Chapter Text
Nirei saw the child in a moment of distraction.
He shouldn't have been distracted, of course — there was a fight going on. But fighting was something he often couldn't participate in. He wasn't good at it.
His kind and gentle classmates never blamed him for it, but he always tried to join in with all his might, as if trying to prove something. Until "that incident."
After several days of heated discussions and debates among Kiryuu, Tsugeura, and Haruka, they decided to draw a line for Nirei's involvement. The three of them (sometimes with Sugishita as well ) would assess the opponent's strength. If they decided Nirei wasn't suited to join, his primary task was to protect himself. If they thought he could handle it, then he could use it as a test for himself.
Today was clearly a situation where Nirei shouldn't step in.
The opposing side was a bunch of reckless thugs, many of them wielding homemade weapons: ordinary wooden bats, bats with nails, iron rods...
Fortunately, at the very beginning, Sakura, Sugishita, and Tsugeura worked together and took down a good number of those in the center with the most dangerous weapons. The rest of the class attacked and dodged, mostly handling the remaining opponents, though they were all barely keeping up.
For a moment, Nirei had a strange flashback to the Keel battle. But he knew this wasn't the same. Everyone had improved so much since then. Besides, at the very least, the person who had stood in front of him back then was no longer there.
Stop thinking about that.
He leaned against a telephone pole and looked up. In the corner of his vision, he caught a flash of red. Before his heart could race, he recognized it as just a child's clothing. The relief he started to feel was immediately crushed — this was no place for a child.
He kept his eyes fixed on that child, praying that this kid who had run out from some unknown street would leave quickly. But that was too late. Several of the thugs had spotted the child. They exchanged grinning glances, then broke away from the group and headed straight for the kid.
Nirei Akihiko's nails dug into his palms. Why do these people always have to resort to cheap tricks when fighting? But this was no time to dwell on that. He quickly scanned his classmates: Sakura and Kiryuu were surrounded by five enemies — not in immediate danger, but unable to break free; Sugishita was dealing with someone wielding a homemade spiked club, too preoccupied to help; Tsugeura flipped backward to dodge a swinging iron rod — clearly unable to assist anyone else. The other students were in similar straits. After sweeping his gaze across the scene, he realized that the only one with any spare capacity was himself.
Nirei bit his lip. Should I go?
He had a very clear understanding of his own abilities. If he went after them, there was no way he could beat those thugs. At best, he could lead them away from the child — but he was already running.
No matter what, I can't let that child get hurt. He remembered Bofurin's motto. This was one of those moments to step forward.
He wasn't entirely unprepared, though. The group chat had a location-sharing feature. He opened it in the class-wide group. Watching his own blinking dot move across the map, he tucked his phone into his deepest pocket. Just before the screen went dark, his gaze unconsciously fell on a teapot avatar in the member list.
As expected, he couldn't beat them.
When he spotted the thugs, he didn't hesitate. Following a side path from memory, he cut diagonally through the next intersection, creating a gap between two of the thugs, grabbed the child's wrist, and pulled the kid behind him. While the enemies were still off-balance, he lowered his voice and said, "Come with me." Then he half-dragged, half-carried the child as he ran.
He kept his head down and charged forward. Behind him, the sound of a wooden bat cutting through the air crashed into his ears.
They ducked into an alleyway filled with cardboard boxes. Using the corner wall for cover, Nirei shoved the child into a discarded box. He pressed down on the kid's trembling shoulders. In the dim light, he couldn't make out the child's pupils clearly enough to see whether his own face was reflected in them. "Go left, straight to the main road. Don't look back."
The child hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Nirei let go and headed in the opposite direction. He deliberately stepped harder, making sure the pursuers would immediately catch his location — as long as the child got away, that was enough.
He slipped into an even narrower alley. It was wrapped in years of damp cold: the smell of mildew, rust, and dust hanging in the air. Behind him, the shouts of his pursuers echoed from all directions. Footsteps quickly converged among the intersecting paths. A net was closing around him.
He turned two corners trying to get back to the main road, but at the third corner, he was blocked from the front. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw figures behind him as well. His escape route was gone. All Nirei could do was press his back against the rough wall and try to breathe as shallowly as possible. Still, his fingertips trembled from the tension. He thought of his blinking location in the group chat. He thought of his only feasible goal — almost laughable — "just hold them off."
He watched as the first wooden bat came down.
Nirei smiled bitterly and curled himself up, trying his best to protect his head and abdomen.
"Your back is important too, you know."
A voice sounded in his mind. Was it Kiryuu? Nirei tried to recall in his daze — it didn't seem so. A coral-red tassel with beads surfaced in his memory. In such a miserable situation, it seemed strangely fitting to think of him.
Nirei let his mind wander, hoping it would help him resist the physical pain. The thugs were mostly just shouting now — maybe their kicks and punches had lightened up. Nirei couldn't really tell anymore. His whole body was burning with pain, and the salty, bloody taste in his mouth could have been from his nose — he hadn't protected his head well enough — or from blood rising up from his throat.
From blood, he thought of the color red, and from there, to that boy with the red hair. It seemed like Nirei hadn't thought of him in a very long time. Or perhaps it hadn't been long at all.
It was something he never mentioned, so could never measure.
Through his daze, he felt the beating stop. Had they finally decided to let him go? He relaxed his arms slightly — and through the gap in his elbows, he saw an iron rod raised high.
