Chapter 8

The first truly bad thing happened on a Thursday.

That felt unfair.

Bad things should have the decency to arrive with thunder, or omens, or at least a suspiciously dramatic sky. Thursday should have been safe. Thursday was inventory day. Thursday was when Hearthbell donated yesterday’s loaves to the Greenwall shelter and Mara complained. Thursday was when the head baker made seed rolls because the old dwarven couple from Bramble Street always came by for them, and I was allowed to add a tiny extra honey glaze to the last tray if no one was looking, which everyone was, but kindly.

It had been a good shift.

Not perfect. Good.

Riko had messaged too much in the morning, then not enough in the afternoon, then exactly once near closing.

Riko: Come home fast.

That was all.

No heart. No joke. No peach boy. No demand that I say it better.

Just come home fast.

So I did.

I packed the leftover cinnamon roll I had saved for her, checked my patch twice, told Mara goodnight, and stepped out into New Avalon’s evening with my work bag tucked close and my chest doing that foolish warm thing it did whenever I imagined Riko waiting by the window. The city was gold and violet above me. Living vines glowed along the railings. The old stone gargoyles watched the lower avenues with sleepy eyes. Tram sparks snapped blue where the rails curved toward the station, and somewhere high above, a castle bell rang nine slow notes from a tower built into the crown of an ancient skyscraper.

Home was three train stops away.

Riko was probably there already.

Maybe she had made tea too strong again. Maybe she had reorganized my shelf. Maybe she was sitting on the bed pretending she had not been anxious all day. Maybe she would grab my sleeve the moment I came in and say, “You took too long,” and I would say, “I came straight home,” and she would say, “Still too long,” and then I would kiss her because sometimes the same argument could become a soft thing if you handled it carefully.

I laughed aloud on the sidewalk.

A woman walking a tiny feathered lizard looked over at me. I smiled. She looked confused, then smiled back. A small thing. Good. I tucked it away automatically, another good thing for the list if I remembered to write it down later.

New Avalon glittered in evening festival lights. Gaycation decorations still hung over the streets in ribbons of color and little floating lanterns shaped like hearts, masks, keys, and wings. Castle towers rose above the old city bones, their battlements washed in pink, blue, gold, and green mana light. Vines curled around brass signs. Far above, a tram crossed a living wood bridge between two skyscraper keeps, windows lit like a necklace in the dusk.

I loved the city.

I really did.

Even when it hurt me.

The walk to the station was easy enough. Nobody bothered me. A Luminari dropped a bag of onions, and I helped gather them before they rolled into the street. A little paper charm got stuck on my horn, and a child giggled while I carefully peeled it off and handed it back. The station entrance glowed warm beneath ivy and white stone, the sign overhead pulsing Crownline Eastbound in gold script.

Then I heard shouting.

At first, it blended into station noise. People argued in New Avalon all the time. About train schedules. About guild taxes. About whether monster insurance covered roof damage if the monster was technically someone’s escaped familiar. Noise was noise. I kept walking, adjusting the paper bag in my hand.

Then I heard Riko’s voice.

My whole body stopped.

Not the teasing voice. Not the sharp, playful one. Not the soft one that said I love you into my shirt like she was afraid the words would run away.

This was Riko cornered.

“Stop,” she snapped. “Stop saying that.”

A man answered, ragged and desperate. “Then come home with me.”

My stomach dropped.

I moved toward the sound before my thoughts caught up.

The train platform opened ahead, crowded with evening commuters. People had formed one of those awful public circles that was not really a circle because everyone pretended not to be watching while absolutely watching. In the middle stood Riko.

And the adventurer from the train.

For half a second I did not know him.

Then my body did.

My shoulder remembered the platform. My tail remembered the stone. My lungs remembered trying to breathe while his boot lifted toward my face.

He looked worse than I remembered. Not weaker. Not exactly. But undone. His cheap plated jacket was unfastened, guild badge hanging crooked. His hair was messy like he had run his hands through it too many times. His eyes were red around the edges. Two other adventurers stood behind him at a distance, a woman with a bow and a man with a shield, both looking like they wanted to be anywhere else and also did not dare leave.

Riko stood opposite him with her bat in one hand.

She had not raised it.

Not yet.

Her red orange hair was tied high, but strands had come loose around her face. Her eyes burned red, then flickered blue, then red again. Her jacket was open over a black top, one shoulder bare, cyan seams pulsing too fast beneath porcelain skin. She looked furious. She looked scared. She looked like someone had ripped the floor open under her feet and she was trying to threaten gravity.

The adventurer took a step forward.

“Mira,” he said.

Riko flinched.

Barely anything.

But I saw it.

Mira.

“Mira, please,” he said again, and his voice broke around the name. “Just talk to me. You can’t just disappear. You can’t send one message and vanish like none of it happened.”

Riko’s head snapped toward me.

She saw me.

Everything in her expression changed at once.

Panic.

Pure panic.

“Yuzu,” she said.

The adventurer turned.

His face went blank when he saw me.

Then recognition arrived.

Slowly.

Ugly.

“You,” he said.

My hands tightened around the bakery bag.

The cinnamon roll inside crinkled softly.

Riko moved between us too fast. “Don’t.”

The adventurer stared past her at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Don’t talk to him,” Riko snapped.

He laughed once. It sounded nothing like amusement. “Him? That’s him?”

Riko’s eyes flashed. “Shut up.”

“Mira.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“That’s your name.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It was your name yesterday. It was your name for two years.”

The crowd shifted. Someone whispered. I heard my own heartbeat under it.

My mouth went dry.

Riko’s fingers tightened around the bat. “Go away.”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said. “Your party has been looking for you. Do you understand that? We thought something happened to you.”

“Something did happen,” she said sharply.

His face twisted. “Don’t.”

“You happened.”

That stopped him.

Riko seized on it like a blade. She turned toward me, words spilling faster now, too fast, too bright, each one trying to build a bridge before the last one fell into the water. “Yuzu, listen to me. He’s dangerous. You know he is. You saw him. He threw you off the train. He’s violent. He’s always been violent.”

My breath caught.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

Riko froze.

The platform noise seemed to shrink.

Her eyes flickered cyan.

Then red.

“What?”

I swallowed. “How do you know he threw me off the train?”

The adventurer looked between us.

Riko opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

“I you told me.”

“No,” I said softly. “I didn’t.”

Her face went still in the way I hated. The way where every emotion vanished because too many were trying to come out at once.

The adventurer laughed again, this time colder. “She was there.”

I looked at him.

He looked awful.

Triumphant, maybe, but only because he was hurt enough to grab any weapon he could find.

“She was on that train,” he said. “With me. With us. She watched the whole damn thing.”

My fingers went numb around the bakery bag.

