Shiratori Seiya hadn't slept a single minute the previous night. The chaos had descended suddenly—Shione's collapse, the hospital vigil, Suzune's tearful accusations, the reporters, the whispered conversations in sterile corridors—but the more turbulent the storm around him became, the more his mind settled into an almost preternatural calm.
He had spent the long, dark hours thinking. Not panicking. Not agonizing. Just... thinking. Weighing outcomes. Tracing the threads of cause and effect. Examining the shape of his own heart with the same cold, clinical precision he applied to everything else.
And the decision he had finally reached was, in its own way, exactly as Takahashi Mio had guessed: he wasn't going to give up on Hojo Shione. And he absolutely, under no circumstances, was going to give up on Hasegawa Saori.
If he had still been wavering—still hesitating on the threshold of that absurd, anime-protagonist-style conclusion—then Takahashi Mio's impulsive, desperate kiss weeks ago had planted the first seed.
But the moment of true crystallization, the point at which his internal compass had locked firmly into place, was the revelation that Hojo Shione had developed depression after their breakup. That she had been silently, secretly crumbling while he remained oblivious. That her smiles had been masks and her reassurances had been lies crafted to spare him guilt.
That was the turning point. The moment his lingering resistance had crumbled.
Yes, maintaining relationships with both of them simultaneously would require an enormous investment of time and emotional energy. It would be complicated. Exhausting. Probably, at times, close to impossible. A significant sacrifice on his part.
But given how deeply, hopelessly, irrevocably devoted Saori and Shione were to him... a little sacrifice was acceptable. More than acceptable. It was the bare minimum of what they deserved.
Of course, abandoning the pursuit of financial stability was out of the question. This was, after all, a ruthlessly materialistic society. Without money, he was nothing—a man with grand intentions and empty pockets. Without money, he couldn't provide for the people who depended on him.
Saori needed money simply to survive. Her circumstances had been made brutally, heartbreakingly clear. The crumbling shack. The leaking ceiling. The hole in her sock. He wanted to give her a life better than that—a life of warmth and security and comfort where she never had to choose between fixing her roof and eating dinner. All of that required money.
Hojo Shione also needed money, though in a different way.
To exchange for songs from the System that would support her dream and silence the cruel chorus of doubters. Even if she chose to set aside that dream—even if she decided, after everything, that she no longer wanted to stand on a stage—having more resources would give her more choices in life. More freedom. More options beyond simply enduring. The ability to walk away from anything that hurt her. None of that could be achieved without a solid financial foundation.
Take the current crisis as an example: if he already possessed sufficient wealth, every negative repercussion from the concert disaster could be neutralized with a few well-placed phone calls and a generous check. Compensation wouldn't even be a concern. The record companies and talent agencies would be begging him to schedule her next performance. Money, wielded correctly, wasn't just currency—it was a shield. A weapon. A safety net that caught everyone who fell.
Moreover, after witnessing firsthand the staggering depth of affection that both Shione and Saori held for him—affection that bordered on the irrational, the desperate, the all-consuming—Shiratori Seiya had developed a new theory about the System itself. A hypothesis he intended to test. But that experiment would have to wait until he'd gotten some sleep.
About an hour later, after dropping Takahashi Mio off at her apartment with a firm reminder to attend her afternoon classes, Shiratori Seiya turned his steps toward his own front door. The exhaustion he had been holding at bay through sheer force of will was finally beginning to catch up with him. His eyelids felt heavy. Gritty.
The soreness behind them had intensified from a dull ache to a sharp, insistent throb. He hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours, and his body was making its displeasure known.
A hot shower. A bed. Everything else could wait.
He took the elevator up, leaning against the mirrored wall and watching his own haggard reflection with detached resignation. The doors slid open. He stepped out. Turned the corner of the corridor.
And stopped dead.
There, sitting on the floor directly in front of his apartment door, was a familiar figure. A girl in a pristine white tracksuit, her posture perfectly straight, her legs folded neatly beneath her. In one hand, she cradled a long wooden katana—the same practice sword she carried everywhere, its polished surface gleaming under the corridor's fluorescent lights.
