The city sprawled below, gold and gray in the harsh afternoon light, wind tugging at the edges of the gravel-strewn rooftop, teasing loose strands of hair and coats alike. From here, the faint hum of the restaurant two floors down filtered up, lost in the rush of height, wind, and tension. The streets stretched endlessly, traffic tiny and silent from this altitude, but the real danger wasn't down there—it was here, with him, with Hiroshima, the one who had made my blood boil and pulse spike within the same hour.
He moved recklessly, almost stupidly, toward the edge, oblivious to the drop, oblivious to me, yet carrying that aura—the two-years-older aura, calm, collected on the surface, but betraying tiny tremors beneath. That stubborn fool. That beautiful, infuriating fool who didn't even know me, and yet somehow had managed to haunt my thoughts from the moment I'd seen him.
"You're a fool," I spat, boots crunching against gravel. "You really think you can run from me?" My voice carried across the rooftop, sharp as the edge of glass, the wind tugging it in chaotic arcs. He froze mid-step, stubborn, defensive, posture rigid. "You think you're clever? Genius even?" I stepped closer, eyes narrowing, scanning the tremor in his fingers, the faint rise and fall of his chest. "Only on paper, perhaps. In reality?" I hissed, "Reality scares you senseless, doesn't it?"
He pressed his lips tight, jaw flexing, voice controlled but low. "Kaoru… stay back. I didn't mean—"
"Didn't mean?" I laughed softly, almost bitter, almost cruel. "That's your excuse?" The sunlight caught his hair, haloing him, highlighting the pale flush creeping across his face. "Do you see where you are? One wrong step, and you'd be…" My voice faltered, sharp panic flickering behind the obsession, "gone. Do you understand that?"
Hiroshima's stubbornness didn't waver, not entirely. He shifted, trying to step back, misreading my approach as threat instead of rescue. His foot hit the edge of the rooftop, gravel slipping beneath his heel. My heart lurched, sharp and raw, panic slicing through my obsession.
"You think you're clever, but you're nothing if you can't see danger," I growled, lunging, my hands wrapping around him before the edge could claim him.
His pulse slammed against mine, frantic, confused, wild. I could feel his entire body trembling, heart racing, breath uneven, and the intensity of that moment—the sudden closeness, the panic, the fragile chaos—hit me like a thunderclap.
"You could've fallen!" I snapped, gripping him tightly. "Do you understand how stupid you are? You think genius protects you from a rooftop? You're lucky I'm here. Lucky I can see what fools can't!"
His arms went around me instinctively, gripping like survival depended on it—and perhaps it did. His breaths hitched against my chest. The sunlight blurred across his features, the wind tugging again at his coat, teasing, testing. He was alive, trembling, panic-stricken, and utterly mine to hold, even if he would never admit it.
"You're older than me," I said, voice low, obsessive, teasing. "And yet you act like this. Trembling. Panicked. Almost falling. I've only known you a day, but I've already spelled your name a thousand times in my mind." I leaned close enough to let the words brush his ear. "Do you feel it? How much I've noticed you? How dangerously fast I became… obsessed?"
He stiffened, pulling back slightly, indignation warring with panic. "Kaoru… don't say—"
"I'll say it," I interrupted, voice sharp and intimate. "You ran away last night. Did you run because you're weak?" I smirked despite the wind tugging at my hair. "Or are you really as strong as you look… and just too foolish to admit it?"
He flushed, embarrassed, defensive, pulse hammering. "I… I'm not weak!"
"Then why didn't you return to the Pavilion?" I challenged, eyes blazing, dominance clear even as the afternoon sun warmed us. "If you weren't weak, you'd have come. But you didn't. Instead, you run from me like a fool."
The combination of panic, closeness, and verbal domination rendered him speechless, fumbling, awkward. His hand tightened on my cosplay coat , his jaw flexed, eyes squeezed shut. We were strangers—one day old in acquaintance—but here we were, tangled in the chaos of wind, sun, height, and obsession, forced into intimacy by circumstance.
I held him longer, scolding, teasing, obsessed, protective. "Earlier, you were about to die. Step back, breathe, and try to remember what that felt like. And now?" I tilted my head, voice dropping lower, edged with mischief. "If you run down now, you might break that pretty, sharp jaw of yours…" I let the words linger, dangerous, intimate. "…the one I wasn't able to take into my mouth."
His entire body stiffened, frustrated huff escaping lips. He finally moved, stepping away from the edge, still trembling, still gripping me, but now with a mixture of exasperation and realization. He walked downstairs, stiff-backed, careful, the blush still high on his cheeks, his pulse finally slowing as we descended back toward relative safety.
But even as he tried to regain composure, his eyes flicked to me with a warning, sharp and protective of his own fragile pride. "Kaoru," he said, voice low, almost shaky but firm, "don't follow me. If you do, things won't go well."
I chuckled, low and dangerous, brushing a loose strand of hair behind his ear as I let him go. "Oh, that's exactly what makes it fun," I murmured, my gaze lingering on him as he walked. "Foolish, stubborn, panicked… and still walking away as if you can hide from me. You've already become mine tonight, whether you like it or not."
I let him leave first, letting his figure move down the stairs, careful but tense, every step deliberate as if the world itself had sharpened beneath his feet.
The city stretched endlessly below, a golden-gray maze of streets and lights and distant movement that seemed insignificant compared to the storm of panic, breath, and desire that still pulsed between us. The wind tugged at my coat, twisted strands of hair across my face, carrying the faint scent of his skin, the warmth of his proximity, and the adrenaline that still clung to him—and to me.
Every nerve in my body remained taut, as though the rooftop itself had embedded the memory into my skin. My heartbeat refused to slow, matching the echo of his in my mind, a relentless rhythm that reminded me: he had been so close to the edge. So close that even the thought of him falling—not just disappearing, but tumbling over that railing, lost—made a sharp panic rise like ice along my spine.
And yet… the same panic was laced with an obsession so consuming it almost burned. I had noticed everything. Every flicker in his gaze, every tremor in his fingers, the way he pressed his lips tight, the way he'd tried to command his older presence yet betrayed it in the tiniest quivers. That foolish, beautiful defiance.
I replayed it all, slow-motion: the sun catching his hair, the wind tugging at his coat, the pulse I could feel thundering against mine, his eyes squeezed shut, the subtle inhale of breath that came too fast, too ragged. He was fragile. He was stubborn. He was alive. And he was mine, even if he didn't yet know it..just yet..he's a weird challenge I've to win .
And beneath that, a deeper, darker edge stirred. This wasn't just fascination. This wasn't just the thrill of closeness. It was a claim, a reckoning. A recognition that someone so sharp, so clever on paper, could be so… achingly human when reality pressed in. That juxtaposition, that delicious imbalance of control and chaos, was a hook in my chest that refused to loosen. Every instinct, every heartbeat, screamed that this afternoon—this chaotic, trembling, panicked moment—had marked us both in ways neither of us could ignore.
I watched him disappear down the stairs, the noise of the city faint but persistent, and I could still feel the shape of him, the shadow of his panic, pressed against me. I could still hear the ghost of his voice muttering against my ribs, see the flush across his skin, feel the tension that had made him so impossibly close. And even as I let him go, even as he claimed distance, I knew that it would never be enough. I would remember. I would trace it, replay it, dissect it… and wait for the moment he forgot nothing, either.
Fool. Genius. Fragile. Alive. Stubborn. Mine.
At least for now.
But I had no doubt: this was only the beginning , my clever fool .