Riko moved toward me. “Yuzu ”

“You watched?”

“I didn’t know you yet.”

“You watched him throw me?”

Her mouth trembled. “I ”

The adventurer’s voice sharpened. “Then she followed you.”

“Shut up,” Riko hissed.

“She followed you because she thought it would be funny.”

“That’s not ”

“That’s what you said,” he snapped. “You said, ‘Watch this. He’s cute. I bet he cries pretty.’”

My stomach turned.

No.

No, no, no.

Riko’s face crumpled so fast that for one terrible second I wanted to comfort her more than I wanted to breathe.

“That was before,” she said.

“Before what?” the adventurer demanded. “Before you fucked him? Before you moved into his apartment? Before you ghosted me with one breakup text after two years?”

I stared at Riko.

She would not look at me.

“Riko,” I said.

The name felt different in my mouth now. Still hers. Still loved. But suddenly wrapped in paper I had not known was there.

The adventurer’s jaw tightened. “That isn’t even her fucking name.”

Riko flinched again.

My chest hurt.

“Stop,” I said.

I did not know who I was saying it to.

Both of them maybe.

The adventurer pointed at her. “Her name is Mira. Mira Vale. She’s our scout. Our tech. Our pain in the ass. My ” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard, and when he spoke again the rage sounded thin over something much sadder. “She was my girl.”

Riko hugged herself with one arm, bat hanging low in the other hand.

“I picked Riko,” she said, so quietly I almost missed it. “I picked it because I thought Yuzu would like it.”

That hurt worse somehow.

The sweetness inside the lie.

The way it had been true and false at the same time.

The adventurer stared at her like she had reached inside his chest and rearranged things.

“You renamed yourself for him?”

Riko’s eyes filled with light.

“I picked him,” she said.

It came out desperate.

A defense. A confession. A plea.

“I picked him. That has to matter.”

The adventurer looked like he had been slapped.

“You didn’t pick,” he said. “You ran.”

“I left you.”

“You vanished.”

“I texted.”

“You wrote, ‘I’m done. Don’t look for me.’ That was it, Mira. After everything, that was it.”

Riko’s mouth opened.

No words came.

His face twisted with grief now, open and ugly and public. “I know I wasn’t perfect. I know I told you to stop texting so much sometimes. I know I missed messages. I know I was tired after quests and I didn’t answer right away. I know I told you that you were too much when I shouldn’t have.” His voice shook. “But disappearing like this? Leaving me to find out from other people? Do you even understand how cruel that is?”

Riko’s eyes went red.

“I was scared!”

“You were always scared!”

“Because you made me feel crazy!”

“No,” he snapped. “You made every silence into betrayal. Every job into abandonment. Every conversation with another woman into a war. I loved you, and you still made me prove it every hour until there was nothing left of me but apologies.”

My messages. My check ins. Say it better. Again. Tell me. Prove it. Don’t be there without me.

The adventurer looked at me then, and whatever grief had been in his face curdled into disgust.

“And you,” he said.

Riko stepped forward. “Don’t.”

He ignored her. “You little freak.”

The platform went cold around me.

My patch pulsed amber beneath my sleeve.

“You people can’t help yourselves, can you?” he said. “Oni. Orc blooded. All of you. Doesn’t matter how small they make you. Doesn’t matter how cute the horns are. You see someone else’s woman and that biology kicks in.”

My ears rang.

Riko lifted the bat. “I will break fucking your jaw.”

He laughed bitterly. “Go on. Defend him. That’s what they do, right? Make you think it’s your idea.”

My hand went to my patch.

I did not mean to.

It just moved.

Amber. Working. Suppressed. Safe.

Was it enough?

Had it been enough?

Dølls were immune.

Riko said Dølls were immune.

Riko had also said she was a virgin. Riko had said the video was old. Riko had said roommate. Riko had said her name was Riko. Riko had said a lot of things.

My stomach folded around something sharp.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Riko turned toward me slowly.

“What?”

My voice sounded strange. Small, but not soft. Not exactly. “How do you know you’re immune?”

Her face went white.

“Yuzu.”

“You said Dølls are immune. But how do you know?”

“I know because I know.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It is.”

“No,” I said.

The word came out harder than I expected.

Riko stared at me like the sound had struck her.

I almost apologized.

I did not.

I could feel something hot moving under my ribs. Anger. Real anger. Not big. Not loud. But mine. The patch was on. It was working. The feeling still existed.

That scared me.

The adventurer seized on it immediately. “See? Even he knows.”

“Shut up,” Riko said, but her voice was cracking.

He stepped closer, eyes shining with ugly vindication. “He knows what he is.”

I looked at him.

That was a mistake.

Because he was wrong in every way that mattered and right in just enough ways to hurt.

I had been the other man.

I had not known.

But I had been.

Riko had belonged somewhere else. Loved someone else. Hurt someone else. And I had been there, soft and eager and lonely, letting her call me good boy and mine while another person was waiting for messages that never came.

Monster.

The word did not come from him.

It came from somewhere old inside me.

A customer’s eyes on the pastries. A train platform. A patch blinking amber. A doctor saying difficult. My own party running away from me in fear. My own body, too strong, too scented, too much, no matter how small I tried to make it.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered.

The adventurer’s face twisted. “Does that fix it?”

“No.”

Riko made a broken sound. “Yuzu, don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t let him make you think ”

“You lied.”

Her eyes flooded.

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“When I stopped asking questions?”

She flinched.

“When it couldn’t ruin things?”

“Stop,” she whispered.

My anger wavered under the pain in her voice.

The adventurer moved.

Fast enough that maybe he thought he was still the strongest person in the conversation. His fist came toward my face, all grief and rage and wounded pride packed into one stupid punch.

I caught it.

One hand.

The sound was small.

Flesh against palm.

Then silence.

The platform stopped breathing.

The adventurer froze.

So did I.

His fist strained in my grip.

It went nowhere.

He was bigger than me. Taller. Armored. Adventurer trained. Human in the way people trusted by default.

I was four foot nine without horns.

I was an oni.

Level ten.

Retired.

Small.

Soft.

Bakery boy.

My fingers closed a fraction tighter around his fist.

Not much.

Enough.

His face changed.

Pain first.

Then fear.

Real fear.

The kind I had seen my whole life.

The kind that said, oh.

This is what you are.

My heart pounded.

I could lift a horse if I wanted to. Not easily, maybe. Not comfortably. But I could. I had points in Strength from my adventuring days. More than people assumed. More than I liked thinking about. The System made size into a suggestion if the numbers were high enough, and my numbers were not huge, not impressive by true adventurer standards, but they were more than enough to turn a human hand into broken pieces if I squeezed.

The hot thing inside me rose.

He had hurt me.

He had hurt Riko.

