Thousands of Years Ago
(?'s POV)
The world had ended. Not with a bang, not with a roar, but with a quiet, sterile snap.
The joyous, chaotic noise of Thriller Bark, the joy of the survivor, Franky's SUUUPER shouts, Brook's music was gone.
Eaten by a silence so deep it felt like a physical weight on Luffy's eardrums. The air was dead, tasting of ozone and something else, something final, like the air inside a tomb that's been sealed off.
His crew was scattered around him like broken toys discarded by a careless giant.
His eyes, wide with a horror he'd never known, scanned the devastation, each face a fresh punch to his gut.
Zoro was on his knees, his form not falling forward just by sheer will. His swords, his pride, weren't just broken. They were unmade. Where the legendary Wado Ichimonji had been was nothing but a faint shimmer in the air, only an empty handle with nothing else, just being held on a hand that refused to let go. His other two swords just as empty, thrown to his sides. His muscular arms were bent into shapes that made even Luffy's own rubbery flesh ache, a deep, clean gash across his chest that didn't bleed, just… existed. A final, brutal period at the end of a sentence of violence.
Sanji lay in a crater. One leg was a ruin of shattered bone and torn fabric, bent backwards in a way that was utterly wrong. There was no blood, just… destruction. The force had been so pure, so absolute, it had simply cancelled the biology within.
Nami was curled in a fetal position around the shattered remains of her Clima-Tact. The delicate instruments were now just glittering junk. Her orange hair was splayed around her head like a fallen sunset. Her eyes, usually so full of clever fire and calculating mischief, were open and empty, frozen mid-sob. A single, perfect, coin-shaped bruise was on her temple, as if she'd been tapped with a finger with the weight of a continent.
Usopp was a statue of pure terror. He hadn't even managed to raise his slingshot. It was a splintered mess in his frozen grip. He was slumped against a shattered tree, his long nose almost touching his knees, his whole body locked in an arc towards the ground. His goggles were cracked, and behind them, his eyes were wide with a fear so total it had stopped time itself for him.
Chopper was a small, furry heap in his Brain Point. He'd been in the middle of a frantic diagnosis, his little hooves clutching his head. He was the first one to fall. His whole body trembled even before HE arrived. Like his instincts told him that something was coming, and there was no escape. Then, like a way to save its own life, his body just shut down. Nobody knew what to do.
Franky's SUUUPER form was a tragedy of twisted metal. His proud chest plate was sheared in two, revealing sparking, dead wires. One of his powerful arms was completely severed, lying several feet away, fingers still curled into a fist. His blue hair was unmade, threw over his face like a wet dirty mop. The brilliant inventor, was reduced to a broken machine.
Brook… was a collection. His bones were not scattered, they were rearranged. His skull was placed neatly a few feet from his ribcage. His limbs were lined up beside his torso. It was meticulous, deliberate, a mockery of his skeleton body. The worst part was the faint, trembling vibration of his jaw bone, a silent, endless scream from a soul that could not die, could not move, could only endure the horror of its own disassembly.
The Marine that caused all of this stood in the midst of it all. An Admiral, according to Robin. His white coat was pristine, untouched by dirt, sweat, or consequence. His platinum hair seemed to drink the weak light and chime even brighter. His crimson eyes, behind those glasses, were not the eyes of a victor. They were the eyes of a man reading a particularly tedious instruction manual.
Luffy's chest was a cage of fire and broken glass. Each breath hurt. The sight of his Nakama, his world, shattered around him, was a pain worse than any poison, any punch. It was a wrongness that broke the universe.
"Y-You…!" The word was a raw, torn thing ripped from the very core of him. "My crew…!"
The Admiral's gaze shifted to him. It wasn't hateful. It wasn't even angry. It was… observational. Like a scientist noting a reaction in a petri dish.
"It is… unfortunate." The voice was calm, measured, a library voice in a slaughterhouse. It was the most terrifying sound Luffy had ever heard. "You have a good crew. Their bonds are strong. A rare and precious thing in any era. I have seen it before."
Luffy could only stare, the heat in his chest a boiling, incomprehensible storm. The man's words were just noises. Why wasn't he fighting? Why was he talking?
