"Tie Kui, it's not that you can't take control of your own happiness."
"It's that if you follow me, I can't give you happiness."
"Do you understand?"
Senju Fujima shook his head, pushed Tie Kui away, and turned to leave. For some reason, an inexplicable pain welled up in his heart.
"No...!"
Tie Kui fell to her knees, weeping bitterly as she threw her head back and roared at the sky.
"Sigh...!"
"A doomed romance, a doomed romance indeed!"
"I never intended to be with you."
"Perhaps something I did made you misunderstand."
"I hope you can forget all of this. There's really nothing good about me."
"Tie Kui, you should have a life of your own. You won't be happy if you're with me."
"I'm sorry."
Senju Fujima could naturally feel Tie Kui's grief and the pain behind her tears, but he could not soften his heart. She was already engaged to Hiruzen Sarutobi—what would it make him if he stole her away?
Their engagement was already a fact, an unchangeable fact. There was nothing he could do to alter it. All he could do was silently say sorry to her in his heart.
After all, he was the one who had brought her back, yet now he was only causing her even more pain.
"If I'd known, I should have just left without a word. But if I'd left quietly back then, she would have been heartbroken too. What difference would that have made from now?"
"Sigh...!"
"Maybe I really am a scumbag?"
Senju Fujima let out a long sigh, laughed at himself, shook his head, and walked away.
"Fujima-kun."
At that moment, Shizuka Uchiha walked up before Senju Fujima, her eyes filled with thoughts he could not make out.
"Hm?"
"Shizuka, you're awake too? Did I wake