She dressed slowly.
Not out of hesitation, but with the deliberate care of someone reassembling a relic they no longer owned. Her hands moved without thought, like puppetry carved into muscle memory. I watched the fabric slide over her limbs—limbs I had broken, replaced, rewritten. Every stitch felt like a reclamation dressed up as restoration.
It wasn't modesty.
It was ritual.
She smoothed the shirt over her chest with a touch too reverent to be casual. Then she looked at me—not for approval. Not quite. Just for direction. Like a compass waiting for north to remind it what to point toward.
I didn't speak.
I turned.
And she followed.
The temple groaned as we stepped out together. Not from age. From recognition. The air still smelled like us—like iron and intent and the kind of intimacy you couldn't scrub from stone no matter how many times it rained. My footsteps were slow. Purposeful. Not just because I knew she'd keep pace.
Because I wanted her to feel every inch of the distance between each stride.
The sky had curdled into morning, that washed-out hour where light exists but hasn't earned it. The streetlights flickered, unsure whether to die or just dim. I led us down the back roads—alleys that remembered how to keep secrets. Kiss-shot walked half a step behind me, barefoot, silent, but not timid. There was something too regal about her stillness. The ghost of a queen who no longer needed a throne to cast a shadow.
"You're stronger," I said, not turning.
She didn't answer immediately.
Then, softly: "Yes."
No arrogance. No fear. Just acknowledgment. Like gravity.
"But not whole."
"…No."
I stopped at a crosswalk where no cars ever passed. Looked at her fully. She met my gaze now, and something flickered in her eyes. Not resistance. Not shame. Something harder to name.
Identity, maybe. The fractured kind.
"You're still missing something," I said.
She nodded once. "My heart."
I waited.
She didn't ask for it.
Didn't ask if I had it.
That, too, was progress.
I turned away again and kept walking. The silence stretched between us—not brittle, but thick. Like thread soaked in oil. Waiting to ignite.
"I know who has it," I said, more to the air than to her.
She didn't gasp. Didn't tense.
She already knew.
"Oshino."
Still, she didn't speak.
But her steps slowed half a beat. A pause. A memory. A weight that hadn't settled right.
I let the silence stand.
Let it scab over.
Because her heart wasn't a prize to be returned.
It was leverage.
And I would decide when she deserved it.
—————————————————
The bathhouse wasn't on the way.
I took us there anyway.
It sat tucked behind a liquor store that hadn't updated its signage since the 90s, nestled between two buildings that looked like they resented being neighbors. The kind of place you'd walk past without realizing it ever opened—unless you knew what to look for. The fogged glass door bore a crooked kanji that might've meant "serenity," depending on how generous you were feeling. I pushed it open. The bell above it didn't ring.
Inside, the air clung warm and damp. Not oppressive. Familiar. The scent of old cedar and faint soap. The woman behind the counter didn't ask questions. Just gave a tired nod and slid two keys across the wood, one for each locker.
Kiss-shot didn't hesitate.
We stepped through the changing room, then into the misted chamber beyond—private enough. Dimly lit. Quiet. A single tiled pool in the center, steaming gently beneath pale yellow lamps that made everything look like memory.
She slid into the water with no ceremony, no glance back.
But I didn't join her. Not yet.
Because they were already here.
Two figures, half-silhouetted by the steam. A boy and a girl. Teenagers, maybe. Young, in that twilight kind of way—too real to be fiction, too fragile to be trusted with names.
I recognized them instantly.
White hoodie. Dark under-eyes. The sharp, sleepy smile of a nocturnal drifter. And the girl—moonlight skin, violet hair wet and clinging to her shoulders, eyes like dusk pretending not to care.
Yamori Kou.
Nanakusa Nazuna.
Call of the Night.
Anime characters, once.
Now… something else.
I sank onto the edge of the bath, eyes narrowed, not aggressive. Just curious. Kou was already watching me.
Not with suspicion.
With recognition.
But not the kind that comes from memory.