In the other hand, she held a triangular nori rice ball, half-eaten, the seaweed wrapper slightly crinkled. She was kneeling there like a guardian statue. Like a door god. Like a loyal hound waiting for its master to come home.
Shiratori Seiya blinked. Hard. Then, for good measure, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and looked again.
It was still Saori.
Unlike her usual practical high ponytail—the sleek, efficient style she wore for kendo training—her long, dark hair was loose today. It cascaded down her back and pooled on the tiled floor around her kneeling form, gleaming like spilled ink under the corridor lights. She hadn't noticed him yet.
She was squinting with evident, blissful contentment, her cherry lips pressed delicately against the soft white surface of the rice ball, taking tiny, savoring bites. Each mouthful was chewed with the slow, meditative thoroughness of someone for whom food was not merely sustenance but a genuine, uncomplicated pleasure. Her brows and eyes radiated pure, undiluted happiness.
And then, as if some sixth sense had tingled at the base of her skull, she suddenly stopped mid-bite. She looked up. Her gaze found him.
For a suspended heartbeat, Saori simply stared. Her clear, luminous eyes blinked once—a slow, owlish blink of genuine surprise, as if she couldn't quite believe he was really there. Then, recognition flooded her features.
Her face transformed.
A wide, radiant, utterly foolish grin spread across her cheeks, and she was already scrambling to her feet, using the wooden katana as a support to push herself upright.
"Seiya!"
She launched herself toward him with the unthinking, full-bodied enthusiasm of a missile locking onto its target. Shiratori Seiya barely had time to raise his arms before she collided with his chest, wrapping herself around him with a grip that was surprisingly fierce for someone so slender.
A faint, clean fragrance enveloped him—not the sophisticated, floral sweetness of Hojo Shione's jasmine perfume, but something simpler. Warmer. The comforting, domestic scent of lavender laundry detergent. The smell of freshly washed cotton dried in the sun.
Feeling the solid, breathing warmth of the girl in his arms, Shiratori Seiya let out a long, quiet breath. His hand rose automatically to pat her back in a soothing rhythm.
"Why are you here? Waiting outside like this?"
"Hmm..."
Hasegawa Saori hummed a thoughtful, noncommittal sound against his chest. She didn't answer with words. Instead, she lowered her forehead and rubbed it gently against him, nuzzling into the fabric of his shirt like a small, affectionate animal. Then, her nose twitched. She sniffed. Once. Twice.
A look of confusion flickered across her pale face. She lifted her chin, her clear eyes finding his, and her lips formed into a small, unconscious pout.
"Seiya smells like another woman..."
Her tone carried no accusation—only a simple, slightly sad statement of fact. Like a child reporting that it was raining outside.
"..."
Shiratori Seiya opened his mouth. Closed it. He had not, in the chaos of the morning, found time to shower or change clothes. His shirt still carried the faint, clinging traces of Hojo Shione's perfume—the scent of her hair, her skin, the way she had pressed herself against him in the hospital room before he'd left.
He had simply wanted to get Takahashi Mio back to Tokyo and then collapse into his own bed as quickly as possible. The olfactory evidence of his night's vigil was apparently more conspicuous than he'd realized.
Ahem.
He cleared his throat lightly to cover his embarrassment. Then, gently, he disentangled himself from Saori's embrace and turned toward the door, his fingers moving to the electronic keypad.
"Saori, you know the passcode, don't you? Why are you sitting out here in the hallway instead of waiting inside where it's warm?"
His hand paused mid-motion, hovering over the number pad. A thought occurred to him—one that, given his history with Saori, was entirely plausible.
"Did you forget the code again?"
"Saori is not stupid."
Her voice carried the faintest hint of wounded dignity. She fished her phone from the pocket of her tracksuit, opened her memo app, and held the screen up for him to inspect. There, in plain text, was the eight-digit door code, carefully saved and labeled.
"See? Saori saved the password. It's right here."
Click.
The lock disengaged.
