Chapter Text
Ranko and Kuno crossed the bridge together, the world around them slipping into the heavy quiet of early evening. The sky had dimmed, dragging a deeper gray over everything it touched. Here, on this side of town, the light changed—the flickering fluorescence of the streetlamps painted the streets in cold colors, and the buildings loomed with that particular brand of government-issued indifference. Pale cement, faceless walls, block after block of subsidized housing, each one indistinguishable from the last.
Ranko walked like she belonged to the grid—chin up, shoulders squared, hands tucked into the wide sleeves of her jacket. She knew the turns without thinking, didn’t bother slowing down, didn’t hesitate. Kuno, a few steps behind her, tried not to stare too long at the back of her head, her braid swaying like a pendulum as she walked. He knew, without a doubt, that if he’d been alone, he would have gotten hopelessly lost among these repeating towers. But she was leading, and he was following.
He wanted to ask. The question kept tugging at him like a thread caught on something sharp. About her father. About her home. About what kind of life she had been avoiding. She had deflected him once already—made a joke about offering him her family register instead of the truth. He hadn’t pressed her then, and he wouldn’t now. Still, curiosity settled in his chest with a weight he couldn’t ignore.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with broken households. He knew the sour silence of rooms left empty, the gravity of anger that circled in a house where a father’s voice cracked like thunder. He knew grief. He knew mothers who died, and fathers who never really stayed. But Ranko—Ranko was a closed book written in a language only she knew. A girl with bleach-dyed hair and a laugh she used like armor. A girl who looked out at the world like it owed her something, and maybe it did.
He glanced over at her, the fluorescent light catching the edge of her jaw. She hadn’t looked back once.
They finally stopped in front of one of the many buildings they'd passed—indistinguishable from the others but for the number nailed crookedly to the concrete wall. A boxy, gray construction, sun-faded and neglected, with rust streaks under the windows and grime smudged into the corners. It stood in silence, as if holding its breath. Just the wind down the corridor and the occasional buzz of a faulty light overhead.
Ranko pushed open the chipped glass door with her shoulder, stepping into the ground floor vestibule. A row of dusty mailboxes lined one wall. Somewhere deeper in the building, a pipe clanked once and fell silent again.
"Elevator or stairs?" she asked, glancing at Kuno over her shoulder.
He turned his gaze to the elevator. It sat squat and metallic in its enclosure, paint peeling around the frame, the control panel worn shiny with age. It looked like the kind of elevator you’d find in an old station—reliable enough, but carrying decades of stories in its joints. Still, something about it made him say, "Stairs."
Ranko nodded like she’d expected that. They started up the stairwell side by side. Neither of them struggled—Ranko moved with the confidence of someone who’d taken these steps a thousand times—but Kuno could hear it in her breathing. Not effort. Nerves. She was trying to keep it steady, but it spiked now and then, like she was gearing up for a confrontation. The concrete echoed with each of their footfalls.
They reached the fifth floor. The hallway was a dull tunnel of doors and flickering light, the air heavy with a blend of mildew and something sweet gone stale. Ranko came to a stop in front of one door among many, its metal surface scuffed and unremarkable.
She stood still for a moment, keys clinking softly in her hand, betraying the tremor in her fingers. But she got the lock on the first try. The door creaked open without resistance.
“I’m back, pops,” she called into the dark, flipping on the light with the edge of her knuckle.
A small, weak glow spilled into the apartment.
Ranko stilled at the entrance. The apartment greeted her with silence and stale air, the kind that clung to the back of the throat and tasted like old cigarettes and alcohol. Kuno stood just behind her, saying nothing.
One big room. Two doors, one window. Ranko began to kick off her red sneakers and hesitated, looking at the floor.
“Keep your shoes on” she said, defeated, and stepped inside, her movements quick and sharp, like she was bracing for something. Her eyes scanned the room, but there was nothing new—just the same old mess. She knew before she even said it.
“Old man,” she called, voice low and flat.
No answer. Of course.
Kuno took a moment before daring to step inside a home in sandals. He stepped inside carefully and shut the door behind him, moving with quiet precision. The place was a cluttered, lived-in wreck, and something about it made his skin itch. Still, he didn’t flinch. He just stood still, upright beside the fridge as it hummed loudly.
The apartment was one long rectangle of poverty. A cheap futon folded against the far wall, partly obscured by a crumpled blanket and a pillow without a case. A battered sofa sat crooked beside a low table, the surface barely visible under a lean tower of empty ramen cups, disposable chopsticks poking out at odd angles, and ashtrays full of cigarette butts. The floor around it was littered with clear garbage bags packed with beer cans and dented Strong Zero tallboys, some half-full and sticky, cigarette butts swimming. The stove was untouched, buried under bundled stacks of old tabloids and weekly manga magazines yellowing at the edges, tied together with fraying string.
