"I wanna eat cotton candy, Yahya." Saki kept shaking his shoulders while he remained composed and unmoving, directing his words to the client across the table. Not acknowledging her stubbornness in the slightest. "Yahya! You're ignoring me again!"
She yelled directly into his ear, rattling his immovable frame. He didn't register it. His concentration stayed entirely on his client — convincing, persuading, steering the conversation with the kind of precision that left no visible exits. Every line of his face read corporate. His body language was flawless. The client had no idea he was being handled.
"If you could make some adjustments to your budget, sir, you could own a property of significant quality." Which was, plainly, a trap. Saki, being a former officer, had identified this clearly — and had decided the cotton candy issue took precedence. "Yahya, the cotton candy's selling out, please buy me one~!"
"But... at this rate I can't stretch the budget any further." The client hesitated. Yahya leaned in smoothly. "You shouldn't say that, sir. Imagine your children growing up in a home with real comfort, rather than one that offers them nothing." The client sank into thought. His fingers overlapped, fidgeting. His mind filled entirely with the image of his family.
"Yahya!" Saki screamed.
He remained outwardly unbothered, but the frustration was building steadily beneath the surface. His expression served the client. His eyes held something considerably sharper.
"Uhm... all right. I'll buy the house."
"Excellent, sir. Shall we move forward with the paperwork?" His approach had paid off. But — "Yahya. Stop ignoring me. Buy me cotton candy." She began shaking his shoulders again. He stood, excusing himself smoothly. "One moment — I need to use the restroom."
He dragged Saki with him, locked the door behind them, and turned. "What is wrong with you, Saki? Can you not see I'm in the middle of a deal?!" She blinked at him twice, entirely unintimidated.
"Cotton candy...," she mumbled, head dropped, fingers tangling together repeatedly.
He reminded himself she was a ghost. He pulled a breath through his teeth, pinched his temple. "Fine. I'll get you one — after I close this. Can you give me that?"
"But cotton candy—"
"I said after! Do you understand or not!"
"Ah, fine. Stop yelling. Humph."
"..."
He stood in the restroom alone for a moment, thoroughly defeated. She had already passed through the wall. He followed the conventional route and returned to his table. Saki sat across from him with her arms folded tightly over her chest, mouth in a pronounced pout, fury radiating quietly off every inch of her.
"What an ordeal," he breathed, barely audible, and settled back into his chair. Fake smile. As usual. Saki mirrored his expression with exaggerated precision and he quietly landed a hand on her knee beneath the table. She hissed, mouth puffing further.
"Shall we proceed with the paperwork, sir?" Yahya asked his client. The man nodded, then hesitated. "Ah — could we wait for my father-in-law? He contributed half the payment, and I'd like him present when we sign." That information didn't sit comfortably. Yahya was entirely aware of the property's condition. A thread of guilt pulled through him — but not enough to override the promotion waiting at the end of this transaction.
"Of course, sir. We can wait."
Three o'clock became three-thirty. No sign of the father-in-law. Yahya maintained his composure. The deal would close. Four o'clock approached. Patience was thinning. Saki's mood had not improved. The client's eyes didn't rest.
"Sir — are you confident your father-in-law is still coming?" Yahya asked, his control holding by a narrowing margin. The client looked up from his phone. "I'm... not certain. I asked him but it seems he might not—"
He stopped.
An older man was walking toward them through the café.
The client's eyes filled with something that resembled pained relief — he hadn't truly believed the man would come. Yahya noticed the shift and turned.
His heart stopped.
The air left him entirely.
The aged man halted mid-step. Their gaze locked and held, neither moving nor looking away. Saki, watching Yahya go still, turned to study the man with a narrowed expression. She looked between them.
"Dad — please, come sit." The client moved to his father-in-law and guided him to the table, breaking the suspended moment. "Thank you for coming, Dad." The old man gave a brief nod.
Yahya stared. Saki kicked his leg. He blinked back into the room. "Mr. Cizar, this is my father-in-law — Gaspard Rochechouart." Yahya managed a nod. His eyes wouldn't hold the man's face. Something moved across his expression — something he was working to keep contained — fear, threaded through with guilt.