He had hurt me.

He had hurt Riko.

The hot thing inside me rose.

His fist trapped in mine while his face twisted with pain and fear and all the ugly things he thought about me suddenly became something physical.

I was still holding him.

I meant to let go.

I really did.

Then Riko sobbed behind me.

Just one little broken sound through her teeth, like she was trying to keep herself from falling apart and failing.

My attention flicked to her.

My grip tightened.

There was a wet, snapping sound.

The adventurer screamed.

For one strange second, I did not understand why.

Then his arm came away in my hand.

The platform erupted.

Screams. People falling backward. The bowwoman behind him shouted his name. The shield man lunged forward, then stopped so hard his boots scraped the platform when he saw what I was holding.

I stared at the arm.

It was still armored from wrist to elbow. Warm. Heavy. Bleeding less than I expected because the tear had been fast and his body was doing that adventurer thing where the System tried very hard to keep people from dying immediately.

The adventurer collapsed to his knees, clutching the stump just below the shoulder, face white, mouth open around sounds that were not quite words.

“Oh,” I said.

My voice sounded distant.

Then, because everyone was screaming and nobody seemed to be doing the obvious thing, I crouched and held the arm out toward him.

“Here.”

He stared at me.

I blinked. “You can just put it back on.”

His scream turned into a choked sound.

“Don’t drop it,” I added, because that felt important. “If it touches dirty platform stone, you’ll need to rinse it before potioning. Or maybe not. Human arms might be less picky. I don’t know. Mine usually reattached fine if I held the pieces together quickly enough.”

The bowwoman made a horrified noise.

Riko stared at me like she had never seen me before.

That hurt.

A little.

Maybe more than a little.

“What?” I asked, still holding the arm. “It’s not ruined.”

The shield man roared and charged.

I turned too late to see his face clearly, only the flash of steel coming toward my chest. He had drawn a short, heavy stabbing blade, the kind built for punching through armor seams. It struck me just below the ribs.

The blade shattered.

Not bounced.

Shattered.

Metal broke against my skin under my shirt with a bright, crystalline crack, shards spraying across the platform like dropped silver. The impact shoved me half a step back, more surprising than painful. My shirt tore a little. My skin underneath was unbroken.

The shield man froze.

So did I.

I looked down at the hole in my shirt.

Then at him.

“That was my work shirt.”

His eyes widened.

I did not decide to move.

Movement happened.

Lightning took me in a short, sharp snap.

A white gold crackle that broke my shape into a streak and threaded me through the space between his legs before the broken blade finished falling. I reformed behind him in a crouch, one hand still holding the severed arm, and kicked backward.

A donkey kick.

Mara would have laughed at the form.

My heel struck the shield man between the backplate and spine.

He flew.

Straight across the platform.

Into the tiled wall beside the route map.

The impact punched him into it hard enough to crater the old station stone and crack the newer Pendragon reinforcement runes. The wall swallowed half his body. His shield clanged to the floor, spun once, and fell flat.

For one long second, he did not move.

Someone whispered, “He killed him.”

I frowned. “No, I didn’t.”

Probably.

I looked at the wall.

The shield man groaned.

See?

Not dead.

The crowd had gone very quiet now.

People were still breathing too hard, crying, whispering, pulling children back. But the screaming had stopped in that terrible way screaming stopped when fear got organized. The circle around me widened. I was standing in the center of it with a bloody arm in one hand, a torn shirt, flour still on one horn, a cinnamon roll crushed in a bakery bag against my hip, and the adventurer I had accidentally disarmed kneeling at my feet.

Disarmed.

That was bad.

That was an awful thought.

My mouth twitched.

Not funny.

Do not laugh.

Absolutely do not laugh.

A red and white system window burst open in front of my face.

[System Notice]

Combat Engagement Detected.

(Dice: FUCK YES. YES. FINALLY. THERE HE IS. THERE’S MY LITTLE CRAZY MURDER MONSTER. Gods, I feel like I just snorted powdered lightning off a mirror.)

I sighed.

“Not now.”

Riko stared at me. “Who are you talking to?”

“The worst god.”

[System Notice]

Unarmed Dismemberment Successful.

(Dice: Technically armed disarmament now. Because you have his arm. This is why I do this job.)

“I didn’t mean to.”

(Dice: That makes it better. Not morally. Comedically.)

The adventurer whimpered.

I looked down at him and held the arm out again. “You should really take this.”

He recoiled.

“You need pressure,” I said. “And maybe a potion. Do you have a potion? Most adventurers carry one. If not, I have bakery burn salve, but I don’t think that’s rated for shoulders.”

His face had gone gray.

The bowwoman rushed to him, fumbling in a pouch for a healing vial. She kept glancing at me like I might eat her if she moved too fast.

I did not like that.

I set the arm down gently beside her.

“Line it up before pouring,” I said. “If you pour first, the muscle seals weird and then you have to cut it open again. That’s annoying.”

She stared at me.

The adventurer made a wet, terrified sound.

“It’s okay,” I said automatically. “It grows back if you mess up, right?”

Nobody answered.

I frowned.

Humans were weird.

No. Not humans. Most people. Most people did not treat losing limbs like a scheduling issue. I knew that. I did know that. I just forgot sometimes because adventuring had been full of things that tore, crushed, dissolved, ate, regrew, reattached, or replaced body parts as naturally as other people changed socks. I had once lost three fingers to a frostjaw trap, stuck them in a lunch tin, finished the room, and put them back on during the loot split because it seemed wasteful to stop in the middle.

That had made sense at the time.

It still sort of made sense.

The system window danced happily beside my face.

[System Commentary]

(Dice: Look at this. Look at this beautiful disconnect. “Oops, arm came off. Just slap it back on.” Gods, I missed you.)

“I work in a bakery now,” I muttered.

(Dice: And yet here we are, standing in public with someone else’s limb and a shattered dagger. Funny how destiny smells like blood.)

Riko moved closer.

Not toward the injured adventurer.

Toward me.

“Yuzu,” she said carefully.

I looked at her.

Her eyes were wild. Red, cyan, gold, red again. Tears of light still tracked down her cheeks, but she was not looking at the arm. Not really. She was looking at my face.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked.

I stared.

“What?”

Her voice trembled. “Are you mad at me?”

Around us, people were backing away. The bowwoman was trying to press the severed arm back to her teammate’s shoulder while the shield man groaned from inside the wall. Station security bells had begun ringing somewhere down the platform. Three city knights in green white armor were pushing through the crowd, hands on weapons. Someone was shouting for a healer.

Riko did not care.

She reached for me, then stopped just short of touching my sleeve.

“Yuzu, please. I know this looks bad. He’s making it worse. He always makes things worse. He knows how to make me sound crazy. He knows what to say. He’s twisting everything.”