Ranko’s face didn’t change. She moved like she was checking the place for booby traps, brushing back her bangs with one hand, pushing the folder under her arm a little more securely. This was home. She didn’t look surprised. Just tired.
Kuno didn’t touch anything. Didn’t comment. Just waited, his gaze fixed quietly on her back as the fridge clicked again. Ranko turned to look at Kuno. He didn’t belong in this place—his kendogi crisp, bokken still strapped to his hip like some wandering knight had taken a wrong turn into a slum. He looked out of place, and so handsome it made her stomach twist.
He was here for her. That alone made her feel like she might float right out of her socks.
She exhaled sharply, forced her feelings back into the little box where she kept them most days. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her oversized jacket and tried not to smile too wide.
“Wanna see my room?” she asked, voice casual. Not that he’d ever read between the lines anyway.
Kuno nodded once. “If you would permit me.”
She gestured with her chin and led the way past the leaning stacks of refuse and the sticky tiles of the kitchen. He followed, picking his steps with quiet care. They passed the bathroom, its door half open to reveal cracked tiles and a rust-stained sink, and stopped in front of the only closed door in the apartment.
She opened it. “Oh” she said, her voice small. “He didn’t—” she bit her lip. Her dad hadn’t turned her room into anything. It looked like it hadn’t even been touched since she visited last.
Kuno expected more of the same—more mess, more clutter. But it wasn’t.
The room was small. Very small. But it was clean, and it was hers.
A small western-style bed was pushed against the wall, covered with a plaid blanket and an old pillow shaped by use. A narrow desk sat beneath a window, its curtain drawn open just enough to let in the cool blue of twilight. There was a chair, its back slightly chipped, and a shelf above the desk lined with paperbacks, some upright, some stacked. Romance novels. Seinen manga. Martial arts books. A cracked mug with pens and pencils.
No closet—just a narrow chiffonier in one corner, one drawer open just enough to show folded clothes crammed inside. There was a school bag beside the bed, a crumpled convenience store receipt sticking out from under it.
Kuno didn’t say anything. He simply took it in, quietly, as Ranko leaned against the doorframe, hands still buried in her jacket pockets.
“So,” she said, glancing sideways at him, “this is where the magic doesn’t happen.” Her voice had a grin in it, but her eyes didn’t meet his.
Ranko nudged the door completely open with her foot, stepping into the small room as if testing the floorboards. She turned to him with a glint in her eye and tilted her head.
“You ever been in a girl’s room before, Samurai?”
Kuno’s answer was quiet, straightforward. “I have a sister.”
Ranko barked a laugh. “That’s not what I meant.” She smirked. “Of course you haven’t been.” She waved him in and pointed to the chair by the desk. “C’mon, take a seat.”
Kuno obeyed with his usual solemn grace, sitting straight as a post, bokken resting on the desk, eyes respectfully averted while she knelt by a plastic laundry basket and began rifling through it—pulling out notebooks, a crumpled skirt, a comb with a few stray blond strands clinging to it.
He watched her for a moment. Then: “Would you like to live in my home?”
She froze, one hand buried in the basket, the other curling slightly over the edge. She didn’t look at him right away.
“What?” Her voice came too fast, too light. “My room’s not that bad, is it?”
Kuno was still, unshaken. “That is not what I meant.” He spoke evenly. “If you desired it, I would see a guest room made ready. It would be your room. A safe place. Your own.”
Ranko stared at him. Her lips parted slightly, but nothing came out. Her heart kicked once, hard. She felt the twist of it inside her—flattery that warmed her chest, nerves that made her throat tighten. And then other things too—heat rising up the back of her neck, guilt at the mess he’d seen, a sharp little twinge of shame .
“I do not mean to insult your home,” he said quietly. “Nor to belittle this room. It is… lovely. Clearly yours. I only meant…” He looked around—not at the cracked paint or the scuffed wooden floors, but at the way the books were stacked in tight, well-loved rows, the little trinkets and the essence of Ranko’s unspoiled youth he so desperately wanted to help her preserve. “If you ever wished to… you could live at the Kuno Estate. There would be no expectation. No debt. No strings.”
Ranko let out a breath and laughed again—softer this time, not sharp enough to cut through what he’d said. She rubbed the back of her neck, fingers catching in the loose blonde braid resting over her shoulder.
“Man,” she muttered. “You and Akane, huh. Tryin’ to adopt me or something.” She smiled faintly. “Neither of you even know me.”
