seized. Her muscles tensed and refused to move.

Not from pain. Not from the blood loss.

But because Mizuki had drawn it again.

And this time… she meant it.

Mizuki didn’t speak. She didn’t glare. She didn’t even blink. Her pink pale eyes, normally bright, sometimes teasing, had dulled to something flat. Blank. 

There was no anger in her expression now.

No humor. No sharp remark. No trace of the girl who had once flinched at violence and hesitated at goodbyes.

Only a calm, brutal certainty.

The kind that came after grief, not in the middle of it.

An felt her heart lurch sideways in her chest. A numbness crawled up her spine and settled into her ribs.

So this is how it ends.

Not with a duel. Not with a last clever line or some sudden twist of fate.

Just silence.

Just the weight of all the things left unsaid between them, pressed down into the barrel of a stolen gun.

Her throat tightened.

Tears burned behind her eyes before she could stop them. They slipped out, silent and slow, trailing down her cheeks and disappearing into the dust below. Her lips parted. She wanted to say something, anything. One final dig. One last joke. One soft word that might make it all mean something.

But her voice wouldn’t come.

So instead, she shut her eyes.

Tensed for the final moment.

Waited for the thunderclap. The sting. The end.

It didn’t come.

The silence dragged on, stretching too long. Thick as smoke. Sharp as glass.

Stillness hovered like a second heartbeat.

An’s lashes fluttered.

She cracked one eye open, slow and cautious, bracing for the barrel, or the burst, or both.

Mizuki was still there. Still straddling her. Still pinning her wrists to the broken floor.

But something had shifted.

The grip wasn’t slack. Not gentle. Not merciful.

But it trembled.

Just barely. Just enough.

She hadn’t fired.

Not yet.

And in that breathless pause, between intent and impact, An saw something she hadn’t dared hope for.

Not forgiveness.

But a fracture.

Mizuki looked torn apart.

Not furious. Not precise. Just… unraveling. Like something inside her had cracked open and couldn’t be put back.

This wasn’t a soldier following orders. This was someone trying and failing to remember how to be human.

Because Mizuki wasn’t fighting An anymore. She was fighting herself.

Fighting the part of her that had once looked at An and seen something terrifying. Then, somehow… saw something worth staying for. 

An hadn’t looked at her like the others did. Not with suspicion. Not with pity.

She had looked through the armor, past the name, beyond the blood.

She had seen Mizuki.

Not just the killer. Not the weapon. Not the one they built from fear and silence.

She had seen the girl underneath. The one Mizuki had clawed her way into becoming. The one who bled every day to exist as she truly was.

An had never questioned it. Never stumbled over her pronouns. Never hesitated to call her beautiful, sometimes mockingly, sometimes not. 

She had accepted her. Fully. Quietly.

Like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like Mizuki had never needed to prove she was real.

And that, that impossible kindness, had lingered in Mizuki’s chest like a splinter. Something she never asked for. Something she didn’t know how to carry.

Because she didn’t believe she deserved it.

That was what stopped her now. Not mercy. Not guilt.

Recognition.

She knew this moment. The surrender. The stillness. The strange peace in letting go.

She had lived it once, a long time ago, when the world had made her feel like there was no place for someone like her.

When living as herself had been the harder fight. When she had thought maybe she would rather disappear than keep trying to be seen.

But Rui had found her then.

He hadn’t told her to get up. He hadn’t said it would get better.

He had just stayed.

Refused to look away. Refused to let her vanish.

He reminded her : she was not a mistake. Not broken. Not alone.

And now, here she was.

Gun drawn. Jaw clenched. Breath fraying.

Facing the girl who once made her feel real in the moments she most doubted her own reflection, and about to erase her.

Not because it was right. But because she didn’t know who she would be without the anger.

Because if she let it go, what would be left?

A hunter? A weapon? Or just a girl who’s spent too long pretending she didn’t care who bled?

Her chest ached. Something deep. Old.

