F Grade Healer Becomes Strongest Biomancer-Chapter 75: Little Dove

Kagami

The elevator opened on the third floor.

Kagami stepped out.

The corridor lights caught him at the shoulders and followed him down, strip by strip, the only noise the buzz from the dying bulbs.

Agents stopped in the hallway and bowed for him along the way. Their faces were a blur. Not OG. He checked the next. Kept walking. Eyes droned over a brunette woman. Not that one either.

She spoke to him, something about protocol and obligations.

Turn left.

The residential wing was three corridors from the operational side. He turned left because the knight said left and because left was where OG’s desk was and because he’d already said hai and the rest was just walking.

Then she came around the corner.

Blonde hair past her elbows. Convenience store bag on one shoulder. Humming the curry jingle from the evening news. She’d just come from the Tamei girls’ room.

He could smell the onigiri and the same subtle perfume she’d worn two days ago.

When she had stood in a doorway and taken a child out of his hands. Nana’s shirt had been wet in his palm.

Even then he could feel the fabric bunching where his fingers closed. Smell the residue on the girl’s skin, faint and intoxicating and on an unintegrated girl.

It was Nami’s.

Magic of Pontos. He didn’t want to admit it then.

He was disgusted by that weakness.

And OG had walked into the room, said Good, you found her, and the girl’s feet were off the ground and none of it registered on OG’s face because she already knew.

She always fucking knew.

Already had directions written down and a path through the tanks and a timeline that started before the flood and ended somewhere Kagami couldn’t reach.

And she did so with a smile.

They passed each other in the corridor.

OG stopped humming.

Her shoulders shifted, just a fraction.

"Good morning, Kagami-san. Didn’t have your coffee? You look grumpy."

They stood for three seconds.

"Excuse me, Kagami-san." She bowed. "Have a good day."

Then she kept walking. Her footsteps faded down the corridor. The curry jingle came back, quieter.

Kagami stopped. Three doors down from the Tamei girl’s quarters. He could hear two voices through the wall. The girl and someone he couldn’t place. Not the older sister. Someone smaller.

Not her. The dove. Quickly, now.

OG was getting smaller down the corridor. Blonde hair, light strips, bag swaying. She turned the corner toward the operational wing.

He followed after another second.

The knight didn’t need to push. Kagami’s legs carried him the same direction his hands wanted to go and the distance between them was shrinking with each turn.

Past the briefing rooms, dark. Past the comm station, empty. Past the medical wing where they’d once tried to pry the thing from his spine. It killed the entire surgical staff. He’d been awake for all of it.

The office door was open. Half the desks empty. Two agents at the far end. The younger one stood first. Bowed. His partner followed, and they filed out the way everyone filed out when Kagami entered a room that wasn’t his. Folders left open, coffee still steaming. One pen rolled to the edge of a desk and stopped.

The door clicked behind them.

OG’s desk. Second table from the window. Tangerine on the folders. A photo pinned to the partition. Park, cherry blossoms, one shoe. A kid she mentioned to Kagami once.

She was pulling the chair out when the room emptied around her and she looked at the door and Kagami filled it.

"Kagami-san. Is everything okay?"

She looked at his arm. The right one. Checked it the same way she’d checked it in the doorway with Nana’s wet shirt in his fist, assessing the threat level, calculating whether today was the day it split open.

It was not.

"Who told you about the cell?"

You already know, don’t waste time.

"Which cell?"

"Sublevel Four." He stepped in. "You gave the girl directions."

OG sat down. Opened the tangerine with her thumbnail. Pulled a segment free and ate it like he hadn’t said anything.

"I give a lot of directions, Kagami-san. Big building."

"Ezra’s letters. The route past the tanks." He was closer now. He didn’t remember stepping. "How long?"

Her hands stilled on the fruit.

"Long enough."

"Why?"

"Because someone had to."

She stood. Reached past him for the filing cabinet—close enough that her shoulder brushed his chest, close enough that the floral scent hit him full.

"Are you going to sit down? You’re standing there like a statue."

He put his hand on her throat.

She didn’t step back.

Her pulse was steady.

You’re already holding her. Finish it.

"You’re not afraid?" Kagami said.

"You’re the best of us, Kagami-san." Her voice thinning against his grip. "It’s... an honor."

Kagami tilted his head.

"To be killed by you."

Pluck it.

"Be quiet."

"H-huh?"

He closed his eyes. The tendrils crawled back into his spine. The knight went quiet.

He squeezed. Something gave under his thumb—cartilage, then deeper. Her hair swung across his forearm. The weight came all at once.

Kagami exhaled. The fluorescents caught the sweat on his knuckles.

He lowered her into the chair. Her head tipped against the partition. The little boy smiled above her—chubby cheeks, one shoe. The partition clip held.

The tangerine sat half-peeled on the desk. Juice on her fingertips.

His thumb was still pressed into the dip above her collarbone. He pulled it back. The indent stayed.

The photo had a crease through the middle where she’d folded it to fit the partition clip. He hadn’t noticed that before. Hadn’t noticed the second photo behind it either—same boy, older, holding a fish.

The tangerine smelled sharper now. Like it was the loudest thing in the room.

The knight said nothing. That was worse.

He turned.

Ezra sat in an agent’s chair across the room, one leg crossed over the other knee. Black hair, honey eyes. Coat unwrinkled. Hands folded in his lap the way they fold in waiting rooms.

The chair had been occupied when the agents left. Kagami was certain of that now.

He unbuttoned his jacket and folded it over the nearest desk. The tendrils were already crawling back down his shoulders, forearms, and then his hand.

There’s your fucking champ.