From the Top

It was still night.

The Supra roared through the darkness, its engine the only sound alive in a world that felt emptied out.

No voices.

No radio.

Just the hum of tires on cracked mountain asphalt, winding its way inland—out of the valley, away from the school, from the shattered glass and silent halls, from the blackboard still etched into my memory like a scar that hadn’t yet formed.

Ryoji hadn’t said a word since he cut comms with Hiro.

He’d simply driven. Jaw tight. Eyes forward. One hand on the wheel, the other resting near the stick shift like muscle memory had taken over. His knuckles still looked tense. A pale sheen of dried sweat clung to his temple.

It wasn’t over.

Not in his mind. Not in mine.

I didn’t try to fill the silence. I wasn’t sure I could.

It felt wrong to speak. Like we’d stepped out of something sacred, or cursed—or both—and were still carrying the air of it on our skin. The Supra wasn’t just moving us anymore. It was carrying the weight of what had just happened. Of what we’d become.

Of what he was.

Of what I’d seen him do.

I hugged my knees up in the seat, bare arms wrapped around them. The warm draft from the heater barely reached me. My fingers were cold. Not from the temperature. From something deeper.

The forest thinned as we climbed.

The night sky opened above us. Pale stars, faint and distant, like they weren’t watching anymore.

Like we had gone beyond their reach.

That’s what it felt like.

Like we had crossed into another world. One with different rules. One where I wasn’t just running from danger anymore.

I was inside it.

Breathing it.

And I wasn’t sure we could ever go back.

We climbed higher, the road winding like a loose ribbon through black pine and crag rock. Somewhere down in the valley, the ghosts of that place were still settling. But up here, it was just us and the hum of the engine, the steady growl of the Supra pressing forward like nothing had happened.

Except everything had.

My body was still braced. I hadn’t realized it until my calves started cramping, my fingers stiff from gripping the seatbelt too tight. My thoughts flicked back and forth—Krisha’s body limp in his arms, the takedowns, that… thing I saw in his eyes. And the blackboard.

God, that blackboard.

I swallowed hard, but it caught in my throat. I hadn’t said a word since we left.

Neither had he.

Then—his voice.

“This wasn’t like Awara,” he said, calmly. Not turning to look. Just watching the road. “Or the Osaka Station.”

My head snapped toward him. I didn’t respond.

“You’re feeling like your limbs aren’t yours,” he continued. “Like sound’s too loud but also too far away. Your chest is tight. Like you’re still waiting for something to happen.”

I blinked.

Every word landed. Like he was narrating my insides.

“And that’s normal,” he added. “You’ve had your first direct exposure. Full contact. Close-range. We walked through it, not past it.”

I didn’t know what surprised me more—that he knew exactly what I was feeling, or that he was saying it.

He shifted gears, the sound clean, fluid. His hand lingered for a moment. Then, without looking, he moved it from the stick to my shoulder. Light pressure. Not forceful. Just… there.

“You’re safe now.”

Just those three words.

And suddenly, something loosened in my ribs. I hadn’t even noticed how hard I’d been holding my breath.

Safe.

He said it like a fact. Like a promise. Like he meant to make it true even if the world disagreed.

I turned toward the window, but not before glancing at him again. His eyes were on the road, but the shadows that clung to him—whatever that thing was inside him during the fight—felt dimmer now. Muted.

This man went from taking down a special ops team like it was a formality… to grounding me with his words.

I was starting to believe he could really do both.

“I promised you pizza, didn’t I?” he said suddenly.

I stared at him. That was not what I expected next.

The laugh came out before I could stop it. A breathless, cracked thing that almost hurt.

“You did,” I managed, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of the borrowed tank top. “You really did.”

He gave a small nod. Like that settled something.

I wanted to ask—Are we really safe now? But the words stuck.

Maybe I didn’t want the answer. Maybe I already knew it.

“We’ll stop at the next clearing,” he said. “Stretch your legs. Eat something.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. He beat me to it anyway.

“You can relax,” he said quietly. “We’re in the clear.”

And for just a moment, I let myself believe him.

The Supra rolled to a quiet stop, tires crunching over loose gravel.