Saki catalogued every flicker of it. The stubbornness that had been consuming her quietly dissolved as something more pressing replaced it. She watched them both carefully.
"Dad, this is the estate agent — Yahya Cizar." Gaspard neither responded nor looked at Yahya. The tension between the two men settled in the air like weather.
"We can proceed with the paperwork, Mr. Cizar."
Yahya nodded — and in the space between instruction and action, quietly exchanged the documents. The property he handed over was no longer the original one. His expression said everything his voice didn't. His client was absorbed in his father-in-law's comfort; Gaspard kept his eyes on his phone, closed off from the room entirely.
"The papers are prepared. You only need to sign." Yahya slid them across with a pen. They were signed with the father-in-law's quiet approval. Yahya watched the old man as he moved through it — his shoulders thinner than they had been, his posture diminished, but those facial expressions unchanged. Profound, in the way of someone who had lived through more than they discussed.
"We're finished. Whenever you're available tomorrow, we can view the property, sir." The man stood, nodded, and left with his father-in-law. Yahya couldn't stop watching them go. He followed their figures until they turned a corner and disappeared. Then he exhaled through his teeth and looked at Saki.
She already had questions arranged on her face. "You checked out completely. You swapped the real documents. Who was that man, Yahya?"
"He is... my father-in-law." Saki blinked. Twice. She leaned closer, searching his face. "...What did you just say?" Low. Confused. "I'll explain at home." She didn't push. They gathered the documents and left the café. He bought her cotton candy on the way. She ate it quietly the whole walk home, which, for Saki, was its own kind of silence.
He unlocked the front door and led her directly to the room he had once warned her never to open. He unlocked it and brought her inside. It was immaculate — not abandoned, not neglected, but tended to with the particular care of someone who returned to it regularly and alone. A jasmine fragrance filled every corner, absorbed into the furniture, into the air itself. They moved further in. He guided her to the bed and pointed to the frame mounted above it.
"Look."
It held Yahya and a woman Saki had never seen or heard him mention. She was luminous — something floral and warm about the way she existed in that photograph. Her smile, captured and stilled, made Saki's heart pound. She stepped closer, gaze fixed.
Yahya came to stand behind her. "Her name was Noémie Rochechouart. She was my wife."
The surname hung in the air. It didn't connect immediately — Saki's eyes were still held by the frozen happiness in that image. She had never once seen him smile the way he smiled in that frame.
"Where is she now? What happened?"
He sat on the bed. His hands moved across the sheets the way a person's hands move when they are searching for something that is no longer there.
"June 8th. At the Athénaïs Villa — a bomb went off. The building burned completely. There was no reason to believe anyone was inside. As a detective, I had no knowledge that the photographer, Noémie Rochechouart, was working there that day." His voice dropped. "I failed to solve what happened. I failed as a detective. And I failed as her husband." He broke down quietly, hands covering his face. The grief moved through him in the particular way of something that had been carried too long and too silently. His eyes still searched the room. His chest still ached for her.
"My father-in-law held me responsible for her death. My friends withdrew. My own family distanced themselves. I left the department and became an estate agent." He wiped his face, steadying himself.
Saki sat beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder. Her chest felt full with the weight of it — the knowledge that he had been mending alone, holding himself together in a room that smelled of someone who was gone.
"When I first saw you, I didn't recognize you as the officer who tried to stop me from entering those flames. But when I read the article — I knew." He looked at her, and the edges of a smile found him. She pulled the corner of her own lip up, barely.
"I'm sorry. I never realized you were carrying all of this on your own." she whispered. He shook his head. "Don't be. With you here, I've started to find my way back. I'm grateful I ran into you at that bus stop, Saki." She smiled and pulled him into a hug. He held her back while she wiped her own face quietly against his shoulder.
A beat of silence.
"I wanna eat cotton candy, Yahya." They broke apart laughing — the kind that arrives after something heavy and lands like relief.
Before leaving the room, he lifted the frame and cleaned the glass carefully, thoroughly, for the last time. He set it back. Looked at Saki. She nodded.
"Sometimes it's better to let go than to hold on, Yahya." He nodded. Something in him eased — a weight that had followed him out of that room every other time he'd left it. Today, it stayed behind.