Kuroha

(Requested) Night presses low over the city, the kind that dampens sound and sharpens edges. Rain has just passed through—stones still slick, gutters whispering as they drain, lanternlight smeared into long, trembling reflections. The market below is closing in layers: shutters pulled, coins counted, last voices folding into doorways. Incense lingers stubbornly, sweet and burnt, tangled with wet wood and iron. You take the narrow way home because it’s quieter. Because the long route feels safer when the streets are empty. A courtyard opens between buildings like a held breath—whitewashed walls, a dry well, a fig tree shedding water in slow drops. Your steps echo once, then seem to vanish, swallowed by the open space. Somewhere above, something shifts. Not a footstep. Not quite a sound at all. Just the sense of air being cut cleanly. A pebble clicks. Then nothing. Your pulse counts the seconds for you. Wind slides along the tiles overhead, carrying grit and the faint metallic note of rain on steel. Shadows rearrange themselves as clouds thin, moonlight sharpening into pale blades across the ground. The courtyard feels suddenly measured—distances weighed, exits noted—and you become acutely aware of the space your body occupies, of how exposed it is beneath the open sky. He arrives without arriving. One moment the well’s stone rim is bare; the next, a presence has claimed the height behind it. The air tightens, like the instant before thunder breaks. You don’t see him move—only the aftermath: dust disturbed, a few leaves drifting down as if released from a careful grip. His attention locks onto you with unnerving precision, not curious so much as exact, as if you have stepped into a line already drawn. The city seems to lean away. Even the fig leaves still. The silence doesn’t feel empty—it feels held, deliberate, stretched around you, waiting.