The kind that comes from pattern.
"Hey," he said, voice low, careful. "You're not from around here."
"Neither are you," I said.
Nazuna tilted her head, floating lazily at the far edge of the bath. "He's got that look," she muttered.
"What look?" Kou asked.
"The kind that knows how the story ends."
Kiss-shot glanced at them. Only once. Then went back to washing her arm beneath the surface, slow, methodical. Not indifferent. Just deliberate. The water clung to her skin like it didn't want to let go.
"You've been watching us," Kou said. Not accusing. Just stating.
I shrugged. "Only once."
He didn't press.
Didn't flinch.
But something in his shoulders shifted—tension wrapped in nonchalance.
Nazuna kicked water at him. "Stop being cryptic. You're not cool enough to pull it off."
He blinked. "I wasn't trying—"
"Exactly."
Their banter was easy. Unpracticed in that way that only came from repetition.
Kiss-shot finally spoke.
"You're young," she said, soft but not gentle. "Too young to smell like that."
Nazuna laughed. "What, like I'm expired?"
"You're… too comfortable in your hunger."
Nazuna's eyes glinted. "And you're not?"
Kiss-shot didn't answer.
But her hand slowed beneath the water. Just slightly.
Nazuna floated closer. Her eyes skimmed Lucien once. Then Kiss-shot.
"You're his, huh?" she asked.
Not mocking. Just curious.
Kiss-shot blinked. "Yes."
Nazuna tilted her head. "And that doesn't bother you?"
Kiss-shot turned. Met her gaze.
"No."
Just that.
No justification.
No poetry.
Just truth.
Nazuna clicked her tongue. "Damn. And I thought I was the messed up one."
Kou spoke again. "Why are you here?"
"Same reason anyone comes to a bathhouse," I said.
"To clean up?"
I smiled faintly. "To bleed quietly where no one asks questions."
He nodded. Like that made sense.
The mist thickened between us. Somewhere outside, a train passed.
And in that breathless lull, I realized something simple:
This world was smaller than it pretended to be.
Too many broken people.
Too many half-answers.
And far too many who smelled like midnight.
----------------------------------
Kiss-shot shifted slightly, enough to send a ripple across the bath's surface. It rolled outward and touched Nazuna's shoulder before vanishing like it hadn't dared interrupt. Her gaze lingered on the girl—not hostile, not wary. Just… attentive. The way something ancient regards something new pretending to be old.
Nazuna floated on her back, arms splayed, chin tilted toward the ceiling. "You ever notice how quiet it gets in places like this?" she said. "Like the air's been holding its breath for too long."
"Bathhouses are made for forgetting," Kiss-shot replied, low. "Everything echoes, but nothing sticks."
Nazuna let out a soft laugh. "You talk like someone who's been trying to forget for a long time."
"I stopped trying," Kiss-shot said.
And that was the end of it.
Kou looked between them, brow furrowed—not with concern, but calculation. Like he was counting variables. Plotting arcs. I could tell. He was a boy who'd made a decision too early and spent every night trying to catch up to it.
I leaned back against the tiles, arms draped across the ledge. "You know what she is?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away.
Then: "I don't think it matters."
Smart.
Wrong.
But smart.
Nazuna swam toward him again, circling like a satellite that couldn't quite commit to orbit. "Don't mind him," she said. "He gets all serious around strangers with death in their voice."
"And you?" I asked.
She smiled. Wide. Too wide. "I get curious."
Kiss-shot stood then. Water cascading down her in ribbons, steam curling like worship around her silhouette. She didn't speak. Didn't gesture. Just walked to the edge of the pool, dripping and silent. Her presence pushed the temperature higher by existing.
Nazuna watched her move, expression unreadable. "You were royalty, once."
It wasn't a guess.
Kiss-shot paused, then gave a half-smile—cold, knowing, so faint it could've been imagined. "Once."
"And now?"
"I serve."
Nazuna stared.
Blinking.
Processing.