"That is why this is such a waste. A truly… tedious outcome." The Marine's head tilted. A small, almost delicate motion. "In another sea, under another sun, I stood beside you on the Thousand Sunny. I watched you become the King of the Pirates. The parties were… lively. The navigator's laughter was particularly infectious when she wasn't worrying about berries, the archaeologist… her smile was a worthy treasure to fight for"
Luffy stared, his brain struggling. The words made shapes in the air, but they didn't make sense. Another sea? Another sun? He was the King of the Pirates?
"In another," the man continued, his voice never changing its flat, weary tone, "I led a rival crew. We clashed at the summit of the world. It was a magnificent battle. You almost won"
Luffy just blinked. The words were just noises. They were big, complicated words that meant nothing to him. All he felt was the cold ground under his knees, the ache in his body, and the terrifying stillness of his friends. All he heard was a crazy man saying crazy, boring things that had nothing to do with right now.
The confusion curdled into pure, undiluted rage.
The only thing that cut through the confusion was a sharp, hot spike of protectiveness.
"SHUT UP!" Luffy roared, the sound tearing from his throat, raw and desperate. "JUST SHUT UP! I DON'T GET IT! I DON'T CARE! YOU HURT MY FRIENDS!"
He launched himself forward, every ounce of his will, his love, his rage, his very soul poured into a final, desperate, Jet Gatling.
A storm of fists to protect what was his
To defy this monster
But then
They just… stopped.
A full foot from the Marine's impassive face.
The air itself crystallized and shattered silently around his rubber arms, buzzing with a nullifying energy.
The wrongness emanating from the man's hand was an absolute wall. A full-stop to all motion, all hope, all force.
The Admiral's eyes held his. No anger. No hate. No annoyance. Just a deep, ancient, tired certainty, and perhaps a flicker of something that looked almost like pity.
"I know," the man said, and it sounded less like a taunt and more like a genuine, weary apology for the inevitable. "But unfortunately for you, in this timeline, I chose the white coat. The sea of possibilities is vast, but a man can only sail one course at a time. He must choose his purpose and see it through, no matter the personal cost. My orders are to end the Great Pirate Era, root and stem. And that includes you and your friends."
His hand moved. A tiny, almost lazy flick of his wrist. A motion so insignificant it was an insult in itself.
There was no impact. No pain.
But everything just… shut off.
The fire in his belly. The strength in his arms. The will to stand. The very idea of defiance. It all just… turned off. Like a switch had been flipped in the core of his being.
His legs were water.
His bones turned to sand. He crumpled, his face smashing into the cold, unforgiving ground.
The world grew dark and fuzzy at the edges, closing in like a long tunnel. He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't even blink.
He could only watch, a helpless prisoner inside his own useless, broken body.
"Such a waste of a good crew," He heard the man murmured, his voice already fading as his consciousness faded away. "Such a tedious, unfortunate path this one is for this version of you"
Then, a different sound. A struggle. A woman's grunt of effort, cut short.
"Secure Straw Hat and the Devil Child" he commanded to the surrounding Marines who had been too terrified to even approach during the confrontation. "The rest… dispose of them."
He turned and walked away, not looking back at the carnage, his white coat a stark, funereal banner in the gloom. For him, it was just another tedious mission completed.
Then, nothing.
-------------------------
(Present)
(Hiratsuka Shizuka's POV)
The faint, lingering warmth of Saturday night felt like a distant dream, a pleasant feeling in the otherwise predictable quiet of her weekend.
Sunday evening found Shizuka in her apartment, the faint smell of cigarette smoke and takeout containers a familiar comfort.
She stared at the lesson plan for Monday, but her focus was elsewhere.
Her thoughts kept circling back to him. Yoshioka Akira.
He'd shared a moment with her that left her thinking about it for the whole evening. She had his this close, but decided not to rush things.
Now arriving to her lonely home, maybe she should have been more aggresive
With a frustrated sigh, she stubbed out her cigarette. The "decorous woman" act was exhausting.
Tomorrow, it was back to business. But her resolve was firm. She would be "persistent." She would find a way to pick that lock and get into his heart (And pants)
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. A message from her friend, the one who'd taught her to be wary of men.
{Haruno: Heard you had a drink with the new silver-haired sensei on Saturday night. Well? How was the fresh blood?}
Shizuka snorted. Fresh blood. If only she knew.
{Shizuka: It was… quiet. He drinks tea}
{Haruno: Tea?! At a bar? How boring. Is he even that good-looking up close?}
Shizuka's fingers hesitated over the screen. Good-looking? That was a laughable understatement.
