Slipping through the alleyways of the night like she was avoiding being caught, Maki had only one place in mind that she needed to get to: a rumored meeting of high-level mafia men who she'd crossed paths with a time or two. As she thought about the men and their ugly faces and attitudes, her hand wrapped its way around the hilt of her katana—a sword she carried simply for intimidation tactics that evening. She knew that she couldn't properly kill a man with the sword, but she didn't need any weapon at all to defend herself if the men she'd been told were meeting were, in fact, who she knew them to be. That katana was the only thing even remotely similar to a weapon she carried on her, no further blades or guns or traps hidden anywhere on her body.
While approaching the supposed meeting place, her pace slowed down tremendously, not wanting to alert anyone to her presence with a wrong move. She'd been out of work as an assassin for years, ever since she'd aged out of the orphanage system and the men who'd employed her couldn't use funding to keep her in their grasp, but on occasion she'd pay some of her targets visits to remind them that she still had the power over them. Most of her former targets were still dead in the ground, but the ones that had repented their sins while believing they were staring death in the eyes got a second lease on life. That was why she didn't need a real weapon on her that night, she knew that the men she was checking up on were reformed enough to not need her to bring them to mercy once more, and if they had decided they weren't going to play by her rules, she had her own way to keep them from committing any more crimes.
The building was an old warehouse, unguarded even though there were mafiosos inside, and Maki was able to get inside quietly and with ease. She weaved her way through the empty crates that were still stored there, beginning to hear voices that she recognized, the sound of their gruff words bringing a deep scowl to her face. Dealing with scum of the earth was never anything she enjoyed doing, but if she was making things better for the overall population she could look past the game of life and death she was playing. Once she was able to properly hear the men's conversation, she froze in her place, sidling up to a crate to make herself as small as possible and avoid being seen if anyone dared to come look for her.
Their conversation was about funds and how to illegally funnel them from one account to another, because the person who owned the originating account owed them quite a few debts that needed paying. If someone was making deals with the mafia then they tended to be in a really bad spot, and the sound of the men trying to manipulate someone who'd needed a bit of help made Maki's grip tighten on her katana. She couldn't just jump into their conversation and put a stop to things, especially not if the men didn't recognize her, but she also couldn't stand by idly and let them talk about such disgusting things like they were appropriate courses of action.
Her entrance into the scene was to dash around the crate, katana pulled from its holder and being brandished in front of her while she glared at the men. "What's this about criminal deeds?" she asked, her voice fake-sweet and contrasting immensely with the appearance she was giving off. "I thought you two were going to change your ways, not use your second chance at life to keep being assholes."
Both men were looking at her from the second they'd heard her footsteps approaching them, and neither of them had anything to say to her, their expressions matching each other's with the jaw slightly dropping and their faces beginning to go pale. "So you recognize me, I get it," she continued, lowering the sword slightly to look less intimidating (although a tiny woman being intimidating to the two burly men felt laughable), "but that doesn't excuse you still being pieces of shit to others. What happened to begging me for mercy, that you'd never get involved with the mafia again?"
"That was just talk!" one of the men barked, before motioning towards her, the other man taking his lead and charging at her. She rolled her eyes, threw her katana aside and held out a hand in front of her, which connected with the outstretched hand of the man trying to go for her neck. The second their fingers brushed together the man fell cold to the floor, the life in his body having been zapped with just a tiny touch, and the man who'd commanded for him to make that charge was left stammering and looking for a way out of the situation.
Looking down at the dead man at her feet, Maki shook her head and gave a dramatic sigh. "I tried warning you when I brought you back that any further touches meant you die, but I guess no one believed me." She kicked the man's shoulder, feeling his rigid and stiff body underneath the sole of her shoe, as her eyes came back up to look towards the other man, who was stumbling backwards, trying to get away from her and her life-bending powers.
The last thing she heard come from his lips was an apology and a promise that he wouldn't take an innocent man's money, and then he was gone. That left her alone with a corpse, which she ignored the second she could, retrieving her katana and heading back home without much fanfare. This life wasn't what she'd asked for, but it was what she was given, and she made the best of things every day she could. Her ability was what had made her such a good assassin, being able to kill someone, bring them back to have them make amends in any way possible, then kill them a second time without any effort on her part. As long as they'd never died before, she could physically interact with someone all she wanted, but the second they'd died once and she touched them, they'd be alive like nothing had happened, but so much as a tiny brush of bare skin between her and them would end with them dead once again, with no chance of a second revival.
