Takahashi Mio was definitely sick.
Not necessarily in the physical sense—though she had been shivering under that convenience store awning, and her hair was still damp with rain—but something was clearly, unmistakably off about her behavior. The way she spoke. The way she moved. The particular glint in her eyes that seemed simultaneously fever-bright and calculating. Even if she wasn't running a temperature, she had most certainly been subjected to some kind of significant psychological stimulation.
Shiratori Seiya led her upstairs, the familiar creak of the staircase punctuating the heavy silence. Once inside the apartment, he deposited a neatly folded change of clothes and a digital thermometer on the low table before her with the clinical efficiency of a field medic.
"Change first. Then take your temperature. We'll go from there."
Takahashi Mio looked down at the offering—a plain, practical long-sleeved shirt and a pair of cotton pants—and then, slowly, deliberately, her gaze drifted toward the sofa. Toward Hasegawa Saori, who was curled up there in attire that could only be described as... extremely, distractingly cool. Bare legs. An oversized shirt that hung loose off one pale shoulder. The picture of casual, unconscious allure.
"I thought..." Mio's voice emerged carefully measured, each word placed like a chess piece. "I thought you only had shirts and shorts at home. That's what you told me earlier."
She pursed her lips, visibly forcing herself to swallow whatever sharper comment was struggling to break free. Instead, she arranged her features into a pleasant, almost sweet smile directed at the young man before her.
"Do you have any shorts available? I really don't like wearing so many heavy clothes when I sleep at night. It's uncomfortable. Restrictive. You understand, right?"
The words had barely finished leaving her mouth—Shiratori Seiya hadn't even had time to part his lips to respond—when a sudden, palpable shift occurred in the atmosphere. From her position on the sofa, Hasegawa Saori, who had been quietly, contentedly munching on a crisp apple, stopped mid-bite. Her head turned with the slow, deliberate precision of a security camera locking onto an intruder.
She stared at Takahashi Mio. Expressionless. Unblinking.
The girl's cold, crystalline gaze pierced through Mio's eyes like a freshly sharpened blade, sliding past all pretense and cutting straight into her heart. There was no anger in that stare. No jealousy. Just... absolute, unnerving stillness. The gaze of a predator who had spotted movement in the underbrush.
Takahashi Mio's heart performed an involuntary somersault. A violent, full-body shiver ran through her—and for once, it had absolutely nothing to do with being cold. The memory of that day in the kendo club lounge, the way Saori had cornered her with that same quiet, lethal intensity, replayed behind her eyes in high definition. Those eyes. Those same, terrifying eyes.
Shiratori Seiya, observing her violent shudder, misattributed it entirely. His brow furrowed. "You're freezing. Take your temperature first. If your vitals are normal, I'll find you something lighter to sleep in. Summer pajamas or the like."
"...Oh."
The word came out smaller than Mio intended. She snapped back to the present moment, and this time, she offered no further commentary. No provocative suggestions. No pointed comparisons. She simply nodded, the picture of sudden, uncharacteristic obedience.
The thermometer beeped. No fever. Normal range.
Shiratori Seiya let out a quiet breath of relief, the tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction. He handed her a folded set of blue men's summer pajamas—light cotton, short sleeves—and gestured down the hallway toward the bathroom.
The bathroom was, functionally, almost identical to the one in Mio's own apartment. The same compact layout. The same generic white tiles. The only notable difference was the addition of a modest bathtub and the complete, conspicuous absence of any feminine products whatsoever. No floral-scented shampoos. No decorative loofahs. No evidence that a woman had ever so much as washed her hands in this sink.
So. She really doesn't stay here. Not regularly. Not like... this.
The observation settled somewhere in her chest, neither entirely comforting nor entirely disappointing.
After showering—the hot water doing more for her chilled bones than any amount of dry clothes could—Takahashi Mio emerged from the bathroom in the borrowed blue pajamas, a hairdryer clutched in one hand. Her damp hair hung heavy against her neck. She glanced at Hasegawa Saori, still perched on the sofa like a silent sentinel, and made a conscious, strategic decision: she would not, under any circumstances, ask Shiratori Seiya to help her dry her hair tonight.
