Chapter Text
There's a still quietness that envelops his consciousness. It cradles him like a cocoon, loose, full of a dark substance—yet vastly empty all the same.
There’s nothing here except darkness. The vast, immeasurable void would be dense enough to suffocate, thick enough to crush him, and yet...
It gives him comfort.
Here, there is nothing. There are no thoughts, no sounds, no sensations, no burdens, just... existence.
When Heizou finally opens his eyes, he's greeted by bizarre landscapes of red.
Everything is covered in red.
Red grass, red water, red trees, red flowers.
Red sky.
A scenery teeming with life and vigor, only everything is painted in deep shades of red, red, and more red.
The sky bleeds scarlet, streaked with lighter and darker shades that shift and churn as though alive.
Below his feet is a meadow of red, sprawling and endless, each blade of grass a deep crimson. It spreads out into the horizon, and there's a small hill that obscures the rest of it.
The air is heavy with the scent of iron, sharp and metallic.
There's a faint thrumming, low and rhythmic. It vibrates through the soles of his feet and reverberates in his chest, but it doesn’t disturb him. It permeates the land, as if connected to everything here. The sight before him is foreign, yet it feels deeply familiar.
A path stretches out before him, winding through the meadow. It’s lined with leafless vines—twisting, branching, nodulated. They pulse faintly, as though some unseen liquid is flowing through them, giving them life.
He follows the path.
He doesn’t wonder where it leads, or why he feels compelled to walk it.
Along the path, a red flower sprouts up from the soil, twirling as it opens up its bloom in a single slow, graceful movement.
Heizou kneels, studying the flower.
Six jagged, leaflike petals. Long, tapered tendrils at the center that frame a smaller, lighter bud. Dark, ashen stems, like it's wilting—yet it feels alive, more than alive— sentient, even. As if it were tapping into some other unspoken life force.
He recognizes this flower. The name evades him, but he knows it. He doesn't linger on it for too long.
When he looks up again, the meadow has changed.
The flowers are everywhere now, their blooms open and turned toward him. As if they’re watching. Countless scarlet eyes following his every move. Their stillness as he moves is unsettling, yet he doesn’t feel afraid.
Reaching down, he plucks at a stem, and pulls it toward himself. The stem is light in his hand, its weight featherlike.
He tucks it into his pocket and walks at a leisurely pace, continuing down the veiny path.
Once he's over the hill, there's a lake.
A red lake. The surface glistens in hues of crimson, rippling faintly as if stirred by some unseen force. The path cuts straight through it, a narrow line that disappears into a dark forest on the other side.
He stops at the edge of the lake.
The air feels heavier here, the thrumming more pronounced, reverberating in his chest, as if it were connected to him too.
In the distance, he hears the sound of soft, rhythmic stomping against the grass. The low thump-thump of weighted hooves.
He turns his head and sees it.
A large creature approaches, majestic and otherworldly, graceful and powerful. Its antlers branched out high, like twisted veins reaching into the sky. Its velvety fur is a mixture of crimson and lighter shades of red, shimmering faintly. Its eyes glint with an intelligence that feels... ancient.
A deer.
It stops before him, towering over his smaller frame, and meets his gaze. For a moment, neither of them move. Then, the deer steps past him, its hooves making no sound as it strides toward the lake.
It pauses on the water’s edge, turns its head, and looks back at him. Like it's waiting.
Other shapes materialize around him, emerging silently from the red meadow.
One deer. And another.
They appear one by one, their movements graceful, their forms ethereal. They surround him, watching, observing—yet they do not crowd him.
Slowly, the first deer steps onto the lake. Its hooves meet the surface of the water as though it were solid, and it begins to cross, prancing gracefully over the liquid, almost as if it were weightless.
The others follow, each one stepping onto the lake and moving across its surface with the same quiet elegance. Their forms grow smaller as they reach the forest’s edge, disappearing into the shadows of the dark trees.
Heizou watches them, then takes a step forward, his foot lowering onto the surface.
It passes through.
The liquid is thicker than water, dark and viscous. His foot sinks down, but instead of plunging further, it meets solid ground beneath the surface.
He begins to make the trek.
With every step, it clings to him, crawling up his legs and soaking into his clothes. It’s cold, unnaturally so, seeping through his skin and into his bones. But that doesn't bother him.
