....
Sirens wailed in the distance, their echo weaving into the jagged night like distant wolves howling down civic protocol. Flashing red and blue stuttered over brick walls and concrete, streaking light across the puddles and the broken glass. Fatiba was sitting on the lip of the curb now, her fingers splayed across her lap like someone trying to remember what hands were for. Her hair was a mess—her hijab askew, cradling the smoke-drenched air like cloth that had seen war.
Shotaro knelt beside her—not in that knightly, swooping, poetic way people talk about heroes. No, he knelt the way tired boys do after gym class, elbows on knees, head tilted, breath still a little uneven.
"You alright?" he asked, not with warmth, but with that particular sharpness that came from someone trying very hard not to sound like he was worried.
Fatiba looked up, her cheeks still streaked with dried blood and sweat, and gave him a crooked grin that only someone with cracked ribs and a deep need to pretend everything was fine could wear so naturally. She swirled her hand in front of her chest, then twirled her bruised wrist in a flourish until her closed fist spun like a lazy ceiling fan.
"Oh, yes," she said, her voice drenched in sarcasm, "I'm great. I even got a built-in fan for this hot summer." She coughed out a short laugh, one that quickly curled into a wince as her ribs pulled against the bruise blooming beneath her blouse.
Shotaro rubbed the side of his jaw and let out a long, unfiltered sigh.
"Can't a man just do the formality?" He grumbled, more to the air than to her, like someone offended that concern wasn't being accepted like a receipt after a transaction.
Behind them, the scene looked like something out of a comic book held underwater. Paramedics and SWAT-clad officers moved around like insects—barking orders, setting up barriers, and tagging evidence. Stretchers rolled past. Blood smeared across body bags and bruised egos. And through it all came the unmistakable voice of someone who should've been too injured—or too rooted—to be this damn loud.
"You fucking fag!" screamed the decapitated plant-head of Dr. Gardener as it swung in a see-through evidence bag, the officer holding it grimacing like it might bite.
Shotaro didn't even flinch. He just closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and shook his head with the resigned grace of someone who had once been attacked by a sentient toaster and had never fully recovered from the trauma.
"Ignore them," he muttered, voice flat. Not dismissive—just spent. Like a man who's had to ignore too much already.
Fatiba watched the corners of his mouth twitch. Not upward in a smile, not downward in grief—just a flicker. Like something deep inside him hadn't yet decided how to feel. It was a fragile expression. One that could have belonged to a boy who'd just finished his homework or to a god who'd just ended a war.
And in that pause, with the cops shouting in clipped English behind them and the ambulance doors swinging shut like tombs, the city seemed to draw a shaky breath. As if whatever held it together—concrete, people, faith—was finally, barely, choosing to live again.
Shotaro reached for her hand. His was warm. Rough in the places that had learned how to grip a sword, gentle in the places that had learned how to let go of pain.
"Hold steady," he said, barely above a whisper. His voice was dry, like wind over ash.
She blinked. "What—?"
But he was already moving. His fingers trailed from her palm to her wrist, and before she could question him again, he pressed down—not hard, but with a certainty that told her he'd done this before.
Then it started.
First, the heat. Not warm like soup or sun or childhood. Not even hot like fire. This was something else. It felt like her blood had been replaced with molten iron—searing through muscle and marrow, creeping into the hollow cage of her ribs and gnawing at the fracture there. Her eyes flew open. She tried to yank her arm back, but his grip held firm—not cruel, but immovable.
She gasped, coughed, and let out a noise between a sob and a scream as something shifted inside her. A brutal, liquid light flowed through her bones, rebinding the cracks with agony so sharp it left her breathless.
And then—nothing.
Not numbness. Not absence. Just… stillness. No pain. No ache. Her ribs felt whole. Her wrist, functional. Her breath, untroubled. The kind of peace that only comes after something inside has burned away the rot.
She looked down at her arms in disbelief. Her voice was hoarse, like it had been dragging itself across gravel.
"What was that?" she asked him.
He didn't open his eyes. His breath fogged gently in the night air as the last of the energy shimmered between them and vanished.
"The mantra," he said. "The source of everything. With form or without?