Well, actually, she knew that to be untrue, as she personally knew someone else who could raise the dead, but their services required heavy sacrifices and it was a burden to them to do the task. So as far as most people knew, there was just one lifegiver, one deathtaker, who was resented by both the heavens and hell and any divine beings between them for their talent, and that was Maki. Ever since she'd aged out of the orphanage, her ability hadn't been as much of a problem as it was when she was younger, because she wasn't frequently being faced with people on death's door that needed to be revived, or men that she'd killed and had to bring back so they could face someone else's justice. She still frequently found herself relying on her skill to help others, but it had become less problematic in her adult years overall, and for that she was thankful enough.
There were still some serious issues with the talent, though, and she knew she had to deal with those on a daily basis. Those issues were what had brought her to her current situation, doing vigilante work in the night while living with a pair of detectives during the day, but she was hopeful that soon enough, things would start changing for the better for the three of them, one way or another. If she'd known what "the better" would entail for any of them, she may not have been so wishful about things, but as far as she was aware, the only way her life could get better from its current spot would be being able to move into a different house without her roommates being the people asking her to bring back the dead so that they could investigate their crimes further.
She got back to the house she was sharing with the others not longer after her brush with the mafia men, unlocking the door without any issue and stepping inside a completely dark house, neither of her roommates still awake. Once the door was properly locked behind her, she put the katana back on the shelf where she'd taken it from (it was a decorative piece, not even worthy of being used as a weapon, which was why she carried it when she was doing check-ins) and headed towards her room. That was when she saw a crack of light underneath a closed bedroom door, and her heart began racing when she heard that there were people—plural people—talking on the other side.
It wasn't that she wasn't fond of her roommates having guests over without her knowing about it beforehand, but rather that she knew the guests that she could hear and her instant reaction to their voices was to want absolutely nothing to do with them. One of the voices, the softer one that she didn't hear as much as the others, belonged to the man who lived in the room, but the other two were possessed by people she was trying to limit her interactions with; they were great people, they really were, but the problem with Maki's talent of bringing the dead back to life was that she knew an awful lot of people who'd met untimely ends that she'd reversed, and those two were two such individuals.
Still, she couldn't exactly let there be a social gathering in the room next to hers without her giving a reminder that they needed to shut up and let her sleep. Her knock on the door caused shuffling on the other side, and when it opened it was Shuichi standing there, looking down at her with a sheepish look on his face. "Right, I know why you're here," he said, trying to put on a smile but only managing to look pained, "but we've got to get these things worked out at some point and I thought that—"
"I don't care," she snapped, watching him flinch at the harshness of her words. "It's after midnight, shouldn't you be quieter in here? All three of you?" Even though she couldn't see the others, she knew they were both just out of view, one on an air mattress on the floor and the other in Shuichi's bed, a common set-up since the detective had moved into the house he currently lived in. Maki could easily remember when things were different and she'd be invited into the group sleepovers, but those days were long gone and she could only grimace at the memory of them. "I'm sure you're so excited to be able to live together again but leave me out of it and let me sleep." "—right, sorry about this, Maki." Rather than leave things right there and call the conversation over, Shuichi came outside his room, closing the door behind him despite the protesting calls from the others. "Look, I know that having them here is painful but can't you be a bit nicer about it? That's my girlfriend and my best friend in there, and you know how much they mean to me."
"Oh, trust me when I say I know all-too-well, and you know how much they meant to me before everything happened." Maki put a hand on Shuichi's shoulder, her fingers digging into his bony frame and making him squirm under her palm. "I'm not saying that you shouldn't be bringing them here, but I am saying that you should've thought better about it before you did it."
He nodded, tears beginning to brim in his eyes from how her fingernails were getting dangerously close to breaking his skin, even through his shirt. "I'll make sure we're extra quiet then, so you don't have to hear their voices. Will that make things easier for you?"
"It might," she replied, letting go of him only to push that same shoulder back into the door he stood in front of as she stormed down the hall to her own room. She could hear him calling apologies until his door opened and he went back inside to the others, but she honestly couldn't care at all about how sorry he was. There was a huge sacrifice someone with death-reversing powers had to make, and that was losing contact with people they cared about when they saved them from a grim fate. She couldn't fault Shuichi for maintaining relationships with the duo, they were pretty great people and she'd enjoyed them both when she'd been able to, but now that they were living zombies to her, it was best that she stayed far away.