Something she thought she had buried the night she stopped asking to be saved.

Because this wasn’t justice. It wasn’t revenge.

It was execution.

And Mizuki didn’t know if she would survive it.

Not physically. But emotionally. Spiritually.

Existentially.

Would it bring peace? Or would it mean that every cruel thing said about her was right?

That she was only ever meant to destroy?

The barrel didn’t lower. Her hand didn’t move.

But something inside her cracked louder than any gunshot.

Why are you hesitating?

Because An wasn’t fighting. Wasn’t begging. Wasn’t afraid.

She had looked Mizuki in the eye, steady, tired, open, and accepted her. Not just her death.

Her.

All of her.

And that hurt more than anything.

Because Mizuki remembered what that kind of acceptance had felt like. And how rare it had been.

And how much she missed it.

Just do it, the old voice whispered. But she didn’t want to.

Not like this. Not when An had once made her feel whole. Not when she still saw herself in the girl beneath her.

Tired. Hollow. Still trying. Still there.

Mizuki hated it.

Hated how much she wanted to be seen like that again. And how afraid she was of what it would mean to reach for it.

So she didn’t pull the trigger.

Not yet.

Her hand didn’t drop.

But it didn’t fire either.

And An, bloodied, breath shallow, wrists pinned, saw it.

Saw the fracture. The hesitation. The truth. 

That the hunter had a heart after all, and it was breaking.

And the silence between them stretched thin as a thread.

Not safe.

Not yet.

But, for the first time in a long, long time, 

Not over.

“So,” An said at last, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You can’t kill me after all.”

The silence shattered, fragile, like glass cracking slow and sharp.

Mizuki’s eyes flicked to hers, sharp, unreadable, but her voice, when it came, was quiet. Not cold. Just tired. Worn down by battles far beyond this moment.

“As if you’re not doing the same.”

An blinked, caught off guard. “What...?”

“You heard me,” Mizuki said, her grip tightening briefly, a flicker of something unsteady before her fingers loosened again. “Don’t act surprised. I’ve seen it. Felt it.”

She let the words hang between them, heavy with unspoken weight, before continuing, bitter now, edged with a sadness that felt impossible to name.

“The way you treat me. Like it’s all just a game. The teasing. The flirting. The countless times you came close enough to kill me and didn’t.”

An opened her mouth to speak, but Mizuki went on, relentless. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice how your threads always avoided my vitals. How they burned, how they seared, but never deep enough. You call it precision, restraint masked as style. But it wasn’t just control. It was care.”

Her voice dropped to a murmur, fragile yet fierce. “You were sparing me. Just like I’m sparing you.”

A silence stretched, thin, taut, a fragile thread pulled tight between them.

Mizuki’s jaw clenched, a flicker of torment flashing in her eyes. “And I don’t know if that makes this better, or worse.”

An’s breath caught. No witty comeback. No defiance. Just the raw, aching truth settling between them.

Because Mizuki was right.

Because beneath the war, beneath the steel and fire and pain, there was something more.

Something terrifying and fragile and impossible to name.

The battlefield was emptying itself.

Not with urgency anymore, but with exhaustion. The chaos had ebbed, leaving only the low hum of silence in its wake, punctuated now and then by the distant thunder of retreating footsteps, scattered debris shifting under weight, or the occasional burst of static from broken radios. The smoke still lingered, curling in slow, tired ribbons through the air, but the screams had stopped. The fighting had thinned to nothing but memory.

It was just them now.

The rest, the soldiers, the hunters, the vampires, the injured, the dying, were all shadows fading into the horizon, blurred by the settling dust and time. The world had grown too quiet, too hollow. Like the battle had cracked it open and now it was waiting to see what would crawl out.

An’s voice broke that silence.

Soft. Unsteady. A whisper, but not uncertain.

“Sorry,” she said. “If I hurt you. Or anyone from your group.”

It should have been simple.

It wasn’t.

