Within the stifling confines of the training chamber, Thitta adjusted the bore of her weapon with a movement as subtle as it was unerring. No deafening thunder followed; her modifications had transmuted the violent roar into a heavy, suffocating silence. "If one proffers flesh to a goat, it shall not partake, would it?" she remarked with a chilling apathy, just as a single leaden messenger stood poised to pierce the mark. A momentary stillness ensued, before she abruptly pivoted the steel toward the figure standing before her.
Clank! The searing metal streaked past, striking the iron lattice directly behind the one's ear, leaving a faint, ghost-like hum vibrating in the stagnant air.
"And what of the tiger?" Thitta continued, her inquiry resuming as if uninterrupted. Ioris let out a sharp breath, a dry, cynical curve gracing the corner of his lips. "What's it thistime?" he inquired.
"Why didn't you flinch?" Thitta countered, a flicker of genuine bewilderment crossing her features. "Do you have enough resentment to hurt me?"
At this, Thitta cast a gaze of pure vitriol upon Ioris. "Do you think I need resentment first to discharge a weapon?" Closing the distance with a deliberate stride, Ioris narrowed the space between them. He reached out, grasping the cold iron in Thitta's hand and pressing the muzzle firmly against the center of his own chin. "For with every wound you inflict, another promise that you break, Micha." he murmured. "Taking accountability—for a person like you, surely that is no great burden." Thitta surrendered her grip, letting the weapon fall away.
Ioris set the steel aside, returning it to its proper resting place. "As for the tiger," Ioris murmured, his voice a low resonance in the hollow room, "he would surely seize the offering. For it is the primal decree of his blood to seek sustenance in the living. To hunt is not a whim, it is his sovereign nature. He is a creature of predatory grace, bound by a pull to the scarlet feast. He doesn't kill for malice, but because he can be nothing else."
The tension in the room, once as taut as a bowstring, suddenly snapped. Ioris let his hand fall from the weapon, the metal cooling against his skin as he stepped back. "Is that not the answer you were expecting for?" he asked. "Now, let's grab some coffee in the morning." Ioris glanced down, his fingers tapping the glass of his watch. The invitation was less a question and more a way to step outta a stifling chamber and back into a world where utility and function were.
The scene was set within the hushed sanctuary of a roadside café—a quiet "eatery" where the world seemed to hold its breath. Ioris sat before a delicate plate of panna cotta and a steaming latte, while Thitta leaned over a glass of iced americano.
"Claire... How is she? Or have you simply let her slip from your mind?" Thitta's voice was careful and rounded, avoiding any edge that might bruise Ioris's peace of thoughts. Ioris shakes his head. "Not in the least," he replied, before taking a lingering sip of his latte. "I've found her. But I've yet to find a way to extract her—to bring her safely under my guard." Thitta nodded as a sign of understanding. That there's still an issue.
"So, where did you find her?", "Do you recall that dealer? The one you dismantled?" Ioris shifted his gaze to Thitta. "Ah. What's with him? Haven't heard for so long." Curiosity flickered across Thitta.
Memory of the dealer's foolish attempt to cheat her was still vivid—a gamble that failed, because Thitta is the type that moves through with vigilance. "One of my guards discovered that Claire is being held in a tightening vice because of him. He's saddled her with debts that he has offered to her." At this, Thitta's focus sharpened, her attention becoming an unwavering constant. "What's the obstacle, then?" Thitta knew well that for a man like Ioris, erasing a debt—no matter how staggering the sum—was usually a triviality. "When my men attempted to negotiate, he demanded something far more 'substantial' in exchange for her freedom," Ioris answered, with a flicker of irritation. "Ouch. That's a foul hand to be dealt," Thitta remarked dryly. Ioris's mind is already beginning to sift through the wreckage for a path forward.
Ioris averted his gaze, tethering his sight to the cold vitreous barrier—a glass divide that partitioned the dense silence of the café from the restless stir of the waking world. Beyond that, he watched the drifting silhouettes of strangers: laborers hurried by their own shadows, school buses teeming with students, and the ones in search of a morning meal. The world outside pulsed with a life that felt increasingly foreign, its noise unable to pierce the transparent veil that held him in stasis. "Tell me," Ioris began, his voice a stray thought escaping the labyrinth of his own mind. "In what manner do you believe a soul most thoroughly ruins their own life?", "By drifting through the world unmoored," Thitta replied. The ice in his Americano clinked as she took a sip.
"When they remain ignorant of their surrounding, or when they simply fail to keep an edge on their guard." she continued. "As simple as that."
