He watched her emerge from the brewery like a curse summoned by cigarette smoke and unchecked ego.
Sunlight caught on her collarbones. Her tank top—white, ribbed, cropped and tied at the back—hugged her figure like it had been designed to provoke litigation. Shorts too short, legs too bare, neckline too low. She looked like a summer sin.
Katsuki's jaw ticked.
That was the problem. She looked like she belonged here. Like she'd never been hunched over discovery files at midnight or screaming into Excel formulas. Like she hadn't shattered him into a hundred silent pieces and left his balcony haunted with silence and secondhand playlists.
She crossed the street without flinching, a bottle of soda swinging from her hand like a weapon.
"You're a long way from home, Hasegawa." Arms crossed. Chin tilted. Mouth curled in that infuriating smirk that always came before she said something she knew would get under his skin.
But the words didn't register.
Because his brain—normally a machine built for cross-examinations and quarterly reviews—was glitching.
Midriff.
Bare.
The tank top was tied in a knot at the back, leaving her spine and shoulder blades exposed like a goddamn invitation. Her hair was a mess. Her skin sun-warmed. Her legs—
"Your shorts are too fucking short."
She gaped, and made a face like he'd just accused her of war crimes.
"I'm sorry," she said sweetly. "Is there a dress code for being emotionally abandoned and publicly humiliated? Should I have worn my trauma poncho?"
He didn't answer. Because his blood was loud in his ears. Because she wasn't supposed to look like this. Untethered. Glowing. Fine.
Her brows pulled together. "What are you even doing here?"
She stepped closer, soda fizzing in her hand like it had opinions. "I returned the laptop. I've followed the NDA. I don't owe you any money—and don't even think about taking the Manolos. You gave them to me. Because I broke my shoes. When you left me."
Every word landed like a slap.
He should've said something then. Clarified. Apologized. Asked why the hell she thought he cared about a pair of shoes when he hadn't been able to breathe properly since she left.
Instead, Katsuki said, "I'm giving you your job back."
Her expression didn't change.
Then she laughed.
Actually laughed. Loud, bright, slightly unhinged—like he'd offered her a timeshare in hell.
"Oh, sure. Thanks so much. Really generous of you," she said, voice syrupy with mockery. "Sorry you drove all the way up here, but—no."
Katsuki's jaw tightened. "I drove for twelve fucking hours. The least you can do is listen."
She tilted her head like he'd just quoted his own Yelp review. "Oh wow. Yeah. You're not in Nagoya anymore, Hasegawa. You don't own anything here."
The words hit like static—loud, jarring, wrong. And he should've let them go. Should've walked away. Should've remembered that small-town girls with spite in their veins and bruises on their hearts weren't interested in pity hires.
Instead, he stepped forward, voice low.
"You sure about that?"
And there it was—that tiny flicker of awareness. In her throat. In the twitch of her fingers. The barest flash of recognition that his presence still got under her skin.
She groaned and turned around. "Go back to whatever high-rise hellhole you came from."
He called after her. "Sukehiro."
She didn't turn around.
Just raised her hand and flipped him off, two fingers over her shoulder like punctuation.
Katsuki exhaled once. Long. Controlled.
-----
She marched to her bike with the single-minded rage of someone one caffeine crash away from criminal charges.
But Katsuki followed.
Not with urgency—he didn't rush. He never did. He moved like inevitability: slow, deliberate, impossible to outrun. And when she swung her leg over the bike, gripping the handlebars like they were her last defense, he reached forward and clamped his hand around the metal.
"Hasegawa." Her voice was low and warning.
He didn't flinch.
She yanked. He didn't let go.
Instead, he stared down at her like she was a particularly complex legal problem with no satisfying answer. His grip stayed firm, knuckles barely flexing.
"Just listen to me for a second."
"I've been listening to you for six months," she snapped. "Passive-aggressive digs. Snide commentary. Weird metaphors about deliverables. Let. Go."
She shook the handlebars again, but he didn't budge. If anything, he held tighter.
"I said let go."
"Stop fighting me," Katsuki growled, his voice sharp, low, and furious. "Get off the bike and talk to me like a damn adult."
"No," she hissed. "I like the bike. The bike's on my side."
"Hana—"
"Don't Hana me."
"Sukehiro."
"Don't Sukehiro me!"