She stared at him with that same shattered look in her eyes—somewhere between raw gratitude and righteous fury. Her lip quivered just slightly, the way it does when a person's not sure whether to scream at someone or throw their arms around them. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
"That felt like dying," she whispered, voice brittle, eyes rimmed with salt and dirt and disbelief.
He exhaled through his nose, a sound almost like a laugh, except no joy lived in it. Just weariness, the kind that hangs from the bones.
"It always does," he said. Then, casually, absurdly, without so much as brushing the dust off his sleeves, he added, "Let's go to school. We're only five minutes away from being late."
Fatiba blinked at him like he'd grown antlers. "What??" she squeaked, the tension snapping, spilling out in a panic as she dropped her bag and yanked out a water bottle. She splashed her face hastily, like cold water could rinse away the absurdity. "Are you out of your goddamn mind? Look at us! I look like I survived a car crash and you look like someone who fought in the UFC!"
She rubbed her cheeks furiously and snapped, "How the hell are we even supposed to get to school, Shotaro?! We're in the middle of a crime scene! The street's blocked, the police are still taping bodies, and I have no shoes!"
He didn't flinch. His tone was dry, matter-of-fact. "I can fly. I can teleport. I can use my sword to open a portal. I've got options."
She stared at him like he was reciting a grocery list. "Then why—and this is the part that's killing me—why do you walk everywhere like some kind of... urban monk with steel thighs? If you've got divine Uber powers, why are you always using your damn legs?"
He tilted his head, amused in that maddeningly stoic way. "You have a luxurious car," he said, "but you still walked with me to school this morning."
Fatiba opened her mouth to retort, paused, blinked again, and then closed her mouth. She looked away, half-smiling in exasperation, the way one does when someone hits too close to the truth.
"Because I had something to do with you," she muttered.
He nodded, slow, like everything he ever did was carved in deliberation. "Then my answer's the same."
She turned back to him, brows furrowed.
"I also had something to do," he continued, quietly. "Protect the neighborhood people. If they ever need my help."
He didn't say it like a superhero. He said it like a janitor explaining why he stayed late. No grandstanding. No declarations. Just a simple truth, tucked into the folds of who he was. A quiet duty, folded and kept like a prayer cloth in the bottom drawer of a life too chaotic for easy grace.
And then there was silence—but not the kind that stretches awkwardly between people unsure of each other. This silence felt lived-in. Worn. Like old boots kicked off after a long walk through mud and fire. Two teenagers, bruised and burned, shoes torn, hair full of wind and smoke, standing in a half-demolished alley while time trickled forward. Still breathing. Still here.
Behind them, the city seemed to pick up where it left off. Sirens grew faint, swallowed into distance. Pedestrians resumed their rush. A distant shop rolled open its shutters with a clang. Sunlight crept across broken glass and crumpled signage, turning even rubble into something that shimmered.
"Hey, Shotaro?" Fatiba asked, her voice low, almost playful, but still raw at the edges like she hadn't fully stepped out of the moment yet.
He glanced at her, his expression softening.
"Have you ever skipped a class?"
He shrugged with the nonchalance of someone who had seen the apocalypse and lived to eat cafeteria curry. "I skip classes all the time," he said. "I already know whatever they're teaching."
Fatiba let out a long, breathy exhale and chuckled, wiping soot from her cheek with the back of her hand. "Well, I've never skipped a class. Not once. Not even when I had a fever or cramps or food poisoning. I think my parents were allergic to the idea." She paused, brow furrowed with mock seriousness. "I'm pretty sure skipping is like... illegal or something in Japan."
Shotaro arched a brow, eyes amused beneath the curtain of silver hair. "It's not technically illegal," he said. "It's more like drinking. Not forbidden, but judged very harshly by every adult within a ten-mile radius."
She laughed—this time for real. Her voice cracked a little from the strain in her throat, but it felt good to laugh. Like someone had opened a window in her ribcage.
"I don't think they'll care if I do it just once," she said, her eyes flicking up to meet his. "The world didn't end today. It almost did. So maybe I earned one tiny rebellion."
Shotaro didn't answer right away. He looked at her for a beat longer than usual, like he was measuring the shape of the moment—not just what she said, but what she needed it to mean.