She didn’t mean it to sting, but it did a little. Kuno didn’t react.
“Nabiki’s the only one with a head on her shoulders,” Ranko added, mostly to herself.
She looked at him—still sitting straight, hands folded in his lap, the gentle curve of his wide shoulders too noble for this cramped little room—and softened. She gave a small nod, eyes unreadable.
“Thanks. For the offer.”
Nothing more. No decision. No answer.
Then she turned, brushing her braid back behind her shoulder. “Stay here, yeah? I’m gonna check the old man’s crap for the inkan.”
“As you wish.”
Kuno stayed.
His eyes moved over the room now that she was gone. He saw the little details: black wristbands folded neatly on the top of the chiffonier. A Sylvanian Families bunny on the edge of the shelf, its tiny apron torn, one pink ear smudged with grime. A toy microphone, cracked at the handle, abandoned but not thrown away. And there, peeking from the lowest drawer of the cheap chiffonier: a glimpse of an off-white gi, old and stained at the collar.
Ranko called from the other room, voice sharp with a touch of triumph. “Found it.”
She padded back into her bedroom, holding the small cylindrical inkan between two fingers. Kuno had risen from the desk chair the moment he heard her return. He shifted his bokken to the side and stepped back politely, allowing her space.
The folder hit the desk with a soft thump . Ranko opened it, flipping to the page where the guardian’s seal was required. Kuno glanced at the documents. His eyes moved over the clean, orderly print—her full name written out in neat kanji, her father's name just below, listed as her official guardian. The silence in the room thickened.
Ranko dipped the inkan onto the red ink pad, her wrist slightly trembling. She looked at him, brows drawn.
“I shall do it,” Kuno said, reaching out gently. His fingers closed around her hand.
She blinked. “No. I’ll do it.”
“This is wrong,” Kuno said quietly, not letting go of her hand.
Ranko narrowed her eyes. “My old man doesn’t give a damn.”
“You say that,” he replied, calm, “but I have never met him. I cannot say that for certain. What I can do is make sure you do not stamp this yourself. If I do it, you are not the one falsifying anything. You will be able to say it was not you.”
Her mouth parted, something raw flickering across her face. She looked at him, the absurdity of it, the sweetness, the madness. “You think I care about lying on paperwork?” she asked, voice rising with half a laugh. “Kuno, I’ve done way worse.”
“It does not matter what you have done before,” he said, steady as steel. “I am doing this for you . If your father ever brings it up, if our school ever doubts you, you can say honestly that you did not stamp it yourself. You may even say I gave them to you stamped. Either way, you did not do it yourself.”
She stared at him, lips parted, trying to summon a retort that would land. Something flippant, something easy. Nothing came. She tried to scoff, but her chest felt tight.
“This is really unnecessary,” she muttered.
“If it is so meaningless,” Kuno said, not unkindly, “then you would not mind allowing me to do it.”
He took the inkan from her open hand, with a quiet gravity that left no space for argument. He pressed it carefully onto the paper, firm and sure.
A small red oval bloomed against the bottom of the page.
Kuno handed her the inkan, and Ranko slipped it back into its case. He closed the folder with care, holding it in both hands as she took the red ink pad and walked out of the room, her footsteps light on the wooden floor.
He followed her into the main room, the buzz of the fridge still present like a nervous whisper. Ranko was crouched near the low kitchen counter, tugging open a thin metal drawer. A small heap of papers sat inside, some folded, some wrinkled. She dropped the seal and ink, and pulled one paper out and squinted at it under the weak kitchen light.
“Huh,” she said, voice low, almost amused. “Looks like my old man’s doing construction work.”
Kuno paused, holding the folder to his chest. She wasn’t speaking to him directly, but he listened.
“These wages look like they’re from either overtime…” she tapped the page with her finger, “which I doubt he’s doing, there’s no other… ah, night shift.” Her mouth twisted thoughtfully. “That’d explain why he’s not home. Maybe I can sleep here tonight if he’s gonna be out all night working. We don’t even have to cross paths.”
Kuno stepped closer, his posture straight, voice calm. “I meant what I said. You have a place in my home.”
Ranko glanced back at him, paper still in hand. Her brow lifted, skeptical. “Kuno… you do realize it’s not normal to invite some girl to live in your house, right?”
“I am inviting a friend,” he said, without hesitation. “That is entirely appropriate.”
She scoffed, short and bitter. “You’re so damn idealistic, it’s unreal.”
He tilted his head, watching her. Waiting.