We’d climbed high—higher than I’d realized. The clearing overlooked the valley like a forgotten scenic point, half-swallowed by trees and mist. Below, ridges folded into deep green shadows, layers of forest and fog. Somewhere far down, hidden by distance and miles of mountain, was the school.

The place where it happened.

Where Krisha’s team was still recovering—if they were lucky.

Where her flame-red hair still lay on the classroom floor like a warning sign no one could read until too late.

Ryoji shut off the engine. The sudden silence made my ears ring.

He stepped out first, doing his perimeter sweep. I followed, letting the cool air hit my face. Still. Clean. Quiet enough to press in. I moved to the edge of the overlook, arms tight across my chest, eyes tracing the shadows swallowing the valley.

Had all of this really happened?

I tried piecing it together, like a movie I’d jumped into halfway through. Security escort. Japan. Then him. Ryoji. Dry, serious, stone-faced. More noir detective than bodyguard.

But he was also… cool. Collected. Confident in that quiet, maddening way that made you second-guess your own instincts.

Thinking about it now, though—

How did I even find him?

How does someone like that even end up in some cushy side-gig in Italy?

He knew people in Osaka, still had access codes to buildings in Japan, could move past police and security like it was child’s play. Strange. But maybe that’s just how his world worked—local allies, contingencies, networks built for every scenario.

Maybe.

Even so—escaping Osaka on the fly was one thing.

Taking on a military-grade tracking unit?

Outmaneuvering Krisha?

Disabling her entire team?

That was… something else.

That wasn’t protection.

That was war.

I stared out over the mist-covered valley, my heart beating slow but heavy. There were no words for it. Only that deep, unsettled churn in my stomach.

Who was he?

And who was I to have found him?

What were these dreams—this strange thread that seemed to loop tighter every time I got closer?

Was I imagining it?

Or had I stepped into something I didn’t yet have the language to name?

Ryoji’s voice cut through the stillness behind me.

“Don’t stand too close to the edge.”

He said it like always—calm, measured.

But it still startled me.

Because I wasn’t afraid of falling.

I was afraid that if I turned around, I’d see something in his eyes again—something I wasn’t ready to understand.

I sat on the hood, metal still warm from the engine. Ryoji had handed me a survival bar—chocolate-almond, supposedly. Tasted like regret and granola. I chewed anyway. The silence between us stretched just long enough to feel comfortable, letting the night hold our thoughts.

Below, the valley had vanished into shadows. No lights, no movement—just black and the distant outlines of mountains against a velvet sky. The only glow came from the Supra’s dome lamp and the stars, scattered like careless dust across the heavens.

And then I remembered.

Not the danger. Not the blood. The other moments.

The ones that made this all real.

Him cooking, sleeves rolled up, brushing hair out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. Arguing over bread slices. That silly night I stole a slice of mozzarella and he caught me mid-bite, calling me a thief.

The Tokyo rooftop. The world quiet. I broke down—really broke down—and he didn’t say much. Just stayed. Held space. Offered stillness.

He’d been there when I faced Shizuka and Kyoshi too. The weight of old love, of being the one left behind. He hadn’t judged. He’d just understood.

That night felt like a year ago.

It wasn’t even a week.

I took a breath and said it, low, but firm:

“Ryo… how?”

He turned slightly, raising a brow.

“How what?”

I gestured vaguely toward the darkness behind us. “How did you do what you just did? That wasn’t… I mean, you’re not just some ordinary bodyguard. Or private investigator.”

A faint smirk touched his mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“You really are just now getting that?”

I gave a hollow laugh, but it vanished just as fast.

He looked back at the valley, jaw tight, voice quieter. “They made mistakes. Though they were walking into a scene from a softcore drama—a flirty escort and client on another scandalous stop on their honeymoon journey in a schoolhouse. A perfect setup for leverage. They didn’t expect a building wired with traps and an operator who knew the terrain better than they did.”

I blinked.

It did make sense. Scarily so.

“They underestimated us,” he added, “and paid for it.”

I swallowed. “We were lucky?”

He nodded once. “They made plenty of tactical errors. The medic broke protocol—tried to exfil a wounded without securing the perimeter. Rookie move. Krisha’s a top-tier tracker, but even the best need a great team to function and can’t trace footsteps through concrete hallways when you’ve pre-rigged the route.”

