His mother's soup tasted the way school holidays smelled—soy and ginger, steam rising in gentle ribbons. The chipped bowls had been the same since he was a boy, their blue paint flaked at the edges, stubborn survivors of years of family meals.
The old table creaked as it always had. His father talked too loudly about the team's chances this season, waving chopsticks for emphasis, and apologized for it twice when he realized. The television murmured from the next room, tinny laughter from some variety show bleeding through.
For a while, Seigi let himself be carried by the current of it, a river that remembered him even if he felt like a stranger in its banks.
"You're thinner," his mother said, ladling more into his bowl.
"I am eating."
"Eat more."
He obeyed. Not because he was hungry, but because she needed him to.
His father tried casual. "Captain says they're working you hard?"
"Always." Seigi smiled and made it reach his eyes. They deserved that much. "I'm okay."
His father leaned back slightly, chopsticks tapping the rim of his bowl. "You've always been different, you know. Even as a kid—you got up when others stayed down. Your grandmother used to say your blood remembered old battles." He chuckled, shaking his head. "Superstitious nonsense, but… maybe she wasn't wrong."
The words snagged on Seigi's thoughts like hooks, though he forced a smile and let the moment pass.
His father nodded, then brightened, as if recalling a prompt. "And Renji? How's your partner holding up? Still juggling those night shifts with two kids at home? Your mother was saying his wife looked worn down last time she saw her in the market."
The question caught Seigi for half a breath. He pictured Renji with his easy grin at the precinct, the way he deflected with jokes but always had shadows tucked behind his eyes. "He's managing," Seigi said carefully. "He always does."
"Good man," his father said. "Don't let him burn out before his time. You two watch each other's backs."
The chatter flowed, light and ordinary—about a neighbor's new dog, a bakery changing hands, an aunt's stubborn hip. Seigi supplied nods and noises in the right places, his chest tightening with the wanting. Wanting this to be enough. Wanting this to be all there was.
His mother's gaze lingered—sharp in the way only mothers manage. "You're carrying something, Seigi. You always have."
"I'm fine, Mom."
"Of course you are," she said, with a tone that meant she didn't believe him and loved him anyway.
He reached for his chopsticks and, without meaning to, balanced them across his fingers the way he used to as a kid—crossed, then scissored, then lifted like little wooden swords. The muscle memory stirred something brighter than the lamp over the table.
A memory:
He was eight, a towel clipped at his neck for a cape, an upturned colander denting his hair into ridges. Grandma sat by the open window, knitting needles ticking like a quiet clock, telling her Sengoku stories—their family's version, where generals were giants and foot soldiers were stubborn, and every battle was a war between heroes and villains, not provinces and taxes.
"Heroes don't fly," Grandma had said, amused, "they fall and stand again until the ground gives up." He took that as permission, climbed onto the low step by the genkan, and jumped with a battle cry, expecting the air to catch him like it had in cartoons. It didn't. He hit the mat with a thump that knocked the wind out of him, eyes watering.
His father had tried not to laugh and failed, scooping him up by the armpits. "You were airborne for at least half a second. That's a start." His mother fussed at the towel-cape's knot, muttering about bruises and bad influences, and still set a bowl of miso in front of him like an award.
Later, he'd stood on the chair—chopsticks in both hands—guarding the table from invisible ogres. He nicked the lacquer and apologized to it, solemn. His father tapped the back of his knuckles with one chopstick to correct his grip like a kendo teacher who had been demoted to dinnerware. Grandma, without looking up, added, "A stubborn boy makes a good hero if his stubbornness learns where to kneel."
He'd held that line under his tongue for years, like a sweet that never fully dissolved.
Back to now:
The variety show's laughter wobbled in from the living room, and for a moment the house was exactly the same as it had been: soup steam, the click of chopsticks, his father's too-loud voice, his mother's soft scolding. The river of Then and the river of Now ran almost side by side.
Almost.
He rose to fetch tea, grateful for the small excuse to move. The floorboards creaked the same way they had under his childhood weight, grounding him. That was when he saw it.
