Page 265 of Mercy Written in Blood

Renji stood.

"We do not serve the Accord."

"Not willingly."

"You know very little about my willingness."

"I know you have obeyed its secrecy for centuries while despising much of what it protects."

Renji's face became still. Sota did not soften the statement.

"You stayed because leaving would have abandoned people to worse physicians, worse lawmakers and worse men. Haruki stayed for the same reason."

The use of Haruki's first name changed the air. Ken noticed. Renji did too. Sota seemed unaware he had done it. Or had intended them to notice.

Haruki felt another fragment move at the edge of memory. A dormitory window. Rain against glass. Someone whispering his name without the distance adults placed around it. He shut the memory down.

"You do not know us," Haruki said.

Sota's gaze rested on him.

"Perhaps not as well as I once did."

Silence. The sentence could have meant anything. Research. Shared ideology. An encounter Haruki had forgotten.

Before Haruki could demand an explanation, Sota stepped back and inclined his head.

"Take the envelope."

Haruki did not move. Sota's smile returned — charismatic, intelligent, unnervingly sincere.

"I am not asking you to surrender anything," he said. "Not your authority. Not your judgement. Not your distrust."

His gaze moved to Renji.

"I am asking you to consider what the Takahara died trying to prove."

Then back to Haruki.

"And whether preserving the world that killed them is truly the same as protecting the people within it."

Haruki stared at him. No weapon had appeared. No demand had been made. Sota had not threatened the Ishida Family or promised blood if they refused. He had done something more dangerous. He had made refusal sound like fear.

Sota stepped from the pavilion. At the edge of the platform, he paused.

"You will be told I am a fanatic," he said. "You will be shown the people who act brutally in our name and asked to believe brutality is the whole of us."

"Isn't it part of you?" Haruki asked.

Sota looked back.

"Yes."

The answer contained no shame. Only weight.

"As it is part of the Accord. As it is part of the Ishida Family. The question is not whether blood exists within a cause."

His gaze held Haruki's.