The adventurer, pale and shaking while his arm began to smoke under potion healing, gave a broken laugh. “I’m twisting?”

Riko spun toward him. “You threw him off a train!”

“You watched!”

“I didn’t know him yet!”

The words cracked across the platform.

She flinched as soon as they left her mouth.

I did too.

Riko turned back to me fast, too fast, panic swallowing her expression. “That came out wrong.”

“It didn’t,” I said.

Her mouth trembled.

“It came out true.”

Her face crumpled.

“No. No, Yuzu, listen. I was awful then. I know. I know I was awful. But I’m not that now. I’m not. You changed things. You made me want to be better. That has to matter. Tell me it matters.”

“It matters,” I said.

Immediate.

Automatic.

True.

Too easy.

Riko grabbed it like she was drowning. “Then don’t look at me like you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Say it better.”

I closed my eyes.

Pain moved through me.

Not from the dagger. Not from the fight. From the shape of the words. The old familiar hook, thrown even now, even here, even with blood on the ground and knights coming closer.

I opened my eyes again.

“I love you,” I said.

Riko’s breath caught.

“And I’m angry at you.”

Her whole body shook.

“That’s not better.”

“I know.”

“You’re supposed to make me feel better.”

The adventurer laughed again, weak and vicious. “There she is.”

Riko turned on him with a snarl.

I stepped between them before she raised the bat.

Not because I was choosing him.

Not because I was choosing her.

Because if she hit him now, something in all of us would get worse.

“Stop,” I said.

She froze.

So did he.

So did I, a little.

Because my voice had not been loud.

It had just been certain.

The city knights arrived with weapons drawn.

One was a human woman with a green plumed helm and a tower shield. One was a Luminari with silver eyes and pale glowing hair braided tight against his scalp. The third was a broad dwarf with a baton crackling with restraint runes. Their armor bore Pendragon’s crest: sword, crown, and bridge.

The woman looked at the arm on the platform.

Then the man in the wall.

Then me.

Her expression hardened in the very official way people hardened when paperwork would soon become violence.

“Hands visible,” she ordered. “Step away from the injured.”

I lifted both hands immediately.

Then realized one had blood on it.

Not mine.

Mostly.

“Oh crumbs,” I whispered.

The dwarf’s baton hummed louder.

Riko stepped forward. “He was attacked first.”

“Riko,” I said.

“He was!”

The adventurer gasped through clenched teeth as the potion forced muscle to remember where it belonged. “He tore my arm off.”

“I said sorry,” I protested.

Everyone looked at me.

I thought about it.

“I think I said sorry.”

[System Notice]

Transcript Review: No apology detected.

(Dice: You did offer practical limb care advice, which is honestly more intimate.)

“Not helping,” I hissed.

The Luminari knight’s eyes narrowed. “System interference?”

“Dice,” I said miserably.

All three knights looked more tired at once.

That was fair.

Dice was tiring.

The human knight raised her chin. “Name. Level. Rank.”

I swallowed. “Yuzu. Level ten. F rank. Retired.”

Her eyes moved to the adventurer’s guild badge.

Then to the shield man embedded in the wall.

Then back to me.

“Level ten.”

“Yes.”

“F rank.”

“Yes.”

The dwarf muttered, “Bullshit.”

[System Notice]

(Dice: See? He gets it.)

“I am level ten,” I said.

(Dice: Yes, sweetie, and a guillotine is technically furniture if you sit on it.)

The human knight’s hand tightened around her weapon. “You’re coming with us until this is sorted.”

My stomach dropped.

“No,” Riko said.

The knight looked at her. “Do not interfere.”

Riko’s eyes flared red. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That is not currently evident.”

“He was defending himself.”

The adventurer barked, “From what? My fist? He tore my arm off over a punch!”

I looked at him, confused. “You tried to punch me in the face.”

“With a fist!”

“Yes?”

He stared at me like that should explain something.

It did not.

A fist could kill someone if the stats were right. A spoon could kill. Weapons were mostly intention plus leverage plus System nonsense. People who thought fists were harmless had never been hit by the correct fist.

I almost said that.

Then decided it might not help.

The knights stepped closer.

My patch pulsed amber under my sleeve.

My heart beat too fast.

I did not want to be arrested. I did not want Mara called. I did not want Hearthbell to learn that I had caused a platform incident with multiple injuries. I did not want Riko to look at me like this was proof she ruined everything. I did not want the adventurer’s fear to become law around my throat.

Then another system window opened.

Smaller.

Older.

I had not looked at it in a long time.

[Title Reminder Available]

(Dice: Oh, are we finally remembering? Please tell me we’re remembering. It would be very funny if the city knights tried to put cuffs on you before reading the murder sticker.)

I frowned.

“Murder sticker?”

(Dice: Title. Badge. Warning label. Same thing.)

The knight said, “Last warning. Hands behind your head.”

I swallowed.

Then opened my title panel.

Not my full status. I hated my full status. Too many old things lived there. Too many choices I had made before patches and bakery counters and Charlie and trying very hard to become the kind of boy who did not solve problems by throwing himself at stronger monsters until one of them stopped moving.

Just the title.

The panel unfolded in front of me, black edged and gold lettered.

[Title Equipped]

Rank Reaper

Acquisition Requirement:

Kill an enemy at least 30 levels above you and three full rank brackets higher.

Recorded Acquisition:

Yuzu defeated a B rank entity while classified F rank.

Social Effect:

Extreme intimidation among trained combatants, guild personnel, knights, and system literate officials.

(Dice: Translation: the tiny boi once killed something that should have used him as dental floss. Please clap.)

The platform went very still again.

Different still.

The kind of still that happened when everyone suddenly realized the story was older than the part they had seen.

The human knight’s face changed first. Her eyes flicked over the panel. Then to me. Then down to my patch. Then back to the title.

The dwarf stopped muttering.

The Luminari knight went pale in a way that made his glow dim.

“Rank Reaper,” the woman said.

My ears burned. “I don’t use it much.”

“No,” the dwarf said faintly. “I imagine not.”

Riko stared at the panel.

The adventurer did too.

His face had gone from fear to something worse.

Recognition without understanding.

“You’re level ten,” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “I said that.”

“You killed a B rank?”

“I think it was B rank.” I scratched my cheek with my clean hand, then stopped because there was blood on the other one and I suddenly did not trust either hand. “It might have been a monster. Or an adventurer who had become a monster? There was a dungeon tree involved. And a lot of teeth. And a glowing fruit. The report used complicated words.”

(Dice: It was a B rank corrupted adventurer fused with a carnivorous orchard spirit. He ate the fruit afterward. The fruit, not the adventurer. Probably important context.)

“The fruit was useful,” I muttered.