The first one that came to mind, the one that she could forgive more than the other, was Shuichi's girlfriend Kaede, who had only recently been brought back to life. It was a horrible incident that had led to her dying, a planned attack while she was on stage at a piano concert, and with how many people had watched her get gunned down by precision-aimed fire it was a miracle that there weren't more questions about how she'd survived the direct attack on her. Some people had asked, certainly, but the news had reported her revival as an act of some benevolent god, and many would know that to mean someone with the power of life and death stored in their hands. By no means should Maki have been able to get up on the stage in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but her assassin skills had proven themselves to be handy in reviving Kaede before she was carted away and pronounced permanently deceased.
She could vividly remember the blood drying up, the wounds healing themselves instantly at a single touch to already-clammy skin, Kaede's eyes coming open and her first words being a question about what had happened to her. She'd known Maki long enough to know about her ability to reverse death, and when she found out it had been used on her she'd known how to make sure that she didn't accidentally cause herself to drop dead once more. Their friendship was strained from that moment on, but they were still amicable towards one another even if they couldn't so much as brush fingers without lasting consequences.
The other one was the tricky one, because so much of Maki's own heart had been sacrificed in making the decision to bring Kaito back that seeing his goofy face, his bright smile and his shining eyes, made her regret ever choosing to save him. He'd been her best friend and first crush, and between them and Shuichi they were one of the most recognizable groups their school had ever known, always at each other's sides and hanging out every moment possible. It was the year before they graduated that Kaito had gotten incredibly sick, missing weeks of school without any explanation as to where he was, and when he came back he was a different person entirely, barely able to walk between classes without needing assistance (but refusing it because he insisted he was fine). In secret he told Maki and Shuichi what was going on with him, swearing them to silence on the matter and never letting anyone know that what was wrong was terminal, because he'd had a plan to guarantee his survival.
"I'm gonna die from this lung bullshit, and I know it," he said, the words never leaving Maki's mind despite the years that had passed since they'd been said, "and that's why I'm making sure that I've got Maki Roll at my side when it happens, so that no one else knows that I'm dyin'. It's what I've decided on, so you can't change my mind!" His voice had been so feeble even though his words were radiating pride, and true to what he'd said it was impossible to make him see the error of his ways and make him rethink that choice.
In the end, he'd gotten what he wanted, her by his side as he choked to death on his own blood, and the second his heart had stopped beating she restarted it with a shaky touch of her fingers to his lips, deeming a kiss too risky in case it lasted too long and he died once more. Being able to bring him back was power she wished she'd never had to use on him in specific, because of how much she secretly loved him, but in the time immediately following the revival she had to start distancing herself from him. Gone were the days of idle shoulder-bumps that led to him lifting her up and carrying her around, because they couldn't risk the skin contact, and gone were the days of group sleepovers at Shuichi's uncle's house, because being too close to Kaito made Maki's entire body ache with desire. She loved him so much, and she'd resigned herself to never getting him because he'd technically died, and the fact that Shuichi had maintained a great friendship with him the whole time felt like a slap across her face every day.
But that wasn't something she could bring up with her friend, not without sounding like she despised their friendship that she couldn't be part of without potentially losing someone forever. This was the downside to the ability she'd been gifted, and while most of the time that downside could be overlooked, that just wasn't possible when it came to Kaito (and Kaede, to a smaller extent), and she hated it. She hated hearing his joyful laughter, seeing that face that she adored so dearly, being addressed by a voice that was the only way the person speaking was going to be touching her. If she could, she would trade her life-giving power for spending all the time in the world with Kaito, and she wouldn't regret that decision even slightly. That was just how much she wanted to be with him, a fact that she and she alone knew.
In her room, where no one could see the pain she felt by knowing those two were in an adjoining space, Maki closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, her hand idly reaching towards her chest and curling into a fist over her heart. Romance was stupid, feelings were dumb, and being in love with someone she'd brought back to life and therefore couldn't touch was a pain she'd never wish on even the nastiest of people. "I should've told him they had to leave," she grumbled, her fist growing tighter. "Tonight's just not a night I want to be dealing with this."