Over.
His mind went blank.
In the seconds before he lost consciousness, he heard the thugs' shouts suddenly change in tone. Chaotic footsteps receded from around him like a tide, then stopped somewhere not too far away. What happened? A light seemed to shine in from the mouth of the alley that had been blocked off.
Someone lifted him from the ground. The movement was almost gentle, but on his battered and bruised body, it only stirred up new dull aches. He let out a soft, involuntary groan — and then heard a familiar yet unfamiliar voice close to his ear.
"You're safe now, Nire-kun."
The tone sounded angry — what's wrong? Nirei wanted to ask, but he quickly thought of something else: It's been so long since anyone called me that.
In his haze, he remembered that over the past year, everyone had grown close. They all called each other by their first names now. Even Haruka could say everyone's names naturally without turning red. The name "Nire-kun" existed only in a carefully folded corner of his memory — belonging to a boy who was always polite and distant, smiling as if through a thin mist.
The chest of the person holding him rose and fell gently against his cheek. Warmth seeped through the fabric of their clothes — just before unconsciousness swallowed him whole, he thought he caught the faintest scent of tea.
Suo was at the hospital room door when he saw Sakura and Kiryuu.
The classmates had followed the location tracker to the final spot, only to find the alley. Kiryuu guessed that Nirei's phone had been smashed, which was why the tracking stopped automatically. But then, where could the injured Nirei have gone? Everyone was frantic. Then a child appeared — they said that a big brother wearing the same clothes as them had saved them, and that he had yellow hair.
The child said the big brother had pulled them out of a ring of bad people, but then the brother himself got trapped in an alley — the child clenched the hem of their shirt as they spoke. Kiryuu crouched down and patted the child's head. "It's okay. Even though you could only watch, you were very brave." The child added that the brother had been taken away by someone else. That person had appeared very quickly, was very strong, and had taken down the thugs all at once. They couldn't see what that person looked like, but they definitely weren't wearing the same clothes.
The classmates exchanged glances. A very strong person who "helped" Nirei?
"Not necessarily help," Kiryuu said, patting the child's head and telling them to go home quickly. He stood up and looked gravely at his classmates. "He took Aki-chan away, and none of us received any word. So only that person knows where Aki-chan is right now." That's practically kidnapping. He didn't say it out loud. This person could very well have taken advantage of the chaos.
"Anyway, everyone split up," Sakura decided. "Taiga, you take some people and ask around if anyone saw them. Kyotaro, you and some classmates check nearby shops for security cameras. Mitsuki, take someone and call nearby hospitals to ask if they've admitted any Bofurin students."
He quickly assigned tasks and directed everyone to take action. He himself turned to join Tsugeura's group. He was already far too familiar with the process of searching for someone — so familiar it made his heart ache — but it wouldn't be like that.
He gritted his teeth.
He wouldn't lose Nirei Akihiko again.
He tried not to think about the person who had already left.
When the three of them met eyes at the hospital room door, they all froze at the same moment, though Sakura and Kiryuu had already had a faint premonition at the end of the hallway.
An awkward tension grew in the air. It was Kiryuu who spoke first, his voice low but enough to cut through the hesitation:
"Where's Aki-chan? Where is he?"
Suo took two seconds to realize he meant Nirei. His Adam's apple moved, but no words came out. He silently raised a finger and pointed to the hospital room behind him. Kiryuu patted Sakura on the shoulder. A reminder and also a restraint. then stepped past both of them and opened the door. A sliver of light spilled out from the hospital room, pale and harsh.
Before stepping in, Kiryuu turned his head and said in a low voice, "Keep it quiet in the hospital, okay?" The hint of teasing in his tone had also been thinned by the hospital's starkness — faint, almost absent, and yet it only made the worry more apparent.
He closed the door behind him, leaving only Sakura Haruka and Suo Hayato facing each other.
"Suo Hayato."
"Mm."
Suo leaned against the wall. The silence stretched time until it felt almost distorted. He could smell disinfectant and metallic tangs mingling in the air. He opened his mouth but couldn't form any words suitable for the moment. He swallowed the "I'm sorry" back down — he had a feeling Sakura wouldn't want to hear that.
Sakura walked toward him in silence. His fist tightened in mid-air, his knuckles turning white with the effort. The force built up little by little.
Suo made no move to dodge.
But the punch never actually landed on him. It grazed past his face and hit the wall — a dull thud. Tiny flecks of paint dust fluttered down from the wall and landed on Suo's shoulders, like the snow he had missed watching with everyone last winter.
Sakura pulled his hand back and let it fall to his side, not looking at him. There was white plaster dust on his knuckles, along with a few small scrapes. Suo could smell sweat and iron on Sakura, along with a faint trace of laundry detergent.
After a while, a shadow stirred behind the door. Kiryuu opened it and poked his head out. His gaze swept between the two of them, then he calmly announced:
"Aki-chan is awake."
That sentence pulled the loose threads back to where they belonged. Sakura turned on the spot, his steps more hurried than when he'd arrived, as if something was pulling him toward the hospital room.
And Suo stood by the door, unable to decide.
The corridor was empty again, with only him left behind. The paint dust had all fallen from his shoulders by now. But he was still afraid — afraid that he might carry something cold inside, like snow.