The morning air smelled of rain and concrete as Yami stepped off the train at Tokyo Tech's station. The late April chill still clung to the metal railings and platform benches, though cherry blossom petals swirled in the damp breeze - the last remnants of spring giving way to summer's humidity. The weight of his new student ID felt heavier than it should against his chest. This wasn't just any college, but Japan's top-ranked institute for computer science, its main building's glass facade reflecting the overcast sky like a monstrous circuit board.
A group of first-years clustered near the wrought-iron gates, their nervous laughter bouncing off the steel-and-glass architecture. Yami adjusted his backpack straps, feeling the encrypted case press against his spine through the thin fabric of his uniform. He'd earned his place here through sheer skill—top 0.1% in the national coding olympiad, flawless entrance exam scores that had professors emailing him before results were officially posted.
"Just act normal," he told himself, walking past the massive granite monument engraved with names of alumni who'd gone on to Silicon Valley or Nobel Prizes. The stone felt cold even through his shoe leather.
Morning classes passed in a blur of air-conditioned lecture halls and the constant hum of server fans. In Advanced Programming, the professor paused mid-lecture when Yami raised a hand to point out an optimization that could trim 0.3 seconds off a database sorting algorithm—a microscopic improvement no one else had noticed in five years of teaching this material. The sudden silence was so complete Yami could hear the squeak of chalk on chalkboards stop dead.
At noon, Yami claimed his usual isolated corner of the western courtyard where the gingko trees provided shade. He unwrapped his bento with precise movements, the lacquered wood box clicking open to reveal rice molded into perfect rectangles, each grain aligned like code in an elegant function. His chopsticks hovered over a slice of tamagoyaki when—
"M-mind if I sit here?"
The voice came with a swirl of cherry blossom scent and something citrusy. A girl stood holding a konbini onigiri in one hand and a battered copy of "The C Programming Language" in the other. Her long black hair cascaded over her shoulders like spilled ink, so dark it seemed to absorb the sunlight. And her eyes—even in the dappled courtyard light, those blue eyes stood out like fragments of sky trapped in human form. Sakurai Momo, from his Data Structures class. The only student whose code submissions ever made him double-check his own work.
"Seats are free," he muttered, immediately regretting how his voice cracked on the last syllable.
She sat closer than anyone ever did, her hair brushing his forearm as she tore into the onigiri with unselfish enthusiasm. Seaweed flakes tumbled onto her pleated skirt. "You're Kuragane Yami." A statement, not a question.
"Your recursion solution last week..."
Her fingers twitched unconsciously, tracing invisible code in the air.
"That pointer hack shouldn't have worked. It violated every convention. But the way you chained those memory addresses..."
She exhaled sharply, her blue eyes burning with reluctant admiration. "It was like watching someone rebuild a engine while it was still running."
Then she leaned in, close enough that her blue eyes caught the fractured light through the ginkgo leaves. She took both his hands in hers, her fingers warm and slightly sticky from the onigiri.
"You know, Yami," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried over the courtyard chatter, "I like you... Wanna go out sometime?"
Blood roared in his ears like a crashing wave. This wasn't happening. His social anxiety spiked, that familiar vise tightening around his lungs until each breath felt like inhaling needles. The bento blurred before him as his vision tunneled.
"I... need time to decide," he managed, staring at their joined hands instead of her face. His untouched food suddenly seemed fascinating.
Momo grinned, a flash of white teeth that made something flutter behind his ribs. "Tomorrow after class. Let's meet at the gates." She squeezed his fingers once before releasing them, leaving behind the ghost of her touch and a single seaweed flake stuck to his wrist.
The next afternoon found Yami standing rigidly at the designated spot fifteen minutes early, his starched collar suddenly strangling-tight. The campus clocks ticked past 4:05, then 4:10. Just as he started to believe this had been some elaborate joke—
"Sorry! Professor Nagata wouldn't stop talking about heap allocation!"
Momo arrived in a whirl of black hair and citrus perfume, her uniform blouse slightly untucked and her cheeks flushed from running. She'd left her hair down today, the inky waves swaying with each step like a living thing.