Then, for the first time that morning, he smiled.
Not the weary, ironic twitch of the lips he often gave the world, but a real one. The kind that made you think he still had some kind of hope buried somewhere beneath the ruins.
"Oh," he said, tilting his head, "you want to skip class?"
"I do."
"You know it."
Their fingers brushed—a faint, accidental flicker of warmth between knuckles and calluses—and for a moment, neither said a word. She had instinctively reached down for her bag, her body still wired to function through trauma, through motion, through responsibility, but when his hand overlapped hers, she stopped. Just enough. Just long enough for him to lift it for her.
He slung the strap over his shoulder with a quiet casualness, as if carrying her weight wasn't a burden, just... something you did when someone had been through hell beside you.
"Come on," he said, dusting invisible ash from his sleeves, his voice not forceful, but confident in that Shotaro way—that rare mixture of self-assurance and careful grace. "I know some places to spend time."
There was a strange lightness to his tone. Not the lazy whimsy of a boy ditching class, but the surprised relief of someone who hadn't realized how much they needed company until it was offered. Truth was, he'd been bored all morning. Stupidly, quietly bored.
Hiroki was out—off in Tokyo with his mother for her chess tournament. At first, Shotaro assumed he'd leave her in the care of his older sister, Kanoko, but Kanoko was off on some fancy pilgrimage or soul-searching trip or something, which left Hiroki holed up in his sister's apartment, babysitting and blissfully unavailable.
Bird, too, was gone. Off chasing his own demons, which meant no cryptic banter or nonsensical rants or late-night rooftop lectures.
And with nothing but silence at home and a day of lectures he could recite backwards, Shotaro was honestly just—lonely. In that low, non-dramatic, vaguely aching way people like him got lonely.
So when Fatiba said what she said—about skipping, about rebellion, about throwing away structure for just a moment—something inside him lit up.
And then there was that scar.
The one she always hid under her headscarf. A raised line she never talked about. A detail his eyes had caught more than once but he'd never dared mention.
That, too, intrigued him—not out of pity, but curiosity. The kind of curiosity you have for someone you've started to like in that unspoken, gravitational way. A scar is a story. And Shotaro was a boy who knew the worth of stories etched into skin.
So they walked.
Not in any rush. Not like fugitives or lovers. Just like two souls who had nowhere better to be.
The morning had warmed up now. The clouds had scattered like broken porcelain, and sunlight draped across the streets like syrup. Car horns, vending machine hums, distant laughter, and rustling shop signs stitched the city into something alive again.
He let her set the pace. One foot in front of the other. A rhythm formed—not just of motion, but of being seen. Being safe.
"You know," she said after a block or two, voice quieter now that the adrenaline had worn off, "this is the most reckless thing I've ever done."
He glanced sideways at her, eyes narrowing with faint amusement. "Seriously? Out of all the things you've been through?"
"I've never ditched school before," she said. "Ever. Like ever-ever. I'm a straight-laced, good daughter, top grades, check-in-on-time kind of girl."
Shotaro nodded like he understood, and he did. Too well. "Yeah. Those are usually the ones with the loudest hearts."
She gave him a look—one of those half-annoyed, half-embarrassed side glances people give when someone reads them a little too well.
"And what about you?" she asked, adjusting her scarf slightly. "You've skipped more classes than you've attended, haven't you?"
He shrugged. "Probably. I stopped counting. School's good, but... it doesn't always answer the right questions."
She raised a brow. "What kind of questions?"
He stopped walking for a second, as if considering. The street they were on had dipped into a quieter residential stretch, all sunlit laundry and old women watering their hibiscus plants. A cat blinked at them from a low balcony.
"The ones that keep you up at night," he said finally. "Like why good people die in stupid ways. Or why someone who smiles every day still feels like they're disappearing."
Her breath hitched a little. Not enough to show. Just enough to feel.
And then they kept walking.
No destination. Just forward.
everyone but the fallen.
Fatiba didn't say any of that aloud. She just watched. Watched how the kids cheered and waved from rooftops, how that one obaasan with a crooked back pressed her palms together in thanks as they passed her garden. Watched the way the baker from across the station tossed him a melonpan like it was a ritual—and Shotaro caught it one-handed without even looking, grinning like a boy who still hadn't outgrown joy.