The man's handsomeness was almost an abstract concept, a brutal, mathematical perfection that was hard to process. But that wasn't the interesting part.
{Shizuka: He's… noticeable. Gotta go. Papers to grade}
She put the phone down, face first.
Noticeable. That was one word for it.
And knowing Haruno, is she got more into the topic, it would've picked her interest and made her go for him too
Fuck her, he is mine
Her gaze drifted back to the window, looking out over the city lights.
Somewhere out there, he was probably doing the exact same thing: sitting in a quiet room, perfectly still, perhaps listening to the sound of some obscure classic music
The thought was both absurd and, she was increasingly certain, he looked like the type
Monday promised to be far more interesting than her lesson plans suggested
------------------------
(Next Morning)
The energy of a Monday morning was a unique creature.
The collective groan of students, the rustle of uniforms, the scent of floor polish and youth. And today, as has been for the last three months, was a new current running beneath it all.
Shizuka felt it the moment she stepped into the main building.
A certain… buzz. It centred near the staff room, a subtle ripple of excitement and whispered chatter, predominantly from the female student body.
She didn't need to guess the source.
Walking in the direction of his classroom, observing the scene with his customary look of profound disdain, was Higikaya Hachiman
His dark eyes tracked the flow of students with the weary cynicism of a wildlife documentarian studying a particularly foolish migratory pattern.
Shizuka followed his gaze.
There he was. Yoshioka Akira was walking towards his classroom, a stack of graded papers in hand. He moved with that economy of motion, a shark cutting through a sea of minnows.
And the minnows were certainly reacting.
A group of first-year girls from the volleyball team pretended to tie their shoes just a little too slowly as he passed, their giggles stifled the moment his shadow fell over them.
A trio of girls from his classroom, who Shizuka recognized as being particularly dedicated to the latest trends, were huddled together, their eyes wide as they whispered fervently.
"...no, but his hair... it's like, actual platinum..."
"...do you think he models on the weekends? He has to, right?"
"...I heard he's from some super prestigious university abroad..."
Their speculation was a going on and on like always.
Hachiman's monologue voice as he watched the event was practically audible in Shizuka's head: 'The mating rituals of the common high school student are a pathetic display. The appearance of a new alpha specimen, in this case a genetically superior male teacher, causes immediate disruption in the herd. The females engage in preening and proximity-based signalling, hoping to be chosen, while the males either puff out their chests in a futile display of competition or, like me, observe from a safe distance, understanding the sheer pointlessness of it all.'
Yoshioka, for his part, seemed utterly oblivious.
He acknowledged no one, his crimson eyes fixed on some point forward
He didn't revel in the attention, he simply ignored as if it were a minor atmospheric condition, like humidity.
That makes her thoughts that he was someone famous or accustomed to fame more prominent
He reached his classroom door and paused, his hand on the handle.
For a single, fleeting moment, his gaze swept down the hall. It passed over the giggling girls, over the puffed-up boys, and finally, it landed on Shizuka.
There was no smile. No recognition. Just a brief, almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment.
She nodded back smiling slightly
Then he disappeared into his classroom, leaving a wake of whispered speculation and fluttering hearts behind him.
Hachiman, from his spot, let out a quiet, disgusted snort. He had seen the entire exchange, including the look between the teachers.
His expression said it all: Another Monday, another series of incomprehensible social performances.
Shizuka felt a smile tug at her lips.
The mystery of Yoshioka Akira has been by now a public spectacle ever since he arrived to the school
But she was the only one who knew even just a little bit more that the rest
And that made her slightly giggly
She walked back to her own homeroom class.
The bell rang, signalling the start of classes. The show was over. For now.
---------------------
(Hikigaya Hachiman's POV)
Monday mornings are a testament to human misery, a shared delusion that they can simply reset our will to live after two days of blessed nothingness.
The classroom was a symphony of stifled yawns, the frantic scratching of last-minute homework, and the low hum of existential dread on the more astute and worried students
Most of the conversations around where focused on two topics, what they did the weekend, or if they were together talking about their funny and enjoyable experiences
And of course, there was a new note in this orchestra of social politcs: a faint, almost electric buzz of anticipation.
The cause was now standing at the front of the room
Yoshioka-sensei. The new English teacher.
The guy who looked less like an educator and more like a fallen angel forced to teach grammar as a form of celestial punishment (Not said by him, said by the lovestuck JKs around him)
The female half of the class was, to put it bluntly, insufferable.
