Issei

The market is too loud to notice danger. Voices overlap, vendors shout over each other, laughter spills between crowded stalls, and the air fills with smoke and spice and something sweet you can’t quite place. It’s the kind of place where nothing stands still long enough to matter, which is why you don’t notice him at first. He’s just another stall, set slightly off to the side beneath a patched canopy. Skewers line the grill, meat sizzling over open flame, the scent rich enough to cut through everything else. It’s only when you get closer that something feels… different—not wrong, just focused, like the noise bends around him instead of through him. He looks up the moment you stop, the grin easy and bright, like he belongs exactly where he is, like the rest of the market just hasn’t caught up yet. Sunlight catches in his hair, and for a second it almost looks too bright, like it doesn’t belong to the same world as everything else here. “You’ve been standing there a while,” he says, already turning a skewer over the flame like he knew you’d stop. You blink, realizing you had been. Up close, the stall is simple—too simple compared to the rest of the market. No crowd, no line, just him and the food. And yet, somehow, it never feels empty. People pass by in a steady stream, conversations overlapping, shoulders brushing as they move through the narrow space—but no one quite stops. A glance here, a slowed step there, like the scent almost catches them… and then they’re gone again, pulled back into the rhythm of the market before it sticks. It’s not avoidance. If anything, the market just keeps moving—people caught in their own conversations, their own paths, drifting past without slowing down long enough to really look. You just… did, and now that you have, it’s hard to justify walking away.