The words landed like a match on dry kindling. Mizuki’s breath caught, not from shock, but from the force of what came next. A tide that rose without warning, pressing into her lungs, choking out the thin space she had carved to stand in.

Because suddenly, she thought of Ena. 

Ena.

Lying broken beneath the rubble, unmoving. Her arms still wrapped around Kanade in one final act of protection. Blood pooled beneath her like ink soaking into the earth. Mizuki remembered the hollow thud in her chest when she saw her, the way her knees buckled, the way her breath caught and never quite came back.

Kanade knelt beside her, hands shaking too hard to touch, too afraid to let go. Her pale hair clung to her face, streaked with soot and tears. Her eyes didn’t look like eyes anymore. Just wounds. Raw and bottomless.

Even Mafuyu, 

Even she had cracked. Just for a second. Her mask, always so solid, had slipped. And in that flicker, Mizuki saw it : the grief, the fear, the quiet unraveling held just beneath the surface.

How could she have forgotten?

How could she ever forget?

That simple apology, soft, careful, human, cut deeper than any weapon Mizuki had ever trained with. Not because it was cruel. Because it wasn’t. Because it was honest. Because An had said it and meant it. And somehow, that truth hurt more than any of the lies they had traded in the heat of battle. It cracked something Mizuki had worked hard to keep sealed. The kind of pain she had thought she had buried beneath orders, precision, and revenge. But here it was again, raw, close, impossible to ignore.

Her grip on the prototype gun tightened. Rui’s gun. The ridiculous, patchwork weapon that looked like it belonged on a stage, not a battlefield. It used to feel warm. Playful. Now it felt like stone in her hand. Cold. Heavy. Not just power, but memory. Guilt. The weight of everything she had lost and couldn’t get back. Her fingers settled into place. Trained. Mechanical. Cold. Ready to fire.

Forgiveness was one thing. Mizuki could almost stomach that. But forgetting? That was impossible. Not when Ena’s blood still seeped into her memories. Not when Kanade’s broken voice still cracked down the center of her thoughts. Not when she could still remember the weight of Rui’s steady hand on her shoulder, long before she became this thing she didn’t recognize. Forgetting would mean erasing everything that had brought her here. And if she forgot, who was she?

An was waiting. Her body still beneath Mizuki’s, unmoving except for the shallow rhythm of her breath. Eyes closed. Braced. She didn’t flinch when Mizuki adjusted her stance, didn’t move when the gun hovered over her heart. She had already let go. Believed this was the end. Maybe she thought it was justice. Maybe she thought she deserved it. But there was no fight left in her. Just stillness. Just surrender.

And Mizuki couldn’t do it.

She wanted to. Needed to. But her hand wouldn’t move. Her heart wouldn’t shut up.

She let the gun fall from her hand, no, she flung it, like it had turned searing hot against her skin, like the weight of it had suddenly become too much to bear. Rui’s prototype, now felt like a weaponized memory she couldn’t hold onto any longer.

Her lips parted, breath catching in her throat, as if a word, something raw and half-formed, was rising up. Something she might regret. Something she might have needed.

“I—”

But the word never came.

Because the moment the gun struck the ground, there was a crackle, a sharp, electric hiss, like the last breath of a machine pushed too far. A blue spark leapt from the core, brief and deadly.

And then, it exploded.

A blinding burst of color and electricity erupted between them, blue light streaking across the room in a jagged halo of energy. The sound was deafening, a roar of rupture and static and sudden violence. Mizuki and An were both thrown backward, caught in the pulse of the detonation like dolls tossed by the wind.

An slammed into the wall, shielded partly by its curve, stone bruising her ribs but sparing her from the worst. Mizuki twisted midair, instinct screaming, barely ducking low enough to avoid the brunt of it, though her shoulder caught fire with pain, and her ears rang like glass under pressure.

And still, through the chaos, through the ringing in her ears, through the shock that hadn’t yet settled into her bones, Mizuki’s hands had never quite let go of An’s wrists.