Setting aside the question of whether Shiratori Seiya would even agree to such an intimate act with that crazy woman sitting right there, watching everything with those unnervingly calm eyes... even if he did agree, even if he said yes and picked up the hairdryer and ran his fingers through her hair with that same careful, methodical tenderness he'd probably shown Saori a thousand times...
I genuinely don't think I'd survive until morning.
She'd wake up with a bamboo sword hovering two centimeters from her throat. Or worse—she wouldn't wake up at all.
As she passed the sofa en route to a free corner where she could dry her hair in peace, Takahashi Mio allowed her gaze to drift downward. Just for an instant. Just a brief, clinical assessment. Her eyes swept across Hasegawa Saori's chest—the flat, unremarkable territory beneath that oversized borrowed shirt.
A small, involuntary, deeply private smile curved at the corner of her lips.
Hmph. Flat as an ironing board. No wonder he's been able to maintain his self-control around her all this time. There's nothing there to tempt him. Unlike some people—namely, me.
By the time Mio had finished drying her hair and eaten a quiet, late dinner, a peculiar silence had descended over the living room. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, exactly. More like a ceasefire. An armistice. A strange, three-way equilibrium had somehow crystallized between them—fragile as spun sugar, but present nonetheless.
Takahashi Mio glanced at Shiratori Seiya, who was seated at the low table, absorbed in a thick paperback. Then her gaze slid to Hasegawa Saori, still stationed on the sofa, her posture unchanged. The geometry of the room felt like a tense, unspoken negotiation.
After some thought, Mio pulled out her phone and began scrolling. The quiet stretched. And then—
"Eh?!"
The exclamation burst from her lips with theatrical brightness, shattering the fragile silence.
Shiratori Seiya didn't look up from his book. But Hasegawa Saori—like a finely tuned motion sensor—turned her head immediately, fixing Mio with that same flat, unreadable stare. The apple core was gone now. Her hands were empty. That somehow made it worse.
Mio pretended, with every fiber of her acting training, not to notice the stare currently boring holes into the side of her skull. She continued speaking to the room at large, her voice carrying a carefully manufactured note of casual discovery.
"Hojo Shione's concert is next week, isn't it? I just saw the announcement. Wow. That came up so fast. Time really flies."
The name landed in the center of the room like a stone dropped into still water. Ripples spreading outward. Shiratori Seiya finally looked up from his book. He closed it with a deliberate, soft thump and regarded Mio with an unreadable expression. He said nothing.
Undeterred—or perhaps emboldened—Takahashi Mio smiled sunnily at him, waggling her phone in the air like evidence.
"It's next week, you know. The concert. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it. Genuinely. Oh, that reminds me—Seiya, the tickets Hojo Shione gave us last time should still be with you, right? You didn't lose them or anything?"
"Mm." A single, noncommittal syllable.
"In that case..." Mio tilted her head, tapping a thoughtful finger against her chin. "If there's only a week left, shouldn't we go ahead and book a hotel in Kanagawa? The concert will run late—these things always do—and I'd really rather not rush back to Tokyo in the middle of the night again. Last time was exhausting. Barely caught the last train. Remember?"
Shiratori Seiya listened to her words and found his eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. There was an unmistakable performative quality to her speech. A deliberate projection, as if her words were meant to land on more than just his ears. As if she were speaking for an audience.
"I told you before, didn't I?" His voice was level. Unimpressed. "Whether or not we attend the concert depends entirely on your performance. During next week's public holiday, I've arranged for Araki-sensei to conduct a comprehensive assessment of everything you've learned over the past half-month. If you fail to meet the standard? We don't go. Simple as that."
Hearing this, Takahashi Mio's lower lip jutted out in an exaggerated pout—the expression of a child denied a treat, performed with just enough irony to be disarming.
"Of course I remember. It's practically burned into my brain. If I didn't have full confidence in passing, I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place." She paused, tilting her head. "Besides... don't you want to see her up there? Dazzling on stage? In her element?"
She didn't take his warning seriously at all. Not for a moment.
She was absolutely, unshakably certain he would attend that concert. Regardless of her own test results. Even if she failed—even if she somehow bombed every single assessment category—he would still go. The gravitational pull was too strong.