The human knight lowered her weapon slightly.

Not fully.

But slightly.

“Title acknowledged,” she said. “This does not exempt you from investigation.”

“I know.”

“But it changes procedure.”

“That happens sometimes.”

The dwarf glanced toward the shield man in the wall. “Medical team first.”

The Luminari knight nodded sharply and moved to help pull him free.

The bowwoman had managed to align the adventurer’s arm. Healing potion hissed where flesh met flesh. The reattachment looked messy but functional. I crouched without thinking.

The adventurer flinched so hard he nearly ruined the alignment.

“Don’t move,” I said. “You’ll make the nerve seat wrong.”

“Stay away from me.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t want your help.”

I tilted my head. “Then why are you doing it wrong?”

His mouth opened.

Closed.

The bowwoman looked at me with desperate hatred and desperate need fighting in her face. “Do you know how to fix it?”

I nodded. “A little.”

She hesitated.

The adventurer shook his head frantically. “No. No, no, no.”

I sighed. “Your thumb is rotated wrong.”

His panic paused.

“What?”

“If it heals like that, your thumb will bend weird. Maybe not forever, but at least until a proper healer cuts and resets it.”

The bowwoman looked down.

So did he.

His face went greener.

“Oh gods.”

“May I?” I asked.

He stared at me.

His eyes were wet now. Fear. Pain. Humiliation. Hate. All of it tangled.

I could have been cruel.

The old me might have been practical enough to skip the asking and just fix the limb because efficiency mattered more than feelings. The old me had once relocated a man’s dislocated shoulder with a kick because he kept squirming and we had a frost touched chimera to chase. It had worked. He had complained a lot.

I was trying not to be old me.

So I waited.

The adventurer’s jaw shook.

Finally, barely audible, he said, “Fine.”

I took his arm gently.

He trembled.

I ignored the crowd. Ignored the knights. Ignored Riko’s eyes on me. Ignored Dice vibrating with divine glee somewhere above my left eyebrow.

“Hold still,” I said.

“I am holding still.”

“You are shaking.”

“My arm came off.”

“That does make stillness harder.”

He made a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh. Maybe both. Both things could be true.

I rotated the arm half an inch, pressed the shoulder joint into place, and poured the last of the potion along the seam with my free hand. The flesh hissed, bubbled, and knitted ugly but acceptable. He screamed through his teeth, but he did not pull away.

“There,” I said.

His arm twitched.

Fingers flexed.

Thumb moved correctly.

“See? Good as new. Mostly. Don’t lift anything heavy for a day. Maybe two. And do not punch oni.”

He stared at his hand.

Then at me.

His pants darkened.

For one second, nobody said anything.

Then I looked away because seeing that felt private in a way the arm had not.

The adventurer began to cry silently.

Not big sobs. Not dramatic. Just tears running down his face while his newly reattached fingers trembled in his lap.

My anger thinned.

Not vanished.

Thinned.

He was awful.

He had hurt me.

He had hurt Riko.

He was also a person sitting on a platform, smelling of fear and urine and heartbreak, holding an arm that had almost not been his anymore.

I hated complicated things.

Bread was much easier.

He looked up at Riko.

“She’ll cheat on you too,” he said.

The words came out broken, but they landed.

Riko went still.

I did not look at her.

Not right away.

The adventurer swallowed, eyes fixed on me now. “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But the second she thinks you’re leaving, the second you can’t answer fast enough, the second someone makes her feel wanted in a way you didn’t manage right, she’ll burn you too.”

Riko whispered, “Stop.”

He did not.

“She’ll say she picked you. She’ll say it matters. She’ll say she’s scared. And maybe she is. Maybe she loves you. Maybe she loved me. It won’t stop her.”

The platform seemed too cold.

My hand still smelled like blood.

Riko’s tears glowed brighter.

The city knight stepped between them. “Enough.”

The adventurer laughed weakly. “Yeah. Enough.”

The medical team finally arrived, two healers in Pendragon green with emergency kits and floating stretcher charms. They took the adventurer and his friend. The bowwoman followed, but not before looking at Riko once with an expression I did not know how to name. Rage. Pity. Betrayal. Maybe all of them.

Riko did not look back.

She looked at me.

Only me.

Like if she stopped looking, I would vanish.

The knights took statements. That part was blurry. Riko tried to answer for me twice. Mara arrived halfway through because of course someone had messaged Hearthbell, and her face did a complicated thing when she saw the platform, the blood, the knights, me, Riko, and the old title still hovering faintly above my shoulder.

“Yuzu,” she said carefully.

“I’m okay.”

She looked at the blood on my hand.

Then at the cracked wall.

Then at the title panel.

“Who are you?”

I looked down.

“I don’t know.”

Mara stared at me like she was trying to find the boy she knew somewhere under the blood, the title, the cracked station wall. Her hand had risen halfway toward my shoulder by habit, because Mara was the sort of person who touched first when someone was hurting, but it stopped before it reached me. Just stopped there in the air for half a second too long.

Her fingers curled.

Then she lowered her hand.

“Oh,” I said softly.

Mara’s face tightened. “Yuzu ”

“It’s okay.”

It was not okay.

It was absolutely not okay.

But everyone was watching and there was blood on the platform and the city knights were still there and Riko was standing too close to me with her eyes flickering like a broken stop sign, and I could not handle Mara looking afraid of me on top of everything else. So I smiled. Not the big bakery smile. Not the bright customer one. A tiny emergency smile.

“I’m okay,” I said again.

Mara looked like she hated that answer.

Riko stepped in immediately, like she had been waiting for a crack wide enough to push herself through. “See? He’s okay. He didn’t do anything wrong. They attacked him. You saw that, right? Everyone saw that. He was defending himself.”

Mara’s eyes moved to Riko.

Not gently.

Riko flinched, then hid it by lifting her chin.

The human knight with the green plume was speaking to another officer now, voice low, likely already turning my life into official phrases. Public disturbance. Self defense claim. Excessive force review. Title bearing former adventurer. Potential biological compliance concerns. I knew the shape of paperwork even when I could not hear the words. Paperwork had teeth. People pretended it did not, because teeth made it seem alive, but paperwork could absolutely bite.

Riko grabbed my sleeve.

“Tell her,” she said. “Tell Mara he started it. Tell her all of it. Tell her he was lying and trying to hurt me because he can’t stand that I left. He’s always been like that.”

I looked at her hand on my sleeve.

Then at her face.

She was beautiful and ruined and terrified. Her red orange hair had come loose. Her eyes kept changing colors too fast, red anger, blue fear, amber wanting, red again. Tears of light still shone under her lower lashes. She looked like she was trying to hold herself together by force and blaming the world every time another piece slipped.

