The sun was dying, bleeding across the horizon like a throat slit too clean, too fast. Tokyo’s edge wore its twilight like a bruise—purple, gold, and flickering with the sickly orange of vending machines and gas station signage. Toji lit a cigarette with a shaky flick of his thumb, the flame catching his scarred knuckle, and exhaled a thick plume or smoke.

He was alone. He preferred it that way.

The job had been simple enough—escort a cursed object from the hands of one greedy occultist to another, both the kind of men who collected talismans the way other men collected suits or wristwatches. Useless baubles to them. Dangerous relics to the rest of the world. He hadn’t even unsheathed the weapon today, which should’ve felt like a win, but instead he just felt tired. Not the kind of tired that begged for sleep. No. The kind of tired that lived in the marrow. The kind that made the world feel too loud, too slow, and too bright all at once.

He turned down an alley, the shortcut back to the safehouse—a little izakaya that served cheap shochu and didn’t ask questions. He’d stashed his weapons in the lockbox upstairs, and all that was left was to forget the day the only way he knew how: gambling, a numb mind, and maybe a warm body if he felt like lying to himself.

But that’s when he felt it.

Not cursed energy. Not danger. Not even the familiar prickling awareness of being watched.

Just... something. A shift. Like gravity had quietly realigned.

Toji stopped walking.

Ahead of him, someone stood at the far end of the alley, backlit by neon pink signage in kanji too blurred to read. The kind of glow that only looked beautiful if you’d been crawling through filth long enough to forget what daylight felt like.

He squinted. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Some petty thug? A sorcerer?

But no. It was a woman.

And something about her knocked the breath clean out of his lungs.

Not because of beauty—though she had it, in spades. Not because she moved like she belonged in silk instead of a Tokyo backstreet—though that too. It was something deeper. Something he couldn’t explain with mere words, only with instinct. Something old and savage and unmistakably real.

She looked like she didn’t belong in the world he’d made for himself. Like she didn’t know what it meant to carry the weight of blood and silence. Like she hadn’t buried a blade in someone who deserved it, or worse—someone who didn’t.

He hated her for that, just for a moment. Hated her clean lines, her untouchable quiet.

But then she looked at him. And Toji felt like his bones had been rattled by the gaze of a god.

Time slowed. He felt it in his chest first, a hitch in the rhythm like his heart had skipped rope mid-beat. Then in his gut, a low pull, not desire exactly—something more dangerous. The feeling of fate brushing its fingers down your spine. The feeling of being seen exactly for what you are, and still not turned away.

He realized, distantly, that his cigarette had burned down to the filter.

“Hey,” he said, voice rougher than usual, almost involuntary.

She didn’t respond.

Instead, she just stepped sideways—into the narrow light from a buzzing vending machine—and he saw her clearly for the first time. She wasn’t dressed for attention, yet she held it like gravity. Her expression unreadable. Her body still. A statue with a heartbeat.

He had killed men for less than the way she made him feel in that moment.

From the side, another woman appeared—in a bright-red coat, cigarette already half-smoked. “What's the hold-up?” she asked her, not unkindly.

Still no reply.

“Hey, man, get outta her way,” the red coat said over the first woman's shoulder to Toji. “Or don’t. Either way, she’s not your type, trust me.”

Toji stared. “You with her?”

“Yeah, she’s with me,” the woman said with the weary certainty of someone who had said it too many times before. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Toji didn’t reply.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “What are you, some kind of yakuza?”

He snorted. “Worse.”

The woman frowned, then muttered something under her breath and waved her friend toward her. "Come on, let's go. It's getting cold as hell out here."