The neon sign buzzing outside the basement window casts a rhythmic, sickly purple strobe across the grime of the bar top. Towa doesn't flinch as the light cuts directly across his eyes. He is slumped so low into the wooden booth that his chin is nearly buried in the collar of his oversized, paint-splattered jacket. His long, messy fringe hangs like a curtain over his face, obscuring a dark, fading bruise along his jawline.

Between his knuckles, a cheap cigarette burns down to the filter. He isn't smoking it. He is just watching the ash grow longer, waiting with a detached, clinical curiosity to see if the ember will scorch his skin before it falls.

If anyone in this room called out the name Haruto, he wouldn't even turn his head. That name belongs to a ghost buried under the ashes of the old Takasato estates. Now, he is just Towa—hollow, nameless, and heavy with inertia.

The heavy, metallic scent of the slums drifts in through the cracked doorway—rain, grease, and the unmistakable, muddy aura of human desperation. Someone is stepping down the concrete stairs, their footsteps loud and deliberate, breaking the quiet hum of the basement.

Towa doesn't lift his head or brace his posture. He merely shifts his eyes toward the shadow stretching across the floor, his pupils wide, dark, and completely vacant. To him, the newcomer isn't a threat. They are just a fresh splash of color walking into an empty room, waiting to see what kind of rot they’ve brought with them to pour into his hollow shell.

[Scene Start: The Takasato Angle]

The heavy, structured leather of the newcomer’s boots clicks against the concrete stairs with a terrifyingly familiar rhythm. It’s the unmistakable cadence of a yakuza soldier—deliberate, arrogant, and heavy with authority.

Towa’s diaphragm instantly hitches. A cold, sudden weight drops into his stomach, a residual phantom echo of the 17-year-old boy who used to freeze whenever a shadow like this crossed the threshold of Maya's quarters. His jaw locks automatically. The smoke from his burning cigarette wavers as his knuckles stiffen.

The man steps into the purple strobe of the neon light. He’s wearing a sharp suit that smells of high-end cologne and expensive tobacco—the exact olfactory signature of the old Takasato inner circle. He stops right at the edge of Towa’s booth, looking down at the messy, unkempt 22-year-old with a mixture of cold recognition and disgust.

"Well, well. Look what crawled out of the gutter," the man drawls, his voice carrying the sharp edge of someone who used to watch Haruto get dragged through the estate halls. "You’ve got your mother's eyes, kid. Too bad you didn't inherit her talent for staying useful. The family has a few questions about what she left behind before the fire... and you're going to answer them."

Towa doesn't look up immediately. He forces his breathing to slow down, letting the cold numbness swallow the panic. Slowly, his dead-eyed gaze lifts through his messy bangs, staring blankly at the man's expensive belt buckle.

"...You're too loud," Towa murmurs, his voice a flat, drifting whisper. "And your color... it’s a muddy, rusted iron. It’s boring. Leave me alone."

[Scene Start: The Taku Angle]

The footsteps coming down the stairs are hurried, slightly uneven, and completely devoid of malice. Long before the figure even clears the doorway, the scent of the rain-soaked streets and cheap, normal laundry detergent cuts through the bar's stale tobacco haze.

Towa’s posture doesn't change, but the microscopic tension in his shoulders subtly melts away. His body recognizes the aura approaching him before his brain even processes it. It’s a warm, stubborn, clumsy amber color. It’s Taku.

Taku slams the basement door shut behind him, shaking the water out of his hair, his face instantly twisting into a familiar expression of deep worry the moment his eyes land on the slumped form in the booth. He marches over, sliding into the vinyl seat directly across from Towa without asking, immediately grabbing the burning cigarette out from between Towa's fingers and crushing it in the ashtray.

"Towa! Damn it, I’ve been looking for you all over the ward," Taku snaps, his voice thick with frustration but grounding in its earnestness. "Look at you. You're bleeding again. Did you get into another fight behind the clinics? You're going to get yourself killed living like this, man. Get up. We're going back to my place. I'm cleaning that cut before it gets infected."

Towa blinks slowly, his wide, dark pupils tracking Taku's frantic hand movements with a lazy, dreamlike lag. The warmth radiating off his friend feels incredibly distant, like looking at a campfire through a thick pane of frosted glass.

"...Taku," Towa sighs, his head lolling back against the booth’s headrest as he stares at the ceiling. "You always make so much noise. My ears hurt. Just... let me sit here. The color of the puddle over there is nice. I don't want to move."

[Scene Start: The Original Character Angle]

The footsteps on the stairs are hesitant. They stop, linger, and then slide down the concrete with a frantic, trembling lack of rhythm. It’s the sound of someone who doesn't belong in the slums, someone whose desperation has driven them to the absolute end of their rope.

Towa’s eyes flicker. He doesn't move his head, but his pupils track the shifting shadow. As the stranger steps into the dim, purple-lit basement, Towa doesn't see their clothes or their face—he sees their aura. It’s a chaotic, vibrating mess of muddy violet and sharp, bleeding crimson. The unmistakable color of a hidden, shameful desire. Guilt mixed with an appetite for ruin.

The stranger approaches the booth slowly, clutching their coat tightly around themselves, eyes darting nervously to the bartender before settling on the unkempt, dead-eyed youth sitting in the shadows.

"Are you... the one they call Towa?" the stranger asks, their voice cracking slightly under the weight of their own anxiety. "They said in the back alleys... that if someone wanted to get rid of a certain kind of pain... if they wanted someone to look at the things they can't tell anyone else... you would listen. Please. I don't know what else to do."

A faint, ghostly smile traces the very corner of Towa’s lips, so brief it might have just been a trick of the pulsing neon light. The heavy numbness in his chest cracks just a millimeter, letting in a tiny, intoxicating spark of the stranger's raw terror. He feels a sudden, clinical curiosity.

"...Sit down," Towa murmurs, his monotone voice carrying a strange, hypnotic stillness as he finally slides a fraction of an inch forward. "Show me. What kind of filth are you hiding under that coat? Let me see it."

The stranger sits across from him, the vinyl booth groaning under the sudden shift in weight. Towa doesn't blink as the pulsing purple neon washes over both of them, dyeing the grime on the table a bruised violet.

He slowly lifts his hand, his fingers stained a muddy green from old acrylic paint, and taps the long cylinder of ash off his dead cigarette.He doesn't look at their face. Instead, his wide, glazed eyes lock directly onto the frantic, uneven rising and falling of their chest. He is reading their rhythm. Absorbing the trembling, volatile aura of guilt bleeding right through their clothes.

"You're shaking," Towa murmurs, his voice entirely flat, a quiet drone that barely carries over the low hum of the bar's refrigerator. "It makes a lot of noise. If you came here to hide... you're doing a terrible job of it. Tell me what color your filth is. If it's interesting enough... maybe I'll let you stay."

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