“I don’t want more reasons,” I said.

Riko froze.

“What?”

“I don’t want more reasons why he’s worse.” My voice came out quiet, but she heard it anyway. “I know he’s worse. I know he hurt me. I know he said awful things. I know he tried to punch me. I know his friend tried to stab me. I know.”

Her grip tightened. “Then why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I want the truth from you.”

Her mouth opened.

No sound came out.

The city around us seemed very far away suddenly. The crowd was still there. Mara was still there. The knights were still there. The adventurer was still being loaded onto a floating stretcher with his reattached arm held across his chest. But for a moment, the only real thing was Riko’s hand on my sleeve and the fact that I could feel her trying to decide which version of herself might survive my next question.

“The truth,” I said again.

Her face twisted. “You say that like there’s one truth.”

“That sounds like something someone says when there are too many lies.”

She recoiled as if I had slapped her.

I almost apologized.

The apology rose up so fast it burned my throat.

(I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t look like that. Please don’t leave. Please don’t make me wake up alone again.)

But I did not say it.

That felt like violence against myself.

The kind I was used to.

Riko’s eyes went red. “Fine,” she said. “You want truth? Fine. He was not the only one.”

Mara sucked in a breath.

I went still.

Riko laughed once, sharp and broken. “There. Is that better? Is that true enough? He was not the only one I cheated with. Before you. During you. In the beginning. There were others. Men from clubs. Adventurers after jobs. Some pretty boy from a party whose name I didn’t even keep. People who looked at me like I was something they wanted for five minutes and then I made them prove it because I didn’t know how to stop needing proof.”

“Riko,” I whispered.

“No, you wanted truth.” Her voice climbed. “You wanted the ugly part, right? Here it is. I was a whore. Is that what everyone wants me to say? I was a stupid, needy, lying whore who wanted attention so badly I let anyone with hands and a pulse make me feel real for a few minutes.”

Mara’s face hardened.

Not at me.

At Riko.

“Your just selfish and cruel,” Mara said.

Riko turned on her. “Oh, fuck you.”

Mara did not flinch.

That was when I realized something awful.

Mara was afraid of me.

But she was still not afraid of Riko.

Not in the same way.

Mara looked at me now like I might accidentally break the world if I forgot it was fragile. But when she looked at Riko, she looked angry in a human way. Protective. Disappointed. Ready to grab a broom and beat sense into someone if necessary. It should have comforted me that she still had that kind of courage.

It did not.

Because the fear was still there when she looked back at me.

Riko pointed at Mara with a shaking hand. “Say it. Go on. Say it.”

Mara’s jaw worked once. “You want me to call you that? Fine. You acted like one. You used people. You used him. You used Yuzu. You used sex like a knife and a bandage at the same time, and then acted surprised when everyone bled.”

Riko’s face crumpled.

Mara immediately looked like she regretted saying it that way.

But she did not take it back.

Riko turned toward me, desperate now, words spilling out in a flood. “I was going to tell you. I was. I swear I was. I just didn’t know how because every time I tried, you looked happy, and I wanted one person to look happy because of me without knowing all the things I did.”

I could not speak.

The arm.

The title.

The name.

Mira.

Riko.

The video.

Roommate.

Last boyfriend.

Old.

Today.

Truth.

Everything stacked too high.

Riko kept going because stopping would have meant hearing herself.

“At first, I thought it was funny,” she said, and the words came out with a kind of horror, like she was confessing to a murder she had committed while asleep. “You. The train. The way he threw you, the way you looked so small, the way you disappeared into lightning and hid behind that troll. I thought you were cute and sad and pathetic and I wanted to see what would happen if I touched you.”

My stomach twisted.

She pressed both hands over her mouth, then dragged them down.

“I kissed you after I sucked off guys,” she said. “I did. I would leave him, or someone else, and come find you, and kiss you like I had not just had someone else’s cock in my mouth because I thought it was funny. Because you were so sweet. Because you believed me. Because you got flustered and looked at me like I was magic, and I wanted to see if I could make you keep looking.”

My hands went cold.

Mara whispered, “Gods.”

Riko sobbed once and laughed through it. “I was planning the panties thing from the beginning. I saw how embarrassed you got and I wanted to push it. I wanted to make you wear something of mine under your clothes before you even knew what we were. I thought it would be cute. I thought making you mine would be cute.”

I remembered the bunny note.

Yuzu has to wear these now.

Too cute not to.

Don’t argue, peach boy.

The memory felt different now.

Still warm.

Still embarrassing.

But stained.

Riko’s hands shook harder. “And the video. The one I sent at the party. It was not old. I lied. It was that night. I went to him because I was angry at you for going somewhere without me and I wanted to hurt you before you could hurt me. I thought if I made you feel what I felt, you would understand. I filmed it. I sent it. Then I lied.”

Mara made a sound under her breath that was almost a curse.

I closed my eyes.

There was no surprise left.

That was the worst part.

Every truth she gave me hurt, but none of them fully surprised me. Some small careful part of me had already known, or guessed, or collected the pieces and quietly refused to assemble them because the finished picture was too ugly to hang in my head.

Riko was crying openly now, light dripping down her chin. “I’m disgusting.”

I opened my eyes.

She looked at me like she wanted punishment.

Like punishment would be easier than uncertainty.

“I’m disgusting,” she said again. “I’m filthy and cruel and broken and I hurt everyone who loves me because I don’t know how to believe anyone will stay unless I ruin them first.”

I stepped toward her.

Mara said, “Yuzu,” very softly.

I stopped.

Not because she had ordered me.

Because her voice had fear in it.

There it was again.

My chest hurt.

I looked back at her. Mara, who had taught me how to fold honey twists tighter, who had covered for me when my eyes were red, who invited me to Gaycation because she thought I needed a life, who had seen me in a pink dress and smiled like it was something sweet and brave. Mara, who now stood with one hand near Sel’s emergency charm and the other clenched at her side like she did not know whether she was trying to protect me from Riko or everyone from me.

“I won’t hurt her,” I said.

Mara’s face broke a little.

“I know,” she said.

But she had hesitated too long.

I heard the words under the words.

(I hope.)

I nodded once, because if I tried to say anything else, I might cry.

Then I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around Riko.

She collapsed against me so hard I had to brace my feet.

Her body shook. Not with pretty crying. Not with little glowing tears for dramatic effect. She shook like something inside her had come loose and was trying to tear its way out. Her fingers clawed at my shirt, gripping fistfuls of fabric like I was a ledge over deep water.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I lied. I lied so much. I wanted to keep you. I wanted to be someone you could love.”

“I do love you.”

She cried harder.

My own eyes burned.

“I’m angry,” I said into her hair. “I’m hurt. I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know if I know how to trust you right now.”

Her fingers dug in.