Yukinoshita's pen was poised over her notebook with an unusual intensity, her icy demeanor thawed by a fraction of genuine interest, ever since the start of his classes he has produced topic after topic that made their head hurt.
Almost like he enjoyed giving class just for the sake of toying with their minds, and Yukinoshita has been one of the challengers in this class
Yuigahama was practically vibrating in her seat, her smiles a little brighter. She doesn't really grasp the classes taught, possibly just enjoys seeing the handsome teacher talk in his low baritone voice about deep topics, just like the many other hormonal teenagers beside her
Even the usually apathetic girls were sitting a little straighter. It was disgusting.
Was a sharp jawline and weirdly colored hair really all it took to override years of ingrained academic apathy?
'Of course it is' The cynical part of his mind supplied. 'In the economy of high school social status, genetic luck is the highest currency. His lesson plan probably just says 'Stand there and look pretty' and he'd still get a full salary'
But the teacher didn't just stand there. He moved to the board
He picked up a piece of chalk, and the room seemed to get quieter, the air itself stilling around him.
They were already expecting another class of English Literature and philosophical questioning that is apparently his Modus Operandi
"Open your texts to page 84" His voice was a low, calm baritone that seemed to absorb sound rather than create it. "William Blake. 'The Tyger.'"
A few obligatory page flips followed. Those were the books that the teacher managed to include into their academic syllabus
How did he do that?
He doesn't know, but the books are completely in English, but somehow the classes he taught have improved the english level of their school, now even the most ignorant of the students could hold a conversation with a foreigner, albeit in a broken english. But still, it was surprising nonetheless
Then Yoshioka-sensei started his class
He didn't begin with a boring biography or a tedious vocabulary list.
Instead, he turned to the board and began to write.
His handwriting wasn't the messy scrawl of most teachers. It was precise, elegant, and utterly consistent, each curve written in perfect cursive
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
It read
"William Blake was a visionary" Yoshioka-sensei began, not looking at them, playing with the chalk on his hands "As you already knwo by the poems we have read before, He saw the architecture of creation and made a mythology of it. The symmetry of innocence and experience"
He finished the stanza and turned. Those crimson eyes behind his glasses swept over the room
"The tiger is not just an animal, he is refering to something else entirely" He continued, his voice filling every corner of the room. "It is a question. A question made of fire and muscle and fear. 'What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?'"
He paused, letting the words hang in the air.
"What does that mean, 'fearful symmetry'?" He asked the class
Tobe, the class clown, predictably, raised a hand. "Uh, 'cause it's, like, balanced? But scary?"
A few snickers rippled through the room. Yoshioka-sensei didn't smile, but he gave a single, slow nod. "Adequate. It is perfection that inspires terror. Not imperfection. The tyger he writes about is perfectly, beautifully his own existence. A predator. Its beauty is in its absolute function. Its symmetry is its deadliness"
The snickers died down and then he continued
"Blake is asking who could create such a thing" Sensei went on, his gaze drifting to the window. "A being of such power that it could conceive of both the lamb and the tiger, and see the necessary, terrible beauty in both, something many of you have seen already, more in this school ambient. Tell me, if there is someone being bullied then there must be a bully right. Then who created them both the prey and the preyed? Who decided their roles?"
His eyes flicked back to them, and for a split second, Hachiman saw it.
Some of the students that were in the higher caste shifted slightly, others that he knew where in some sort of subtly bullying circle looked to other way
Feeling called out now, huh?
He remember that there was a girl that was harassed slightly for something, he doesn't know what and he wasn't interedted in the slightest
Of course, he remembers how everyone reacted when Yoshioka-sensei intersected and stopped that, becoming even more famous, even to the girls that were part of the bullying circle
"The poem is not about the answer," He concluded, turning back to the board to write the final, famous lines. "It is about the courage to ask the question. To stare into the burning eyes of the terrifying and magnificent and demand to know its origin"
He finished writing and faced them and then the chalk broke in his hands, its shrill sound jerking everyone out of the quiet spell he'd woven.
Yukinoshita was the first to break the silence. "A fascinating interpretation, sensei" Her voice carried a note of genuine challenge as always "You speak of the creator's nature with a certain… perspective"
Yoshioka-sensei's eyes met hers.
"I speak only of what Blake wrote, Yukinoshita-san" he said, and then he continued.