When morning came whoever owned that warehouse would stumble upon a corpse that had been long dead, even though it had been walking the earth hours before, and she was the one responsible for it. No one would ever know that she'd killed yet another person, it would remain anonymous and even if she was somehow attached to it, how would it be seen as her doing something wrong? The man had charged at her even though he should have known touching her would have fatal consequences, and it wasn't like she could control how her power worked. Skin-on-skin contact after revival was means for death, that was what she told everyone she brought back the second they regained consciousness, and failure to heed her warning would be the end of them.
As she lay herself in bed, the thoughts of the man she'd killed intertwining with the thoughts of the two twenty-somethings over in Shuichi's room that she'd brought back to life, Maki began to wonder if there was a way to pursue relationships with the dead she'd revived that wouldn't end in heartbreak and a second death. There had to be some solid workaround to her power, otherwise her existence was meant to be lonely—and it was in the last moments before sleep overtook her mind that a potential method to maintaining friendships (or more) crossed her mind for the first time.
It would take a lot of trust and hoping for the best, but if it worked, she might be able to find herself bumping shoulders with her former friends once more.
She brought the idea up while sitting at the desk at the detective agency where she worked with her current roommates, bored out of her mind as she waited for something exciting to happen in the world around them. "What if I touched someone while, say, wearing a glove, do you think that'd kill them?" she suggested, getting the attention of both detectives in one go while they'd been working on paperwork for cases. "I'm not saying I'm planning on doing it, I was just thinking, what if I did?"
"It'd make two of us who wear gloves on the regular, I suppose," Kyoko replied, her typically serious expression not fading even with the suddenness of the question. "Of course, yours would be worn to save others, while mine are…ahem, the point is, I think it would mean less questions for me if you were doing the same."
"You're not planning on testing this on anyone we know, are you?" Shuichi asked, his eyes growing wide at the prospect of Maki using either of his close friends as bait for her idea. "I get that you want to be able to have friends, but maybe risking someone's life for it isn't the best idea."
"They wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for me, if they're not stingy they'll let me have this chance." Feeling rude to word it in such a self-centered way, Maki considered apologizing and giving her suggestion a second, different shot, but she stopped herself when she realized that she was allowed to be self-centered about this. A lot of her life was spent doing things for the best of others without regard to her own ideals and wants, so now that she had something her heart so strongly desired she wasn't going to let go of it until she was able to give it its proper opportunity. "If I can touch someone with my hands covered, think of the possibilities. Think of what else I'd be able to do."
Grimacing as he did as instructed and thought about her words, Shuichi ended up shaking his head in disagreement. "I'm sorry, Maki, but all I can think of is someone taking it as an invitation to touch you however he wants and finding himself dead again anyway. You should know that trying this will end in someone dying, because they want more than you can give them."
"Oh, that sounds like you have someone in specific in mind," Kyoko said with a tiny smirk, glancing towards Maki and how she was biting her bottom lip to keep herself from blurting out anything incriminating. "I'm not going to ask names, but perhaps it would be one of our visitors from the other night?" Neither of the people she was with said a word, which all but answered her question, and so she felt correct to continue with, "I do want to agree with Shuichi and assume that whoever this mystery gentleman is, he won't be able to hold himself to not touching you unless given somewhere safe, but at the same time, you do know that there are other workarounds if that worst-case scenario does happen."
"I'm not asking anyone else to bring him back if he dies a second time, that's on him for being a moron," Maki replied, before realizing what she'd said and grumbling something at herself under her breath. She knew that talking this out with two detectives, one of which was best friends with the guy in question, would result in her having to come to terms with her lingering affection for a formerly-dead man, but she hadn't expected to be the one to admit it to everyone. She'd assumed the process of revealing the information would be long and drawn out, with them having to pry her mouth open to get her to speak. "I…mean, that's on him for ignoring me."
"If you spoke to Kaito again, he wouldn't ignore you, I can promise you that." Speaking with confidence, as if he'd thought about this scenario before it was presented to him, Shuichi's eyes looked to Maki to see her visibly shrinking away at the mention of the man's name, which only proved that he'd known who she was talking about. "He misses what you used to have, back when we were all friends and could hang out without problems. Ever since you did what he wanted and brought him back, he's wanted to spend time with you."
"To what? Thank me for giving him a second life?"
Once again Shuichi shook his head, while Kyoko stopped what she'd been doing to watch and listen intently. "I mean, I can't say that wouldn't be part of it, but he wants to spend time with you because, uh, he thinks you're a great person. Which really is a codeword for he thinks you're hot and likes you almost as much as you like him."