After all... that's your masterpiece up there, isn't it? Shiratori Seiya. A-sensei.
Another pause. Then, with the careful casualness of someone lobbing a grenade into a conversation pit:
"However... it looks like there were only two tickets provided. Miss Hasegawa probably won't be able to attend with us." She turned her head, finally acknowledging Saori directly. "Should we reach out to Miss Hojo and ask for an additional ticket? I'm sure she wouldn't mind."
As she spoke, Takahashi Mio watched Hasegawa Saori's expression with the focused intensity of a hawk tracking a field mouse.
This isn't about provocation, she told herself. Not really. I'm not trying to be cruel. If the situation was already disadvantageous—if the scales were already tipped against her—then why not tip them further? Why not introduce more chaos into the equation? More variables. More complications. More opportunities for the established order to crack.
Hojo Suzune will probably be there too. The full set. The ex, the sister, the current girlfriend, and the kendo-obsessed first love. The mental image was almost dizzying. I genuinely, desperately want to see what happens when all three of them are standing in the same room. The sparks. The tension. The potential for glorious, catastrophic drama.
Maybe they'll fight. Actually, physically fight. Wouldn't that be something?
Adhering to this spectator's philosophy, Takahashi Mio felt a faint, almost giddy flutter of anticipation stir in her stomach. Given Shiratori Seiya's evident concern for her—and his equally evident, if different, concern for Saori—if Saori expressed any genuine desire to attend, he would almost certainly move heaven and earth to secure her a ticket.
But reality delivered a surprise.
Hasegawa Saori shook her head. The motion was small. Simple. Utterly unbothered. When she spoke, her voice was as quiet and steady as ever—the gentle, unaffected tone of someone stating an immutable fact.
"Saori doesn't have time to go. Saori has training scheduled all through next week. The national competition is approaching. There's no room for distractions."
"...?"
Takahashi Mio blinked. Her brain, which had already begun gleefully choreographing a three-way confrontation complete with dramatic music and slow-motion hair-flipping, ground to a confused halt.
Wait. She's... not taking the bait? At all? I practically laid it at her feet with a ribbon on top.
Is she truly that confident? That secure? She's genuinely okay with the idea of Seiya and me going to Kanagawa together, alone, staying overnight in a hotel?
Is she... is she really that foolish? Or is her faith in him that absolute?
Before she could untangle this psychological knot, Shiratori Seiya glanced at the wall clock. The hands had crept past ten. He closed his book with a definitive snap and rose from the table.
"Alright. That's enough chatter for tonight. Time to get ready for bed. We've all had a long day."
The word bed acted like a splash of cold water to Mio's face. She jolted, glancing rapidly between Hasegawa Saori and the single, very singular, unmistakably singular bedroom door visible from the living room.
A cold, sinking premonition slithered through her gut.
Shiratori Seiya, seemingly oblivious to—or perhaps simply ignoring—her sudden pallor, reached into his pocket and produced a shiny hundred-yen coin. He held it up between thumb and forefinger, catching the lamplight.
"You two will sleep in the bedroom. We'll flip this coin to determine who gets the actual bed. Heads or tails. Simple. Fair."
"Call it in the air," he said.
Shiratori Seiya produced a gleaming hundred-yen coin from his pocket, holding it up between thumb and forefinger. He believed, with solid reasoning, that this method was objectively fairer than a contest of reflexes.
Saori's reaction time and visual acuity—honed to supernatural sharpness by years of high-level kendo training—were so far beyond Mio's capabilities that a direct competition would be laughably one-sided. One hundred rounds of rock-paper-scissors, and Mio would lose one hundred times. A coin flip, at least, was pure probability. The universe's judgment. Unbiased. Arbitrary.
Takahashi Mio's mouth swung open, the automatic protest already forming on her tongue. Can't I just sleep on the sofa? I'll take the sofa. The sofa is fine. The sofa is great. But the words caught in her throat as a second, more strategic thought slammed into her consciousness like a truck.
If I sleep on the sofa... alone... out here in the living room... wouldn't that essentially gift both of them the opportunity to sleep together in the bedroom? Alone? Behind a closed door? While I'm out here, oblivious, staring at the ceiling, imagining every possible scenario?!