She turned fully now, paper still in her hand, something hard and restless flickering behind her eyes. “I joked at first with you, and with your girl too, but you gotta cut it out. Stop trying to adopt me or somethin’. You can’t just offer me that kind of thing,” she said, not shouting, but not gentle either.
Kuno’s grip on the folder tightened slightly, but he remained quiet.
“You don’t know what that does to someone like me.” Her voice cracked—only a little. “And you keep treating me like I matter, and I get confused. I start thinking maybe I do matter. That maybe I could belong somewhere.”
“You do matter.”
She looked away, suddenly breathless, trying to pull herself back into the armor of her usual grin. “Don’t do that to me, Samurai. I can’t depend entirely on you. I won’t.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. The old fridge buzzed on. Ranko stood there, angry and humiliated and more in love than she’d been five minutes ago.
Ranko sighed and slipped the paper back into the drawer, nudging it closed with her hip. “Let’s go get something to eat,” she said, the fight in her voice now carefully buried under something easier, looser. She cast a glance over her shoulder, a faint grin curling her mouth. “I know a pretty good Chinese restaurant, authentic and all. And you’re buying, since you’re so damn generous.”
Kuno didn’t argue. He simply nodded and followed her out of the cramped little apartment, the weight of unspoken words still lingering between them. In his hands, two bulging plastic bags crinkled with every step—filled to bursting with empty beer cans and Strong Zero. Ranko had done her part, stuffing the tower of ramen cups into bags that she swung lightly at her sides.
They took the elevator down this time. It shuddered faintly as it descended, humming like it was sighing under the weight of long years and long nights. Neither of them said much, the silence strangely companionable.
At the ground floor, they stepped out into the early evening and padded across the narrow street to the designated trash area. There was a blue net stretched over a row of garbage bags like a poor man’s veil, held down with bricks. A laminated sign was affixed to the wall, listing which kinds of trash went out on which days in faded hiragana.
Kuno paused in front of the net, head tilted, reading the notice with the same solemnity he gave to old poetry. “They are very specific here,” he murmured. “Burnables, plastics, glass… even the order.”
Ranko looked at him like he was an alien freshly landed. “What, is this your first time taking out the trash?”
He didn’t blink. “Certainly not. I have performed such duties in middle school.”
That did it. Ranko laughed, full and bright, her head tipping back. “In middle school,” she repeated, teasing. “Man, you’re unbelievable.”
Kuno merely straightened his posture, unbothered, releasing the bags under the net with care. She pulled back the net and held it with the cement bricks, and straightened. He looked at her then, expression unreadable. And for a second she forgot to breathe. She started walking again, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. The night had teeth, but she didn’t mind. She had company.
Ranko led Kuno through the concrete maze of low-rent housing blocks and flickering street lights, her gaze fixed on the cracks in the sidewalk. Every step echoed with the dull weight of consequence. So—what was her brilliant new plan? No more stealing. That was one. Go back to school, for real this time. Literally walk through those gates like she belonged there. Try to stay in her own damn apartment without crossing paths with her old man, since he seemed to be working nights now. And most importantly: do not, under any circumstance, fall in love with Tatewaki Kuno.
She sighed through her teeth. It was too much. Too many changes, all crashing in at once, all of them requiring something she didn’t have—consistency. Commitment. A spine made of something sturdier than fire and flight. She wasn’t built for that.
After all that talk about independence, all that swagger about not needing anyone, she had asked him to come with her. Just in case her old man was home. So much for standing tall and alone. So much for pride.
Ranko glanced up at Kuno.
He walked beside her with the calm, upright confidence of someone who had never needed to run. Tall, sharp-jawed, kendo uniform crisp and proper. His bokken bumped against his hip with every step. There was something achingly upright about him, like he didn’t know how to hunch, how to shrink himself to survive. Handsome. So handsome it pissed her off. And stupid. Stupid like a fairytale prince trying to save dragons from their own hoards. And he was kind. To her . Not because he wanted something. Just because he thought it was the right thing to do.
How the hell was she supposed to not fall in love with him?
He noticed her looking. Raised an eyebrow, wordless but questioning.
She squinted, stepped closer and grabbed his arm with exaggerated force. Her grip was dramatic, playful, bratty in its mimicry of dependence. “I’m so hungry,” she declared, her lip jutting out in a pout. “I’m gonna make you spend a lot .”
Kuno didn’t hesitate. “You deserve a feast. You passed your exam with distinction.” He smiled at her. Full-hearted. Like he meant it.
Her cheeks burned hot. Her heart leapt in her chest like a misfired punch. God dammit , she thought, biting back the swell of emotion before it reached her mouth. Just how am I supposed to not fall in love with this idiot?!