“So it was tactics,” I said slowly. “Tactics, surprise, and… luck.”

“And prep,” he added. “Prep matters.”

Still. It didn’t explain everything.

Ryoji broke the silence first, eyes still fixed somewhere beyond the tree line. “I don’t know how they found us.”

That stopped me.

He continued, voice low but even. “We’re clean. You, me, the car—no trackers, no RFID, no micro-resonance. I checked everything twice before we left Osaka. But they still got close. Twice.”

“Then how?” I asked, my voice smaller than I intended. “Do they have something else to track us?”

He nodded grimly. “We are clean,” he said again. “Back at the Yamada Tower. Full-spectrum biometric profiling, soft tissue X-rays, neural frequency mapping—everything short of a bone marrow sample.”

My stomach sank like a stone in a lake.

“They flagged us through the baseball man. I could understand that, they were already tailing him for a while.”

I looked down. The crumpled bar in my palm had gone warm. My fingers felt stiff.

He went on, casually, like he was recounting a weather forecast. “Then the garage in Matsumoto. That could be a lucky satellite hit.”

He stopped for a beat.

“But then Krisha got lucky again. Guessed our route and our stop at the school. Something is amiss.”

He then gestured vaguely behind us, to the empty dark. “But this will slow them down. They’ll need time to assess what just happened. This wasn’t a retrieval. It was a humiliation.”

I glanced at him, unsure what to say. He wasn’t tense. Just quiet, methodical, calm. Like this was all another Tuesday.

We stayed there a while, letting the night stretch between us like a curtain we were too tired to pull back. No questions. No clever remarks. Just breath, stars, and everything we weren’t ready to say.

Below, the valley had vanished into ink. No lights. No sounds. If I ignored the bruises on my legs, I could almost convince myself the school had never happened—fever dreams, too much stress.

But my skin remembered. My mind remembered. The arrow that never made a sound. Krisha’s limp body. And him—moving like he wasn’t human, like he’d done this a hundred times before.

Something shifted back there.

I don’t know what. Fate? Some invisible thread snapping into place?

From the moment we stepped out of that crate in Awara, I think I knew—this wasn’t the trip I thought it would be. Not just a company errand. Not just meeting my father. Not even just about safety anymore. This was something else.

I glanced at him again. Elbows on knees, eyes fixed on a horizon that offered no answers. He hadn’t flinched when they came for us. No panic. No hesitation. And now? Now he was still in a way heavier than silence. Like he needed this moment. Like we both did.

For the first time since it began, I wondered—who was he, really? And why did I feel that the closer I got to the answer, the more it might change me too?

I was scared. Not of him. Of what I might become if I kept following him into the dark.

The mist curled below, the Supra’s dome light dead. Only stars remained. Somewhere down in the forest, past the roads we’d left, the version of my life I used to know was still there. Waiting. But I wasn’t going back.

That world had been soft. Summer sun and cassette tapes. Sleepy dance studios. Shizuka’s sharp smiles and Kyoshi’s silences.

But I knew exactly when I crossed the line.

Tokyo.

That morning I could’ve stayed. Could’ve reached out. Could’ve asked them for help—finally pressed them for the truth.

But I didn’t. I left.

I walked out of that triangle of heartbreak and into something stranger. Into a car with a man I barely understood. Into shadows I wasn’t ready for.

That version of me—

She didn’t exist anymore.

Not here.

Not tonight.

Not after everything I’ve seen.

And the wildest part?

Even through the fear—

Even with every step more uncertain than the last—

I know I’m following my heart.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s reckless.

It’s real.

Sylvie would’ve told me to go back.

To Venice or Tokyo. To summer. To safety.

Kyoshi and Shizuka still lived there—under the sun, beneath polite regrets and poolside silences.

But this wasn’t summer anymore.

This was what came after.

And I was the one who chose to walk here.

On this clearing at night. No sunrise. No headlights. Just the car cooling beside us, the valley swallowed in mist, and the stars above—dim, scattered, too far to help.

The kind of night that didn’t feel like it would end.

And somehow, I wasn’t alone in this darkness.

I was with him.