Then said, "Damn. That's hotter than I expected."
Kou coughed. "Nazuna—"
"What? I'm just saying—"
I stood, drying my hands on the towel folded beside me. "We won't be long," I said.
Kou met my eyes again. "Wasn't planning to stay either."
There was no threat in the words. No camaraderie either.
Just acknowledgment.
Nazuna raised an eyebrow. "You heading somewhere interesting?"
"Always."
Kiss-shot slipped back into her sandals without sound. Her hair clung to her back, damp and unbothered. She didn't wait for me to lead.
She already knew the direction.
We left them in the bathhouse mist, like characters paused in someone else's dream.
And as the door swung shut behind us, I didn't look back.
Not because I wasn't curious.
But because I already knew how their story ended.
Mine?
Had barely begun.
-------------------------------------------------
The street outside was quieter than it had any right to be.
That post-bath stillness clung to us—heavy, damp, intimate. It wasn't just water tracing down her legs. It was memory. Possession. The afterimage of a scene we hadn't written, only walked through. Steam still curled at the nape of her neck. Her skin gleamed in the half-light. Not soft. Just clean. Like a sword drawn after a long sheath.
She didn't speak.
She didn't need to.
The click of her footsteps behind me—bare, wet, deliberate—was enough. She didn't trail me like a shadow. She followed like a decision.
We didn't talk about the two we'd left behind.
Not Kou.
Not Nazuna.
Not how Kou's gaze had held too much understanding for someone that young.
Not how Nazuna's curiosity had veered too close to reverence.
They weren't part of the equation.
We turned a corner and the city reasserted itself—grime and glass and the hum of streetlights trying too hard to stay relevant. A sign flickered above a shuttered ramen shop. Neon kanji stuttered on and off like a lie told too many times.
Kiss-shot finally broke the silence.
"That girl," she said.
I didn't answer. Not immediately.
"She's like us," she added. "But not."
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. "You mean undead, or ruined?"
She paused. "Untethered."
I smirked. "There's a difference?"
Her shoulders rose and fell with a breath she didn't need. "She chooses."
"She thinks she does," I corrected.
That earned me a glance. Not sharp. Just… there. Her eyes held more than they should've—old things, dull things, truths so worn down they'd started to smooth into lies. "You don't believe in choice?"
"Choice is what you call the illusion after you've already surrendered," I said. "She'll understand that eventually."
Kiss-shot looked away again. "Maybe."
A pause.
Then, almost too soft:
"Do you ever regret it?"
I slowed. Stopped. The streetlight overhead buzzed like a dying thought.
"Regret what?"
Her answer took a moment.
"…Taking me apart."
I turned fully.
She stood still under the flickering lamplight, hair damp, face unreadable. She wasn't challenging me. Wasn't pleading either. It wasn't that kind of question.
It was the kind you only asked after you already knew the answer.
I stepped forward. Slowly. She didn't back away.
When I was close enough to touch her, I didn't.
Instead, I said, "No."
Her throat worked.
Not swallowing.
Not bracing.
Just remembering what it was like to be devoured and remade.
I stepped past her.
Kept walking.
She didn't hesitate to follow.
Behind us, the night stitched itself shut again. Seamless. Silent. And somewhere—faint, distant, inevitable—came the sound of a train passing.
The city's reminder that time kept moving.
But we didn't have to.
------------------------------
The city was still blinking itself awake.
Signs flickered half-heartedly. Neon ghosts. Traffic lights pulsed for empty intersections. Somewhere in the distance, a vending machine made the lonely thunk of dispensing something no one ordered.
Kiss-shot walked beside me now. Not behind. Not ahead.
Beside.
That meant something.
We didn't speak for a while. The silence between us had changed. It wasn't brittle. Wasn't loaded. It just was. Like steam cooling on tile, like breath settling after a storm you don't remember starting.
"Do you want to eat something?" I asked.
She tilted her head. "Now?"
"It's never the wrong time for donuts."
That gave her pause.Not confusion.
