1The night didn’t end after the men left.

  The weight of their presence, the threat that they represented, still lingered in the park like a heavy fog.

  Yuzuki sat on the bench, watching the others, feeling the silent tension that had settled over the small group.

  Naseru sat a few feet away, his posture rexed but his mind somewhere else entirely.

  She could tell.

  She could see it in the way his fingers tapped idly against his knee, in the way his eyes were locked onto the empty street beyond the park but weren’t really looking at anything.

  He was thinking.

  "You’re always in your head," she muttered before she could stop herself.

  Nasru’s gaze flicked toward her.

  "What?"

  Yuzuki shrugged. "You always look like you’re trying to solve some impossible puzzle."

  Nasru was quiet for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.

  "Maybe I am."

  That caught her off guard.

  She expected him to brush it off, the same way he always did. But this time, he seemed… more open. Just slightly.

  "Trying to figure out how to stop them?" she asked.

  Nasru exhaled. "Trying to figure out how to make it all stop."

  Yuzuki hesitated. "You mean the businessmen? The tourists? The locals looking for someone to use?"

  Nasru’s jaw tightened.

  "Them. And the ones who made them that way."

  2There it was again.

  That idea.

  That not all of them started that way.

  That somewhere down the line, something twisted them.

  Yuzuki bit her lip.

  "Apparently you can tip the scales and I want to see what things can be like when you align the majority percentage."

  She had never thought about it like that before.

  But Nasru had.

  "So what’s the answer?" she asked.

  Nasru let out a breath, dragging a hand through his hair. "I don’t know."

  It was the first time he admitted it so pinly.

  Yuzuki frowned. "Then what are you trying to figure out?"

  He hesitated for a second, then finally spoke.

  "Someone I knew left behind a book."

  That got her attention.

  Yuzuki straightened slightly. "A book?"

  Naseru nodded. "They were… someone who thought about these things. A lot. They wrote down ideas. Pns. Ways to actually fix things."

  Yuzuki’s chest tightened. "Who?"

  "Doesn’t matter."

  The answer came too quickly.

  A deflection.

  Naseru didn’t want to talk about them.

  And Yuzuki didn’t push.

  Instead, she asked something else. "And? What happened to the book?"

  Naseru exhaled. "I’ve been reading it. But there’s more. More books I don’t have yet. More things I don’t know."

  He sounded… frustrated.

  Like he was searching for something that kept slipping just out of reach.

  Yuzuki studied him for a moment.

  "So are you gonna find them?"

  Nasru went quiet.

  And then, finally—

  "Maybe."

  3The conversation didn’t go any further.

  Naseru changed the subject, asking if she was hungry.

  Yuzuki wasn’t going to lie. She was.

  So when Naseru pulled some money from his pocket and muttered, "Let’s go get something," she didn’t argue.

  They walked in silence for a while, slipping through the neon-drenched streets of Tokyo, passing convenience stores, quiet alleyways, and rows of vending machines humming softly in the night.

  Finally, they found a pce.

  It wasn’t much—just a small shop selling cheap rice bowls and miso soup, the kind of pce that catered to the city’s exhausted workforce.

  Naseru ordered without hesitation. Yuzuki watched him carefully.

  He was spending money on food this time.

  She had seen him win money from basketball before, but he rarely used it for himself.

  He barely ate, barely cared.

  But now, he was eating with her.

  She didn’t know why that mattered, but it did.

  4When they returned to the park, a few of the other guys had already brought back food of their own.

  A small, unspoken agreement happened.

  They sat together.

  They ate.

  It wasn’t some dramatic moment.

  It wasn’t some deep revetion.

  But for a brief second, the park didn’t feel so suffocating.

  For a brief second, they weren’t just surviving—they were living.

  Yuzuki gnced at Reina, who was quietly eating beside her, her posture still tense but her face less guarded than before.

  She looked at Naseru, who sat with his legs stretched out, his expression neutral as he picked at his food.

  She thought about what he said.

  About the books. The pns. The person he knew.

  Someone had been trying to figure things out before him.

  And now, Naseru was trying to pick up the pieces.

  She swallowed her food, the warm rice sitting heavy in her stomach.

  Maybe one day, he’d tell her more.

  But for now?

  This was enough.

  For now, they ate.

  And the world kept spinning around them.

  To be continued...