"You look nice," she said, plucking at his sleeve where he'd obsessively ironed out every wrinkle. "But you might wanna breathe sometime today." Her fingertip tapped the space between his eyebrows where tension had gathered.
They took the Yamanote Line to Akihabara, Momo chattering about everything from the cafeteria's battery-acid coffee to how Professor Ito's toupee migrated northwest during particularly intense lectures. Yami nodded at intervals, hyperaware of their elbows brushing whenever the train swayed, each contact point burning through his sleeve.
The arcade was a sensory assault of strobing lights and 8-bit music. Momo dragged him to a programming rhythm game where players coded solutions in time with pulsing basslines. She destroyed him three rounds straight, her fingers flying across the keyboard like concert pianists.
"Your form is perfect," she admitted after the fifth round, her breath warm against his ear as she leaned over to point out an optimization. "But you're over-engineering the solutions." Her laugh curled around him like cigarette smoke—harsh but intoxicating.
Dinner was at a ramen shop beneath the train tracks, where the walls vibrated with every passing commuter train. Momo slurped noodles with shameless enthusiasm while Yami found himself explaining memory allocation theories between bites of chashu pork. The words flowed easier than they ever had in class, fueled by the way Momo's eyes lit up when he described his heap management algorithm.
The bubble tea shop was Momo's idea—one of those neon-lit places with drinks in colors that shouldn't exist in nature. They claimed a corner booth where the vinyl seats stuck slightly to Yami's thighs. Between them sat two enormous drinks: his matcha latte with precisely seven boba pearls (he'd counted) and her fluorescent purple monstrosity that smelled like synthetic blueberries.
"So," Momo said, stabbing her straw through the plastic lid. "Why won't this work?"
Yami's fingers tightened around his cup. Condensation dripped onto the Formica table. "I have to get into Todai Med," he began, the rehearsed explanation ash in his mouth. "My parents—"
The words came faster now, tumbling out like broken code—the medical school demands, the hidden game designs, the encrypted drive in his bag containing what remained of Root128. His voice cracked on the last part. "There's no other—"
A hot tear splashed onto the table. Then another. Yami hated them, hated how they betrayed him, how his vision blurred into uselessness. The plastic cup crumpled slightly in his grip.
Momo's hand covered his, her thumb brushing his knuckles. "I know," she said simply.
Then she slid out of her seat and into the space beside him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders before he could protest. Yami stiffened—no one touched him, not like this—but Momo just held tighter, her chin resting atop his head.
"Breathe," she murmured into his hair. "Just breathe."
Her sweater smelled like lavender detergent and something indefinably Momo. Against his will, Yami felt his muscles unclench one by one, his forehead coming to rest against her collarbone. Her heartbeat thudded steady beneath his ear, a metronome counting out the seconds until he could speak again.
When he finally pulled back, Momo wiped his cheeks with her sleeve, the rough fabric catching on his stubble. Then she dropped the bomb with a smirk that didn't quite reach her eyes
"I'm Griffin."
The name hit like a stack overflow error—that fatal moment when recursion consumes all available memory. Vladimir de Blath Kung aka Root128's right hand in the ksociety days. The only hacker who'd ever matched him line-for-line in their midnight coding duels.
"You... disappeared after the Ministry job," Yami managed, his mind racing through the implications. The cafe's neon signs reflected in Momo's blue eyes, fracturing them into prismatic shards.
Momo—Griffin—twirled her straw, watching the purple liquid swirl. "I was always better at finding people than hiding." Her gaze lifted to meet his, suddenly vulnerable. "Especially people worth finding."
The walk back to campus passed in comfortable silence, their shoulders bumping occasionally on the narrow sidewalk. Spring crickets chirped in the planted trees along the avenue, their songs syncopated with the distant hum of Tokyo's nightlife.
At the gates, Momo hesitated, her blue eyes almost black in the sodium-vapor lights. Then she stood on tiptoe, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered: "For the record, genius, I meant what I said."
Yami watched her walk away until the darkness swallowed her silhouette, the encrypted case in his backpack no longer feeling like a chain—but a key waiting for the right lock. Above them, the first stars pierced the light-polluted sky, faint but persistent.