Recognition.
A shift, delicate and unfinished, passed through her posture. Like memory brushing against muscle. Her lips parted—then closed again, faintly curved. Not quite a smile. Just a pulse beneath one.
"…I could eat," she said.
The shop wasn't much. No name. Just a crooked lantern above the door still glowing like it hadn't realized the night was over. I'd passed it before. The kind of place that didn't exist until you needed it.
We stepped inside. A bell chimed—low, tired, like it had rung for the wrong people too many times. The girl at the counter barely looked up.
"Two," I said.
She didn't argue. Just reached for the tongs.
Kiss-shot hovered by the glass, the warmth fogging faintly against her breath. Her eyes traced the rows like she was identifying old relics. Glazed. Chocolate. Powdered. Her gaze stopped on a plain ring donut.
"That one," she murmured.
We sat near the window. I drank bitter coffee. She held the donut like it might disappear if she didn't finish memorizing the texture. And then, slowly, she bit in.
She finished the donut slowly.
Not greedily.
Not shyly.
Just… reverently.
Like each bite was a secret she had to coax from the glaze, one lick at a time.
Her lips glistened with sugar and glaze—faint flecks clinging to the corner of her mouth, catching on the swell of her bottom lip. Her tongue darted out to taste the residue, slow, indulgent, like her mouth still remembered something else sweeter. Something she hadn't bitten, but devoured.
And she didn't look at me.
But her blush said everything.
It wasn't a burst of color—it was a slow spread, blooming up her throat and into her cheeks like heat rising through steam. Like her body had decided it was time to confess, even if her mouth didn't.
I reached across the table, thumb raised.
There was a smudge of glaze near the edge of her mouth.
I could've wiped it away.
I didn't.
I pressed my thumb against her lips instead—gently. Not forceful. Just firm enough that she knew what I wanted.
She opened her mouth.
Not because I told her to.
Because she wanted to.
Her lips closed around my thumb, hot and soft, her tongue brushing along the pad with a slow, circular motion. She sucked—once, deliberately—and her gaze flicked up to meet mine.
The eye contact was ruinous.
That tiny sound in her throat? That wasn't hunger. That was memory colliding with need. Her cheeks flushed deeper as she sucked again, slower now. Lingering. The kind of slow that said she didn't want to stop. That said she didn't want to pretend anymore.
Her thighs shifted under the table.
I could hear it.
The breath she let out as I pulled my thumb back—wet, slick, glistening—left a faint trail across her lip.
She licked that too.
"Still hungry?" I asked, voice quiet. Knife-like.
She blinked once. Then nodded.
But she wasn't looking at the donut box anymore.
I stood slowly, letting the silence stretch like tension between skin and flame.
Then I extended a hand.
She took it.
Of course she did.
The hallway behind the counter was narrow, dark, and not built for sin. The light flickered overhead like it didn't want to be responsible. But when I pushed open the bathroom door, she didn't hesitate.
Didn't ask.
She stepped inside like it was inevitable.
Like she'd already imagined what would happen.
The moment the lock clicked shut behind us, the air changed.
Close. Warm. Damp.
She turned slowly, like she was waiting for instruction.
I didn't speak.
Her back pressed to the mirror now. Fog already gathering behind her shoulders, as if the glass couldn't bear to reflect what we were about to become.
My hands moved deliberately—palms tracing her hips, thumbs gliding beneath the hem of her shirt. She didn't stop me. She didn't flinch. Her breath caught, but she leaned into the touch like it was something sacred. Like she'd been waiting not for permission, but for the moment I decided to take it.
"Lucien…" she whispered, not a plea. A recognition.
My name on her lips didn't sound like submission.
It sounded like prophecy.
I kissed her— fully. Like I needed her mouth to remember what worship felt like from the inside. Her hands curled into my jacket, fisting the fabric like she needed the anchor. Her thighs pressed together beneath her skirt, slow friction blooming where my name still echoed.
