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ryūjirō worked the bone slowly between his teeth, the scraping rhythm low and steady, a sound too small to be noticed over the hush of the grass and the low croak of waking crows. he had seen them before they had seen each other — the big stranger moving like a blade sheathed in patience, and kaede, drawn toward him like a moth that knew better but burned anyway. he did not move from the shadowed thicket where he crouched. did not announce himself. ryūjirō was a man built for the spaces between moments — for the unseen glances, for the measured breaths before blood hit the dirt. he watched. he bone creaked against his molars, splintering in hairline cracks. his blackened gaze dragged over the male — assessing weight, posture, kill-shape — then flicked back to kaede, the way she bowed, the way the pride flickered and trembled behind her slender spine. he saw it all. the way she offered herself like a blade meant for another's hand. ryūjirō spat a thin shard of marrow into the grass at his feet, tongue pressing against the raw edge where the bone had split. his expression did not change. it never did. but a slow, dark thought curled cold in his gut. he would watch. and if the male moved wrong — if he so much as breathed wrong — ryūjirō would carve his lesson into flesh before the stranger ever understood he'd been judged.