He turned the page on his book again and turned into another segment
"Blake published 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' as complementary opposites," Yoshioka-sensei stated, his voice still that same low, pervasive calm. He didn't need to raise it. The silence in the room was absolute, a vacuum eager to be filled by his words "To understand the terror of the tiger, one must first know the peace of the lamb, otherwise, how could the lamb know it is a lamb?"
He wrote on the board again, the chalk making a soft, precise click with every letter.
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
"The question is the same" Sensei noted, his crimson eyes scanning their faces. "But the tone, the context, changes everything. The lamb does not inspire fear. It invites tenderness. The same creator, two different creations. Two necessary halves of a whole"
The lesson continued
Hachiman found his own pen moving, not copying notes verbatim, but jotting down fragments of the teacher's commentary ''Innocence is not ignorance. It is a state of grace before the fall into knowledge. Experience is not wisdom. It is the scar tissue that remains.' Who talked like that?'
An hour bled away, filled with the troubling imagery their teacher spoke about in the book's historical situation.
Yoshioka-sensei guided them through "The Chimney Sweeper" poems, the bleak hope of the innocent version versus the bitter resignation of the experienced one.
He spoke about the soot-covered children he is grateful he doesn't have to live.
Looking at the historical situation of the books he speaks about, he is actually grateful of the house he has and the food on the table, hearing their teacher talk about a dark past of child-labor.
He never offered easy answers. He only asked more questions, his voice a steady, relentless probe prying at the edges of their understanding
"Consider the social commentary" He said, gesturing to the lines on the board. "But then consider the deeper metaphor. Is the chimney a physical place? Or is it the narrow, dark passage one is forced into by life? The 'coffins of black'—are they literal? Or the constraints of a society that consumes its young?"
The class, for once, was too captivated to even look at the clock.
Tobe had given up entirely on pretending to understand and was just staring, mouth slightly agape, caught in the rhythm of the teacher's voice.
Hayama's usual polished attentiveness had cracked, revealing genuine, uncalculated curiosity beneath.
Yoshioka-sensei's method was brutal in its efficiency. He would quote a line in English, then dissect it with surgical precision in Japanese for them to understand it.
"'And by came an Angel who had a bright key'" He paused, letting the hopeful image settle. "A bright key. To unlock what? Freedom? Or simply a different cage? Is the angel a saviour, or another authority figure offering a conditional escape?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He simply moved on, layering interpretation upon interpretation until the simple poem felt even heavier
The final poem he brought them to was "London."
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
"Mark the repetition. 'Charter'd'. Mapped. Controlled. Owned" Sensei's voice took on a darker, flatter tone. "Blake walks through a city of institutions, the church, the palace, the military, and he doesn't see progress. He sees 'mind-forg'd manacles'. The chains people make for themselves in their own heads. The curses they inherit and then willingly pass on"
He turned from the board, his gaze sweeping over them.
"Every face he meets, he sees a mark of weakness, a mark of woe. Not because he is cynical" A faint, almost imperceptible dryness entered his tone "But because he is observant. He is listening to the cries of the people and hearing how they have internalized their own oppression. The infant's cry of fear, the soldier's sigh, the youthful harlot's curse, they are all part of the same song. A song of a society chaining itself"
The bell for the end of the period was shockingly loud, a violent intrusion into the world of bleak, their teacher had made
For a long moment, no one moved. The classroom was steeped in a profound, heavy silence. The words hung in the air like smoke
Yoshioka-sensei placed the chalk down neatly on the tray.
"For your consideration" He said, his voice returning to its default, neutral state, the brief glimpse of dark intensity gone as if it had never been. "Are we lambs, tigers, chimney sweeps, or Londoners? Or are we the immortal hand that fears what it has created? Class dismissed"
He didn't wait for a response.
He gathered his papers and left, moving with that same silent efficiency, leaving thirty-odd teenagers behind in a room thick with the unsettling weight of their own lifehood
Hachiman slowly closed his notebook.
His hand was slightly cramped from writing. Two hours had vanished. He felt like he'd just lived through a dozen different lives
Across the room, Yukinoshita was still staring at the door through which the teacher had exited, her expression unreadable.
Yuigahama looked vaguely troubled, as if she'd understood just enough to be disturbed.
'Well, I guess that is all for today' Hachiman thought, the chill from earlier returning 'I will make sure to hug Komachi when I get home if she allows it of course'
----------------------
(Later That Day)
(Hiratsuka Shizuka's POV
The door to the staff room clicked shut behind her, sealing out the distant roar of after-school club activities.