"Is my affection for him really that obvious?" Cue both of them telling her that they were able to read her feelings on her face, and that she'd never once been able to keep any sort of romantic interest in the man to herself just by the way she acted towards him. "Ugh, that's the last thing I wanted to hear! He has to know how I feel, huh?"
"He's known for a long time, Maki." Shuichi punctuated his statement with a cough, which he had attempted to make muffle his words but failed at doing so, making Maki's face turn red with embarrassment at what was being discussed. "Did you really think he didn't know that you ever liked him? Because I can tell you that that's why he wanted you to bring him back to life, so that he could…you know, have a chance with you." That was where he stopped, noticing that Kyoko was paying way too much attention to what was being said, and so he hastily finished with, "I don't know why he thought that would work, but he did and it hasn't so far."
"Because I'm a total moron about things, I get it." Banging her fist against her forehead, Maki thought about how long she'd been giving Kaito the cold shoulder to keep him safe, thinking that she was better off distancing herself from him than anything else. Had she known how he felt she might have thought about making things work sooner, and even though it was assuring to know that he still did like her, she was worried that she was going to be trying too little, too late. "So what do I do now? Try the glove thing? Do you think Kaito can actually be mature enough to make that work?"
"That would depend on how far you want to take things," Kyoko cut in, slowly pulling one of her gloves off to expose the charred and scarred skin underneath the fabric. Her abilities rested solely in her hands, whereas Maki's were on any patch of skin that was visible, and Kyoko made it a point to not use her talent unless absolutely necessary because of its personal drawback. Just like Maki couldn't touch anyone who had been risen, Kyoko couldn't either, because her hands would begin to burn and wherever she'd initially touched the formerly deceased would do the same, the scent of smoldering flesh filling the immediate area right away.
The power to play with life and death came at such steep costs, and the fact that two of the deathtakers were close enough to be roommates was astounding, but it meant that they could be there for each other when it came to figuring out what to do about their lives. "I think I'll stick to keeping my hands clear," Maki decided as she watched Kyoko put her glove back on with a smile. "But I…can't just keep leaving Kaito out of my life like this, do you know how jealous I get when I hear Shuichi talking to him?"
"Do you know how jealous he gets when he hears me talking to you?" Shuichi shot back, before realizing what kind of behavior they were beginning to condone. "Look, if you want to talk to him again that's fine, I just don't want you to accidently make him die a second time. That'd be the worst, for all of us."
"Trust me, I know that it'd be worst, thanks." If Maki could do something to make sure that she wouldn't manage to hurt Kaito if they began speaking again, she would do it in a heartbeat, but there just weren't any logical options she could take. Her powers were too different from Kyoko's to make her method work, and she wasn't familiar with the specific abilities and precautions any other deathtaker used to keep a social life. Besides, she'd always been used to being alone and isolated in her youth, so it shouldn't have ever been so hard to go back to living that life.
But her heart still yearned to talk to Kaito again, and even though she tried to play it off as if she wasn't interested in potentially ruining his life, she was desperate to find a way to make things work out. Even if it was for one final conversation before casting him off forever (in a social sense, she wasn't considering killing him and denying everyone else of his presence), she wanted to make something happen. Eventually she broke down and talked to her roommates about it a second time, Kyoko staying silent as she smirked at hearing Maki's desperation and Shuichi's hesitance at letting anything happen, but they came to the decision that as long as the conversation happened in some way that they could see each other, but had no chance of touching each other, that would be fair enough.
That was where the planning ended, and Maki was told that things would happen as they needed whenever possible, which wasn't a good enough answer for her but she wasn't going to press the issue. She noticed, right away, that her time spent at the house seemed to be filled with only the other people who lived there, and occasionally a couple of Kyoko's friends who had never tasted death and therefore were safe to be around. Shuichi was home just as often as always, but he wasn't inviting Kaito or Kaede over anymore, and Maki was too ashamed of how things had worked out to ask him what was up with that.
The knock that came at her window one night a few weeks later jolted her away from a light sleep, and she was so angry that she first reached for the pocket knife she kept at her bedside table before she got up to see what was going on. "I'll murder whoever's out there," she muttered, flipping out the sharpest blade on her knife and pulling open her curtains, gasping when she saw who was standing on the other side.
