The clack of a keyboard echoed faintly through the dim, quiet room.
Aika sat at her desk, a mug of lukewarm tea forgotten at her elbow, its steam long dissipated. The soft glow of her laptop reflected faintly in her glasses as lines of case notes scrolled across the screen. Corporate policies, timestamps, flagged anomalies. Fraud trail analysis—complex, layered, intentional.
But she wasn't reading anymore.
Not really.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, unmoving.
Outside, the wind shifted. Leaves rustled across her small balcony garden—the only piece of calm she'd kept all these years, a patch of green against the world's chaos.
It was late. The hour when thoughts became heavier, when silence pressed into the bones and left little room to escape what lay buried beneath the surface.
She closed her laptop with a soft click and leaned back in her chair, arms crossing loosely over her chest.
The investigation was progressing faster than she expected. And that man—Ren—he had been more helpful than she could have imagined. His insights were precise. His analysis quietly brilliant. But he didn't speak much. Never pushed for attention. He simply… showed up. Did the work. Anticipated needs before anyone voiced them.
There was something about him that tugged at a quiet part of her.
No, not him.
Something in him.
She stood abruptly.
Her bare feet moved across the wooden floor as she stepped into the centre of the living room, where the space opened up—spacious enough to stretch, move, breathe. The furniture had been pushed back long ago to accommodate late-night routines she never outgrew.
Her fingers flexed. Shoulders rolled.
She shifted into stance.
Her body flowed from memory, from discipline, from muscle that remembered what her mind sometimes forgot.
She moved through the kata, slow and precise, each motion a controlled exhale of tension—each strike a word she didn't say.
And somewhere between a sweep and a turn, an image surfaced.
Not Ren.
But him.
The boy with too-wide and too-thick glasses and a voice that trembled like a wire pulled taut.
The boy she'd stood in front of—twice. Once on a rooftop. Once by a courtyard fountain.
She hadn't thought about him in years.
Not really.
Not until recently—when she caught herself watching Ren from across the room, wondering why something about him struck a distant chord.
But now, here in the quiet, she let herself remember.
That day.
That look.
That voice, whispering a soft "Thank you" even though she told him not to.
She struck forward, the edge of her hand cutting through the air.
The boy she had forgotten the name. And she hadn't stayed long enough to remember. Her mother had moved them suddenly—again. She hadn't said goodbye. She hadn't even thought to.
What was the point? They were kids. It's been a long time for him to remember.
Still…
She turned, pivoted, breathing heavier now.
Still, he'd looked at her like she mattered. Like she was more than fists and silence.
She finished the last movement of her form and stood still, breath fogging faintly in the cool night air that drifted through her window.
A question lingered.
What happened to him?
Did he grow up soft or strong? Did he still keep his head down when the world raised its voice? Did he ever think about her?
Would he even recognize her now?
Aika exhaled and brushed the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm.
"Stupid," she muttered.
This was foolish sentimentality. She had no room for ghosts. The past was the past. She had built her life by moving forward—by not letting old stories drag her down.
Still…
She stood there a moment longer.
Eyes half-closed. Breath slowing.
That boy—whoever he was—was probably living his own life now. A completely different path. No reason to dig into old echoes.
He didn't need her then.
He wouldn't need her now.
She turned off the lights and walked back to her desk.
Settled in. Opened the laptop.
Ren's system report was still open—highlighted notes where she'd marked areas to cross-reference. There was a rhythm to the way he worked. A quiet brilliance that mirrored a mind far older than his years.
She began typing.
He wasn't just helpful.
He was critical to the investigation.
As she resumed her review, the name Ren Hayashi hovered at the edge of her thoughts—uninvited, steady, quietly persistent.
But this time, it wasn't just his system logs she was thinking about.
It was the way he moved when he entered a room.
The way he avoided the centre of attention.
The way he kept his gaze just slightly averted unless it was necessary—like someone who had trained himself to disappear.
Like someone who had learned long ago that silence was safer than being seen.
She didn't know why that thought unsettled her so much.
She didn't know why she suddenly felt like she was missing something.
But she shoved the feeling aside.
She had work to do.
As she worked late into the night, Aika didn't realize how often her thoughts returned to a boy she never said goodbye to—and a man who reminded her of him in ways she couldn't explain.