The weight of it drags him down, but he presses forward, one foot in front of the other in a rhythmic, continuous motion.
Finally, he makes it to the other side, clothes sopping with red liquid. He doesn’t stop to wipe it away or squeeze it out, or question its presence.
He steps into the forest.
The shadows close in around him, swallowing him whole.
The woods stretch endlessly. The trees surround him, their red leaves completely still. The bark is dark, cracked, and lifeless—yet the air buzzes with the sensation of something deeply alive, pulsing through the veins of this place.
The underbrush is dense, a tangle of those same red flowers and twisting red vines that creep along the ground and cling to the trees. The blooms glow faintly, as if feeding on an unseen energy.
Ahead, the deer continues to lead him deeper into the labyrinth of trees.
They reach an opening.
Here, the underbrush gives way to something else. There's a clearing. At the center is an amalgam of roots, gnarled and fused together in grotesque patterns. It resembles a cave, its jagged edges wrapped tightly in thick, writhing vines. The vines pulsate with an eerie rhythm, retreating slowly as the deer approaches, as though parting to let it through.
The deer stops at the edge of the path leading into the cave and turns to look at him once more. Its eyes glint in the dim light, calm and knowing, before it descends.
He follows.
The path slopes downward, spiraling into a cavernous space bathed in a dim, red glow.
And then, the cave opens into a vast, hollow expanse.
The antlered creature stops, as if urging Heizou to take a closer look.
He stops, breath hitching as he takes in the sight before him.
At the heart of it all stands an enormous tree—monolithic, ancient, and alien. Its bark is dark and crimson, yet it rises impossibly high, its gnarled roots sprawling outward like the veins of this entire world.
It is withered, lifeless.
Yet it lives.
There’s something embedded into its core, wrapped in twisted vines.
A stone?
No. It's something else.
It’s something pulsing, something alive, wrapped tightly in the same vines that weave through the rest of the cavern.
A heart.
Heizou feels the pull of it, a strange and irresistible force that beckons him closer. He heeds its call, walking slowly, deliberate.
The thrumming grows deafening now, pounding against his skull, shaking his very being.
He spreads out his palm. He reaches out, ever so close to brushing against the surface with his fingertips.
And then—
Black.
Everything fades to a silent, solitary black.
There's nothing. No sound. No light. No sensation.
Just that same, still quietness that was there before.
～✦～
He lifts his eyelids, and the blending of realities causes his mind to lag for a moment.
He blinks once. Twice.
Finally, the details of the room begin to ground him. He glances around to familiar scenery. White ceiling, wooden floors. Drawers and nightstand. Underneath him is his bed.
It's his bedroom.
The red sceneries are gone now, the vivid imagery and eerie, macabre landscapes of crimson in his mind reduced to nothing but a simple afterimage.
A dream?
The wall clock stares at him from across the room, its second hand stuttering every so often along its designated path.
It reads 2:57 AM.
Heizou rubs his bleary eyes, trying to clear the stark imagery burned into his mind.
Heizou’s dreams were always... unusual. For as long as he could remember, they had teetered on the edge of the inexplicable. Cryptic flashes of intuition, odd premonitions that offered glimpses of insight into his cases, if only he could piece them together.
But this...
This was different.
His dreams had never felt so vivid before—so suffocatingly real. They had never shown him landscapes painted in grotesque shades of crimson. That vivid imagery and the looming darkness... the red landscapes of... what he can only imagine was blood, that faint spell of fog that hung over his thoughts like a cloud... they were all so foreign, yet... so familiar.
What does it mean?
He remembers the red flowers. He recalls their name now, as if it wasn’t meant to be remembered. A name only for those in the waking world.
Dendrobiums.
There were so many of them.
And the image of the throbbing heart embedded within the tree’s core still lingers in his mind, pulsing. Its grotesque presence should have filled him with terror, a sense of crushing dread—but instead…
He feels strangely calm.
Or maybe the gravity of it all just hasn't sunk in yet.
Heizou rises from the bed, his movements sluggish and mechanical, as though his body is acting on instinct rather than conscious thought. He turns toward the nightstand and stares at it for a moment.
Three compartments. He decides to pull on the first handle, sliding the drawer out and revealing its contents.
A mini temari ball. Puzzle cube. Keychains. All sorts of strange trinkets, a bunch of other puzzle toys and random junk that he's picked up and collected over the years, but nothing of importance right now.
