The kill took twelve seconds.
A man stepped out of a shuttered tapas bar, checked his phone, and glanced left—never right. Kurai came from the right. A soft rush of air, a flash of steel, a hand over a mouth so the body wouldn't scream. By the time the man's knees hit the wet stones, Kurai had already eased him into the alley's shadow like a tired friend onto a couch.
Novva didn't blink. She was already moving, catching the proof they needed, a ring, still warm, and wiping her blade on her coat hem. No words. There didn't need to be. They had done this too many times to pretend it was new.
They cut through narrow streets that smelled like rain and garlic. Neon leaked from late bars, puddles copied the lights and shook when cars rolled by. Novva ducked into a dark doorway, gave the ring to a man with a paper bag and a scar that looked stapled on, and came out with money bundled in rubber bands. She tucked the roll into her jacket and flashed Kurai a look that meant it was clean.
"Home?" she asked.
"Home." he said.
They walked side by side. The city muttered: laughter from balconies, dishes clinking, a radio somewhere playing a song neither of them knew. Kurai's eyes were steady until they weren't. He stopped so suddenly Novva took an extra step before turning back.
Across the street, a group spilled from a tavern: four friends, arguing over nothing, laughing like the body was built for it. A girl with sharp eyes poked the tallest boy in the ribs. Another girl rolled her eyes and hid a smile. The fourth, quiet, hands in pockets, smiled the smallest smile and stayed a step behind, as if guarding the moment.
Seiko. Fumiko. Kebe. And the quiet one...him.
They weren't, but for two heartbeats they were. Something in Kurai's chest pulled tight enough to hurt.
Novva followed his stare, then looked back at him. "What is it?"
"Nothing," he said, the word a reflex. He turned away.
She took his sleeve. "No. Not nothing. Tell me."
"Let it go."
"I won't." Her voice didn't rise. "One year at your side and I still live outside your walls. What am I to you, Kurai? A partner you point at targets? A blade you carry? Because I put all my trust in you and you act like I'm air."
The street was too open for this. Kurai glanced around, then nodded to a bench under a tired streetlamp. "Sit," he said. "If we're doing this, not in the road."
They sat. Water gathered on the bench's metal slats and soaked through anyway. A plane droned over the clouds. The city felt both crowded and empty.
Kurai leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands hanging, still for once. "You want to know about me," he said. "Fine. I should warn you, almost nothing I tell you will help."
"I'll take it anyway," Novva said.
He watched the puddles for a moment as if they'd answer for him. "I used to think saving one person could be enough to make sense of… everything. A kid named Nao. I pulled her out of something ugly when we were young. I thought that meant I could be the kind of person who stands between people and monsters." He breathed out, long and slow. "Then I learned sometimes the monster wears your skin."
She waited. When he didn't go on, she prodded gently. "And the others? The ones across the street you saw on those strangers."
Kurai's mouth tightened. "We laughed like that once. Seiko, Fumiko, Kebe. We did a thousand stupid, normal things in the cracks between blood and plans, and for a while it felt like maybe-" He cut off, jaw working. "It doesn't matter. Laughter is a loan. It gets collected."
"Kurai," Novva said, softer, "it matters."
He stared at his hands. "Every time I open a door in my life, something walks through it and doesn't leave. The cost piles up. My head gets loud. Sometimes I think the world is built for breaking. Sometimes I think I'm helping it do the job."
Novva pulled her coat tighter against the damp. "You're not the only one who lost everything."
He looked at her, slower this time, as if remembering she was real.
"I'm from England, you remember?" she said, and the words sounded like they had to squeeze through a small space to get out. "I had a family. I had friends. I had a life that was boring in all the ways that mean safe." A thin laugh. "Then the wrong people decided I was useful. Tests. Needles. Rooms with glass where people watched and wrote things down while I screamed. They called it research. They called it 'for the country.' They called me a subject."
Kurai didn't interrupt. He didn't move.
"I stopped being a person for a while," Novva went on. "Just reactions to pain kept in a file. I thought that was how the world worked now. Then some people with no reason to care broke me out. One of them put a hand on my head and said, 'Run and don't look back.' So I ran. To Japan. To a place that wasn't a room. I thought I was done being used." She swallowed. "I wasn't."
The pause sat between them like a third person.
"I'm not telling you this to win some misery contest," she said. "I'm telling you because I chose you. I chose to trust you when trusting anyone felt like holding fire. And for one year you've kept me at arm's length like I'm one more job you can walk away from."
Kurai's eyes dropped. "I don't know how to do this."
"Do what?"
"Let anyone in without watching them fall out. Every time I get close, something tears them away. So I built the walls you hate." He exhaled a short, humorless breath. "Congratulations. They work."
Novva's hand curled on the bench. "I'm not asking for your whole heart on a plate, Kurai. I'm asking to be treated like I exist. Like I'm more than a shadow you give orders to."
Silence again. Rain ticked in the leaves.
He turned his face up to the light like it might burn an answer into him. "What do you think trust buys you?" he asked, and his tone shifted, less wounded. "Safety? Meaning? If I died tomorrow, would your trust have been a mistake? If all we are is a long line of losses, is it wiser to close the door and live with less pain? Or is that just another way of dying?"
Novva's mouth opened, then closed. She stared at him, hurt flaring in her eyes. "I'm telling you I'm bleeding, and you're asking me to define the word 'blood.'"