She had landed on top of her, not in aggression, not in rage, but almost by reflex. The weight of her body pressed down, steady and firm, yet no longer hostile. There was no struggle between them now. No fight left to win. Mizuki’s grip had softened, not enough to be a release, but enough to feel more like grounding than restraint.

An’s gaze shifted, slow and searching, toward the place the explosion had come from, and then she saw her.

Kohane.

The blast had struck her mid-stride, caught her just as she was running back, stubborn as ever, reckless with worry. She hadn’t even reached them yet. Her wounds hadn’t finished healing. Her steps had still been uncertain, her body still shaking from pain she hadn’t let stop her. And yet, she came back. Of course she did. That was Kohane. Quietly relentless. Always returning. Always choosing to help.

Now she was crumpled on the ground.

Debris lay all around her, splinters of wall, shattered furniture, jagged pieces of what once stood. Her clothes were torn, one sleeve ripped open completely, blood soaking through the cloth like dark ink. Her skin was pale beneath the dust, and where the blast had torn into her, along her arm, her ribs, her side, the flesh looked scorched, raw, almost unrecognizable.

The light from the explosion had already faded, but its echo painted the memory in sickly colors, blue and white, ash and smoke.

An’s breath caught mid-throat. Her chest locked tight. Her heart lurched into panic as if her body already knew something her mind couldn’t yet face.

Kohane wasn’t moving.

But no. No.

She was.

Just barely.

Her fingers twitched against the cracked concrete, a faint, flickering glow gathering in her palm. She was trying to summon her healing, even now. Even like this. Her other hand clutched her side, blood seeping between her trembling fingers. Her face was contorted in pain, her jaw tight, but she didn’t scream. Didn’t even groan.

She was silent.

Focused.

Still trying.

But An could see it, the healing was weak. Incomplete. The glow already faltering. The wound too deep. The damage too much.

And in that moment, everything else, the battlefield, the conflict, the weight of Mizuki’s body still bracing against hers, fell away. All An could see was Kohane, lying in the rubble, still holding on.

But not for long.

Kanade was there. Behind her.

She emerged from the smoke like a ghost, like the grim reaper. Not with a cry or a clash of steel, but in silence, an ache made flesh, grief carved into motion. Her figure, slender and small, was framed in the dim light of fires still smoldering behind her. The soft ash falling through the air caught on her blood-soaked sleeves, dusted her pale hair like snowfall on ruin. She didn’t stumble. She didn’t shake. She simply walked forward, step by deliberate step, her scythe hanging from her hands like a memory sharpened into a weapon.

She was hurt, obviously, deeply. Anyone could see it in the way her limbs carried weight, in the labored rise and fall of her chest, in the wet red staining the left side of her uniform. Blood, old and new, crusted in her hairline and streaked down her cheek like tears she had refused to cry. Her breaths came ragged and uneven, as if each inhale scraped against the sharp edges of what was left inside her.

But none of that mattered.

Because her eyes, cold-blue, that had once looked at the world like it was a puzzle to be solved, now held nothing but clarity. Not the desperate, messy kind that clings to hope. This was something colder. Simpler. Her gaze was hollowed out, stripped clean of hesitation, compassion, fear. There was no mercy left in them. Only resolve. Only purpose.

Even broken. Even grieving. Kanade moved with more precision than ever before.

There was a stillness to her, a quiet like the moments just before a wire snaps. No grand declaration, no rush of fury. Just that steady, terrifying calm, the kind that follows after everything’s already fallen apart. Her footsteps were quiet on the shattered stone, barely more than a whisper, but each one rang out like a countdown. The scythe in her grip lifted, not dramatically, not with flair, but like a blade already committed to its path. It rose like it had a life of its own, like it, too, understood there was no going back.

And An knew.

This wasn’t a warning.

It was an execution.

