Chapter 45:

Chapter 43: The Weight Finally Tips

Color Me Yours

POV: Kaito Minami

The train back to Tokyo arrived just before dawn.

The city was still half-asleep—streetlights flickering, sidewalks damp, neon signs blinking weakly in the cold. The colors felt blinding after the muted palette of her hometown. Reds too sharp. Blues too electric. Everything too loud, too bright, too artificial.

My body ached from the cold walk the night before, but I ignored it.

I left the station, took a side route to avoid familiar eyes, and returned to the penthouse through the service elevator. No guards. No staff. No security sweep. There was no evidence I’d ever left at all.

Just the way it needed to be.

Inside, the apartment felt as it always did—silent, still, gray.

But after seeing the warm, amber glow of her window, this place felt colder than usual. Starker. Lifeless.

I set my coat aside, removed my mask, and loosened my tie.

The plan had been simple:

Confirm her safety.

Return before dawn.

Sleep for an hour.

Resume work.

But when I took a step toward the bedroom, a wave of heat washed over me—wrong, heavy, dizzying. My balance slipped for half a second.

I steadied myself on the counter.

The cold from her town had sunk deeper than expected. Combined with seven days of no sleep, and the stress…

My body had made a decision without my consent.

I exhaled, slow and sharp.

I would rest. Briefly.

Just an hour.

I crossed the living room, intending to collapse on the bed—but the sofa was closer. And the room tilted faintly again, a white blur edging my vision.

Fine.

The sofa then.

I lowered myself onto it, one hand pressed against my forehead. Heat radiated beneath my skin, pulsing. A dull, dragging ache spread through my limbs.

I closed my eyes.

Just for a moment.

Just until the room stopped spinning.

Darkness folded over me before I could even exhale.

---

I woke only when light hit my face—sharp, invasive, too bright. Morning. Later than it should have been. Far later.

My body felt heavier than before. My throat raw. My head thick and pounding in slow, rhythmic pulses. Breathing took effort. Sitting up was impossible.

I tried anyway.

My muscles refused.

Cold sweat clung to my skin, but heat burned beneath it. The room wavered again.

Unacceptable.

I had meetings.

I had statements to finalize.

I had—

A sound cut through the fog.

Soft footsteps.

Light. Familiar.

The elevator.

A key code beeped.

A door slid open.

Then—

“M… Minami-san?”

Her voice.

Hana.

My eyes opened at the sound, but the ceiling blurred. Her footsteps approached—quick, worried, unmistakably real.

She was here.

She had returned.

And I was—

Completely unable to sit up.

Pathetic.

Her voice cracked the quiet before I registered the sound of the door.

For a moment, I didn’t lift my head. Couldn’t. My lungs dragged in a slow, heavy breath that hurt going in and came out thinner.

Then I forced myself to look up.

Hana stood in the doorway—winter still clinging to her hair, eyes wide and uncertain.

For a second, stupidly, my mind blanked.

I knew her. Of course I knew her. But the world was too bright, too sharp, the colors bleeding at the edges like someone had overexposed the film of my vision.

“Hana,” I managed. My voice grated. “You’re… back.”

“Yes,” she whispered, stepping closer. “I—I just arrived. Are you… are you alright?”

Alright.

If “alright” meant my body had finally decided that a week of cold air, stress, and disrupted sleep was too much, then perhaps I was. Otherwise… no.

I exhaled through my nose, trying to steady the tremor. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

But the truth was obvious even before she answered—obvious in the way my head swam when I shifted, in the faint chill clinging under my skin, in the hot pressure behind my eyes.

“You don’t look fine,” she said quietly.

Her words cut cleaner than any reprimand at work.

I blinked once, slow, trying to keep my expression even.

“It’s nothing,” I said, leaning back. Even that little movement felt like pushing uphill. “A cold. Stress. It will resolve.”

It was the truth. Both simple and uncomfortably revealing.

I should never have gone out in that weather. I knew the way my body reacts to sudden temperature drops. I knew the nights spent sitting in silence, wondering if she would call, were wearing at me. I knew all of it.

I ignored all of it.

Now it was demanding payment.

She moved closer—to my horror and to something else I refused to name. “You shouldn’t be sitting here like this. Did you sleep at all last night?”

Another small pause.

I hated how weak the truth made me sound.

“No.”

“Why?”

“I had work.”

A lie.

A partial one.

The papers behind me hadn’t been worked on—only picked up, put down, moved just enough to pretend usefulness. I’d sat here for hours replaying that last morning she was here, the quiet, the light, her absence echoing far louder than it should have.

Ridiculous.

Her gaze caught on the disarray, and I looked away.

She knelt slightly, forcing my eyes back to hers. “Kaito-san… you’re sick.”

I didn’t bother denying it this time. My eyelids lowered for a brief moment—long enough that even I could feel the reluctance. The admission sat like a stone in my chest.

“I’ll manage,” I muttered.

“You shouldn’t manage alone.”

The words struck harder than intended.

I felt them more than heard them.

My eyes opened again, and something small, sharp, unguarded slipped through before I could stop it.

She had come back.

She had come back and found me like this.

“You didn’t need to rush back,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t rush,” she lied with a softness that almost—almost—made my chest loosen. “I just… came back.”

She didn’t understand what that meant to me.

Or maybe I didn’t want her to.

She studied me, and I let her. For once, I didn’t look away. Her presence steadied something inside me I hadn’t realized was swaying.