Kaito's wave was overshadowed by the grin on his face, although both were barely visible in the dark of night. Unsure of why he was there, Maki threw the knife at her bed, it stabbing the wall above where she usually slept, and she opened the window, the only barrier between herself and Kaito now the screen on her window. "Boy am I glad this is your window and not Kyoko's, I don't know how well she'd handle such a late wake-up call," he said with a laugh, coming closer to the window screen. "But how's it goin', Maki Roll? Feels like it's been forever since we talked."
"How's it going? That's what you're going to ask me? Aren't you afraid I'm going to kill you right now?" Her words were masking how excited she was to see him there, even if he was mostly shrouded in darkness—even turning her bedroom light on didn't do much to illuminate his darkened form. "You're crazy, Kaito. You're actively playing with death."
"Sure I am, but why does that matter? I heard from someone that you wanted to talk to me, and so I'm here, talkin' to ya. Isn't that the important thing?" Of course coming up with plans had been abruptly stopped when Shuichi had decided to go rogue and plan things himself, and she made the mental note to give him an earful about that when she got the chance. Right then, though, it was time for her to talk to Kaito and hope none of the neighbors saw what was happening outside their house.
"I suppose that's important," she conceded, pulling a sizable chunk of her long hair in front of her so that she could hide her blushing face with it. "I've missed you, Kaito. Ever since I brought you back things just…haven't been the same, and I miss you."
"Why're you hiding yourself away like this?" He was asking about what she was doing with her hair, but Maki thought for a moment that Kaito was drawing attention to her behavior as a whole, asking her why she'd chosen to isolate herself from him even though she felt the answer to that was fairly obvious. Slowly, she let her guard fall, her hair slipping out of her hands and falling back behind her, and her bright red cheeks were visible to him, backlit by the light in her room. "There's that face I've wanted to see for so long! I'm glad we're getting to have this time together, Maki Roll. It's not perfect, but it's something."
She nodded, feeling very much the same sentiment inside her heart, even though her brain was screaming that she shouldn't have been endangering him like this. "It's something I could probably get used to again," she admitted, shifting her eyes up towards the ceiling so that she didn't have to look in Kaito's direction. "But I don't want to accidentally kill you, so we'll have to be careful with it, got it? Unless…do you want to die?"
"Not a second time, if it means losin' you forever. I'll do whatever it takes to get to spend time with you all the time, if it means sitting across the room or talking to you through open windows at night." Kaito laughed, pressing his hand against the window screen and slowly letting his fingers curl up, as if he was grabbing something. "I thought you would've known it from how things were before you brought me back, but I always thought you were a great friend once you came outta your shell. Then I died and you saved me and things changed and I didn't quite get it, 'til Shuichi explained why you were so distant to me."
"I figured you would've gotten why I stayed away, you'd heard me explain my ability so many times that you should've known exactly how it worked." He was the one who'd asked her to use her talent on him, she never had a reason to suspect he wasn't solid on her needing to keep her distance after. "But that's in the past, I guess. You're here now, and we're going to be friends again if only because you're really insistent we do it."
"I'm insistent, sure, but you clearly want it. The whole world can see it. I mean, your face is so bright right now I bet they can see it up in space, like a beacon in the night!" The way Kaito spoke was so charming, and his joyful expression was comforting, and the way he wanted to hold her hand but couldn't was heartbreaking; this encounter was going exactly as Maki had figured it would if it happened and she was living for it.
So the lifegiver, the deathtaker with a single touch, looked at her forbidden prince across the window screen and genuinely smiled, reaching out towards him with her own hand and touching the screen near his, curling her fingers the same way. It was as close as she'd ever thought her hand would get to his again, and she hoped that she could keep herself to maintaining that distance even as they rebuilt their relationship in the coming days, weeks, months, even years. She didn't need to isolate herself from someone who wanted to see her just as much as she wanted to see him, and with that dedication in mind she felt it was safe to give in to her heart and let herself find happiness.
But happiness for Maki wasn't going to come cheap, and she hoped that Kaito would understand that one wrong move, one wrong touch, would result in nothing but pain for her for the rest of her life, because she'd have taken his.
A/N: now I have never actually watched/read anything with this concept before, but I've heard stories and seen how interesting the concept is, so I decided I'd take a crack at writing it for myself for once. and, because I love torturing myself, I did it with my ultimate comfort ship because? why not
I don't foresee this fic being super long, but there is quite a bit more to it lol