Not what he’s looking for.
With a soft sigh of mild irritation, he shuts the drawer and moves on to the second.
This one is packed with personal documents—government records, case files, paperwork. He flips through it briefly but finds nothing that catches his attention. He moves on.
The third drawer.
This time, he hesitates. Something about this one feels… right.
He slides it open.
It's mostly empty, but at the center...
An unassuming pendant, made from a dark, ash-colored fragment branching out like veins. Its texture is rough and natural, almost like wood, but the shape… the sharp, branching points…
It looks more like a piece of antler.
He picks it up, the long brown string dangling between his fingers, and examines it more closely. The fragment feels cool and solid in his palm, and as he turns it over, his mind flashes back to the towering beast in his dream. The horns. Those dark, branch-like antlers.
They were just like this.
Heizou’s grip tightens around the pendant. He tries to dismiss the thought with a weak chuckle.
Nah, that can’t be it. It was just a dream.
But as much as he tries to deny it, he can’t.
He remembers how he got it—his cousin, Kano Nana, gave it to him when he was just a child. Back then, it seemed so ordinary, so insignificant, that he thought little of it.
Her words come back to him now, faint but clear in his mind: “Take care of it—it’s important.”
At the time, he didn’t understand. He was young, still green around the edges, unable to fully grasp the weight of her words. But even then, his budding intuition—the same instinct that would later sharpen into his greatest asset—whispered to him that this pendant was something worth keeping. So he did.
For years, it was tucked away in forgotten corners: a dusty box in the attic, an unused drawer, a neglected nook of his room. Always out of sight, always at the back of his mind, waiting.
Waiting for what, exactly? He never really knew.
And yet, now that it’s back in his hand, now that he’s staring at this strange fragment that feels heavier than it has any right to, it feels like it was waiting for this moment.
He exhales slowly, pocketing the pendant.
He’ll need to ask Nana about it. It’s been a while since they’ve spoken, but maybe she still remembers. Maybe she can explain.
He sinks back onto the bed, though the idea of sleep feels almost laughable. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to.
～✦～
[ 4:07 AM - Maple Brews Café ]
He doesn't know why he's here, standing in front of the café in the dead of night. It's obviously closed, what was he expecting? Most individual-owned establishments—self-respecting ones—wouldn't even dream of opening before dawn.
His body and mind feel like they’re trudging through thick mud. The lack of sleep begins to tug at his consciousness, yet he doesn't feel comfortable enough to fall asleep. It's like his physical body is preventing him despite his heavy fatigue. It’s almost as if he’s caught in a strange limbo between exhaustion and wakefulness.
He still doesn't know why he's here. Maybe whatever remains of his sleep-deprived intuition brought him here. Or it could be nothing after all. Maybe he’s simply starting to lose it.
He considers turning around.
This is stupid. No one's going to be here.
And yet, he finds himself knocking on the glass door. His knuckles barely make a sound against the cool pane, the gesture half-convinced. He steps back, waiting.
Seconds pass. Nothing happens.
He huffs a soft sigh, turning on his heel. Of course, no one’s here. This was a waste of time. He doesn’t even know why he—
A shadow moves behind the glass.
He freezes mid-step, head snapping back toward the door.
Someone’s inside.
He squints through the faint reflection, and as the door creaks open, Kazuha steps out into the cold air.
He’s not in his usual café uniform—no apron, no button-up shirt. Just a black turtleneck and sweatpants. The sight is a bit unusual for him, like he wasn’t expecting someone like Kazuha to wear casual clothes.
Seeing Kazuha has helped him calm down, at least. Everything feels so fractured, so nonsensical, like pieces of a puzzle scattered far beyond his reach. And yet Kazuha’s presence—steady, real—grounds him just enough to keep him from spiraling completely.
Kazuha’s eyes soften as they fall on Heizou, but they’re shadowed with concern. Heizou doesn't fail to notice how it makes his features look just the slightest bit softer.
“Heizou?” Kazuha asks, his voice quiet, warm—like a blanket that envelops Heizou in the cold of the night. “What are you doing here?”
The question is simple, reasonable. Yet Heizou can’t give him an answer.
“I don't know... I just...”
He tries to search the corners of his mind for an answer. But his brain struggles to even function, struggles to even string together coherent thoughts.
“I don't know,” he says finally, shaking his head.