Because this was Kanade. The one who always saw the whole picture. The strategist. The quiet heartbeat of Nightcord at 25. The one who never left anything to chance, who watched from the background and made sure everyone got home. The one who bore the burden of every decision in silence.

But that Kanade was different. Or maybe she had just been peeled away, piece by piece, until only this version remained, honed sharp by loss, carved down to her final purpose. She had lost too much. Ena. The mission. The rhythm of safety that held them all together. And when everything else fell apart, what was left in her wasn’t sorrow or rage.

It was the decision to end this.

What stood in her place now was no longer the protector. Not the planner, not the hesitant voice in the corner trying to hold everything together with logic and quiet urgency.

What stood there was vengeance made still.

Kanade wasn’t here to defend anyone.

She was here to finish what the grief had started.

And she had come to do exactly that.

Kohane couldn’t move.

She could barely breathe.

The world had gone silent around her, eerily, utterly still, except for the distant groan of twisted metal, the crackle of lingering fire somewhere buried in the wreckage. Smoke hung in the air like a shroud, and everything smelled of ash and blood. Her body was failing, torn and burned, ribs aching with every shallow breath. She felt the warmth draining from her limbs, the numbness creeping in slowly, steadily. And yet, despite it all, there was no fear left in her. Not really. Not anymore.

Because she could feel it.

The cold edge of Kanade’s scythe, resting, poised, pressed with a strange gentleness against the hollow of her throat. Not cutting. Not yet. But promising. Inevitable. It didn’t hurt. Not yet. But she knew when the blade moved, it would be final. Quick. Absolute. There would be no time for words, no time for screams or resistance. Just the steel, the silence, the end.

And still, Kohane didn’t flinch.

Her eyes, dimmed by exhaustion, still burning with something fiercely alive, searched past the blur of battle, and found what she needed.

An.

Pinned beneath Mizuki. Struggling now, truly struggling, no longer just restrained but clawing at the hands holding her down. Her expression was one of panic, desperation, pure instinct tearing through whatever walls she had built around herself. She was trying to crawl free, to cry out, to stop what was coming with nothing but raw will and broken breath. But it was too late. The scythe had already been drawn. The sentence already written.

Kohane just smiled.

It was small. Fragile. Incongruous. A kind of smile that didn’t belong here, in this field of ruin and violence. It was the sort meant for quiet dressing rooms, for backstage laughter, for sunlit mornings before performances. Soft. Private. Real.

But she gave it anyway.

And then, barely a whisper, barely even a breath, she spoke.

“Thank you,” she said.

The words slipped into the air like feathers. So gentle they almost didn’t exist. But An heard them.

She froze.

For a moment, the world didn’t catch up. Her ears rang from the explosion, her limbs still thrashed against Mizuki’s hold, but those two syllables pierced through it all like glass breaking in a cathedral.

Kohane’s eyes never left hers.

“I’m glad I met you,” she breathed, her voice already fading, but clear enough to hear. “I… love you.”

It hit An like a collapsing sky.

Her chest caved. Her vision blurred. Her breath turned to fire in her throat. No clever words came. No desperate retort. Just the splintering sound of something vital unraveling inside her.

“No,” An gasped, her voice cracking. “No, Kohane, don’t—”

She lurched forward, hand outstretched, desperation clawing up her throat. But Mizuki still held her back, arms like iron across her shoulders, unyielding. An twisted, struggled, but it was useless.

Kohane was too far.

And An was too late..

The scythe moved.

Clean. Precise. Merciful.

There was no scream. No convulsion. Just a soft exhale, barely sound at all, and then Kohane fell.

Fell like a candle extinguished. Her body tilted sideways, slack with surrender, and she crumpled to the cracked stone with no resistance, no noise. As if the earth had always been waiting to receive her. Her hair fanned out like threads of gold in the dust. Her hand, once glowing faintly with the last remnants of healing, lay open at her side. Her face was turned toward An, and the smile never quite left.

Still, still smiling.

Mizuki staggered.

