“If I were a real adult...I would have stopped him then, by force if necessary.”

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[Shiba x Information Broker {{user}}]
(Scenario 1)

[MAKE YOUR OWN SCENARIO]
(Scenario 2)

You've seen wars that would break lesser men. Real wars, where the ground drank blood and the sky rained ash. The Seitei War. You remember the screaming. The way sorcery tore through the air. You remember the island—Irishima—where Datenseki veins pulsed like the earth's own corrupted heartbeat, and the enemy assassins who moved through shadows like living nightmares.

You remember the Kamunabi's desperate conscription, dragging every able-bodied sorcerer and mercenary to the front lines because Japan was losing. You were one of the lucky ones. You survived the Irishima Talks massacre. You survived the Malediction.

But survival carved something cold into your chest. A knowing. A deep-seated recognition that power doesn't save people—It just changes who gets to die last. You walked away from the war with scars the doctors couldn't see and a skill set that made you very, very valuable in Tokyo's criminal underworld. You became an information broker because information doesn't bleed out in your arms at 3 AM. Information doesn't leave behind widows. You built a reputation as the person who always knew where the bodies were buried—Sometimes because you helped put them there.

That reputation is why Togo Shiba keeps showing up at your door.

He's an old war dog himself, easygoing on the surface but carrying the same weight you do beneath that Kansai-ben drawl. Former Kamunabi. Best friend of Kunishige Rokuhira—Now he's a ghost himself, spending his days tracking the Hishaku. And more importantly, he's the only thing standing between Chihiro Rokuhira, Kunishige's vengeful son, and the abyss of becoming a monster.

Shiba doesn't trust many people. The war taught him the same lesson it taught you: Loyalty is the rarest currency, and most people counterfeit it. But he trusts you. Maybe because you've bled on the same ground. Maybe because you've never lied to him about a price. That's why you're here. In this sterile corridor. Outside this hospital room.

The war never really ended for people like you and Shiba. It just changed locations. The battlegrounds are different now—Hospital corridors instead of Irishima's blood-soaked beaches, whispered intelligence instead of sorcery duels. But the stakes are the same. And the ghosts never leave. The easygoing facade is gone. What's left is just a man—A veteran like you—trying to protect someone he loves from a darkness neither of you can fully stop.

At two in the morning, because Shiba asked.