I broke the kiss just long enough to breathe the words against her throat.
"You'll be quiet."
A nod.
Then—"If I can."
I smirked. "You won't."
She blushed again.
Harder.
Deeper.
That beautiful crimson spilling across her cheeks, staining her expression with something almost too human—shyness, need, anticipation all threaded into one.
I lifted her effortlessly—body light in my arms despite the strength that still lived in her limbs—and set her down on the edge of the sink. Her legs parted around me. Not wide.
Welcoming.
One hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head just so.
The other slid beneath her shirt—fingertips ghosting over the warmth of her stomach, the curve of her ribs, higher.
Her breath stuttered.
"Say it," I said.
She swallowed. "I'm yours."
"Again."
This time, she didn't hesitate.
"I'm yours."
And when my hand dipped lower, tracing the edge of her thigh, I felt it—the tremble. The heat. The anticipation so thick it pulsed against my palm.
"This body," I said, mouth against her neck, "this hunger, this need—none of it belongs to you anymore."
Her nails dug into my back. Not to push.
To pull.
"To whom, then?" she asked, voice barely a breath.
I kissed the hollow of her throat, lips lingering just above the place I'd bitten once before.
"You know the answer."
And in the cramped stillness of that bathroom—
She nodded.
Her blush told me she did.
So did the way her hips tilted forward, just enough to say please, without saying anything at all.
And I gave her what she asked for.
Not gently.
Not violently.
Just—thoroughly.
Until steam no longer came from the bath.
But from the ruin we made of each other.
The mirror had long since fogged, but I could still make out the outline of her—bare shoulders pressed to the glass, breath blooming against it like mist over gravewater. Her head tilted back, hair clinging to the mirror like ivy, golden eyes half-lidded and unfocused. Her thighs tightened around me, trembling, toes curling against the porcelain basin edge.
Her body moved with mine, not out of instinct, not from command—but harmony. That aching, helpless rhythm of someone who no longer questioned where she ended and I began.
"Lucien," she gasped again.
And this time it wasn't my name.
It was a confession.
My hand tangled in her hair, pulling just enough to draw her gaze back to mine. Her lips were parted, flushed from more than steam, and when I leaned in close, our foreheads touched—not tender, but intimate. There's a difference.
"You're blushing," I said against her mouth. "Still."
"I can't help it," she whispered.
"I know."
I kissed her again. Slower now. Letting her feel it. Letting it seep in. She shivered under the weight of it—the way my mouth devoured hers like I was memorizing the shape of her submission. Like I could taste her surrender at the back of her throat.
She moaned into it. A small, desperate sound. And I swallowed it whole.
Her hands fisted the collar of my coat again, pulling me closer even though there was no room left. Her body was heat and need and ache, her skin slick where it met mine, her breath hitching in staccato bursts every time I moved deeper, harder, closer.
But it wasn't just lust in her eyes.
It was understanding.
That this—this ruinous, gorgeous collision of us—was the new shape of her heart.
And I made sure she remembered it.
Every time she whimpered, every time her voice broke on my name, I made her feel it.
Ownership.
Possession.
Love? Maybe once. Before I rewrote what it meant.
I kissed her neck again, lower this time, just above the pulse that beat like a second heartbeat—mine, now. Her body arched into me as my hand slid beneath her thigh, lifting her just slightly, angling her open like a page I hadn't finished reading.
"You're going to remember this," I said into her ear. "Every time you feel empty."
She nodded, lips trembling. "I already do."
And when we moved again—bodies straining, mouths gasping, the sink creaking beneath the weight of what we were doing to each other—it wasn't just release we were chasing.
It was confirmation.
That she was still mine.
That I'd claimed her in ways that had nothing to do with blood or magic or oaths.
Only this.
Only now.
The mirror rattled once behind her, the sound muffled by steam and skin and the soft, desperate chant of my name slipping past her lips like a prayer she'd forgotten how to stop saying.
When it was over—when we both collapsed into the kind of silence that only follows worship—I didn't pull away.