The photo frame on the bookcase had been turned—angled toward the couch instead of the hallway. A subtle change, barely noticeable. His hand moved before he thought, lifting it.
A festival night, years ago. Lanterns strung like fallen stars, smoke from yakitori grills curling up into the dark. His mother caught mid-laughter, head tipped back. His father's hand twined in hers. And just behind them, casual as belonging, stood a man.
Hawk eyes. A thin scar cut beneath one cheekbone. Not looking at the camera. Looking past it, as if he knew where pictures end and the world begins.
Seigi's breath thinned. Training kept his hand steady, but inside, the thread of his heart tugged taut.
"Friend of Dad's?" he asked lightly, too lightly.
His father didn't look up from his bowl. "Old coworker. We haven't seen him in years."
"What's his name?"
A silence, quick as a blade. His parents shared a look, small but undeniable. "Kazu," his mother said at last. "Kazu Mori."
Wrong. The name was a mask. Seigi knew the face from dossiers with no names, from grainy footage where masks slipped just enough to show scars that couldn't lie.
Not Kazu. Not Mori. Veil.
He put the frame back carefully, aligning it just so. He ate the rest of the soup. Joked about the team. Let his father re-tell—badly—the story about the neighbor's dog that mistook a delivery drone for a rival. He laughed in the right places. His mother refilled his bowl even after he said he was full. He didn't stop her.
He hugged his mother longer than he usually allowed, breathing in the faint scent of soy and ginger that clung to her sweater. Hugged his father with the same, firm pressure he used on survivors pulled from wreckage.
Then he walked home through the city night, counting his breaths. Not to calm himself. To keep from breaking into a run.
The lot outside his building smelled of rain-soaked asphalt. Sato was already there, leaning against his car, trench coat collar up against the chill. The glow of his cigarette carved lines into his tired face. He smoked like it might finally confess to him if he held on long enough.
When Seigi approached, Sato flicked the butt away, sparks spiraling. His eyes never left Seigi's. And in that look, Seigi saw it—the thing Sato hadn't said to protect him. The thing he'd hoped Seigi would never have to learn this way.
"Talk," Sato said, voice low, a warning wrapped in gravel.
Seigi swallowed. "They were in my house."
The night hung heavy between them.
Sato struck a match, let it flare, then blew it out before it could catch. His hands were steady, but his jaw was tight. "Lines are being crossed," he said quietly. "And once that starts… there's no crossing back."
"Who is he?" Seigi asked, surprised at how level his voice came out. "In the photo."
Sato's gaze ticked just once—left, then back. "A name won't save you," he said. "But it might hurry the people who want to end you."
Seigi held that, let it bruise. "They know where my parents live."
"They've always known," Sato said, and in the saying of it was the truth about how long he'd been keeping certain storms at bay. "Tonight was a reminder."
Wind pushed grit across the lot. Somewhere, a drunk laughed too loud. Somewhere, a train howled as if the city had a throat.
"I can move them," Seigi said. "I can—"
"You can get them watched," Sato cut in, softer now. "By people who don't miss." He let the unlit match snap in his fingers. "And you can choose, right now, which truths you chase and which ones you let look at you from a distance until you're ready."
Seigi exhaled. The breath felt older than he was. "I'm not sure I'm ever ready."
Sato's mouth pressed thin. "Nobody is. That's why it's called courage and not schedule-keeping."
For a long time neither of them moved. Neon bled against low clouds. The lot lights hummed. Seigi thought of the photo again, of his mother's hand angled just so in his father's, of a stranger dropped into a memory like a pin in a map.
He was no longer just chasing shadows.
The shadows were already in his home.
And they had names.
Sato finally spoke, voice almost gentle. "Go inside. Sleep if you can. Tomorrow, we make sure the people you love are harder to reach."
Seigi nodded. "Tomorrow," he said, and heard how many promises the word could carry.
He climbed the stairs slowly, counting his breaths. Not to calm himself.
To keep from breaking into a run.