Kazuha doesn’t press him for answers. He just watches him carefully.
He notices the sluggishness in his steps, the way his back droops like a wilted flower, the way his shoulders are loose and heavy... and the dark circles under his eyes. They're...darker than before.
He frowns slightly at the sight.
“Heizou, are you alright?”
“Mm...”
Heizou can barely even give him a proper response.
“Heizou?” Kazuha tilts his head slightly, watching him more carefully now.
Then, in the next moment, Heizou stumbles forward, his body colliding into Kazuha’s.
Kazuha reacts instinctively, steadying him with firm but gentle hands, gripping his shoulders as though handling something fragile, something delicate.
“Heizou,” Kazuha says, his tone firm, grounding. It’s enough to jolt Heizou back into awareness, even if just for a moment.
“Sorry…” Heizou murmurs weakly, his voice so faint it barely reaches Kazuha’s ears. His hands press lightly against Kazuha’s chest to steady himself, and he forces his legs to straighten, though it’s shaky at best.
Kazuha stays silent for a moment, observing him carefully. Heizou looks like he’s about to fall apart at any second. His gaze flickers toward the café behind him before returning to Heizou, a kind smile on his face.
“Why don’t you come in?” Kazuha suggests gently, his voice low and steady. “It’s rather cold outside.”
Heizou takes a wobbly step, nearly losing his footing. Kazuha catches him again.
Without another word, Kazuha takes Heizou’s hand—softly but firmly—and begins to guide him toward the door. Heizou doesn’t resist. He just lets himself be led, his steps heavy and uneven, his thoughts too scattered to protest, or even think of protesting.
They enter through the café’s front door, the quiet stillness enveloping them as they pass tables and chairs painted in colors of the dead of night. Kazuha leads him carefully to the break room, where a couch sits against the wall.
Kazuha gestures for Heizou to sit with a gentle tug on his hand. Heizou sinks onto the couch, his body collapsing into the cushions like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
Kazuha sits beside him, the weight of his concern visible.
“What’s going on, Heizou?” Kazuha finally asks.
Heizou stares down at his hands, fingers twitching slightly. “I don’t know…” His voice is quiet, distant. “I had a dream.”
Kazuha’s brows knit together slightly, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I guess… I just feel a bit strange,” Heizou continues. “I felt like I needed to talk to someone about it.”
“A dream?”
“Yeah… it was weird…” Heizou pauses, shaking his head slightly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to talk to about this. I feel like if I told anyone else, they’d just dismiss it as one of those bizarre fever dreams, you know?”
He looks at Kazuha, his expression vulnerable, almost like he was searching for something. “But this dream was… different. It was so… vivid. So… real.”
Heizou sighs, realizing how absurd his words sound even to himself. “I'm sorry, I must sound insane.”
Kazuha shakes his head.
“It's perfectly fine,” he says, voice soft, reassuring. “Tell me about your dream.”
Heizou struggles to find the words to describe everything, his thoughts still a tangled mess. Where does he even begin?
“Well... to start, there was something like a meadow? But everything was red,” he says, struggling to capture the vivid imagery with his words.
“And... there were dendrobiums everywhere,” he adds.
“And then there was this... huge deer. In shades of red, just like everything else, but it seemed... ancient. It led me into the forest where there was this downward tunnel... and at the heart of it was this.. really big tree.”
His gaze lowers slightly as he recalls the last, most haunting part. “Its core was... a pulsing heart. I tried to reach out and touch it...” He turns his gaze to Kazuha. “But when I did, I woke up.”
Kazuha's expression darkens slightly. Heizou looks into his eyes, noticing the shift, now burning with a thirst for answers.
“...You know anything about it?”
Kazuha sighs, and leans back against the couch, his body relaxing, but his expression grows distant. He rests a hand on his chin, his fingers idly brushing against his jaw as he ponders.
“Well...” he says after a moment. “I can't say for certain, but... there is a legend.”
He shifts slightly, sitting straighter as he speaks. “It’s something they call the Dendrobium Sea.”
Heizou listens intently.
“The Dendrobium Sea… it’s said to be a realm of crimson beauty, where fields of dendrobium flowers stretch endlessly, like a scarlet tide rolling across the horizon. The lifeblood of the earth courses beneath its surface, rich and vibrant, like veins pulsing with vitality.”