She swung off the bike with enough force to rattle the frame and stormed away, hair bouncing, middle finger raised like a banner of war.
And that should've been the end of it.
It wasn't.
He moved fast. Faster than she expected. Faster than she could react.
His arm wrapped around her waist like a steel trap and, before she could land a single kick, he had her hoisted—thrown over his shoulder like a sack of misbehaving flour.
"You absolute maniac!" she shrieked, fists slamming into his back. "Put me down! I swear to god I will end you in your sleep!"
A man on the sidewalk paused, eyes wide.
"Hana-chan?"
She screamed like the gates of hell had opened. "I'M BEING KIDNAPPED!"
Katsuki didn't stop walking.
Just looked the man dead in the eye and said, "I'm Katsuki Hasegawa. This girl here is my girlfriend, and we're having a fight."
The old man's eyes lit up with understanding. "Ahh," he chuckled. "That's our Hana-chan." And wandered off like this was a Tuesday.
Katsuki tightened his grip—partly for control, mostly because she'd just tried to bite him—and ducked behind the side of the brewery, where the stone walls blocked the street and the smell of fermenting rice made everything feel about five degrees warmer.
Hana, still shrieking like a banshee, pounded his back with the force of a gremlin with unresolved childhood trauma.
"I hate you! You can't just throw people over your shoulder like we're in a pirate novel!"
"You weren't listening," Katsuki said as he dropped her.
Not roughly. But not gently either. Just enough to remind her that gravity still applied and that he was very much done being reasonable.
Hana stumbled, caught herself, then slapped him.
The sound cracked like fire.
"That hurt!" he barked, one hand flying to his cheek.
"Oh, did it?" she snapped, already swinging her leg back like she was gearing up for round two. "Wanna see what else hurts?"
She aimed for his balls with the deadly precision of someone who had absolutely considered this before.
He dodged—barely. "Stop it!"
"I don't want to talk to you, you emotionally constipated taxidermied titan of toxic masculinity!"
"The fuck does that even—"
But she wasn't done.
"And another thing! You think you can just stomp into town, act like some tragic anti-hero in a love hotel commercial, kidnap me in front of the neighborhood ojisan, and suddenly I'll just roll over and accept my job back? You let me quit. You let me walk out. No fight. No phone call. No yelling in the hallway. You just stood there like a malfunctioning Roomba while I left the only job I've ever actually liked—unemployed!—and then what? You go full cryptid for a month and you show up looking like the tragic lead in a corporate thirst trap, and expect me to just forget everything? No. No thank you. Go flex in someone else's office, and—are you flexing right now? Are you literally flexing while I'm telling you off?!"
He wasn't.
He was just clenching his fists. Because if he didn't, he might actually—
-----
I hate this woman.
He hated her mouth. The way it moved too fast for her brain, like it had been waiting all day to explode on someone.
He hated her eyes. Big, bright, expressive, like she hadn't learned to shut the world out properly. He hated how they always looked like they were two seconds from tears—even when she was breathing fire.
He hated how she never gave up. Never shut up. Never made things simple. Always had to poke, prod, unravel.
He hated how he drove twelve fucking hours for this. For her. For this fucking rant under this fucking sun with this absolutely unhinged woman who makes him feel like he's being cross-examined by a caffeinated oracle with a vendetta.
And the worst part?
He'd do it again.
He'd drive another twelve hours. Through another summer. Through another goddamn town festival and every local ojisan thinking he was some villain in a romance drama. He'd listen to another hour of her yelling, another mile of her not forgiving him, if it meant he could see her again.
If it meant she was here.
Breathing. Screaming. Existing in his air.
-----
He clenched his fists.
She was still going. Still mid-rant. Still halfway through a list of war crimes he'd allegedly committed against her mental health.
And Katsuki Hasegawa had reached his goddamn limit.
"You never shut up!" he snapped.
-----
She turned on him like she'd just remembered a whole new paragraph of insults to unleash.
So he grabbed her.
Fingers curling into her waist.
And kissed her.
Not soft. Not romantic. Not gentle.
Just a hard, frustrated, precision-level shutdown of her entire operating system.
She froze.
Still mid-rant.
Still halfway to calling him a third-rate James Bond villain.
But her mouth had been occupied.
And for one suspended second, the world went completely, blessedly, silent.