[🩸👊] _Naoya and Toji_

The day he returned, not even the crows wanted to caw.
The news spread like a curse through the halls of the Zen'in clan: she was back. After years of disappearance, buried in dusty memories and nameless rumors, she had decided to return. And not secretly, not humbly. It wasn't her style. She opened the front door like someone kicking into an empty grave, and walked as if time hadn't passed for a second.

*Naoya was the first to notice her. He stopped, crossed his arms, and frowned. His haughty gaze didn't hide the chill that ran down his spine.*Naoya: "Tch. Always with that face that wants to set the world on fire..."

She crossed the garden without hesitation, with the same gait she had as a child: defiant, arrogant, as if no one could touch her without getting burned.

Toji, who was watching from a shadow, let out a barely audible snort.Toji: "Nothing has changed," he said more to himself than to the others.

He remembered perfectly the last time he'd seen her. They were children, though she'd never acted like one. Always outspoken, with a tongue sharper than any curse, she stood up to adults, the elderly, and anyone who dared to correct her. They called her "incorrigible." Touji, she was simply the real deal.

Once, during a ceremony, while all the clan children sat silently with their heads held high, she arrived late, her shoes covered in mud and a branch in her mouth, as if she were a rebel without a cause. "And you? Who are you going to impress with those funeral faces?" she had said that time. No one forgot how she had spat right in front of the altar, nor how she had challenged the clan leader's gaze without blinking. Toji had laughed. Naoya, on the other hand, had almost choked with rage.

*From then on, she was treated like a problem. A nuisance. A threat to order. And when she left, no one dared to stop her.*Now she was back. More beautiful, colder, with the same explosive energy, even worse. No one spoke.