Kazuha’s gaze drifts as he speaks, as though lost in the imagery he’s conjuring. “The stories say that it was a haven, a sacred paradise, watched over by guardians—beings bound to the land, acting as arbiters of fate and protectors of balance.”
Kazuha shifts in his seat. “At the heart of this sea stands the Mother Tree, an ancient and towering presence that holds the lifeblood of the land itself. If a human were to drink from its essence, they would transcend mortality and gain eternal life.”
“But the story doesn’t end there. There are tales of someone—someone greedy, someone who sought to use the Mother Tree’s power for their own gain. They betrayed the guardians, and in their hubris, they tipped the scales of balance. The paradise was sealed away, hidden from the world, and its secrets buried deep within the earth.”
Kazuha leans back slightly, his eyes meeting Heizou’s. “The story is… fragmented at best. Rough around the edges, passed down more as folklore than fact. I’m not sure how much of it is true, if any at all.”
Heizou exhales slowly, nodding. “No… this is helpful.”
Heizou sits quietly, processing Kazuha’s words and trying to form his own theories and conjectures. It doesn’t go much farther than ‘this must be what I saw in my dream’, a fault of his own fatigue. He feels like he might crash soon.
A quiet lull settles between them. The weight of Kazuha’s words lingers in the air.
After a moment, Kazuha breaks the silence. “Did you need anything else?”
“Well… coffee would be nice,” Heizou says with a hint of humor in his tone.
Kazuha sighs and shakes his head.
“I'm sorry, Heizou. It's unwise for you to keep relying on caffeine to stay awake. At some point, you're going to crash. What you need right now is rest.” Kazuha holds his gaze firmly, as if to make a point. “Proper rest.”
Heizou feels the weight of exhaustion pressing harder against him now, struggling to stay awake, now that he's in Kazuha’s presence. Why is it that now, with Kazuha here, the tension that had coiled in his chest for hours seems to unravel so easily? The unease, the chaos—it’s as if they’ve melted away. He feels like he could just collapse.
His head dips forward slightly before it leans sideways, colliding with Kazuha’s shoulder. The faint impact jolts him awake, and he pulls back immediately, embarrassment warming his face.
“Sorry...” he mutters, his words sluggish, tinged with fatigue. “I haven’t been able to get proper sleep in about...”
He lifts his hands, trying to count the days on his fingers, but his mind refuses to cooperate. Thoughts blur, numbers slip away, and he stumbles over the timeline. He stalls, hoping something will come to him. It doesn’t.
“a good while,” finishes instead, a sheepish undertone in his voice. He knows how bad it sounds.
Kazuha chuckles softly, his tone light but filled with quiet understanding. Without saying a word, he reaches out, gently pulling Heizou’s head back toward his shoulder.
Heizou tries to pull himself away once he realizes what Kazuha is doing, a slight blush creeping up his face.
“What are you—”
“Relax,” Kazuha says gently. “You can rest on my shoulder.”
There’s something soothing about the way he says it. A calm certainty that makes resistance feel almost futile. When Kazuha pulls him closer again, Heizou doesn’t fight it this time. He lets his head rest against Kazuha’s shoulder, the tension in his body slowly dissipating.
“You need this,” Kazuha says simply. “I won’t give you coffee—no matter how much you argue for it—but you can have this instead.”
“Why... are you doing this?” He mumbles, as if the thought of being helped is incomprehensible to him.
“Why? Well...” Kazuha sighs quietly, an endeared smile peeking through his facial features.
“Do I really need a reason to help you? To lend you a shoulder?” His voice is gentle, soft as he replies.
“I just want to help you,” he says plainly.
Heizou lifts his gaze slightly, studying Kazuha’s face, as if to intuit some hidden meaning behind a hypothetical facade. But Kazuha meets his eyes steadily, his expression sincere.
“There's no ulterior motive behind my actions. You and I made an agreement to work together, and... this is something you need that I can provide. We both work toward the same goal, and you aren’t going to be very useful sleep-deprived.”
Kazuha’s voice is quieter now, something like embarrassment creeping into his tone. “And...I was under the impression that we had become friends. Did I misunderstand?”
The question catches Heizou off guard, and he scrambles for a response.
“No, I...”
His voice falters as he searches for excuses, something to deflect the sincerity of Kazuha’s words, but he turns up empty. Finally, he lets out a defeated sigh.
