The next morning came in through the kitchen window, soft and golden, carrying the scent of toast and butter and the quiet hum of the city waking up.
Yuuta stood at the stove, a pan in his hand, his movements automatic—flip, catch, flip, catch—the rhythm of a thousand mornings repeated until it became instinct. The toast was browning nicely, the butter sizzling at the edges, the kitchen filling with the warm, familiar smell of breakfast.
But his mind was elsewhere.
Not on the toast. Not on the pan. Not on the simple, grounding task of cooking.
His mind was on the practical exam. On the ingredients he would be given. On the judges who would watch him, measure him, decide if he was worthy.
His mind was on Erza and Elena.
This was the first time—the first time in his entire life—that someone would be coming to see him. Not to judge him. Not to evaluate him. Not to watch from a distance with cold, clinical eyes.
To see him.
To watch him cook.
To be proud of him.
The thought sat in his chest like something warm and fragile, something he was afraid to touch.
His mind drifted.
Memory surfaced, unbidden, soft as morning light.
Parent meetings.
He thought about all the years he had spent alone. The orphanage, with its cold beds and colder silences.
The other children who would not play with him, who whispered behind his back, who threw holy water on him while he slept.
The sisters who looked at him like he was something that should not exist, who crossed themselves when he walked past, who prayed for his soul like he was already damned.
He had gone to parent-teacher conferences alone, had sat in chairs meant for mothers and fathers who never came, had signed his own permission slips and checked his own homework and told himself that it did not matter.
Yuuta had always sat alone, During Festival or Meeting.
The chair beside him empty. The space beside him cold. The other parents glancing at him with looks he had learned to read—pity, curiosity, discomfort—before looking away.
Where are his parents?
Doesn't he have anyone?
Poor child.
He had wondered, sometimes, what his parents looked like.
Why they had left him.
If they had ever thought about him, if they had ever regretted it, if they had ever wondered what kind of person he would become. He had never found answers. He had stopped looking.
He had stopped hoping. He had learned to live with the silence, to fill it with his own voice, to talk to his car and his walls and the empty apartment that had been his home for years.
Now he had a family.
Not the family he had imagined as a child, with soft hands and warm voices and faces that looked like his. Something stranger. Something more complicated. Something he had never asked for and did not deserve.
But his.
They were coming to watch him. Erza, with her cold eyes and colder threats, who had promised to kill him and meant it. Elena, with her bright laughter and her small hands and her absolute, unquestioning faith that he was good.
They were coming.
And he was terrified.
He was happy.
He was everything all at once, and the feelings tangled in his chest until he could not tell one from the other, could not breathe, could not think.
THWACK.
Erza's fist connected with the back of his head.
"Ouch! Why did you hit me?"
Erza was standing behind him, her arms crossed, her face cold, her eyes fixed on the smoke rising from the pan. She did not look at him. She did not need to.
"The toast is burning," she said. "Are you planning to burn down the apartment with all of us inside?"
He looked at the pan. The toast was black, smoking, ruined. He grabbed it with the tongs, dropped it on the counter, turned off the stove. His face was red. His hands were shaking. He was embarrassed, and nervous, and happy, and terrified, all at once.
"I am sorry," he said. "I was just spacing out for a moment."
"Spacing out?" Erza's eyebrow arched. "What could possibly make you space out while cooking?"
He looked at the ruined toast, at the smoke still rising from the pan, at the woman who was standing in his kitchen with her arms crossed and her face cold and her eyes fixed on him. He thought about the day ahead. About Sister Mary. About the family that was coming to see him.
"It has been a while," he said, "since I felt happiness. My family is coming to watch me."
The words hung in the air. Yuuta paused, realizing what he had said. He had called them family. Erza and Elena. He had called them his family.
Erza's face turned red. It was not the red of anger or the red of embarrassment. It was something else, something she did not have a name for, something that made her heart beat faster and her hands curl into fists at her sides.
Family, she thought. He called me his family.
She opened her mouth to speak, to deny it, to push him away, to remind him that he was living in her mercy, that she was going to kill him, that he meant nothing to her. The words came out stumbling, tangled, wrong.
"You—what do you—who said—do not forget that you are living in my mercy! Do not ever forget that!"
Yuuta smiled. It was not his usual smile, the one he wore when he was nervous or scared or trying to hide what he was feeling. It was a real smile, warm and tired and grateful all at once.
"Yes, my queen," he said. "I remember. How could I forget?"
Erza turned and walked out of the kitchen. Her face was burning. Her heart was pounding. She did not look back.
Yuuta watched her go. He stood in the kitchen, the smoke still curling toward the ceiling, the ruined toast still sitting on the counter, and he sighed.
"I wonder," he said to himself, "will she ever cry for me? If I die by her hand... will she even care?" He paused. "No. She would not. She would forget me.She would move on. She would not even remember my name."
He picked up the pan and began to scrape the burned toast into the trash.
In the living room, Erza sat on the sofa, her back straight, her hands in her lap, her face turned toward the window where the morning light was beginning to warm the walls.
She was biting her nail—a habit she had picked up from him, a habit she hated, a habit she could not seem to break.
Family, she thought.
He called me his family.
He stood in the kitchen, burned the toast, and called me his family. And I felt... I felt—
She did not know what she felt. She did not want to know.
She had spent centuries building walls around her heart, centuries convincing herself that she did not need anyone, that she was better off alone, that love was a weakness and weakness was death. And now this mortal, this foolish, ridiculous, impossible mortal, was standing in her kitchen, burning toast, and calling her his family.
