Page 84 of Mercy Written in Blood

He sat down and opened Haruki's file. Name: Haruki Ishida. Age: twenty-nine. Occupation: listed as company director. Emergency contact: Reina Kurogawa. No significant medical history. No regular medication. Nothing remarkable.

Renji read the details twice. Then closed the file. He opened it again.

The memory of Haruki's fingers around his returned with irritating clarity. Warm. Trusting. Unconscious.

Renji leaned back in his chair. Fatigue could explain delayed reactions. Stress could produce misplaced attention. The tunnel incident had been unusual — Haruki had spoken a nameconnected to Renji's past. That alone justified continued consideration.

It was not attraction.

It was not interest.

It was certainly not the beginning of anything.

Renji had lived too long to be unsettled by a smile. He had known beauty in every century. Loved voices now absent from the world. Watched desire become grief often enough to understand the cost before the pleasure. Whatever crack Haruki Ishida imagined he had found did not exist.

Renji lowered his eyes to the page. At the bottom of the operative note, beneath the formal account of wounds and procedures, he had written one additional line.

Patient remained concerned for the safety of others throughout treatment.

It was not necessary. It did not belong in the surgical record. Renji stared at it. Then placed his pen against the page to cross it out.

He stopped.

For reasons he could not explain, he left the sentence where it was.

Outside his office, the hospital continued around him. Phones rang. Trolleys passed. People lived because others had refused to let them die.

Renji returned to his notes.

For the first time in centuries, he found himself unable to concentrate on the dead.

And far too aware of one living man.

Chapter Eight

An Uninvited Alliance

Haruki had been awake for less than an hour when the Accord came to claim the dead. They did not arrive with uniforms. That would have been too honest. Three people entered the Ishida headquarters shortly after sunrise wearing dark business clothes and expressions cultivated to reveal nothing. They passed through security without being searched because the names they presented carried authority older than the building around them.

Kael Arai walked in front. Haruki had met him twice before. Both occasions had involved bodies no one was permitted to report accurately. Kael looked exactly as Haruki remembered him: tall, composed and dressed with the deliberate plainness of a man who did not need clothing to establish rank. His hair was dark, his skin almost colourless beneath the office lights, and his eyes held the distant stillness Haruki associated with people who had survived long enough to become careful about every reaction.

Behind him came a woman Haruki did not recognise and a broad-shouldered man carrying a sealed metal case. Neither introduced themselves.

The Ishida Family had gathered in the main meeting room. Ayako sat at the head of the table. Reina stood beside Haruki despite repeated instructions from the hospital that he should avoid unnecessary exertion. Ken occupied the chair nearest the door, one hand wrapped around a cup of coffee he had not touched.

Haruki sat because standing made the stitches in his side pull hard enough to blur his vision. He refused to let anyone see it.

Kael stopped across from him.

"You left hospital."

It was not a greeting. Haruki adjusted the front of his borrowed shirt.

"My condolences. I know how much you enjoy having me contained."

"You underwent emergency surgery yesterday."

"And yet here I am."