I wanted tonight’s drink to be bright. So bright it would almost hurt to look at.

I wanted it to reflect the explosion of emotions his absence had set off in me. The explosion that his return had triggered. The chaos raging inside my chest, that insane collision of feelings. I wanted it in the glass, all of it.

At the moment when he’d spoken in those careful, vague words about why he’d been gone, the way he’d looked at me, as if he were trying to explain it to me personally. That look had sparked fragile hope in me.

Maybe he really had been held up by something he couldn’t control.

Right now, what I felt most was relief. Powerful, dizzying relief. So bright and strangely positive that I decided the cocktail needed one more bold accent.

Still hesitating a little, I reached for a tiny orange paper umbrella.

We didn’t have many. We rarely made drinks like that. Most people came here for beer or something simpler, something less… cheerful.

But we had a few.

So I added it.

When I finished, I slid the glass toward him. The liquid inside was aggressively colorful. He stared at it for a long moment, idly spinning the opened umbrella between his fingers, smiling.

“An umbrella,” he said. “How charming.”

Then he took a sip.

I watched him, nerves buzzing under my skin.

He considered the taste for a second longer.

“Sweet,” he said finally. “Unexpected. But pleasant.” His eyes lifted to mine.

I froze then laughed awkwardly. “Right— yeah. Exactly,” I said quickly. “That was the point.”

Kazuo passed behind the bar and rolled his eyes. I shot him a look, silently begging him to stay out of it. I didn’t need his help right now. Ed was here. Everything else could wait.

For the next few minutes, Ed sipped his drink slowly while I just… watched him. Memorized the way he held the glass. The way his posture relaxed.

Then, out of nowhere, he asked, “Tell me, Luka… what do you like to drink? Cocktails, I mean. Or do you prefer something unmixed?”

I blinked. The question caught me off guard. He didn’t ask about me often.

“I—” My breath hitched, and I swallowed. “I don’t drink.”

He looked at me, clearly surprised, one brow lifting. “A bartender who doesn’t drink? That’s rather unusual.”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my palms over my arms. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Why?” he asked insistently. Like he genuinely wanted the answer.

I shifted, uneasy. I hesitated, then I said it. “It’s not that I dislike alcohol,” I said quietly. “I don’t need it. For work, it’s enough to smell things. To understand how scents blend. My sense of smell is… more than enough.”

The moment the words left my mouth, panic hit.

Too much. I’d said too much.

I went still, my mind racing. He’d know now. He’d realize I wasn’t normal.

Fuck, Luka, why did you say that?

He finally came back after three miserable weeks, and this was what I chose to reveal?

What kind of normal person could do that? Build drinks purely by scent?

This was a disaster.

However, Ed didn’t react the way I expected.

“What an extraordinary ability,” he said calmly. “To create something like that without tasting it at all… simply by smell. That’s remarkable.”

“There’s nothing remarkable about it,” I said, trying to smooth it over. “Really. After enough time, you get used to making it without tasting.”

I smiled behind the mask, pretending this was all perfectly ordinary. Perfectly normal.

His gaze stayed on me. “Perhaps. But practice alone does not make someone unique. That comes from… something else.”

Our eyes stayed locked on each other.

I could sense the tension between us starting to build. A prickling spread through my body, as if static snapping in the air between us. It was slightly suffocating.

To break it, I looked away and grabbed a lime, focusing on the familiar motion.

I sliced off a wedge and held it out to him. He looked at me, then at the lime, then back at me again. When he took it, his fingers brushed against mine, slow enough that there was no way it was an accident.

My heart stopped.

Don’t read into it, Luka.

Don’t!

But God, it was impossible not to.

“Another round?” I asked too quickly.

His eyes flicked to my hands, then back up to my face. “If you insist.”

I made him another drink, something simpler this time. While I made it, I could feel his gaze on me.

When I slid the fresh glass toward him, his fingers lingered against mine again.

I yanked my hand back on instinct.

Fuck…

Was he trying to give me a heart attack?

My pulse was racing so fast I could barely hear anything around me. For a second, the whole room seemed to tilt.

Then someone from the far end of the bar shouted that they needed a refill. And I snapped back to reality.

My cheeks burned as I rushed to take care of it.

When I finished and made my way back behind the bar, he was still there, slowly sipping his cocktail.

It didn’t seem that he was in any hurry. He sat there calmly, as though he had nowhere else to be that day. Out of everything that had happened, that was the one thing that didn’t seem real.

For the first time in weeks, I felt close to happy.

When Kazuo walked past us, tossing out some passive-aggressive remarks disguised as jokes, I even laughed.

I actually laughed. I hadn’t laughed like that in so long.

And then-

BANG!

Something slammed into the front door.

The sound was so sudden, so loud, so unlike anything that should ever happen in a bar that it drew everyone’s attention at once.

Everything froze. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. The clatter of glasses stopped.

Everyone froze.

Kazuo moved first. He was halfway across the room before anyone else had even recovered from the shock.

He yanked the door open with a growl, and the cool night air spilled inside.

A chunk of metal jutted from the doorframe, pinning a piece of paper flat against the wood.

“Son of a—” Kazuo muttered, gripping the twisted piece of iron. He tugged once, twice, then ripped it free with a sharp wrench. The paper fluttered to the floor. The motion must’ve cut his palm, and the metallic scent of blood hit me instantly.

For a moment, he just stared at his own hand. His face shifted, like something behind his eyes had turned dark.

I saw his hand tremble. Then I saw the blood. Dark drops soaked into his fur, dripping down, hitting the floor one by one.

People rushed toward the door. I moved with them without thinking, feeling my pulse in my throat.

What the hell just happened?

Someone picked up the paper and read it out loud.

“Close down. Or we’ll make you.”

Everything inside me dropped.

It was THEM.

I turned to Kazuo, to the blood, to his face. I couldn’t understand what was happening to him, what was going on inside his head in that moment.

I didn’t know what to do.

Part of me wanted to grab his arm, stop the bleeding, do something.

Another part of me—

Ed.

I turned back toward the bar.

He was still sitting there. Still calm and unbothered. As if everything was fine. His glass rested untouched before him, his eyes fixed on me.

Only a moment ago, my ability to laugh had returned, and somewhere deep inside, I’d believed things were finally falling back into place.

Now something hot and sticky crawled through me, something that sent a sick wave of goosebumps across my skin.

Fear.

All that hope for something better disappeared.

And all that was left was the sound of my own pounding heart.