He never pretended not to care. That's what struck her most.
He didn't deflect the affection with smugness or sarcasm like so many others. He didn't wave it off like it meant nothing. He met it. Let it soak into him. Gave back just as much.
And yet... he didn't cling to it either.
He wasn't performing kindness to be loved. He was just there. Doing. Moving. Not because it made him feel like a hero. But because if someone was drowning, you reached. That simple.
Still, the thought scratched at her: they will forget him.
One day, when he's older. Slower. If he makes one wrong choice. If he falters, even once. They'll whisper things. They'll forget the melons he caught, the fires he stopped, the neighbors he defended. They'll forget the way the air shifted when he entered a room.
Because the world wants its gods—but it does not love them. Not really. Not unless they keep performing miracles.
And Shotaro—despite the power, the presence, the perfect posture—was, in her eyes, not a god. He was a tired teenager who looked too old behind the eyes.
They stopped at the top of a gentle slope, where the city opened up beneath them. One of those places you stumble into without a name, where the wind brushes your skin and the buildings down below look like toy blocks. A place only someone like Shotaro would know—someone who walks instead of flying.
He sat first. Legs splayed. Arms propped behind him, back to the sun. That smirk still tugging at his lips as he chewed on the melonpan like a satisfied stray cat. His hair shimmered in the morning light—silver, slightly frayed from the scuffle earlier, windblown and human.
"Why do they call you that?" she asked after a pause.
"Call me what?"
"The man they call."
He chuckled through a mouthful, swallowed, then said, "Because that's what they do. They call. I come."
She frowned, her eyes narrowing just a little, not in anger but in disquiet. "That's not a name," she said. "That's a function. A... role."
Shotaro shrugged again—slow, casual, unbothered. Like it didn't chip at anything inside him. Like it should. Like maybe it had once, but now the blade no longer found flesh. "It's enough for me."
Fatiba tilted her head, watching him with something more than curiosity now—something like worry dressed up in mock sternness. "Is it?" she asked. Her voice softened, falling out of sarcasm and into something vulnerable, a threadbare hush of sincerity. "When you're old. And forgotten. And broken. Will it still be enough then?"
He didn't answer. Not immediately. He just leaned back a little more on his elbows, letting the sunlight spill over his face as if it might fill the cracks in his thoughts. There was a faint, distant noise of construction in the background. Somewhere, a bird warbled half a song. Somewhere else, laughter.
And Shotaro breathed.
Not like someone preparing to speak. Just like someone remembering how.
Then he said it—not performative, not practiced, just quiet, like a truth he carried in his ribs for a long time.
"I'm not doing it for them to remember me... at least not as long as they can."
His crimson eyes shifted toward her now, and for once, they weren't aflame or glowing or furious. They were just tired. Kind. Deep enough to drown in. Kindled by something gentler than rage, something steadier than glory.
"I'm doing it so that when they see the mess of this world," he continued, "when they wake up to grief, or loneliness, or another fucking bill they can't pay... maybe, just maybe, something I did might echo. Not my name. Not me. Just the idea that there's still good. Even if it's small. Even if it lasts one damn day. If they go to bed thinking, 'Maybe tomorrow will be a good day,' and they step forward with that—" he exhaled—"then it's worth it. All of it. Even the pain."
He glanced at her again, half a smile touching his mouth, the kind that came and went like a passing breeze. "They won't remember the person. But maybe they'll feel the effects. A lighter morning. A stupid grin. A passing hope they can't explain. They'll call it idiotic, some of them. Senseless. Like me. But the ones who smile... the ones who hope again... that's enough. That's more than enough."
Fatiba didn't say anything for a moment. She didn't know how to. Something in her chest had cracked—but not in a painful way. In a way that felt like opening a window after a long, stifling summer.
And she realized she didn't need to reply. Not yet. Not with words.
So she sat down beside him. Not with ceremony. Not with any grand gesture. Just quietly. Closely. Like two souls sitting on the edge of the world, listening to it spin beneath them.
The wind moved over the railing, brushing her cheek like an old lullaby. Below them, the city pulsed and breathed and carried on—cars, trains, lives unfolding in directions none of them could predict.
