SecurityCorps. They teach you how to breathe through a broken rib, how to steady your heart rate when face-to-face with an Alpha.
But they never taught me what to do when a girl offers you a "token of love" and calls it a leash in the same breath.
My training demanded a counter-strike—a witty dismissal to regain the high ground—but my tactical mind had been completely stalled.
The air in my lungs turned to lead. I opened my mouth to fire back a dismissal–to tell her that I didn't need a leash, much less a token.
But the words died in my throat. Instead, the image of a life tied to her flashed through my mind; it wasn't a joke, but a devastating, quiet possibility that made my skin prickle.
My silence stretched a heartbeat too long.
I watched Akari's expression flicker. The smugness crumbled, replaced by a flash of raw panic when I failed to provide a punchline.
She leaned forward, her voice jumping an octave to fill the hollow silence I'd left between us.
"Wow, look at you! Corvin, are you dying? Your face is the color of a Tamato Berry." She let out a laugh that sounded too loud, too frantic for the small office. "I didn't realize I was graduating to professional heartbreaker today."
"I'm not dying," I muttered, yanking my scarf up until it nearly covered my eyes. The fabric smelled of woodsmoke and the biting cold of the Highlands—I breathed it in, desperate for anything to ground me. "You just have a very loud, very annoying laugh."
"Oh, please. You're just mad I'm better at this than you," she shot back, her smile twitching with a nervous energy she couldn't mask.
She reached out, fingers itching to snag my scarf. "Stop hiding, you coward. Face your—Wha—!!"
As she leapt for the scarf, the chair groaned under her sudden shift in weight. The back legs skittered against the wood floor.
"Akari!"
In a split second, I lunged, boots sliding on the floor as I reached for her. My arm hooked around her waist, pulling her toward me even as the chair gave way.
We hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud that drove the air from my lungs. For a moment, the world was just the scent of her hair—faintly floral and wildly out of place in this room—and the frantic, uneven thudding of her heart against my chest.
She didn't move. She didn't make a joke. She just stayed there, her fingers curled into the fabric of my Survey Corps kimono, her breath hot against my neck.
"You're an idiot," she whispered into my chest, her voice thick and stripped of its snark. "I told you to be careful."
The floor was hard, and my shoulder throbbed where I'd taken the brunt of the impact, but I barely felt it. All I felt was the weight of her—and the way she was trembling, just slightly, against my chest.
"You're an idiot," she repeated, her fingers bunching in my clothes. "Why do you always do this?"
She was trying to retreat; I could hear her clinging to the insult like a lifeline. If I laughed or pushed her off, the armor would snap back into place.
Instead, I let my hand settle at the small of her back. I didn't pull her closer, but I didn't let go. I just held her there, a steady weight to counter her shaking.
"Maybe I am," I said, my voice low, vibrating in the narrow space between us. "But you're the one who almost cracked your skull open trying to tease me."
I felt her huff a tiny, jagged breath against my neck. I shifted slightly, tilting my head so I could see the messy crown of her dark hair.
The "triumphant" Akari was gone, replaced by someone who looked small in the wreckage of a broken chair.
"Akari." I waited until she finally looked up, her grey eyes wide and searching for a joke that wasn't there. I reached up, my thumb grazing the edge of the red shard now hanging around my neck. "I'm not giving it away."
Her breath hitched.
"The necklace. I'm keeping it," I told her, my gaze holding hers. "Not because it's a sacred artifact. Nor because of what the Professor thinks. I'm keeping it because you made it for me. And that makes it the most important thing I own."
The snark died. She looked at me, her face blooming into a color no scarf could hide. The "scrappy lead" was gone, replaced by a girl who looked like she'd been struck by a bolt from a Thundurus.
"You..." she started, her voice cracking. "You're not supposed to say things like that. You're supposed to tell me I'm being dramatic. You're supposed to be a jerk."
"I'm a lot of things, Akari," I said, gently tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers lingered, feeling the heat radiating from her skin. "But I'm not going to lie about this."
A single tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. She didn't wipe it away. Instead, she leaned—just a fraction of an inch—into my palm.
"It took me three days," she whispered, her forehead dropping to rest against my collarbone. "I cut my hands four times because the Red Chain doesn't want to be shaped. I almost threw it into the fire twice because I thought... I thought you'd just see a tool. Or a burden."
She gripped the front of my kimono, her knuckles pale.
"If you give it to Irida, I'll kill you," she threatened, but there was no venom in it—only a desperate hope. "I mean it, Corvin. I'll actually kill you."
"Then I suppose I'll have to wear it forever," I murmured into her hair.
I felt her finally go limp against me, accepting the win. She didn't move to get up. She just stayed there, anchored to me on the floor, the shards resting between our heartbeats.
"Good," she muffled, her voice regaining a flickering spark of its usual fire. "Because if I see it on the Professor, I'm throwing you both off Veilstone Cape."
