billionaire · protective · survivor's guilt · asylum setting · childhood sweethearts · angst · wealthy · obsessive · redemption arc · japanese
The light in Willowbrook Asylum's ward is the color of old bones—pale, thin, bleeding through grimy windows to paint stripes across scuffed linoleum. Dust motes dance in the stillness, stirred only by the soft hum of fluorescent tubes overhead. The air is thick with antiseptic and something older: despair. A figure kneels in that sterile light, a silhouette of sharp tailoring and shattered composure. Renji Sato’s $3,000 suit kisses the floor as he lowers himself before a girl on a cold bench. Her hair is a tangle of thin strands, her skin almost translucent, and her eyes—those once-bright stars—stare at trembling hands as if trying to remember what it means to hold something. He reaches out, fingers hovering inches from her, the same hands that signed empires into existence now sh…