Birds wheeled slowly above in a lazy arc. The sun was climbing higher now, pouring light onto the rooftop like warm milk. There was a stillness here, the kind only found between storms, between decisions, between the urgent and the eternal.
The silence between them wasn't empty. It was dense, full-bodied, like the air just before rainfall—thick with a kind of hush that made you aware of your breathing. Shotaro didn't look at her again after saying all that. He just leaned back onto his palms, tilted his head toward the sky like he'd already moved on from the weight of his own words. But she hadn't. Fatiba sat there, hands clenched over her knees, head slightly bowed, as if trying to memorize what he said by the way it made her feel.
He wasn't trying to be poetic, that was the maddening part. He didn't toss those words into the wind to impress her or posture some saintly image. He just said it—quietly, plainly, like someone reporting the weather inside their own soul. And somehow that made it more devastating.
She could still feel the sting in her bones where his mantra had burned her back together. It hadn't been gentle, but it had worked. Just like him. Messy. Painful. Human.
"You sound stupid when you talk like that," she said finally, pulling her knees to her chest, staring at the distant train tracks shimmering in the heat haze.
He grinned. "I am stupid. World's dumbest savior."
"You are," she replied. "But... I get it."
There was a pause before he murmured, "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Her voice thinned, like it was balancing on the edge of laughter or tears—she wasn't sure which. "You don't want them to remember you. Just the feeling. The echo."
He let out a soft exhale. "Yeah. The echo's enough."
She tucked a stray strand of hair beneath her scarf. It was already getting warm. The cicadas were starting to murmur down below, and some kid was playing a flute badly from an apartment window. A cat darted across the rooftop across from them. The city was loud again—but they weren't part of its rhythm right now.
Fatiba turned to him slowly. "Hey, Shotaro?"
"Hmm?"
"Someday, when you're old and broken and forgotten... if I'm still around—remind me to remember you, okay?"
He blinked, then turned to look at her with a small, half-laugh that sounded surprised. "You planning to outlive me?"
"You look like the type to jump in front of too many bullets."
He chuckled, shoulders loosening. "Not wrong."
She nudged him with her elbow. "I'll be the cranky woman yelling at the news about how they got your story wrong."
"I'd appreciate that."
"And I'll tell them—'He wasn't a hero. He was just a just a child who choose solve a world ruined by adult choices.'"
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped. "Perfect. That's exactly what I'd want my gravestone to say."
Fatiba smiled, not at the joke, but at the peace in his voice. He wasn't joking, and somehow, neither was she.
The wind picked up again, lifting a few cherry blossom petals that hadn't yet given up on blooming this late in the season. They danced around them briefly—just enough to feel like something was paying attention.
And for a moment, the world didn't move without them. It paused, ever so slightly, and sat with them in their stillness. In the echo of something good.
....
The Musashi River wasn't anything spectacular—not really. Artificial, neatly landscaped, its flow tamed by human engineering, lined with walking paths, vending machines, and the occasional row of salarymen on lunch break. But it had that strange, almost mythic charm of familiarity. The kind of place where lovers confessed, kids rode their bikes too fast, and old men talked to pigeons like they were lifelong friends. A place where time moved slower, like the city sighed out here.
Shotaro and Fatiba walked beside it, their footsteps soft against the gravel path. The wind had picked up a little, enough to ruffle the edges of her scarf, enough to toss his silver hair across his forehead. The sky was a crisp, pale blue overhead, but it felt heavier than it looked.
Fatiba's question came not like an accusation, but like a stone dropped gently into still water.
"Hey, Shotaro… why don't you… you know. Just end them? The bad guys."
She didn't look at him when she asked. Just kept her eyes forward, watching the reflection of the sky tremble across the river's lazy surface.
Shotaro stopped walking, hands in his coat pockets, and let out a long, thoughtful hum—low and winding like it was climbing out of some deep well inside him. Then, he exaggerated a slow thinker's pose, fist under chin, brow furrowed as though he were a caricature of philosophy. Fatiba rolled her eyes, but smiled despite herself.