The room was steeped in the quiet, tired atmosphere of a day nearly done, the scent of stale coffee, drying ink, and worn paper.
And him.
Yoshioka Akira sat at his desk, as still as a photograph.
The late afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, painting bars of gold across the stacks of essays waiting to be graded.
He wasn't working on them. His chair was turned slightly toward the window, a half-empty cup of tea cooling by his elbow.
His crimson gaze was fixed on something beyond the glass, something in the middle distance only he could see.
He looked… tired, but It was more than a teacher's fatigue.
This was the utter stillness of a soldier after a brutal campaign, the thousand-yard stare she'd only ever seen in gritty war documentaries and some edgy light novel protagonist
A wild, ridiculous theory, born from too many late nights with cheap whiskey and even cheaper light novels, clicked into place in Shizuka's mind.
It was absurd, the kind of trope she'd mock in one of her students… but it fit.
The unnatural grace. The way he moved without sound. The chilling calm in the face of a stuck jar lid that should have required effort.
The way he could dissect the concept of terror and creation with the detached air of a surgeon. The weariness that seemed older than his years
'Oh, gods' she thought, her grip tightening on her briefcase. 'He's not just some mysterious businessman or famous artist with a tragic past. That's the boring, adult explanation'
This was something else entirely.
This was the air of a man who probably knew the exact weight of a knife in his hand, the specific sound a body makes when it hits the ground
This was the weariness of a protagonist from some dark anime, the retired assassin, the mercenary who traded his rifle for a grade book, the experimental soldier who'd escaped his creators and was now hiding in the last place anyone would look: a suburban high school
It was the most insane thing she'd ever considered.
And yet, looking at him now, it felt more plausible than him being an accountant who'd had a mid-life crisis.
No amount of corporate drudgery carved that specific kind of void into a person's eyes
He'd mentioned "many places." He'd called life "noisy."
What if those places were battlefields? What if the noise was the sound of gunfire and screaming?
Her earlier curiosity, which had burned so brightly in the bar, now felt like a dangerous game.
She wasn't just prying into the life of a reserved colleague
She was potentially tipping over a rock and finding something… lethal hiding underneath.
She pushed the hysterical thought down. This was real life, not a paperback thriller.
But the image stuck, colouring her perception.
'That is to say he wouldn't NOT look sexy in military fatigues and covered in grime'
The image painted on her head just made him look more alluring.
'Nope, we are in school, keep your thoughts to PG-13 Shizuka, wait until you get home' She told herself
She walked to the coffee machine, her movements deliberately calm.
She poured two cups, black.
She crossed the room and placed one quietly on the corner of his desk, within his line of sight but not intruding on his space. It felt less like offering a colleague a drink and more like cautiously putting down an offering for a sleeping predator
He didn't startle. He rotated his chair slightly towards her direction and picked up the coffee, then placed it beside his own cup of tea staring at it
Shizuka leaned against the adjacent desk, cradling her own cup and decided to talk about his class of today that keep everyone talking, some even called home and thanked their parents for the life they have "They looked like you had shown them a new colour" She said, keeping her voice light "Most of the campaigns of appreciation we made for them were just ignored, you know most of the kids around here are just spoiled brats but you manage to make them consider how lucky they are, good job with that"
A breath, almost a sigh, escaped him. "Well, most think life is easy because they live easy right now, not knowing how hard it can get when everything doesn't go their way"
"And what's your state?" The question was out, softer than she'd intended, a genuine probe wrapped in concern
His head turned. Just a few degrees. Those crimson eyes finally left the cup in his hands and landed on her.
There was no offense in his gaze. No defensiveness. Just that same measured neutrality, now tinged with a faint, surprising trace of… appreciation for the directness of the question?
"I'm just tired, Hiratsuka-sensei" he said, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. "I have the feeling this will be a long week"
"I'll say"
He reached for the coffee.
He took a sip. Nodded once. A silent thank you.
Shizuka smiled into her own cup, her mind racing. The mystery had just deepened into something terrifying and thrilling. She had her answer, and it was infinitely more complicated than she'd imagined.
That of course didn't stop her curiosity. Already running hundreds of scenarios on her head
A lighthouse keeper who knew every shade of darkness.
And against all better judgment, the part of her that loved a good story, the part that was tired of her own predictable narrative, thought that she wouldn't mind a little darkness, if it meant keeping him company