She looked down.
A drawing was lying on the sofa beside her, left there from the night before, forgotten until now.
It was Elena's drawing, done in crayon, the colors bright and uneven, the lines unsteady but full of life.
She picked it up.
The drawing showed three figures standing in front of a castle.
The one in the middle was her—she could tell by the silver hair, the long dress, the crown she had drawn on her head.
On her left was Yuuta, his red eyes wide, his smile too big for his face.
On her right was Elena, her wings spread, her tail curled, her arms wrapped around her mother's waist. Behind them, a castle rose against a blue sky, and above it, in wobbly letters, Elena had written: HOME.
Erza stared at the drawing.
Her hand trembled.
Her eyes burned.
She looked at the three figures holding hands, at the castle behind them, at the word written above it in a child's careful hand.
Home.
She thought about the past weeks.
The meals Yuuta had cooked, the dances they had learned, the hands they had held. The way he had searched all night for her ring, the way he had given it back to her and asked for nothing in return.
The way he looked at Elena, like she was the sun, like she was the moon, like she was everything he had ever wanted and never thought he would have.
She thought about the promise she had made. The promise to kill him. The promise to make him pay for what he had done, for the years she had spent alone, for the daughter she had raised by herself.
She thought about the ring on her finger, the ring that had changed, the ring that had chosen him, the ring that would not come off until one of them died.
Do I really need to kill him? she thought. Just because he happened to sleep with me? Just because he made a mistake when he was young and foolish and did not know what he was doing?
She closed her eyes.
I am the Blade of Atlantis. The most ruthless being in any world. I do not forgive. I do not forget. I do not—
She looked at the drawing again.
Home.
Her hand trembled.
Will I ever bring myself to forgive him?
She did not know.
For the first time in centuries, the Queen of Atlantis did not know what she would do.
She sat on the sofa, holding her daughter's drawing, and watched the morning light grow brighter through the window.
-------------------------------
Sentinel Dock
The meeting room was silent except for the soft crackle of light and the distant sound of something dripping somewhere in the darkness beyond the walls.
The eight gang leaders sat around the table, their faces pale in the flickering light, their hands resting on the expensive wood in front of them.
They had been sitting here for hours, talking, arguing, planning.
They had not moved.
They had not eaten.
They had not done anything except think about the man with the red eyes and the sin they had been ordered to take.
The sin extraction. It was not a simple thing.
It was not something that could be done with a knife or a gun or any of the tools that men used to kill each other in the ordinary world.
It required preparation.
It required precision.
It required something that had been lost for a very long time, something that the Demon King had given them, something that they were afraid to use.
From the beginning, when humanity first ate the fruit of knowledge, when they first learned the difference between good and evil, they had been marked.
Every sin they committed left a stain on their souls, a mark that could not be washed away, a debt that could not be paid.
Murder.
Betrayal.
Lust.
Greed.
Each one added to the weight they carried, the weight that would be measured at the end of their lives, the weight that would determine where they would spend eternity.
The energy of sin was not holy.
It was not pure. But it was still energy.
It could be collected, stored, used.
The demons needed it the way humans needed food, the way plants needed sunlight, the way the world needed something to keep it turning.
It was the fuel that allowed them to evolve, to grow, to become something more than what they were.
The Demon King had been collecting sin for centuries, feeding on the misery of humanity, growing stronger with every war crime, every betrayal, every drop of blood spilled in his name.
The gang leaders knew this.
They had been serving the Demon King for years, delivering sin in the form of contracts and sacrifices and the slow, steady accumulation of human suffering.
They had never been asked to extract sin directly from a living person. They had never been given a target like this.
And they were afraid.
Not of the man. Not of the red eyes or the violence they had seen in the footage or the rumors that had begun to spread through the underworld.
They were afraid of the thing that lived in his apartment.
The thing that had made their low-ranking demons refuse to approach, refuse to enter, refuse to even look at the building. The thing that was blocking them, pushing them back, making their skin crawl and their hair stand on end.
One of the men spoke.
He was older than the others, his hair gray, his face lined, his eyes the color of old blood. He had been serving the Demon King longer than any of them, had seen things that would make the younger men weep, had done things that would make them run.
"We cannot get to him at home," he said. "The thing in that apartment is too strong. Our demons will not go near it. They would rather be destroyed than face whatever is in there."
Another man nodded.
He was younger, eager, the kind of man who had joined because he wanted power and had found something else instead.
"I heard he attends some college," he said. "Some culinary school near Luna City. John Bosco Culinary College."
The men looked at each other.
A plan began to form in their minds, slow and careful and cold.
"If we cannot reach him at home," the older man said, "we will reach him at school. We will find him when he is alone, when he is vulnerable, when the thing that protects him is not there."
Another man, fat and sweating, leaned forward. His voice was eager, hungry.
"We should contact a sniper. Position him near the building. One shot, and it is done. Then we extract the sin and deliver it to the Demon King."
The men nodded.
They looked at the photograph on the table—the young man with the red eyes, the man who had killed their servant, the man who carried the greatest sin in the world.
They looked at him, and they smiled.
"Today," one of them said, "we will receive the Demon King's blessing."
They rose from the table. They filed out of the room, past the skeletons, past the paintings, past the guards with their dead skin and their sharp teeth. They walked into the morning light, into the city, toward the college where a young man with red eyes was cooking breakfast and did not know they were coming.
To be continued...