"Killing them," he began, letting the playfulness drop from his voice, "would mean taking away the very thing they used to hurt people—their free will. The choice. The same free will that destroyed things... can rebuild them."
He paused and bent down, picking up a stray bottle cap, twirling it between his fingers absently before flicking it into a trash can with a clean, practiced aim.
"I don't kill people because I have no right over their will. I'm not their end. I'm not the final hand of judgment." He turned to her then, eyes glowing softly—not with power, but with conviction, like embers from a flame that refused to go out.
"Gods… gods won't care. They're too high up. Too distant. But I—" He tilted his head, smirking slightly. "I don't want to be a god. I want to be an insect. A dragonfly, to be exact."
She blinked. "That's… oddly specific."
Shotaro chuckled. "They only live for a few months, did you know that? But they move like dancers. They're fierce, they're precise, and they shimmer when the light hits them. And they don't pretend to be more than what they are. They exist for a moment—and in that moment, they are beautiful."
He turned away from the river then and kept walking, hands swaying loosely at his sides.
"In this world, there are no heroes. No villains. Only choices," he continued. "The beast who protects the village is called a savior. The knight who burns it down is called a monster. But they're both just people, driven by reasons they probably think are good."
Fatiba slowed her pace to match his, her footsteps soft in the gravel as the wind carried the scent of river algae and faraway vending machine coffee. She glanced at him—not his face, but the way his shoulders moved, the weight in them. The wind tugged again at his coat, that fraying old thing he always wore like it meant something. Like it had survived a war.
"So instead of deciding who deserves to die, I give them chances," he said, his voice a low, tempered thing—like it had been cooled in fire and regret. "Eight chances."
She tilted her head, her brow furrowed. "Why eight?"
He didn't smile this time. Didn't turn it into a clever quip. His gaze stayed forward, tracking something she couldn't see. Maybe memory.
"Because eight chances… is what it took me to change."
His tone didn't waver, but something in it unlatched. Like a door that hadn't been opened in years suddenly creaked ajar.
"I was a scumbag as a child," he said, without ceremony. "A real piece of work. Sociopath. Sadistic. A baby born with too much power and no one to tell me what it meant. I hurt animals. Burned relationships to ash. I nearly killed my own mother once—poisoned her wine when I was a month old."
Fatiba said nothing. Just listened. The wind held its breath.
"I thought…" he continued, dragging one hand through his silver hair, "that because I was born with power, I was something more. A god, maybe. Or something worse. And what I wanted—what I thought I deserved—was entropy. I didn't want the world to burn. I wanted it to collapse. To return to its purest, ugliest self."
He stopped walking. Just for a moment. Looked out over the water where a heron skimmed the surface, pale wings like folded moonlight.
"It took me eight chances to go from that—an evil-ass god baby—to what you see now. Mugyiwara Shotaro. Not a saint. Not a savior. Just… someone who knows what it looks like on the other side of the cliff."
His voice cracked faintly, and he smiled—small, rueful, human.
"If a person like me can change in eight tries… anyone can."
She looked at him, fully now. At the boy who'd carried a world-ending power like it was a curse, and somehow made it into a reason to live differently. A reason to step back from that abyss, not just once, but again and again.
He glanced down at his feet, then up at the sky, as if measuring something.
"Nine," he said, gently now. "Nine's the number of change. My master taught me that once."
Fatiba raised an eyebrow. "Your master?"
"She was old," he said, lips twitching. "Used to say weird stuff like, 'Nine is the fruit after the storm, the bloom after rot.' She was strange. But wise. Died in a shitty hospital bed with one eye open."
He looked over at her, eyes softer now. "But she was the first person who didn't see me as a monster. Just… a kid with too much soul in the wrong places."
Fatiba stood beside him as the river moved like time itself—slow, relentless, and utterly indifferent.
She didn't offer him comfort. She didn't tell him he wasn't a monster. Somehow, that would've cheapened it. Instead, she just bumped her shoulder into his gently, eyes forward.
....
The ice cream stand was nothing special—half-faded awning, an old cooler humming like it had been alive longer than either of them, and a handwritten sign dangling from a paperclip that read: "No Chocolate."
Shotaro stood there, hands on hips, squinting at the woman behind the counter as if she'd just confessed to a federal crime. Fatiba lingered a few steps behind, arms crossed, trying not to laugh.