“But I love you.”

“That’s stupid,” she whispered.

“Maybe.”

“You should hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“You should.”

“I don’t.”

She made a broken little sound.

I held her tighter.

The platform, the knights, the crowd, Mara’s fear, all of it pressed around us. But Riko was warm in my arms. Too warm. Shaking. Alive. Real. All of it was true, and none of it canceled the rest.

That was the horrible thing about truth.

It did not tidy up.

It only got heavier.

After a while, the knights finished asking what they could ask in public and told us we would all be contacted for further statements. Mara insisted on walking me home. Riko clung to my sleeve the whole way. Sel walked behind us, quiet and watchful. The city moved around us with terrible normalcy. Trains still came. People still argued. Someone was selling roasted chestnuts outside the station, and the smell made me want to be sick because it was too ordinary for what had happened.

No one talked much.

Riko kept trying to.

Tiny starts.

“Yuzu, I ”

Then stopping.

“Please don’t ”

Then stopping.

“I can explain ”

Then stopping, because there were no explanations left that would make the truth softer.

Mara walked on my other side without touching me.

That empty space between her hand and my shoulder felt bigger than the whole avenue.

By the time we reached my building, I was so tired that the stairs looked impossible.

I climbed them anyway.

Riko stayed close.

Too close maybe.

But I did not tell her to move away.

At my door, Mara stopped.

“I can stay,” she said.

Riko’s hand tightened on my sleeve.

I looked at Mara.

Then at her hand.

Then at her face.

The fear was still there.

Hidden now.

Better hidden.

But there.

Something in me sank.

“No,” I said. “It’s okay.”

Mara flinched.

I wished she had not.

“I’ll message you,” I said. “Actually.”

She nodded. “Please.”

“I will.”

She swallowed. “Yuzu… I didn’t know.”

I smiled a little. “I didn’t tell you.”

“Why?”

I looked down at my hands.

Clean now, mostly. Station sprites had taken the blood. My skin still remembered.

“Because I wanted to be who I am now.”

Mara’s eyes softened with grief.

“And who is that?” she asked.

I thought about bread.

Charlie.

Riko.

A broken arm in my hand.

A title I hated.

A dungeon fruit I had eaten at fourteen because I thought it might make me stronger and it had, which made it hard to call the decision entirely wrong.

“I don’t know,” I said again.

Mara closed her eyes.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Then she left.

Sel gave me one last look before following her. Not unkind. Not afraid exactly. Practical. Measuring. Like she knew Mara was hurting and was deciding how close danger stood to the person she loved.

That was fair.

I hated that it was fair.

Inside, Charlie waited by the window.

Riko shut the door behind us, then leaned against it like her legs had stopped working.

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Then she whispered, “She’s scared of you.”

I laughed once.

It did not sound like me.

“Yes.”

Riko’s eyes flashed red. “She shouldn’t be.”

“She should.”

“No.”

“Yes,” I said. “A little.”

She stared at me.

I went to Charlie first because I did not know what else to do. His silver leaves glowed in the city light. The bigger pot Riko had given him sat proudly on the sill, chipped at one edge because nothing in my life was allowed to be perfect for more than six seconds.

I touched a leaf.

“Hi, Charlie.”

Charlie did not answer.

Good.

Good plant.

I sat on the bed.

Riko stood by the door.

“I should go,” she said.

The words were fake.

A test.

A knife held backward.

If I said yes, she would break. If I said no, she would know she could stay. If I said nothing, both things would happen.

I was so tired.

“Do you want to go?” I asked.

Her face twisted. “No.”

“Then don’t.”

She crossed the room in three steps and dropped to her knees in front of me, grabbing both my hands.

“I won’t do it again,” she said.

I looked at her.

“I mean it,” she said desperately. “Since I moved in, I haven’t. I haven’t touched anyone else. I haven’t gone back to him. I haven’t. I know I lied before, but I’m not lying about that. Since Charlie. Since the window. Since I stayed. I haven’t.”

I believed her.

That was inconvenient.

Not because belief fixed everything, but because it made the wound more complicated. If she had only been lying now too, I could put her in a box labeled bad and maybe survive by closing the lid. But I believed this part. I believed that somewhere along the way the game had become real, and after it became real, she had tried to stop playing.

“I know,” I said.

Her shoulders shook.

“I don’t deserve that.”

“Maybe not.”

She looked up sharply.

I gave her a small, sad smile. “Truth, remember?”

She laughed through a sob.

“Truth is awful.”

“Yes.”

She pressed her forehead to my knuckles. “Tell me something ugly about you.”

The request was so Riko that I almost smiled.

Almost.

I looked toward Charlie.

Then toward the little shelf with my cookbooks and old adventure manuals.

“Okay,” I said.

Riko went still.

“I started killing monsters before my System unlocked.”

Her head lifted slowly.

“Systems unlock at twenty,” she said.

“Most people don’t need a System to pick up a rock.”

She stared.

“I was little,” I said. “Really little. Smaller than now. I hated that. I hated that everyone looked at me and saw cute first. Or dangerous. Or both. So I decided I would get stronger until neither mattered.”

Riko’s fingers tightened around mine.

“I snuck into a dungeon when I was twelve.”

Her mouth opened.

“You were twelve?”

“Mm hm.”

“Alone?”

“Mostly.”

“Yuzu.”

“It was not a very good plan,” I admitted. “But I thought if I left and came back stronger, people would have to stop treating me like something breakable.”

Riko whispered, “How long were you in there?”

“Two years.”

She stopped breathing.

Or doing whatever Dølls did instead.

I shrugged a little. “Not all in the same room. There were safe pockets. Old ruins. Food if you knew what not to eat. Things to steal from adventurers if you were quick.”

“You stole from adventurers?”

“I was twelve and hungry.”

“That is not what I’m upset about.”

“I know.” I looked down at our hands. “I stole potions. Knives. Manuals. Some boots. A lot of food. Once I stole a whole tent but it was bigger than me, so I dragged it through a mushroom field and ruined it. That one was sad.”

Riko stared at me like she had forgotten her own confession.

I continued because stopping felt worse.

“I ate anything that looked like it might make me stronger.”

“That is insane.”

“Yes.”

“Yuzu.”

“Glowing fruit, monster organs, dungeon herbs, spirit roots, crystallized slime cores, one scale from a sleeping wyrm. That one was a bad idea. My tongue was numb for three days. But my lightning got better.”

Riko’s eyes flickered gold despite herself. “You are insane.”

“I used to be more insane.”

“You are saying this like eating random dungeon organs is a cute childhood story.”

“It sort of is?”

“No, it is not!”

The edge of panic in her voice made me smile a little. “I thought it was fun.”

She stared.

I looked away. “That is the ugly part.”

