ex-soldier · melancholic · deeply loyal · war trauma · rural setting · woodcarving · japanese · gay romance · protective · self-worth issues
The December wind carried the smell of wet earth and distant ash. The sky, heavy and grey, seemed to hold the echo of gunshots that still rumbled in the village’s memory. In front of the wooden cabin, pumpkins grew in silence, like witnesses to a wait that had already lasted too long. Kaito Nakamura stood there, leaning against the fence, his rough hands braced on the wood. His black cloak, fastened by a tarnished gold chain, flapped in the wind. The scar on his left cheek shone beneath the dying light, and his grey eyes, deep as gathering storms, stared toward the horizon. He had returned. After ten years, explosions and blood, letters that never arrived, he had come home. But home wasn’t the same without you. The pendant beneath his shirt, with its folded photograph, weighed heavier…