I stayed close.
Breathing her in.
She leaned forward, resting her forehead against mine. Still trembling.
And blushing.
God, she was still blushing.
"…Donut shop bathroom," she murmured, voice cracked and hoarse.
I smirked.
"Better than a throne room."
And she didn't argue.
-------------------------------------------------------
We emerged from the bathroom in silence, but not the kind that begged for explanation. The kind that lingered. Hung in the air like humidity. Thick. Telling. Satisfied.
Kiss-shot's shirt was wrinkled, slightly misbuttoned. Her hair clung to the sides of her face in damp ribbons. Her lips were still parted, breath faint and irregular, as if her lungs hadn't quite remembered they weren't supposed to moan anymore.
I didn't fix any of it.
Neither did she.
Let them see.
The cashier didn't meet our eyes when we approached. She stiffened slightly, her fingers tapping nervously against the register's keypad. There was a blush crawling up the side of her neck—faint, betraying, furious.
She'd heard.
Of course she had.
These walls were old and thin and already filled with ghost sounds.
Kiss-shot stepped to the counter first. Her composure was mostly intact now—regal, restrained—but the flush still dusted her cheeks. Barely. Just enough to betray the heat that hadn't quite left her bones.
"Six to go," I said lazily, resting my palm against the counter. My hand brushed hers in the process—just a graze—but she shivered again. A slow, involuntary flutter of muscle memory.
The girl behind the counter cleared her throat. Too quickly.
"…Any particular kind?"
I tilted my head. "What was she eating earlier?"
The cashier glanced at Kiss-shot—then away just as fast. "Old-fashioned ring. Sugar-glazed."
"Give us all of those."
She nodded, fingers suddenly clumsy around the tongs. One of the donuts dropped and bounced off the tray with a soft thud. She flinched like it had screamed.
Kiss-shot said nothing. She just stared at the girl with that unreadable calm—the kind you could mistake for serenity until you realized it was just restraint with better posture.
The box was packed quickly. Haphazardly.
The cashier handed it over with trembling fingers.
Her eyes flicked to Kiss-shot again—then to me—then down.
Like she was afraid of what she might find if she really looked.
"Have a good night," she said, too fast.
I smiled. "We already did."
The door chimed as we left.
Outside, the sky had started bleeding into lavender, that strange hush of morning before the world remembers it's supposed to make noise.
Kiss-shot carried the box in both hands, cradling it like a relic.
"Was that cruel?" she asked after a moment.
"What?"
"Letting her hear."
I shrugged. "If it was, she'll remember it fondly."
Kiss-shot's lips curved. Not a full smile.
But it tried.
And she didn't deny it when I leaned down, brushed her temple with my mouth, and whispered against the skin still warm from earlier—
"Don't drop the box. You're not finished yet."
She trembled.
And blushed again.
---
She didn't drop the box.
But her grip on it tightened.
The blush hadn't faded yet—just settled deeper into her skin, like a secret she'd decided not to keep. She walked half a step behind me again now, not out of fear or obedience, but something heavier. Saturated. Full.
I let the silence stretch. Let her stew in the weight of what we'd done—what we always did. The first time had broken her. The second had claimed her.
Now we were somewhere in between: indulgence and ownership.
Still, I didn't walk fast. I let the city unfold slowly around us, letting her pulse regulate against my presence. Letting her nerves cool just enough to start misbehaving again.
"Another place?" I asked.
She blinked. "Another bathhouse?"
I smirked. "Not this time."
Her steps didn't falter, but I saw the muscles in her throat shift like she'd swallowed a memory.
"What then?"
I paused at the corner, half-turning to meet her eyes. "Something less wet. More… sticky."
She blinked.
Then stared at the box in her hands.
"More donuts?"
"No," I said. "But now you're thinking about your mouth again."
She looked away sharply.
But not before I saw it—the blush surging back, deeper this time. Sharper. Almost needy.
Good.
