The groceries came out of the bag onto the kotatsu one by one while dark mist drifted slowly upward behind him.

Bread.

Ham.

Cheese.

Lettuce.

Tomatoes.

Butter.

Mayo.

Shizuka’s head was still regrowing.

The lower jaw pushed gradually out from the neck stump first, skin knitting itself smoothly over forming bone while black vapor curled lazily through the room.

Silver hair spread slowly back across the floorboards last.

Kai ignored it and started making sandwiches.

Ham flat across the bread.

Cheese torn apart instead of layered.

Lettuce pressed down carefully. Tomato slices. Mayo in a thin line across the top slice.

More ham.

Because she always stole extra from his otherwise.

His own sandwich got half the effort.

In front of him, the dark energy in the room shifted.

Shizuka’s eyes opened.

The temperature dropped instantly.

She sat upright so fast the kotatsu rattled.

"What the FUCK, Kai!?"

Dark mist burst violently from around her shoulders.

"You blew up my head!"

Kai took a bite of his sandwich.

"You threatened to eat me."

"I was kidding!"

"I was kidding too." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"Blowing up my head is not kidding!"

"You took pictures of me."

"I hate you! No! I love you. No... I LOVE HATE YOU!"

The shadows around the room twisted sharply with the force of it. Her newly regrown hair floated slightly in the dark pressure spilling unconsciously from her body.

Kai kept eating.

Mostly because he knew from experience that interrupting her while she was yelling only extended the process.

"You absolute asshole—"

She stopped.

Her eyes had dropped to the plate beside him.

Ham stacked thicker than normal.

Cheese torn apart.

No tomato touching the lettuce because she complained about that once and apparently he remembered.

Silence.

The dark mist around the room weakened immediately.

"Is that for meee?"

Kai glanced sideways at her.

"Obviously."

Another second passed.

All of it left her face at once.

She dove under the kotatsu and reappeared on his side of it, pressed warm against his arm, and turned to him with her mouth wide open.

Silver hair spilled over his shoulder and across his arm while she leaned into him with complete shamelessness.

Her mouth opened expectantly.

"Aaah~~~"

Kaito picked up the sandwich.

.

.

The suitcase sat open on the tatami, already half full and heavier than Kaito wanted to carry.

He folded another shirt and placed it carefully on top.

The room stayed quiet around him.

Beyond the shoji screens, the estate had settled into its nighttime sounds.

Wind moving through the old cedar trees in the courtyard.

The low wooden creak of the main house shifting with the cold.

Once in a while something underneath those sounds that did not belong to wind or wood at all.

Kaito had learned very young not to go looking for it.

He glanced around the room.

Tatami worn smooth where he walked most often. The small bookshelf against the wall.

Clan training texts lined neatly across the upper shelves, the ones he had been expected to memorize before he was old enough to understand why.

A few scrolls still hung along the wall beside them.

Clan records.

His father had put them there when Kaito was seven years old and told him to remember where he came from.

Since then he had woken up every morning with the Reizen name staring back at him before he even left bed.

He looked at the scrolls now with the folded shirt still in his hands.

Then looked away first.

Tomorrow morning he would walk out through the estate gates carrying this suitcase and take the bus to Kasuga Park, to the city, to his aunt’s house.

That was all.

He set the shirt in the suitcase.

.

He had told his father that morning.

His father was at the bathroom sink brushing his teeth when Kaito stopped in the doorway and said he was leaving.

Moving to the city. His aunt’s old house was still empty. He was going to stay there while attending university. General Arts. He had already applied.

His father kept brushing.

Foam at the corner of his mouth. Eyes on the mirror.

The sound of the toothbrush filled most of the silence between them.

Kaito stood there anyway.

Waiting a little.

His father rinsed his mouth. Set the toothbrush down beside the sink. Water ran briefly over his hands before he shut the tap off again.

For a moment he only looked at himself in the mirror.

Then.

"Do what you want."

Nothing else followed it.

No argument.

Not even curiosity.

His father dried his hands with the towel beside the sink and walked past him into the hallway without looking at him once.

Kaito stepped aside automatically to let him through.

The smell of toothpaste lingered in the bathroom after he left.

Kaito stayed standing there for another few seconds looking at the sink.

Then he went back to his room.

He had expected something like that.

Maybe not the exact words, but the shape of it.

His father had stopped looking at him like the future head of the clan years ago.

Kaito stood in his doorway afterward with one hand against the frame and tried to decide whether the conversation had actually hurt.

Not really.

It felt closer to confirmation than rejection.

His mother found him that afternoon.

He was sitting beside the suitcase on the tatami when she appeared at the doorway and asked what he was doing.

The moment he told her, she went still.

Only for a second.

Her lips pressed together lightly while she looked at him.

Then her expression softened and she crossed the room quickly enough that he barely had time to stand before she pulled him into her arms.

Warm.

Always warm.

"I’ll miss you," she said quietly into his shoulder. "I don’t want my little boy to leave."

Kaito closed his eyes for a moment and let her hold him.

Her grip tightened slightly before easing again.

"But if this is what you’ve decided," she murmured, "then I won’t stop you."

That evening she cooked dinner herself.

The good dishes came out too. The black lacquer bowls from the cabinet usually reserved for guests and holidays.

His father ate quietly across the table.

His mother kept putting food into Kaito’s bowl every time it got low.

"Kaa-san," he said eventually.

"Hm?"

"I’m full."

"You hardly ate anything."

She added more rice anyway.

Kaito looked down at the bowl for a second before picking his chopsticks back up.