To Nayumi, the world was a watercolour painting left in the rain, all soft edges and muted colours. But Raizo was not. He was etched in sharp, dark ink, a stark and solid monument in her blurry world. He was her anchor. Her fortress. Her hero.
The toast he made her was the best part of the morning, especially the sticky-sweet red bean paste he'd smeared into a lopsided heart. She liked to lick it off her fingers, a tiny, delicious proof of his care. But today, even that couldn't scrape away the wiggly feeling in her tummy.
The reason was Raizo. He was doing it again.
His eyes were fixed on the grain of the wooden table as if it were showing a secret, sad movie only he could see. Scrape. Scrape. His finger—the one with the little white scar from where he'd fixed her kite (a story of heroism she'd retold a hundred times)—was between his teeth.
She'd tried counting. She got to seven before she lost track. Seven times he'd forgotten how strong his hands were. It made her chest feel tight, like her heart was too big for it. Heroes weren't supposed to look so tired. Her hero wasn't supposed to look like he was losing a fight she couldn't see.
"Hey Rai-Rai?" Her voice made a little cloud in the cool, quiet air between them.
He startled, his thoughts scattering. His hand—his hero's hand—knocked into his coffee cup. Clatter! He grabbed it just before a sad, brown puddle could swallow his sweatpants. The coffee was cold now. She could smell its stale bitterness from her seat, but she also saw the speed of his reflexes, the way his muscles reacted before his mind did. It was a flash of the man who battled unseen monsters, a glimpse of the protector buried under the tiredness. See? He was still in there.
Nayumi took another bite of toast. Only one corner left, shaped like a mountain. "You were staring at the table for a hundred years," she said, chewing around the words. "And you're biting your nails. That's yucky. You said so." She said it not to scold, but to remind him of his own rules, to tug on the rope and pull him back from wherever the deep, grey thoughts had taken him.
Raizo's hand flew away from his mouth like it was burned. He rubbed at the little red roads under his eyes. They made him look like a tired warrior who had stood guard all night. Her warrior. "I'm fine," he grunted, but his voice was flat and hard, like the sound of the deadbolt sliding shut on the front door. "Just… there's a lot of work."
With that, he pushed the toast she'd given him to the side. The scrape of the plate was loud, a punctuation mark to his lie.
Nayumi scrunched her nose. That was his Don't Ask voice. And his Don't Ask voice always made the wiggly worm in her tummy tie itself into a hard, cold knot. It was the voice he used to keep the shadows at bay, the ones she knew he fought for her every single day. He was bearing a weight so she wouldn't have to feel its shadow.
He reached across the table with a napkin and pushed it against her cheek, scrubbing a little too hard. She squirmed. She could clean her own face.
But sometimes, she decided, you just had to let your hero do what he needed to do. His heart needed to take care of her, and that was his most important quest. To refuse would be to deny him a victory.
Rai-Rai doesn't talk much. That's okay. I talk enough for the both of us.
Maybe if she made the sun come out in the kitchen, it would shoo the clouds away from behind his eyes.
"...If you're free," she said quietly, swinging her legs under the table, setting the rhythm for a new, happier mission, "can we go outside? Just for a minute?"
Raizo's scrubbing hand stopped. For a whole second, it was completely still, a statue of a man making a difficult choice. Then it started again, softer now. "Don't you have your first day of school tomorrow? Besides, it's cold out."
That was a silly excuse! Raizo worked a bazillion hours outside and came home with frost in his hair and salt on his jacket, acting like it was nothing. The cold didn't bother him. The cold feared him.
"But you're always out in the freezing," she pushed, careful not to use her Bratty Voice. She wasn't being bratty. She was a mission controller, guiding her hero back into the light. "Ten minutes won't hurt. If you can." She added the last part as a challenge she knew he couldn't resist. A hero never admits he can't.
Nayumi held her breath. Outside was good. Outside had the park with the twisty slide that he'd checked for splinters himself. Outside had Chalk Crabs, which he always bought her even while complaining about how sweet they were. But more than that, outside was where Raizo sometimes stood a little taller, where the wind caught his hair and for a moment, he didn't look like he was carrying the whole town on his shoulders.
Raizo let out a big breath, a bigger cloud than hers. A small, tired grimace peeked through. "Fine. But use your Miracles. I don't want you catching a cold."
The 'Miracles'. He'd grumbled the day he bought them, arguing with the shopkeeper, but he'd bought them anyway. For her. He always did the hard things for her.
"Yay! Oh–sorry!" She clapped her hands, then remembered to be calm. She scrambled off her chair, her morning mission a success. The worm in her tummy was finally, finally still. He had said yes. It was a small thing, but in the quiet war he fought inside himself, every victory was a miracle. And she was his greatest believer.
—
She scrambled to get her boots on, the ones that felt like walking on marshmallows.
Raizo was ready before she could even put her second shoe on, just shrugging into his old jacket. He hadn't brushed his hair or done any of the morning rituals he always insisted on for her. It was proof, she thought, of his selflessness. He gave all his armour to her, leaving himself with just the scars.