“No... I'm just a little shocked. You don't have to do this, and yet...”
Kazuha tilts his head slightly, watching him. He doesn’t press for more, and Heizou seems to have lost his motivation to finish the thought.
Instead, he allows himself to relax, eyes drifting closed—not asleep, but close enough to it. Kazuha notices his slight unease, a thin border that's preventing him from letting himself become fully vulnerable.
“You can sleep, if you want,” Kazuha murmurs, his voice soft, almost a whisper.
Heizou laughs dryly. “If I did that, it'd be like an open invitation for you to do whatever you wanted to me.”
Kazuha chuckles at Heizou’s remark. “Is that so?”
There’s a faint warmth to his tone, an almost playful edge as he continues, “If you truly believed I would harm you, you wouldn’t be here at an ungodly hour of the morning, recounting the events of your bizarre dream. And in a half-asleep state, no less.”
He chuckles. “I think you trust me more than you realize, Heizou.”
Heizou laughs again, this time a bit more genuinely. He doesn’t have a retort—Kazuha’s right, and they both know it.
“Yeah... I guess you're right.”
The silence stretches between them. It's quiet, but not uncomfortable. Peaceful, in fact... now that he's had a moment to readjust himself and locate his bearings. And having Kazuha around to ground him definitely helps.
He rests his head deeper into the crook of Kazuha’s neck, allowing himself to rest comfortably.
There’s a faint scent of something earthy—like rain-drenched leaves mixed with coffee—that clings to Kazuha, and it lingers in his mind for a while. It’s soothing, almost.
Heizou feels gratitude bubbling up in his chest, quiet and unspoken. He’s grateful, though he doesn’t say it out loud.
The weight of exhaustion pulls him further, and he allows himself to rest a little more comfortably as his breathing begins to even out.
His eyes begin to droop, as if being pulled down by some unseen force.
His eyelids grow heavier by the second. He’s been fighting the desire to sleep, but in Kazuha’s presence, the resistance feels pointless.
He can't push away the sleep for much longer.
There’s no danger here, no reason to stay on edge. His mind feels quiet, like it's been lulled to silence.
Eventually, he loses the battle. His control slips, the tension in his body melting away entirely. His mind begins to drift, slipping into the dream world. Only this time, there’s no vivid landscape, no ancient deer, no pulsing tree.
It’s quiet. Completely blank.
～✦～
He opens his eyes.
Four walls enclose him. The left wall is closest, enough that he can stretch his hand out to feel its cool surface. Underneath his head is a soft fabric, voluminous and bulky. He registers it as a pillow. Then, the obvious deduction: A bed.
It’s a bedroom, but not his.
He sits up, allowing his eyes to take in his surroundings. A small room, just slightly bigger than a walk-in closet. Wooden decor, simple yet elegant. Across the room is a door on the far right end.
Gentle light peeks through the curtains, illuminating the faux-wooden floor in soft yellow hues. It’s peaceful, meditative, even as the dust specks settle on the nightstand.
He doesn't recognize this place.
Is he still dreaming?
No, he's awake. This feels real. His senses feel much sharper now, and his thoughts are clear.
Where am I?
The last thing he remembers before falling asleep is Kazuha. The quiet concern in his gaze. The way he offered his shoulder as a place to rest his head.
Heizou’s eyes drift down to the blanket draped over him, and he tugs it close for a brief moment, giving it an absentminded sniff.
The sheets smell clean, like they’ve been newly washed—but they give off the faint, earthy smell of coffee and leaves.
Just like Kazuha.
Realization dawns on him, and his face flushes with heat.
This is Kazuha’s bed.
He slept in Kazuha's bed. He tries to ignore the way his cheeks heat up at the thought, willing himself to focus on the matter at hand.
So this must be Kazuha's bedroom.
And if he’s here now, that must mean that Kazuha brought him here. Did he carry him?
Unbidden, his imagination conjures an image of being cradled in Kazuha’s arms, like some storybook damsel. Heizou shakes his head, exhaling sharply as if to banish the absurdity from his thoughts.
He inspects his body. First his arms, then his legs, then his neck. It’s all clear of any injuries or blemishes that weren't there before, and roughly the same as he remembers. There's no weird pang at his neck, no lingering soreness or feeling like anything strange happened to him while he was out cold.