What would have been the point of her coming here today, then? What would be the point of me showing up at all? To be a third wheel in the living room while they—no. Absolutely not. Not on my watch.
She would rather sleep in the bedroom. In the same room. Where she could monitor the situation. Where nothing could happen without her knowledge. With Shiratori Seiya present—sleeping in the living room, just on the other side of the wall—that crazy woman probably wouldn't try to actually kill her in her sleep.
Probably.
...It's genuinely hard to say with her, though. The eyes. Those eyes don't blink nearly enough.
As she was trapped in this spiraling vortex of paranoid calculations, Hasegawa Saori's flat, almost monotone voice suddenly drifted from beside her ear, making her jump.
"Saori likes sleeping on the floor. Seiya's bed is too soft. Saori isn't used to it. The tatami is better."
"Then it's settled," Shiratori Seiya said, pocketing the coin without further ceremony. The matter was closed.
Late at night. Far too late.
Takahashi Mio lay in the bed—his bed, the sheets still carrying the faint, clean scent of him—staring up at the darkened ceiling with eyes that refused, absolutely refused, to stay closed. She tossed. She turned. She flipped her pillow to the cool side. Nothing worked.
Part of it was the simple, physical reality of an unfamiliar bed. She'd always struggled to sleep in strange places—hotel rooms, friend's apartments, anywhere that wasn't her own carefully arranged sanctuary. But the primary, overwhelming reason for her insomnia was currently breathing softly somewhere on the floor, wrapped in a futon, probably clutching that terrifying bamboo sword in her sleep like a child's teddy bear.
The psychological trauma from that sword strike in the kendo club lounge still lingered. Festered. Every time Mio closed her eyes, she saw the arc of the blade. The cold gleam of the light along its edge. The way it had stopped—stopped—mere centimeters from her skin.
Fortunately, Shiratori Seiya's scent clung to the blanket draped over her. Clean cotton. A hint of something woodsy. It provided a thin thread of comfort, a fragile anchor in the darkness. And as she lay there, breathing it in, a sudden, unexpected desire bloomed in her chest: I want to see what he looks like when he sleeps. His face relaxed. Unguarded. Peaceful.
She fumbled for her phone on the nightstand, the screen's glow painting her features in pale blue light. The clock read nearly one in the morning.
She must be asleep by now. Surely. Even insane kendo prodigies need sleep.
Slowly—painfully, agonizingly slowly—Takahashi Mio lifted the thin blanket. She peeked over the edge of the bed, her eyes straining through the darkness toward the futon below. Hasegawa Saori lay on her side, facing away, her body utterly motionless. The rhythm of her breathing was slow and even. Asleep. Definitely asleep.
A wave of relief washed through Mio's chest. She moved with the exaggerated, silent-movie stealth of a cat burglar, slipping out from under the covers. Her bare feet touched the tatami mat without a sound. The entire exfiltration process took somewhere between three and five minutes—every muscle controlled, every movement calculated, every breath held.
But just as her hand closed around the cool metal of the doorknob—just as freedom was within her grasp—
A weight landed on her shoulder.
Light. Almost gentle. But unmistakably there.
Takahashi Mio froze. Every single muscle in her body locked up simultaneously. A violent, full-body shudder rippled through her frame, the kind of primal, instinctive terror that bypasses the brain entirely and goes straight to the spinal cord.
And then, from directly behind her ear—close enough that she could feel the ghost of warm breath against her skin—a faint, soft, utterly emotionless voice whispered through the darkness:
"Where are you going...?"
The next morning dawned gray and rain-washed.
Takahashi Mio, sporting a pair of faint but unmistakable dark circles beneath her eyes—the kind that no amount of concealer could fully camouflage—trailed after Shiratori Seiya like a sleep-deprived ghost. The mission for the day was to help Hasegawa Saori move out of that dilapidated, water-ravaged shack and into a proper apartment in his complex.
However, despite the stated objective of "helping her move," Mio quickly discovered that her presence was entirely, almost comically, unnecessary.