Suddenly, everything went silent. It wasn't a void; it was a heavy, crowded thing, filled with the Ioris's considerations, remaining him anchored to the view outside— his eyes tracking a single leaf caught in a localized whirlpool of wind. Thitta didn't interrupt. She didn't need to. She watched the way his jaw remained just a fraction too tight, the way his breathing had slowed to a rhythmic, almost artificial cadence. She knows his way of thinking—the hidden vaults where he kept his cold, marble halls where he drafted his schemes. "You're already mourning the version of yourself that has to make this choice, aren't you?"Thitta's voice was low. It wasn't a question; it was a quiet observation of a truth he hadn't yet voiced.
Ioris didn't flinch, but the stillness of his shoulders shifted. "I'm not mourning. I'm recalibrating."
"Don't lie to me with your professional vocabulary," she countered softly, her fingers tracing the condensation on her iced glass. "You're wondering if saving her will finally be the thing that shatters the clockwork. You've spent years becoming a man of pure geometry, of angles and logic. And here comes Claire, an irregular shape that doesn't fit into your perfect designs." She leaned in, her gaze catching his reflection in the cold glass.
"You aren't spacing out 'cause out of way. It is because you've already found the solution, and you hate how much it's going to cost to execute it."
Ioris finally pulled his gaze from the world outside, turning to meet her eyes. The coldness was there, but beneath it was a flicker of something raw— a recognition that he was, for once, completely transparent to externality. "He thinks he's holding a hostage," Ioris murmured, his voice regaining its edge. "He doesn't realize he's holding a detonator." Thitta curved a smile— a small, knowing curve of the lips that didn't reach her eyes. "And you're just deciding whether to let the explosion take you with it, or if you're going to walk away from the ashes alone. But we both know, Yose. You've never been good at letting go of things that belong to you."
The coffee was a lukewarm, charcoal-colored disaster, served in a mug that felt like it had been salvaged from a shipwreck. They sat in a dim corner of the shack, the wooden table between them stained with rings from a thousand other desperate mornings. Outside, the humid rot of the Zone pressed against the glass. Thitta's gaze shifted to a structure across the narrow street—a leaning apartment block where the upper floors had pancaked into the middle, held together only by rusted rebar and stubborn habit.
"That brick over there," Thitta said, her voice a flat, rhythmic rasp. "The way the load-bearing pillar is snapped at forty-five degrees. It's almost a perfect replica of the West Wing back in '22."
Ioris didn't look up from his cup immediately, but his rhythm faltered for a fraction of a second. "The West Wing was made of limestone and hubris, Thitta. This is just rotting timber and bad luck."
"Still," she continued, her eyes narrowing with a dry, clinical sharpness. "I remember you trying to calculate the structural of a falling ceiling while your shoulder was literally pinned under a mahogany desk. It was ridiculous. Truly peak, Ioris." she made that as a playful sarcasm.
Ioris finally looked up, his expression a monolith of indifference, though a faint, cynical glint returned to his eyes. "I was calculating the velocity of the debris to see if I had time to finish my cigarette before the rest of the roof joined us."
Thitta let out a short, dry breath—half-laugh, half-exhale. "We spent hours in that crawlspace. You spent half of them explaining why the contractor should have been executed for using inferior mortar, and the rest trying to convince me that the dust in your lungs was a 'textured experience'."
"It kept us from acknowledging that we were three inches away from becoming a permanent part of the foundation," Ioris murmured, taking a slow sip of the bitter brew. "Better," she said, standing up and smoothing the sharp lines of her coat.
They both rose from the table, the movements were fluid, like a shadow stretching as the sun began to fail. The check was left behind, a minor debt settled, unlike the one haunting the periphery of his mind. As they pushed through the heavy door, the barrier finally dissolved, replaced by the biting reality of the morning. The city did not greet them with the warmth of the sun; instead, it offered a vast, ashy expanse of gray stone and iron.
The sky was a bruised charcoal, and the air tasted of old soot. It was as if the world had been burned down in the night, and they were the only two left to wander through the embers. Thitta walked beside him, her coat billowing like a dark wing in the sharp wind. She didn't need to ask where they were going. The transition from the hushed sanctuary of the café to the sepulchral streets felt like moving from a dream into a meticulous nightmare.
She watched the way he adjusted his cuffs— a small, habitual gesture."The air feels heavy today," she remarked, her eyes scanning the monolithic buildings that loomed over them like silent judges. "Like it's made of cinders that haven't quite realized they're dead yet." Ioris didn't look back at the warmth they had left behind. He looked only toward the horizon, where the dealer's domain lay hidden beneath a shroud of smog. "It isn't the air that's heavy, Thitta," he replied, his voice barely more than a ripple in the wind, yet carrying a lethal weight. "It's the gravity of what comes next. Let the city turn to ash if it must— so long as we are the ones holding the flame." She didn't offer a warning; she just stepped into the gray haze with him, with steady presence, sharpening stone for his resolve.