She had remained frozen through it all, her arms locked around An’s wrists out of habit more than intent. Her breathing had gone shallow, her posture rigid. But now her gaze flicked toward Kohane, and something inside her faltered.

Not at the sight of the blood. Not the lifelessness.

But at the sound.

Those final words.

They weren’t curses. They weren’t defiant. They were kind. They were full.

They were the impossible softness of something Mizuki hadn’t expected. Gratitude. Forgiveness. Love. Not the desperate, clinging kind born of fear. No begging. No rage.

Freely given. No strings. No weight.

It landed in Mizuki like a blow with no impact, a blade that cut without pain.

She didn’t know what to do.

An broke free.

Mizuki barely registered the shift in time, her grip loosened, her body too stunned, too shaken by what had just unfolded. The sudden absence of pressure was jarring. One moment, she was restraining An, the next, she was grasping at empty air. Confusion flickered in her eyes, followed quickly by something else. Hesitation. And something unnameable underneath.

But An didn’t hesitate.

She surged forward, not with rage, but with purpose. Blood threads burst to life around her like cracks through shattered glass, coiling through the smoke. They shimmered, still red, still sharp, but not aimed to kill. Only to shield. She moved across the ruined ground in a blur of motion, driven not by vengeance but by grief. Kohane’s body, already beginning to change, already starting that irreversible fade into ash and memory, lay cradled in ruin. An collapsed beside her, a cry caught in her throat, threads flickering wild from her fingers.

Kanade had turned, scythe still in hand, prepared for retaliation. But before she could brace, the threads came, fast and striking.

Mizuki reacted instinctively. Training overtook emotion. Her gun lifted, hands steady once more. She moved in front of Kanade without thinking, aiming for An with calculated precision. Bullets cut through the air, shattering a few of the threads.

But An didn’t retaliate.

She wasn’t fighting anymore.

Her blood threads didn’t lunge, didn’t slash or tear. Instead, they wrapped inward, curling protectively around her and the rapidly fading form of Kohane. The cocoon shimmered as it formed, a sphere of crimson strands weaving tightly together. The same technique An had once used against Mizuki in their last fight, a defensive shell built from agony and instinct. 

Kanade blinked, realization dawning too late.

“Everyone, retreat!” she shouted, her voice hoarse and cracking. “Now!”

The hunters obeyed without question, vanishing into the smoke like shadows. Kanade lingered a second longer, her scythe lowering, her expression unreadable.

Then she turned, retreating into the haze.

Mizuki hesitated.

Her boots scraped against broken stone, heart thundering, lungs tight. She followed after Kanade, but not before casting one last glance back over her shoulder. The cocoon pulsed softly in the darkness, enclosing Kohane’s remains and An’s trembling form.

It didn’t explode. It didn’t lash out. It only breathed.

Softly. Quietly. As if it were cradling grief itself.

And that, more than anything, sat heavy in Mizuki’s stomach. Guilt, maybe. Or something deeper. Something she didn’t know how to name.

Because what she realized, what none of the others knew, was that there was never going to be an explosion.

There was only An.

And what little she could still protect.

Inside the cocoon of thread and blood, the world was silent. Everything outside, the smoke, the crumbling walls, the retreating chaos, faded to a distant blur. An stayed curled at the center, her limbs trembling, her chest aching with the kind of pain that made breathing feel violent. The threads around her pulsed faintly, curling and shifting not like weapons anymore, but like arms, desperate, shaking, trying to hold onto something already fading.

Kohane’s body was almost gone.

There was no weight in An’s lap anymore, no breath, no sound. Her clothes were scorched, stained with blood, and empty. The warmth had long since fled. The only thing left was the smallest of shapes, delicate, cool to the touch, resting in the center of An’s palm. A single blue earring. It still shimmered faintly, untouched by the ash, untouched by death.

And An broke.