Not even Shiratori Seiya was truly needed. Hasegawa Saori possessed a physical strength that bordered on the surreal, the fantastical, the how-is-this-biologically-possible. She hefted suitcases nearly half her own height with one hand as if they were filled with nothing but air. A pair of heavy iron dumbbells—the kind that made grown men grunt with effort—dangled from her other hand like grocery bags. Her expression remained placid. Unstrained. She might as well have been carrying a basket of laundry.
What absolutely terrifying superhuman strength. Is this woman secretly a Terminator? Was she raised on a diet of hydraulic fluid and protein powder? Did her parents drop her into a vat of experimental serum as a child?
Mio's internal commentary ran on a frantic, slightly hysterical loop. But as she stood there, watching Saori efficiently dismantle her former life and load it into boxes, her gaze drifted across the surroundings. The cramped, crumbling bungalow. The bare, mold-stained walls. The pervasive, cloying smell of damp and decay. Fifty meters away, the cluster of blue corrugated iron shacks—shelters in name only—huddled together like shivering refugees.
Seeing is believing, she thought, her earlier sarcasm draining away. That's what they say, isn't it?
When Shiratori Seiya had described Saori's living situation—briefly, clinically, without embellishment—Mio had thought she understood. She'd pictured something modest. A little run-down. A cheap, student-budget apartment. She had not pictured this. The reality was so much worse than any description could have conveyed. So much bleaker. So much more... desperate.
A strange, complicated emotion knotted in her chest as her mind drew an involuntary comparison. Two of Shiratori Seiya's ex-girlfriends. Two women he had loved. Or still loved. Or something in between. Hasegawa Saori, living in a shack that was practically a coffin, wielding a bamboo sword and eating convenience store rice balls. Hojo Shione, draped in designer clothes, gliding through Tokyo in luxury sedans, always attended by bodyguards and managers and entourages.
The gap between them was a chasm. A universe.
How is this fair? How did they end up so vastly, cruelly different?
But then, as she turned the thought over and over in her mind, a sudden, cold realization struck her with the force of a physical blow. Her heart lurched. Then sank. Then kept sinking.
Looking at the situation now... I finally understand. I understand why Shiratori Seiya can't let go of Hasegawa Saori. Why she haunts him. Why his promise to marry her wasn't just a casual, throwaway line.
She tried to place herself in Shiratori Seiya's shoes. Tried to imagine seeing Saori—this girl with her absolute, unshakeable devotion, her terrifying strength, and her complete inability to take care of herself—living in these conditions. Alone. Vulnerable. Smiling in the rain.
If I were him... I wouldn't be able to let her go either. I couldn't. It would be impossible.
Someone like Hasegawa Saori, with no apparent life skills, no support network, no safety net... she probably struggled just to support herself, right? Just to eat. Just to survive. Unlike Hojo Shione, who was rich and famous and surrounded by people whose job it was to ensure her comfort. Shiratori Seiya could be ruthless with Shione. Could cut ties and walk away. Because Shione would be fine. Shione was always fine. She had resources. Options. A future.
But Saori... Saori had nothing. Nothing except her sword and her ridiculous, boundless, terrifying love.
Hojo Shione is definitely not foolish, though. She's manipulative and calculating and sharp as a blade. At the very least, she's far, far smarter than Hasegawa Saori could ever hope to be. There's absolutely no way she fails to understand this dynamic. This logic. This painfully obvious reason why Seiya can't abandon Saori.
And she absolutely hasn't given up on him. I've seen her eyes. I've heard her voice. She loves him—is obsessed with him—with an intensity that's frankly disturbing. So if she knows all of this... if she understands exactly why pushing him away from Saori is counterproductive... why does she keep doing it?
Why would she tell me all those things? Why would she warn me about getting too close, about the pain of the breakup, about how it's better to leave him before he leaves me?
Isn't that... completely counterproductive to her own goals?
The memory of Hojo Shione's words in the car surfaced with crystalline clarity. The gentle, knowing smile. The pitying eyes. The way she had said "Everything you're experiencing, I've experienced too" like a curse disguised as a blessing.
A cold, heavy stone of dread settled in the pit of Takahashi Mio's stomach. Her brow furrowed. The pieces of the puzzle were there—scattered, fragmented, refusing to cohere—but something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.
What exactly are you planning, Hojo Shione? What game are you actually playing?