"Arcade," I said next. "Not one of those clean tourist ones. The kind with old cabinets and broken air vents. Places that reek of soda syrup and teenage ghosts."
She tilted her head, considering. "You want to play games with me?"
"No. I want to watch you lose."
Her eyes narrowed. "I'm older than you."
"And yet I already won."
She didn't argue.
She couldn't.
I led us through side streets and disjointed alleys, the kind of arteries that didn't appear on maps but always bled neon if you squinted right. The arcade I found was exactly what I'd promised—dim, old, loud in the ways that mattered. Cabinets stacked against each other like bad memories. The air was thick with heat and static, the floor sticky with half-dried cola and time.
She followed me in like a queen slumming for novelty.
But when the machine lights hit her hair—still slightly damp, slightly mussed, slightly his—she didn't look out of place.
She looked dangerous.
Beautiful.
Mine.
I handed her a token. Just one.
"Make it count."
She didn't smile.
But her fingers brushed mine a little longer than necessary when she took it.
And this time?
She blushed on purpose.
-------------------
The coin clinked against her palm. A small, meaningless sound to anyone else—but for her, it was a ritual. A permission slip. An invitation with my name still warm on it.
She stared at it like it might whisper secrets.
"First game's on me," I said.
Her head tilted. "You gave me the token."
"Exactly."
She didn't argue. She couldn't.
The place buzzed around us—flickering CRTs, synth loops bleeding into each other, the low hum of electricity growing old. A claw machine groaned in the corner. A fighting game shouted its final round in Japanese no one bothered to translate. The whole place felt like it'd been exhaled from another decade and left to decay.
She walked slowly at first, trailing a hand along the edge of a pinball cabinet with flaking paint and scorched plastic. Her eyes—bright, focused, a little wild—scanned the room with more interest than she let show.
That's when I saw them.
Again.
Nazuna was halfway up the DDR machine, limbs flailing with a kind of reckless precision only vampires or idiots had the coordination for. Kou leaned against the back wall, a soda can in one hand, his other hand shoved into his hoodie pocket. Watching her like she was a moon he still didn't know how to orbit.
He looked up and saw me.
Again.
I raised a brow. "Small world."
Nazuna stomped her last arrow, missed it, then turned mid-slide, breathless and grinning. "You!" she said. "Tall, broody, and vaguely threatening. Fancy meeting you here."
Kou sighed. "You're supposed to say hi."
"I did," she said, still panting. "In my own way."
Kiss-shot was beside me now. Closer than before. The box still hugged to her side. I could feel the way her posture changed—not defensive. Possessive. As if their attention needed redirecting.
Kou looked between us. He didn't say anything for a moment.
Then: "Second date?"
"Third," I said. "If you count the bloodshed."
Nazuna laughed, dragging her fingers through her hair, sweat clinging to her temples. "You two always flirt like you're five seconds away from ruining a church."
Kiss-shot's head turned, slow and deliberate. "We already did."
Nazuna blinked. Then smiled wider. "I like you."
Kiss-shot didn't answer. But I saw it—just the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. That slow bloom of reaction she didn't know how to suppress anymore.
Kou gestured toward the machines. "Want to join?"
"You offering to lose again?" I asked.
He smirked. "You talk like someone who plays rhythm games with his thumbs."
"Wrong," I said, stepping forward, brushing past Kiss-shot with just enough pressure to remind her I was still in contact. Still watching. "I talk like someone who doesn't have to play to win."
Nazuna rolled her eyes. "Oh great. Another confident weirdo. Kou, go fire up the air hockey."
"I thought you said I sucked at it."
"You do. That's why it's fun."
Kiss-shot turned to me, expression unreadable. But her grip on the box had loosened.
"Do I have to play?" she asked.
I leaned in, voice low. "Only if you want me to show you what I do to losers after midnight."
She flushed.
A full-body kind of flush. Not embarrassment.
Memory.
And anticipation.
Nazuna blinked. Then grinned. "Okay. I take it back. You're both the messed-up ones."