The room went quiet.

The city glowed beyond the window. Charlie’s leaf moved in a faint draft.

“It was fun,” I said again, softer. “Danger was simple. Monsters did not look at me like customers did. They did not worry about my patch or my body or what I might do to their food. They tried to eat me, and I tried to kill them first. If I won, I got stronger. If I lost, I learned something or died. Simple.”

Riko swallowed.

“When I turned twenty, the System finally recognized me properly. I tried to join Pendragon. I thought that was what strong people did in New Avalon. Join a guild. Get ranked. Become real.”

I laughed under my breath.

“It had rules.”

Riko blinked. “Rules?”

“So many rules. No solo adventuring until B rank. Mandatory party assignments. Psychological assessments. Suppression compliance. Public hazard review. Training schedules. Equipment registration. Dungeon route approvals. I hated it.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“You hated rules?”

“I used to.”

“You work in a bakery.”

“I like bakery rules. Bakery rules make sense. Wash hands. Don’t burn bread. Label allergens. Very good rules.”

Riko made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh.

“Guild rules were different,” I said. “My party kept changing. People left. Got scared. Got injured. Requested transfers. One person stayed the whole time.”

Riko’s eyes focused on me.

“Who?”

“Leist.”

The name felt strange in my mouth after so long.

Riko’s grip tightened. “Who is Leist?”

I looked at the dark window and saw a ghost in it that was not mine.

Tall. Beautiful in a severe, impossible way. Dark skin like polished walnut. Long black hair that fell too perfectly no matter how much blood or rain got in it. Pale silver eyes that seemed bored until they were not. A face so sharp it looked drawn by someone who loved saints and executioners equally. He dressed like an old noble duelist who had robbed a vampire hunter’s wardrobe and improved it out of spite. White coat. Black lining. High collar. Silver buckles. A sword too thin to be practical until you saw what he could do with it.

“Leist was my party leader,” I said. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Pendragon assigned him officially. I ignored him unofficially.”

“That sounds like you.”

“Old me.”

Riko watched my face.

“He was… intense,” I said. “Cold. Commanding. The kind of person who could insult a noble, a dragon, and a priest in one sentence and make all three of them feel underdressed. He had this way of talking like the world was already late to obey him.”

Riko’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Did you love him?”

I blinked.

Then laughed, tiredly. “I don’t know.”

She did not like that.

I could feel it immediately.

Her grip tightened too much.

“I don’t,” I said again. “Not like you. Maybe I loved him like a direction. Or a storm. Or someone you follow because they are the only other person in the room who can see the monster under the floor.”

Riko’s expression twisted.

“He stayed,” I said. “Everyone else left eventually, but Leist stayed. He said I was a catastrophic investment with unusual returns.”

“That’s romantic?”

“No. That was Leist being nice.”

Riko stared.

I smiled faintly. “He was strange.”

“So were you.”

“Yes.”

I looked down at the patch on my forearm.

Amber.

Steady.

“Leist thought the suppressants were a waste,” I said. “He thought I was letting frightened people domesticate me because I had become tired of being misunderstood. He was probably right.”

Riko’s eyes brightened, almost hopeful. “Then take it off.”

“No.”

She flinched.

I touched the patch lightly. “He was right about some things. Not everything.”

Riko looked at me for a long time.

Then she whispered, “Do you miss it?”

I thought about the station wall.

The arm.

The title.

Dice laughing like a god at a blood circus.

The adventurer’s fear.

Mara’s fear.

My foot hitting armor and the body flying before I thought about how hard was too hard.

“Yes,” I said.

Riko’s breath caught.

“And no.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

She leaned her forehead back against my hands. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

“I don’t know what to do with you either.”

For some reason, that made her laugh.

Then cry.

Then laugh again while crying, which was very Riko and very sad.

I slid down from the bed to sit on the floor with her. She immediately crawled into my lap, desperate and shaking, and I let her. Maybe I should not have. Maybe Mara would have said I needed space. Maybe Sel would have stood in the doorway with crossed arms and practical eyes and said dependence was not safety.

They might have been right.

But Mara was afraid of me now.

The thought came quiet and devastating.

Mara had looked at me and asked, Who are you?

Not what happened.

Not are you hurt.

Who are you?

I did not know if I had lost her.

Maybe not forever.

Maybe not even truly.

But something had cracked, and I did not know how to fix it because the crack was not from a lie. It was from the truth.

Riko’s arms tightened around my waist.

“I’m still here,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes.

That was the dangerous thing.

She was.

After all the lies, all the leaving, all the panic, all the hurt, she was here. On my floor. In my lap. Crying into my shirt. Filling the space Mara had stepped back from. Filling every empty place she could find because she was terrified if she did not fill them, someone else would.

“I know,” I said.

“Don’t send me away.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise.”

I hesitated.

She went rigid.

I felt it.

The cliff edge. The old pattern. The place where her fear would become teeth if I did not give her the word fast enough.

I was so tired.

So I told a careful truth.

“I promise I’m not sending you away tonight.”

She shook.

It was not enough.

But it was not a lie.

She lifted her face. “Do you still love me?”

“Yes.”

“Say it better.”

Pain moved through me again.

But this time, I knew what it was.

“I love you, Riko,” I said. “And I need you to stop making me prove love while I’m bleeding.”

Her eyes went wide.

Then she broke against me, sobbing so hard her light tears soaked into my shirt.

“I don’t know how,” she cried. “I don’t know how to stop needing. I don’t know where the feelings go. They get too big and I do things and then I hate myself and then I need you to say I’m not what I did.”

I held her.

“I can’t make that true for you.”

“I know.”

“I can only tell you I see both.”

“Both?”

“You. And what you did.”

She cried harder.

Outside, New Avalon glittered like nothing had happened.

Inside, Charlie watched from the window, wise and leafy and silent.

I held Riko on the floor of my too small apartment, with my old title still somewhere in the System, my patch glowing amber, Mara’s fear lodged under my ribs, and Dice mercifully quiet for once.

Maybe he was watching.

Maybe he was bored by honesty when nobody was being dismembered.

Good.

Let him be bored.

I was tired of being entertaining.

I wanted bread.

I wanted Charlie.

I wanted Riko to stop shaking.

I wanted Mara to look at me like I was Yuzu again.

I wanted to know whether Yuzu was even a real answer or just the softest mask I had found after the dungeon.

Riko whispered, “I love you.”

I kissed the top of her head.

“I love you too.”

She said it again.

Then again.

Too many times.

Too desperate.

I answered every time.

Too quickly.

Too desperate.

Neither of us was healthy enough to know when to stop.

But for that night, on the floor beside the bed, under Charlie’s silver leaves and the distant glow of New Avalon’s castle lights, we held on anyway.