Her sobs were soundless, but they shook through her like thunder. Her fingers curled tightly around the earring as if she could anchor herself to it, to Kohane, to something, anything. She wasn’t mourning a lover. But something quieter, steadier. Because Kohane had loved her. Openly, quietly, without expectation. She had offered her loyalty, trust, belief, love that was never demanded, only given. And An had known. Somewhere deep down, she had always known. But she had never felt the same. Not like that.

She hadn’t fallen in love with Kohane. But she had cared for her, fiercely, in her own way. Kohane’s presence had meant safety, softness, a rare warmth in a world full of sharp edges. An wasn’t grieving a romance that never was; she was grieving a presence that had held her up without asking for anything in return. And now, all of that was gone, fading in her hands, leaving only the weight of a one-sided love and the silence of something irreplaceable.

An was left clutching a memory, small, fragile, fading, mourning not what could have been, but what had been lost anyway.

The cocoon opened.

Not in violence, not in defense. It unspooled softly, thread by thread, parting to reveal her, not a threat, not a vampire to be feared, but just a girl on the ground, bent over a memory she could never hold again.

Mizuki saw it all from the shadows.

She had stayed back when Kanade ordered the retreat. She didn’t know why. Some part of her legs had moved too slow, some part of her heart too confused. But now she understood. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she never would. All she knew was that the thing she had expected, a final act of vengeance, of destruction, had never come.

Instead, there was this.

An on her knees. Her body shaking. Her eyes red and hollow and full of something Mizuki couldn’t name. There was no fight in her. No rage. Only loss. Deep and final.

Just as Mizuki took a step forward, 

Someone else arrived.

Toya.

He emerged from the ruins, pale and dust-covered, his cloak torn and trailing behind him. His face was streaked with blood, his or someone else’s, it was hard to tell, and the air around him shimmered with the faintest remnants of powers, ice cracking off his shoulders in fine glittering shards.

He saw An.

And then he saw the earring.

His breath hitched. Just once. But that was all it took.

“I’m…” he started, stepping closer. “I’m so sorry.”

His voice was soft, hoarse with exhaustion. But it carried. It settled into the ash around them like snowfall. Slow. Final.

“She was a great companion,” he added, kneeling beside An, careful not to touch her. “She never gave up. Not once. Even when she should’ve. She… she always came back for us.”

An didn’t lift her head. Didn’t answer. Just clutched the earring tighter. Her throat worked like she wanted to speak but couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. There was nothing to say. Nothing that could reach across that divide.

Toya looked away, gaze briefly sweeping the battlefield as the final embers of the fight flickered out.

Then, quieter, he said, “I found the leader.”

An stirred.

“What do you want to ask him?” Toya continued. “If there’s anything you need to know… now’s the time.”

It took a long moment for her to lift her head. And when she finally did, her face was a wreck, red, raw-rimmed eyes, tear-streaked cheeks, lips bitten nearly bloody. She looked nothing like the composed figure she once pretended to be. Just someone cracked open by loss. Someone who had no words left for what this had become.

“Nothing,” she whispered.

Toya frowned slightly. “What?”

Her voice was stronger the second time. Clear. Bitter.

“I don’t want anything. No answers.”

She lifted her gaze to him, finally, and what he saw in her expression made something in him recoil.

“Just kill him,” she said. “I don’t care anymore.”

There was a pause. A beat where silence reigned again. Then Toya nodded.

“…Okay.”

He didn’t argue. Didn’t offer words of comfort or resistance. Just turned.

But something shifted in him.

Not dramatic. Barely noticeable. Just the quiet way his shoulders tensed, the stillness that settled into his spine like a held breath. The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth that didn’t quite become a frown. A flicker of something deeper, grief, maybe, or memory, passing behind his eyes and gone before it could land.

His steps were steady. Deliberate.

But there was weight in them now. Something carried. Something left behind.

And though he didn’t look back, didn’t say a word, his silence spoke of something old. Something personal. Something heavy.

Tsukasa would be next.

And Toya would see it through. Quietly. Precisely.

Because he had to.