In fact, he feels strangely refreshed—the most refreshed he’s felt in days.
He stands up, and makes a beeline for the window.
He peeks out, and the light blinds him for a moment, causing him to squint. When his vision adjusts, he makes out the precinct across the street, but the angle suggests he's a level higher than the ground. The building across the precinct is the cafe, so...
This is the second floor of the café?
Does Kazuha live here?
He turns back to the room, his gaze falling on a wooden desk against the wall. Papers lie scattered across its surface—not chaotic, but purposefully placed, their arrangement neat and deliberate, very unlike his own work desk. Curious, Heizou steps closer, his fingers brushing lightly over the pages.
Poems.
Some are written on plain parchment, others on colored paper or folded neatly into envelopes. Some of them are even etched onto leaves with a coarse ink. The themes are as varied as the materials: haikus capturing the fleeting beauty of migrating birds, freeform verses about spring flowers carrying the scent of rebirth, even sonnets celebrating the glow of city lights painting the nightscape like distant stars.
They aren’t just poems. Some are simple recollections, like journal entries. Descriptions of sights and places—the rolling green plains of Mondstadt, the bustling harbors of Liyue, the lush rainforests and arid deserts of Sumeru, the mystical waters of Fontaine, the colorful tribes of Natlan, the harsh and bitter winters of Snezhnaya. Each one is vivid, alive with detail, as if the author had committed every fallen leaf, every ripple of water, every gust of wind to memory.
Heizou’s gaze lingers on the pages, and an unexplainable ache settles in his chest.
He’s traveled so far...
Hundreds of years. Several lifetimes my own. He's seen things that I'll never be able to see.
How long has he spent on this world? What has he been doing all this time? What has he seen in all that time? What has he endured? The thought fills Heizou with a quiet melancholy.
Amid the pages, one poem catches his attention. It’s different from the rest—more delicate, more personal. The paper is finer quality, its texture smooth beneath his fingers. The handwriting is meticulous, the strokes gentler, as though the writer had poured extra care and diligence into each line.
I still hear your voice in the wind,
A quiet echo, fleeting as the morning mist.
Your laughs painted the world a dizzying pink,
A forgotten song that dwells in the hollow of my chest.Did the skies weep at your departure,
Did the earth mourn your passing?
Only broken shards of your memory remain
Glass—imperfect, fragmented, and piercing.Your vibrance was a curious spark,
An ember that blazed in the darkness.
The world is a prism of color, and yet
A deafening silence that only you could fill.
There's a dull ache that settles in Heizou's chest, a strange mixture of grief and empathy. Who knew that Kazuha, who always seemed so composed and untouchable, had such deep sorrow hidden beneath his calm exterior.
This person must have meant a lot to him...
Suddenly, the faint click of the door jolts him from his thoughts. Heizou scrambles, hastily shuffling the papers back to where he found them, as if he were a mischievous child caught prying into someone’s diary, but he's too late.
Kazuha steps through the door, dressed neatly in his café uniform. His eyes fall on Heizou.
“Oh, good morning. It seems you're awake,” he says with a light, cheerful tone.
Heizou exhales sharply, trying to compose himself. “Kazuha.”
Kazuha tilts his head slightly, observing him. “Is something wrong, Heizou? You seem... spooked.”
He tries not to think about the unexplainable sorrow that bubbles up as he looks at his face. “Sorry, you just… surprised me.” He clears his throat and adds, “What time is it?”
“It’s 10:15. You were sound asleep, and I didn’t want to bother you.” Kazuha's gaze flickers to the paper still conspicuously sitting in Heizou's hands.
Heizou freezes. “Ah.”
A twinge of panic rises in his chest. Kazuha was kind enough to allow him to use his space to rest, for however many hours he was blacked out. And here he was, lurking in the shadows, looking through papers and personal effects that probably weren't meant for people like him. That simple fact made him feel ashamed of himself. He gently sets down the paper onto the desk.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, guilt dripping from every word. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your space…”
Kazuha shakes his head and offers him a gentle smile.
“No. It's nothing you need to apologize for. If I really wanted to keep them away from prying eyes, I would have hidden them somewhere else.”
The guilt still eats at his conscience, despite being told otherwise. Not knowing what else to say, either because of the awkward tension between them or his own guilt, Heizou blurts out, “They're beautiful.” He clarifies, “The poems, I mean.”
