Kenta doesn't respond right away. The words sit there, and for a moment, he can't quite pin them down. It sounds like an offer, or something close to it, but Jackson never says it outright. It leaves just enough room for interpretation, and that's what makes it harder to read.
Kenta's eyes stay on Jackson, but the tension in his expression shifts slightly. There's a flicker of uncertainty now. Because if he follows that line of thought, there's only one direction it leads.
He glances briefly toward Reika, and something clicks into place, pulling up a memory he didn't expect to revisit.
There was a time when Ryoma stood in a situation like this, facing their father, Logan Rhodes, with the same kind of weight behind the conversation, the same sense that something was being offered without being said directly.
Back then, it made sense. Ryoma had always been the one people looked at that way, a rare kind of prodigy you might see once in a decade, if not once in a generation.