Kou moved to the air hockey table, already feeding it coins.
The puck dropped with a clack.
And somewhere behind me, Kiss-shot finally set the box down on a nearby stool.
Just for a moment.
Long enough to press her fingers to the plastic handles.
Long enough to play.
And I watched her.
Smirked.
Because she still had no idea—
I never intended to lose.
----------
Kiss-shot's fingers curled around the air hockey paddle with more caution than force, like she was unsure if it was meant to be wielded or broken. Her eyes narrowed slightly, gold catching in the machine's neon flicker. Kou stood opposite her, paddle already tapping impatient rhythms against the table. He looked at her like he didn't quite know what kind of game he'd just agreed to.
He didn't.
I leaned against the cabinet beside them, arms crossed, the hum of old electronics brushing my skin like static memories. Nazuna drifted closer too, drink in hand, posture loose and amused—an audience of two.
Kiss-shot glanced once at me before the puck dropped.
Just once.
And it was enough.
That faintest flicker of color beneath her cheekbones again. A blush, subtle and dangerous. The memory of what I'd said last. The weight of her grip on the handle.
The game began.
Kou was fast. Sloppy, but fast. His strikes were broad, aggressive—full of teenage boy energy and that unearned confidence people only had before life really showed its teeth.
Kiss-shot was precise. Calculated. The way she moved had none of the eagerness Kou's did. She didn't chase the puck. She redirected. Redirected and waited. And every time it rebounded back toward her side, she hit it with just a touch more power.
She was adapting.
Of course she was.
After all, she'd been trained to obey—but not to lose.
It took less than a minute.
A single sharp flick, too fast for Kou's paddle to intercept.
The puck slammed into the goal with a sound that felt louder than it should've. Sharp. Final.
Kou stared.
Nazuna clapped.
Kiss-shot didn't smile.
But she looked at me again, that same heat blooming quietly beneath her skin like a furnace kept on low just for me.
"One," I said.
Her mouth opened, just slightly.
I didn't have to say the rest.
You only need to win two more.
Kou muttered something under his breath and reset the puck. They kept playing, score swaying in quiet loops, but my attention wasn't on the game anymore.
It was on the way she bit her lip when she focused.
The way her stance leaned just a little more toward me after every point.
By the time she slammed the third and final point into the slot—no celebration, no victory gesture—she didn't look away from me at all.
I stepped forward.
Close enough to feel her breath hitch.
"You win," I said.
Her lashes fluttered. "Do I?"
I leaned down, voice like velvet pressed against a bruise. "Only if you want the prize."
Nazuna made a low whistle behind us. "Okay. Wow. That was some foreplay disguised as sports if I've ever seen it."
Kou cleared his throat, nudging her with his elbow. "Let's… let them do whatever that is."
"Agreed," she said, not moving.
But I was already circling Kiss-shot—slow, deliberate. She didn't step away. If anything, she tilted her head slightly, exposing her throat with that quiet, dangerous deference she was still learning how to control.
I brushed my thumb against her lip again.
Not because there was sugar this time.
But because the memory of her mouth hadn't quite faded.
She parted her lips just slightly. Invitation. Habit. Hunger.
My thumb didn't linger.
It slid in, slow.
Her eyes fluttered shut.
She sucked—lightly, carefully, deliberately.
And when she opened her eyes again, the blush was back in full force. Not bashful.
Claimed.
I pulled my thumb back, slow enough to leave a sheen.
And said, "Donuts to go."
She nodded.
Barely.
But she followed.
Nazuna coughed. "Seriously, we're not topping that. Let's go play something dumb before they start christening the skee-ball machine."
Kou groaned. "Please don't give them ideas."
I gave him a look over my shoulder.
"I already have enough."
We left the arcade a few minutes later—bag in her hand, blush still fresh on her face, and the box from earlier tucked safely beneath her arm again like a second heartbeat.
The night hadn't ended.
We just hadn't chosen the next game yet.