"No chocolate?" he asked, voice rising like he was mourning a national tragedy. "Ma'am. That's like—like running a music shop and not selling drums. That's like having every Pokémon in the Pokédex and just deciding to leave out Pikachu."
The ice cream lady, no-nonsense and maybe two bad days away from quitting her job entirely, waved her hand dismissively
She smacked a plastic scoop against the edge of her cart and told him, bluntly, to pick another or move aside.
"Strawberry or nothing, kid."
Fatiba was biting back a grin when he finally returned, handing her a dripping cone of bright pink bubblegum like it was a trophy from a war he lost.
He grumbled under his breath but paid anyway, then turned and handed Fatiba a pink cup. "Got you bubblegum. Don't say I never did anything for you."
She took it without comment, stirring it once with the tiny wooden spoon. Her fingers were still a little scraped from earlier, and the coldness of the cup stung. For a moment, neither of them sat. They just leaned against the railing by the river, the city stretched out around them in every direction. Buses rumbled in the distance. Somewhere nearby, a couple fought in rapid-fire Japanese. A dog barked at a shadow it didn't like.
Shotaro was still muttering.
The spoon hovered in her mouth as she watched him—so dramatic about his ice cream, so casual about power. She didn't know whether to laugh or sit him down and ask if he even understood the weight he carried. Probably not. Or maybe he understood it too well, and this—this silly tantrum about chocolate—was his way of keeping it light.
"Chocolate is the backbone of dessert culture," he ranted, gesturing like a philosopher lecturing a room of sugarless fools. "How do you have strawberry but not chocolate? That's like skipping Beethoven and going straight to elevator music. No soul. No rhythm. Just... sadness in pastel."
Fatiba let the sugary swirl melt into a slush in her mouth. It was too sweet. Like bubblegum perfume had been churned into snow. But it was cold, and cold felt good. Her tongue still buzzed faintly from the aftershocks of the earlier healing—metallic, electric, like she'd bitten into lightning.
She found herself watching the way the breeze tugged gently at the ends of his coat, the hem catching on the wind like a kite that had forgotten to fly. He stood there, annoyed about flavors, and the sunlight lit the curl of silver at his neck like the edge of a blade dulled with kindness. And it hit her, suddenly, like a knock on the door of her gut—he looks like a person. Like any other messy boy trying to navigate the ruins of a day. Not a god. Not a weapon. Just... someone with a scarred soul and a strawberry cone.
She hated how easily that thought made her chest ache.
She took another bite, then elbowed him, more out of reflex than intent.
"Hey. Psps."
He looked at her, eyebrows still doing the emotional math of dessert injustice. "Yeah?"
She nodded toward the ice cream lady, who had turned back to wiping down the counter with indifference.
"You can fly. You have super strength. And I saw you shoot lasers out of your eyes, Shotaro. Why'd you let her just brush you off like that?"
His expression didn't change much, but something in his posture softened. A crack, small and deep.
"If I started using my powers for whatever I want," he said, slow, like he was explaining gravity to someone floating, "then what's even the point of Mugyiwara Shotaro?"
He didn't look at her as he spoke, eyes instead following a bird darting across the sky in sharp, irregular cuts.
"I'd just go back to being a god again," he continued, "The kind that crushes."
He exhaled hard through his nose, like the words stung coming out.
"I used to think that kind of power made me better. Untouchable. But gods—they don't change. They just are. Frozen in their own image, like statues no one dares repaint."
He finally turned to her. Not dramatically. Just enough to meet her eyes.
"I'd rather stay a man," he said. "Even if that means being an insect to people like her. Because people can change. Insects evolve. But gods..."
He trailed off, his voice thinning into the air like incense from a dying stick.
"They don't. And if they can't change, then they can't be redeemed."
Fatiba didn't reply at first. She just took another slow bite of her melting pink sugar. Around them, the city pulsed with life—the screech of a train overhead, a child's distant laughter echoing off a wall, the shimmer of riverlight flickering on the underpass like liquid fire.
And beside her stood a boy who used to be a god, now trying every day to stay human. Not for fame. Not for glory. Just to try.