Shiratori Seiya pushed the door open and stepped aside, looking at her profile with genuine bewilderment. "So why didn't you just go in? You could have been comfortable. Warm. You could have eaten your rice ball on the sofa instead of the cold floor."
"Because..." Saori lowered her phone. Her eyes, clear and depthless as mountain springs, lifted to meet his. "If Saori waits right here, then the moment Seiya comes home, Saori can see him. Right away. Immediately. Not even one second of delay."
Shiratori Seiya, who had already bent down to help her remove her shoes, paused mid-motion. His hands stilled on the laces.
"Then... by that logic, wouldn't you see me even sooner if you waited at the entrance to the apartment complex? Or at the station? You could catch me the moment I arrived."
"No."
Saori shook her head firmly. The motion made her loose hair sway like a dark curtain. Her foot, still cradled in his palm, twitched slightly at his touch, and a faint, rosy blush began to bloom across her fair cheeks. A misty, almost shy glimmer softened the usual crystal clarity of her eyes.
"That way... huff... that way, Saori wouldn't be able to guard the house for Seiya. If someone bad came, Saori wouldn't be here to protect it. But if Saori waits right here, then both things are true. The house is safe. And Seiya is seen immediately. Both things. At the same time."
A guard dog. A loyal, faithful, absolutely unwavering guard dog. The thought rose up, unbidden, and Shiratori Seiya felt a complex surge of emotion—amusement, affection, and a deep, aching tenderness that caught somewhere in his throat. Without thinking, he squeezed her toes gently through the thin cotton of her sock.
"Don't wait outside the door anymore. It's cold. The floor is hard. And Saori... you carry that wooden katana everywhere you go. Absolutely everywhere. People who don't know you—who don't understand—might see you sitting here with a sword and think you're some kind of dangerous person. An assassin. Someone here to exact revenge on me. It wouldn't be good if the neighbors got frightened and called the police. Do you understand?"
"Oh."
Hearing this reasonable explanation, Hasegawa Saori nodded with her characteristic obedient compliance. Then, she wiggled her toes inside the sock—a small, almost kittenish movement—and added in a soft, earnest voice:
"Saori took a bath before coming here today. So her feet don't smell at all. You can check."
Shiratori Seiya rolled his eyes—a gesture of pure, theatrical exasperation—and guided her foot firmly into the waiting slipper. "You say that as if I've ever complained about anything related to you. As if I've ever disliked a single thing."
He straightened up, his knees popping slightly from the prolonged crouch, and made his way into the living room. Behind him, he heard the soft shuffle of Saori's slippers following like a faithful shadow.
"I remember you mentioned that you had intensive training scheduled all this week. The national competition preparations. So why did you specifically choose today to come and wait for me at home?"
He filled a glass with cool water from the kitchen and set it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Then, crossing to the sideboard, he lit two sticks of sandalwood incense—the thin, fragrant smoke curling upward in lazy spirals, gradually displacing the lingering traces of jasmine perfume and hospital antiseptic that still clung to his clothes.
Only after completing these small, grounding rituals did he turn back to face her, meeting her clear, unwavering gaze directly.
"And you didn't send me a single message. Not one. No call. No warning. If I hadn't come back today—if something had delayed me, if I'd had to stay another night in Yokohama—were you seriously planning to just... wait here? All day? All night?"
"Hmm..."
Hasegawa Saori nodded slowly. Her eyes slid away from his face, unable to meet his questioning stare, and she busied her fingers by nervously kneading the wrapped hilt of her katana.
"If Seiya doesn't come back... Saori will just keep waiting. It's simple."
The quiet, absolute sincerity in her voice—the way she stated it as if it were the most obvious, natural, inevitable thing in the world—made something tighten painfully in Shiratori Seiya's chest.
He crossed the room, took her gently by the shoulders, and pulled her down onto the sofa beside him. Then, because he couldn't help himself, he reached up with both hands and began to knead her cheeks, squishing the soft, smooth skin beneath his fingers.
"Alright. Tell me. What's the real reason you're here? What happened?"