He flinched. It was small, but it was real. "That's not what I meant."
"It's what you did," she said, and looked away toward the street where the strangers had been. They were gone. The doorway was just a rectangle of black again. "Sometimes I don't need you to solve me. I need you to hear me."
A voice that wasn't the rain brushed the back of Kurai's mind like a cold finger. "How many times will you rehearse this, little vessel?" Aghanashini's tone was almost bored. "You love to grind your grief into philosophy. It keeps you from feeling it."
"Shut up!" Kurai thought, and the voice smiled without a mouth and drifted back.
He sat up straighter. "You're right," he said, and it sounded like it cost him something. "I do that. I break things into ideas when I don't want to feel them. It's… easier. Safer." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I heard you. England. The rooms. The glass. I heard you say you chose me. That's not nothing."
Novva didn't speak.
"I won't pretend I know how to be the kind of person you deserve," he said. "I don't even know if I'm built for it. But I can tell you what's true: when you walk into a room, I breathe a little easier. When you're close, the noise in my head turns down. When I say 'home,' it means wherever we put our knives down together." He paused. "That's what you are to me. Not a tool. Not a shadow."
Her eyes shone, but she blinked fast and they didn't spill. "Then say it like you mean it when it's not raining."
He huffed a tired almost-laugh. "I can try."
"Try harder."
"I will."
They sat again without talking, but it was different. The space between them had shifted half an inch closer.
"You mentioned Nao," Novva said after a while. "And the others. Seiko. Fumiko. Kebe. What happened to them?"
Kurai weighed the question like a knife in his palm. "Some left," he said. "Some I left. Some were taken. One… I took. The worst part is knowing how each of those words uses the same mouth."
Novva studied him. "You hate yourself."
He didn't deny it. "On good days, I hate the world more."
"And the one who hurt your mother?"
"Still breathing," he said. His eyes went distant and hard. "For now."
"-Revenge is the only real thing left-" she said quietly, repeating his own words back to him.
"It feels that way," he said. "If I can't make the world make sense, I can at least remove one piece of its rot." He tipped his head, thinking. "But if I get it...if I put him in the ground, what am I after that? An empty hand?"
Novva's shoulders softened. "Maybe that's when you get to decide without pain deciding for you."
"That sounds like a story people tell to get through nights like this."
"It's still a story I want," she said. "And if you won't believe it for yourself, believe I want it for you."
He looked at her long enough that she looked away first.
"I know what it's like to be used," she said, voice low again. "By governments. By men in coats. By people who called me by a number. Don't you dare make me feel used by you."
"I won't," he said, and this time there wasn't any philosophy in it.
They watched a cat cross the street like it owned the pavement. Somewhere a door slammed.
Novva flexed her fingers against the cold metal slats. "You said you breathe easier when I walk into a room," she said, and a rough smile tugged one corner of her mouth. "I'm going to make you prove that."
"How?"
"You're taking me out tomorrow."
Kurai blinked. "Out."
"There's a festival in the city," she said, chin daring him to refuse. "It's loud and stupid and full of people and I want to feel like I exist for a few hours without a blade in my hand."
He thought of crowds and noise and lights that didn't mean danger for once. It felt foreign. It felt like walking into a memory he never had.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?" She seemed almost surprised he hadn't argued.
"I'll try," he said, honest as a bruise. "I don't promise I'll be good at it."
"You don't have to be good at it," she said. "You just have to be there."
They stood. The bench had printed cold lines across the backs of their legs. Novva stepped ahead, then looked back when he didn't immediately move.
"Kurai?"
"I'm coming," he said. He took one last look at the empty tavern doorway. The laugh-track in his head had finally gone quiet.
They walked. Their steps synced without trying. They turned down a street where posters were taped crooked to walls: colored paper, dates, the name of a city(Valencia). Lanterns hung unlit from wires strung over the road, waiting for tomorrow's switch.
Novva bumped his shoulder with hers. "You're buying me something pointless," she said. "Food that stains my tongue a ridiculous color. A toy I'll forget in a week. Something that makes me feel like I'm not just your blade."
Kurai's mouth made the shape of a smile and nearly turned into one. "Bossy."
"Alive," she said.
They reached the building that wasn't quite home but would do. On the stairs, Novva paused. "One more thing."
He tipped his head.
"When I told you my past, I didn't want you to fix it," she said. "I wanted you to sit there and be the one person who doesn't look at me like I'm broken beyond repair."
"I know," he said.
"Do you?"
He nodded once. "I will do better at shutting up and listening."
"Good," she said, and let herself into the dark.
Kurai stayed on the landing a moment longer, the damp air cool on his face.
He went inside.
Tomorrow would be lanterns and noise and the strange work of acting like people. Tonight was just this: two chairs, two blades, two lives that didn't feel as far apart on a wet bench as they had that afternoon.
He set his sword within reach and sat on the edge of the bed. For a long time he watched the window and the slice of street beyond it, rain dragging the neon into long colored tears.
He thought of what he'd said and what he hadn't. He thought of the man who still breathed in a world that didn't need him. He thought of Novva's voice when she'd said 'I chose you.'
He didn't know if he deserved any of it. He only knew he would try. And for him, trying was louder than most vows.
Outside, a string of lanterns swayed on their wires, dark for now, patient. Tomorrow someone would flip a switch and they would remember how to glow.