It had been thirty minutes of stillness. Of breath syncing to breath. Of Kaji's quiet button-mashing punctuated by the subtle sound of pages turning, the occasional shift of cotton over skin, the clink of candy against teeth. The room had found its own heartbeat—measured and slow, the kind that didn't ask for anything but presence.
Then his phone vibrated.
A single buzz against the desk. He didn't look at first. He didn't want to. But the name that flashed across the screen caught the corner of his eye—Kusumi. No fluff. No greeting. Just:
"Need backup. Some assholes are trashing the corner near 3rd. Send help. Dropped a pin."
Kaji sat up. Stood, actually—sudden and sharp.
The sound startled Akame. She looked up from the page she was halfway through, legs bent, body still folded casually across his bed in that oversized hoodie, one side slipping just slightly off her shoulder. Her knees had shifted up with the motion, the fabric falling between her thighs. She blinked, pupils adjusting from the narrow focus of panels to the sight of him rising.
Her lips were still slick from the lollipop, glossy in the soft light. And her eyes—those impossible eyes—looked up at him not with irritation or confusion, but surprise. Like she'd forgotten he had a world outside of this room.
He looked at her for half a second too long.
She looked like a sin. And maybe like heaven. Something caught between the two, trapped in fabric that didn't belong to her and a silence that always did.
Kaji reached for his Bofurin gakuren, tugged it off the hook behind the door with a motion so practiced it barely made a sound. He shrugged it on—green, creased, marked by wear—and rolled his shoulders once to settle into it. He looked like a different person in it. Like a soldier suiting up for something uglier than war.
"I'll be back in a bit," he muttered, already halfway through the doorframe.
But she moved.
Akame sat up onto her knees, not rushed, not dramatic—just fluid, like instinct. In her hand was the lollipop she'd been working through. She extended it out to him wordlessly, her fingers pale and soft against the sharp cut of his green sleeve.
Kaji glanced down. His own lollipop was long gone—just a stick clenched between his teeth like a cigarette. He didn't hesitate.
He leaned in, cool as ever, and took the candy from her fingers with his mouth. His lips brushed her knuckles. Just a fraction of a second. Just enough.
She didn't flinch. Didn't smile.
"Stay safe," she said, quiet.
And the tone of it—warm, stripped of the usual play—made him still.
Her voice wasn't teasing. Her eyes weren't amused. They were something else now. Something softer. Serious. Caring.
He wondered who else had ever been on the receiving end of that look.
He wondered how the hell they survived it.
Kaji paused in the doorway, his shadow cutting across her legs where they curled beneath her. He didn't look at her again. Couldn't. He only said—low, rough:
"Don't leave."
And then he was gone. The door clicked closed with the same quiet force he always carried.
Akame didn't move at first.
Her hand remained in the air for a breath longer, fingers hovering in the space where he'd taken the candy. Then she pressed those same fingers to her lips, lightly—like trying to catch the memory before it slipped.
YOU ARE READING
SUB ROSA | Wind Breaker
Fanfic❝ She was like light slipping through the cracks-out of place, yet impossible to ignore.❞ Akame finds herself in a world that was never meant for her, a quiet contrast to Furin's chaos. But in a place that challenges her at every turn, she begins to...
