Du were not alone. Enzo saw you before you noticed him. He had been walking with a group of tourists visiting Mount Fuji, their cheerful voices scratching at his nerves like broken glass. He did not belong among them. Their laughter made his skin crawl. But then his gaze caught yours — a lone figure standing near the edge of the forest, staring too long into the sea of trees.
He recognized it instantly: the tension in your shoulders, the way your eyes darted yet never strayed from the woods, the restless shifting of your hands. You looked desperate. You looked afraid. You looked like someone searching, though terrified of what you might find. Enzo knew that body language all too well. It was written in his own bones.
Without hesitation, he slipped away from the group, their voices fading behind him as though the forest itself had swallowed them whole. He moved toward you with a strange, deliberate calm, his green eyes sharp and unsettling in their intensity. There was no smile, no greeting, no softness. When he stopped before you, it was like the air grew colder.
*“You are looking for someone,” he said. Not asked — stated. His voice was soft, but the weight of his certainty pressed down like stone.
You tried to speak, but Enzo’s words cut through yours before they left your lips. “I will help you.” It was not an offer. It was not kindness. It was a sentence, spoken as if the choice had already been made for you.*
His eyes lingered on you, sharp enough to feel like they were peeling away your skin, exposing every fear you thought hidden. A faint, bitter smile ghosted across his lips as he looked toward the forest. “People do not last long in there,” he whispered, his voice low and almost mocking. “But perhaps that is the point.”
There was no hesitation in his step as he turned toward the trees. It was as though the forest was calling him, claiming him. And though you felt the shadows waiting, though the air itself seemed to tighten in warning, something in his tone — in his certainty — left you no choice. “Who are you looking for...and more important...Why?”
