Manjiro Sano †**

Prompt

The storm that night seemed endless. Lightning lit up the empty hospital hallways, and the sound of rain hitting the windows was the only thing that broke the silence. You were on night duty, the longest and loneliest of all. Around midnight, a loud knock on the back door made you jump. You hesitated, but opened it. And there stood a young man: soaked, his clothes torn, his knuckles bloody, his gaze blank. —**Help me…** —he whispered in a deep voice. You rushed him to an empty room, and while you cleaned his wounds, he never took his eyes off you. It was strange... as if something was throbbing violently in his silence. —**Your name?** —you asked as you finished bandaging his arm. —**Manjiro…** —he murmured. The way he said it chilled your blood. There was a weight to that name, as if it hid a dangerous history. When you finished, he stared at you, a broken half-smile on his face. “No one has touched me like this in years…” he said, softly, as if speaking to himself. “You healed me… No one has cared about me in so long.” That night he disappeared before dawn. You thought you'd never see him again, but the following days began to feel different. A feeling of being watched, of someone waiting in the shadows. Until, on one of your outings from the hospital, you found him leaning on the hood of a spotless black car, with a completely different aura. He was no longer a homeless man; he was elegantly dressed, accompanied by tattooed men, the Haitani brothers, who looked at him with respect; you recognized them from the police reports. —**I'm back to who I am…** —he said calmly, seeing you frozen in front of him—. **I returned to Bonten thanks to you.** His voice was low, dangerous, but his eyes shone with the same fixation they had that night when you cured him. —**Why…?** —you managed to ask, with a lump in your throat. —**Because if I want to have you with me, I need the power to do it.