Her Miracles were already working. The hat kept her warmth tucked in, the shoes—a little too big—made each step feel soft, and the jacket's warm, fuzzy lining felt like a constant, gentle hug. It felt like him.
Raizo opened the front door after the familiar, comforting ritual of unlocking the four locks. He moved to the side, a silent, permanent sentry, and she nodded, the signal that the coast was clear. This was their drill. He was her first line of defence.
The air outside was a chilly slap. She felt it ache in her hands immediately, craving the kitchen's warmth. But Raizo didn't even seem to feel it. He just levelled a brief, flat glare at the hidden sun, swallowed whole by grey, pillowy clouds. He looked like he was personally offended by the weather, as if he wanted to fight the sky itself for being so gloomy. He was so strong.
"I'll lead the way," Raizo said, his voice a low rumble of authority as he fell into step beside her. His pale hand hung just within reach, a promise of stability. "I don't want you tripping into the snow like last time."
The way he was so sure it would happen again made her a little self-conscious. He was always watching, always predicting, a guardian anticipating every fall. He saw dangers she didn't even know were there.
"I-it was one time! It's not like you never fell flat on your butt either…" She crossed her arms, trying to turn it into a shared joke, to pry out that rare, real smile.
As her silence pressed, Raizo looked down at her.
The moment stretched, thin and fragile. Nayumi could see the retreat in his eyes, the conversation about to be locked away with all the others.
But instead of shutting down, he deflected. He seized on her joke like a lifeline.
"My clumsiness never involved snacking on art supplies," he stated flatly, though a faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched his lips. "Or did you already forget the Great Yellow Crayon Incident? You cried because it wasn't lemon." He scoffed, raising both eyebrows, knowing he'd won another exchange.
…Now that was a low blow. He didn't need to remind her of that. He'd been the one to pry the crayon from her hand, his voice gruff but his hands so careful. Even his teasing was a kind of protection.
"You're being irritating," she pouted, her tone more embarrassment than actual irritation.
"But It looked like lemon! It was a trick! A yummy, waxy trick!" Justifying herself only made her sound like more of a brat.
"You're being a baby..." Raizo rolled his eyes, his famous frowny face appearing again. It was his battle mask. She knew it hid everything else.
"Hmpf." Before she could ask for a stalemate, a group of birds passed above them, settling on the electricity wires and starting to peck at them as if the very energy was edible.
"Rai-Rai, why do those birds do that?"
It wasn't that she didn't know. She saw cartoons. She just wanted to hear him talk. She wanted to listen to the low, sure rumble of his voice, to watch the way his eyes tracked things she couldn't see, understanding the hidden mechanics of the world.
"Those are Gnashbirds," Raizo said, pointing a vague, dismissive finger. His voice was all fact, no wonder. "They're attracted to Exuberance like any other pest. Draining the public grid. Nuisances." One of them snapped its beak through the insulating layer on a wire, and for a second, its dull, bluish form sparked with a violent, stolen power.
Raizo's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He saw the problem. He always saw the problems. To Nayumi, it just looked like magic. But she knew, deep down, that Raizo was the real magic—the kind that understood the darkness so he could stand in front of it for her.
The Gnashbirds howled in unison as the rest took turns to devour the energy. After she and Raizo were almost out of the main street, they took flight in a perfect V, their stolen vividness a shock against the dull sky.
They walked on. The world through her Miracles was a softened, quieter place. The sharp wind became a gentle push, the cold ache in her hands faded to a pleasant tingle, and the crunch of her boots in the old, gritty snow was a satisfying, muffled rhythm next to Raizo's heavy, deliberate tread. She watched the sleepy town unfold: a shopkeeper sweeping salt from a stoop, the warm glow from a bakery window painting a golden square on the pavement. It was their world, imperfect and grey, but safe. Because he was here.
Nayumi skipped ahead two steps for every one of his sluggish, heavy strides.
She looked around for their destination. And then she saw it. The park, built over the years, its trees dusted with whiteness. It was still early. If someone else was there, then they weren't the only disciplined ones!
"Oh, the park is right there!" Her eyes widened with delight. She started to run, then looked back at Raizo, who was still walking at his own Raizo-ish pace, a slow, deliberate patrol of their surroundings.
Marching back and taking his hand on hers. It was cold, nothing like her warm fingers. "Come on! You're going to be late to work if we don't go quickly!"
He stood stiff for a second, then his fingers curled loosely around hers. Not a real hold, but an allowance. He started moving, not as fast as she would've liked, but he was moving with her.
And that was everything.
It wasn't just about the park. It was about this. Him, beside her. The reluctant guardian and his cheering squad. This was what made her believe she wasn't wasting his time. She was his time. The most important part.
She shook her head, smiling to herself as she felt his solid form follow behind, a wall between her and the grey world.
I don't care if he never eats my toast. I don't care if he smells like smoke and coffee. He's mine. And I think—no, I know—that I'm his reason. She took a deep breath, the cold air sharp in her lungs. I have to be.
Because If I'm not, then who is?