Ryu slumped against the damp alley wall, her breath shallow and ragged.
The gash in her side pulsed with a life of its own — a second heartbeat, stubborn and savage.
She pulled out her stitching kit.
Her fingers trembled.
Not from fear — but from the cold, practiced precision of someone who'd sewn her skin too many times to count.
Thread. Needle. Bite down. Push through.
Her scarf muffled the strangled sounds clawing from her throat.
But her eyes?
No hesitation.
Only survival.
Blood streaked her gloves. Every loop of thread whispered:
You're still alive.
She tied the final knot with clenched teeth, then sagged back. Forehead against cold concrete.
Somewhere in the distance, tires screeched. Laughter spilled across the street.
But her world had already tilted into darkness.
---
The room was white.
Too white.
Sterile. Suffocating.
The kind of place that pretends to care.
She blinked up at the fluorescent ceiling light. Her back throbbed.
A slow, mechanical beep echoed beside her.
And then —
Memory shattered.
The alley. The blood. The needle.
She jolted upright —
Except...
She couldn't move.
Hands — cold, unfamiliar — clamped around her wrists.
The world tilted.
She was back there.
Pinned. Screaming behind stitched lips.
Breath stolen. Wrists crushed.
Fire clawing up her throat.
"Stop! I said Stop!"
No one heard.
Only a shape above her.
Looming. Silent. Familiar.
She was lashed flat on the back. Eighteen counted above—
And then—
She woke.
---
She sat up with a gasp, sweat clinging like a second skin.
Her bandages were clean now.
The room was cloaked in shadow.
It was night.
Across the room —
A figure.
She narrowed her eyes. That stance. That silence.
"…Johnny?"
A pause. Then softly—
"Kevin... Not Johnny."
He stepped forward.
"Why are you here?" Her voice was raw, cracked into gravel. "When did you come?"
He knelt beside her bed, gaze locked on hers.
He didn't speak.
Just reached out — one trembling hand — and wrapped her in an embrace.
She froze.
Her arms stayed limp.
For a moment—
She let him hold her.
Then—
She shoved him back.
Her bandages split—a fresh stain blooming like a confession.
"Don't you dare."
His eyes met hers — steady, sad.
"You left," she said, voice rising.
"No calls. No messages. Not even a whisper.
And now you show up like this is some twisted reunion?"
"Ryu—"
"No."
Her voice cracked—then sharpened into a blade.
"Now you show up… and hug me?"
He swallowed, shaken.
"I didn't know how to come back."
She stared at him.
"You know what your problem is?" He said, voice low, gesturing to her bandaged side.
"You don't walk like you're haunted. You walk like you're the one doing the haunting."
She snorted bitterly and raised her chin.
"Oh? Says the one who ran when the tail tucked between his legs?"
She leaned forward, voice tight.
"I have no enormity. You took care of me when I couldn't — and I was grateful.
But don't meddle, Kevin."
Johnny's eyes didn't flinch, but something flickered.
He said quietly.
" That's why I came to find you, Ryu.
Because the only ones who survive this life… are the ones who forget who they were."
He tilted his head slightly.
"And you? You remember everything, don't you?"
He looked at her — not like a man burdened with regret …but like someone staring into a mirror cracked beyond repair.
Then he leaned in.
Her voice dropped — a storm beneath steel.
"Get out of my sight.
I wear masks. I kill for silence. And I don't know you… anymore. I waited — through hell, through blood, through nightmares that refused to die. I thought of you, Johnny. Kevin. Whatever the hell your name is."
"Then maybe we're even," he said, voice like gravel.
"Because I don't know you either — not this ghost wearing knives for skin. The girl I knew bled red. This one? ....
She bleeds ash."
"But even ash remembers what it came from."
Her eyes burned.
"I bleed ash. Fire. Blood. But you? You only bleed lies."
Her breath hitched — but her voice held.
"My whole childhood. My entire life.
I thought of you. I waited for you."
She scoffed.
"Johnny…"
Then softly. Bitterly.
"But that wasn't even your real name, was it?"
Her fists clenched. Her voice cut like frost.
"What the hell was real about you?!
Your job? Your past? Your family? What did we even have?"
Kevin flinched.
He stepped back, her words hitting harder than any blade.
"You think I wanted to lie to you?"
"I had no name left to give. The one they took from me — buried beneath classified files and fake passports."
His voice cracked.
"The only real thing I ever had… was you."
He looked away.
"And I left… because I knew one day,
you'd bleed ash. And I'd be the reason."
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was deafening.
Louder than truth.
Louder than rage.
Louder than memory.
Outside, neon lights buzzed like dying fireflies.
Inside, the past howled.
And somewhere deep within her…
The storm of Neptune churned—the same tempest that had drowned her screams that night.
---
Author's POV~
please be with me in this story >~<
real spices are yet to come....
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