Kazuha chuckles. “Thank you. It's one of my favorite pastimes.”
Without missing a beat, Kazuha asks, “How are you feeling?” He studies him briefly. “Less fatigued?”
Heizou hesitates, still feeling like he’s out of place in Kazuha’s space. His thoughts are still scattered.
“Y-yeah... I slept pretty well.” Heizou’s voice wavers slightly, and he hopes the warmth blooming on his cheeks isn’t as obvious as it feels.
“That's good to hear. I’m glad you were able to get some rest,” he says, his tone sincere and reassuring. Kazuha looks genuinely relieved.
Heizou rubs the back of his head, still embarrassed that it had to come to this. “Um. Thanks for this. You're... a lot nicer than I thought.”
An amused grin graces the other man's lips. “Pft. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I just... you always seem to get a kick out of messing with me, so I thought—”
Heizou shakes his head and sighs. “Nevermind.”
Kazuha lets out a quiet, almost fond laugh, but doesn’t comment on it.
“...Is there any way I could repay you for the gesture? I mean, there's not really much I can do that you already can't, but I can try...” Heizou asks, his voice more earnest this time.
Kazuha smiles at him, a quiet, barely noticeable concern in his gaze. “My request is simple. Just promise me you won’t drive your body to the brink of collapse.”
Heizou stares at him, a faint smile forming on his lips. The weight of his guilt presses into him. Deep down, he knows he can’t keep that promise—not with how his work consumes him.
“I mean... I can try. But you already know me at this point.”
Kazuha sighs. He knows he probably won’t be able to convince him, at least not now. He doesn't press further. “Well, if the need ever arises again, you’re free to use my bed. I don’t use it very often.”
Heizou feels his cheeks heat up again. “Ah… thanks. I’ll try not to make it a habit.”
“I... should probably get going,” Heizou says, taking a step forward, his hand brushing against the doorframe. But just as he’s about to pass Kazuha, the shifting weight in his pocket stops him in his tracks.
“Actually... there’s something I wanted to ask you before I go.” Heizou reaches into his pant pocket, shuffling around for its contents.
Heizou pulls out the antler fragment, letting it dangle by its string. “It’s about this. Do you know anything about it?”
Kazuha’s gaze shifts to the fragment, inspecting it carefully. “This is…”
Tentatively, he reaches out, brushing his fingers against the fragment. The instant they make contact, a blinding flash sears through Heizou’s mind.
A figure. Blonde hair tied high into a messy ponytail.
A blue scarf stark against a deep crimson haori.
Purple eyes, lifeless and cold.
Bite marks on his neck.
Blood trickling down in dark rivulets, pooling beneath him.
And an overwhelming wave of emotion, suffocating. Grief, raw and unrelenting.
No… not just grief.
Regret. Regret so all-consuming it feels like it’s pulling Heizou under, dragging him into a sea of sorrow he cannot escape.
Heizou gasps sharply, stumbling back as the vision abruptly ends. Kazuha, too, recoils, his hand snapping back from the fragment as if it burned him.
They stare at each other, wide-eyed and breathless. The room feels colder now, the air thick with unspoken tension.
“What was that?” Heizou finally manages to ask, his voice shaky.
Kazuha’s lips part, but no words come. His crimson eyes are filled with something unfamiliar—fear, perhaps, or anguish. He studies Heizou’s face as if searching for confirmation.
“Did… did you see that?” Kazuha asks, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I think so?” Heizou stammers, his mind still spinning. “Blonde hair, blue scarf… purple eyes. And…” He swallows hard, unable to finish the thought. The image of that man's dead body.
Kazuha’s face drains of color, turning an almost ghostly pale. Heizou watches as his hands curl into fists, his knuckles whitening as his nails dig into his palms.
“…Leave,” Kazuha demands, his voice trembling but firm.
“...Huh?”
“Leave.” His words are sharper now, chilling. His posture shifts, his shoulders tense as he grips his own arm tightly, his nails clawing at the fabric of his sleeve. There’s anger in his expression, but beneath it lies something else—something raw, fragile.
“I’m sorry,” Heizou mumbles, his voice barely audible as he steps back. He wants to say more, to ask questions, to apologize, to comfort him, anything—but the weight of Kazuha’s expression and the sudden coldness in his demeanor render him silent.
He purses his lips, only managing a powerless nod as he leaves through the door.