I let out a soft, breathy laugh, my chin resting on her head. "Understood."
Kishin floated in the corner, a silent sentinel of cold steel and ancient instinct. As an Aegislash, he was forged to detect the weight of human intent, and right now, his spectral eye was fixed on us—a glowing violet orb that pulsed with a low, rhythmic hum.
He didn't move, but the metallic shimmer of his blade sang in the quiet room. It wasn't the harsh, discordant ring of a weapon drawn for slaughter, but a deep, harmonic resonance that vibrated through the floorboards.
He had watched me face down frenzied Nobles and bloodthirsty Alphas with a heart of ice, yet here his partner was, finally finding a different kind of strength in the destruction of a broken chair.
Kishin's eye flickered from my flushed face to the way Akari clung to my kimono. He didn't intervene.
Instead, he drifted a few inches higher, his purple tassels swaying in a slow, graceful dance—a silent acknowledgment of a bond that finally rivaled the steel of his own frame.
Then, the heavy wooden door creaked.
"Ah! My apologies, I didn't mean to—oh my!" Professor Laventon froze in the doorway, a stack of research papers slipping from his grip like falling snow.
His hat sat crooked as his eyes bugged out, taking in the scene: the shattered wood, the "sacred" Red Chain tangled between us, and his two best Survey members sprawled in a very unprofessional embrace.
"I... I see!" Laventon stuttered, his face turning a shade of red that rivaled the shard. "The, uh... the structural integrity of this office is clearly... lacking! I shall come back when... when the gravity has finished its business!"
He scrambled to retrieve his papers, nearly tripping as he backed out. Kishin let out a low, melodic chime—the Pokémon's equivalent of a satisfied breath—as he drifted over to latch the door. He turned back to the pair, his eye glowing with a soft, expectant light.
Safe, the resonance seemed to whisper through my mind.
In that moment, the "Old Corvin"—the one who lived by decorum and the Survey Corps' rigid hierarchy—should have bolted upright.
I should have been mortified.
But the warmth of the Red Chain was nothing compared to the weight of Akari against my chest. For once, I didn't give a damn about the Professor's heart rate.
"Kishin," I said, my voice muffled but remarkably steady. "Lock it."
The Aegislash didn't need a second command. With a sharp, authoritative click, Kishin's cloth-like arm swept the heavy iron bolt into place.
The sword positioned himself before the door, his eye glowing a menacing violet that promised a very sharp end to anyone else who dared to "check the structural integrity" of the room.
Akari hadn't moved. If anything, she burrowed deeper into my uniform, her shoulders shaking with a suppressed giggle.
"You just told the Professor to go away," she whispered. "You're going to get us court-martialed."
"Let them try," I murmured. I wrapped my other arm around her without hesitation, anchoring her to me.
The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a heavy, syrupy calm. "I've fought Alphas and Nobles, Akari. I think I can handle a lecture on 'professional conduct' from Cyllene."
Akari pulled back just enough to look at me, her face a mess of pink. A snarky remark was clearly loading in her brain, her lips twitching as she prepared to poke fun at my sudden bravado.
But then she saw my eyes. She saw that I wasn't performing. I was just... there. With her.
The joke died on her tongue.
She reached up and hooked her fingers into the loop of the Red Chain around my neck, tugging me an inch closer.
"Good," she said, her voice dropping to a soft, dangerous rasp. "Because if you'd gotten up just because he walked in... I really would have punched you."
I let out a short, genuine laugh. "I know."
I leaned my forehead against hers, the two shards clicking together—a tiny, crystalline sound like the final piece of a puzzle sliding into place.
Akari's thumb traced the edge of my fragment, her mischief returning, sharper and more focused.
"You never answered me, you know," she whispered. "About the wedding rings. Or the... token of love thing."
I felt the heat rush to my neck. I could have played it off, but with Kishin guarding the door and Laventon's footsteps fading, a lie felt too heavy to carry.
"I think you know the answer," I said, my voice a low vibration. "Nobody goes through three days of hell and four cut fingers for a 'colleague,' Akari."
Her breath hitched. She looked at her own matching shard, then back at mine. "And nobody locks the Professor out of his office for a 'friend.'"
She shifted, sitting back on her heels without letting go of my kimono. She looked at me with a raw, terrifying intensity. "If this is a token, Corvin... what exactly are we promising?"
I sat up slowly, mirroring her. I reached out, my hand hesitating for a heartbeat before I cupped her cheek, my thumb brushing a smudge of dust from her skin.
"I'm promising that from now on, you don't need to carry the weight of this world alone," I whispered. "Akari. We don't have to be tools for the clans or the Survey Corps anymore. We can just be... this."
Akari bit her lip, her bravado finally crumbling into a small, shaky smile. "That's… a lot to promise."
"I meant every word," I admitted, a smile finally tugging at my lips.
"Good thing I'm patient," she whispered. And this time, when she leaned in, there was no chair to fall out from under her.