Though Hasegawa Saori's face was slender, with only the barest minimum of flesh over her elegant bone structure, her skin was impossibly smooth—like the surface of a freshly peeled egg, like the finest silk mochi. Once he started touching it, it was genuinely difficult to stop.
"Hmmmph..."
"That... that idiot... The concert... got all messed up, didn't it?"
Her words were mushy and indistinct, distorted by the way he was squishing her cheeks, but Shiratori Seiya understood every syllable. His hands stilled. He stared into her pure, guileless eyes—eyes that held no jealousy, no satisfaction, no trace of "I told you so." Just a deep, quiet, empathetic sadness.
"If she's like that now... Seiya must be very disappointed in her, right? Seiya's heart must be hurting a lot, right?"
She reached up and took his hands—the hands that had been squishing her cheeks—and gently pressed his palm flat against the side of her own face, cradling it there like something precious.
"Saori doesn't want Seiya to be sad. Not even a little. That's why Saori came."
She leaned in closer. Closer. Until their foreheads were nearly touching, until he could see his own reflection mirrored perfectly in the dark pools of her pupils. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft but utterly resolute.
"Seiya still can't let go of Hojo, can he? Just like... just like he can't let go of Saori."
"I—"
His heart trembled. The denial, the explanation, the careful, diplomatic words he had prepared—they all rose to his lips simultaneously and collided there, tangled and useless. Before a single one could escape, Hasegawa Saori dipped her head and pressed her lips to his.
The kiss was soft. Light as a feather. Her lips, slightly cool and trembling just barely at the edges, pressed against his with the texture of delicate fruit jelly—sweet, yielding, impossibly gentle. Her tongue darted out, just once, a tiny kitten-lick against the seam of his mouth, and then she pulled back. Her eyes, when they met his again, were filled with a solemn, almost fierce seriousness.
"If Seiya likes her... that's okay. It's really, truly okay."
A pause.
She straightened her spine, her posture shifting from that of a gentle girl into something older. Something harder. Something that belonged to a warrior.
"If Seiya can't let go of either of them... then just keep both. Love both. And if anyone says no—if anyone doesn't want to cooperate—Saori will help Seiya snatch her back."
To punctuate the declaration, she released his face, reached for the wooden katana resting on the coffee table, and spun it in her hand with a deft, practiced twirl. The polished wood cut a gleaming arc through the air. Her expression remained completely, utterly serious.
Shiratori Seiya sat frozen, his lips still tingling from the ghost of her kiss, his brain struggling to process the absolute, unwavering, slightly-terrifying sincerity of what she had just proposed.
"...What era do you think we're living in right now? The Sengoku period? You can't just go around snatching people like a warlord collecting consorts."
"Hmm. Is that not allowed?"
Her suggestion having been summarily rejected, Hasegawa Saori's delicate brows furrowed. She frowned with the intense concentration of someone solving a complex mathematical equation, racking her brain for an acceptable alternative.
"Then... a different approach. Saori will just knock her unconscious at night and put her in Seiya's bed. When she wakes up, everything will already be settled."
"Is there any meaningful difference between those two plans?!"
Shiratori Seiya reached out and poked her forehead—right between her furrowed brows—with his index finger.
"We live in a society governed by laws. Actual, enforceable, you-will-go-to-jail laws. You can't just go around knocking people unconscious and dragging them into beds. That's kidnapping. That's a felony. Please, for the love of everything, don't let your mind wander into such wildly illegal territory."
"But..."
Saori's voice faltered. The fierce, warriorlike resolve in her posture crumbled, replaced by something smaller. Softer. More vulnerable. She looked up at him, her clear eyes glistening.
"Saori just... Saori doesn't want Seiya to be sad. Not ever. Saori wants Seiya to be happy. That's all. That's the only thing. As long as Seiya is happy..." She pressed her palm flat against her own chest, over her heart. "...Saori will do anything. Absolutely anything."
Something cracked open inside Shiratori Seiya's chest. A wall he hadn't even realized he'd been maintaining. His eyes—already dry and sore from a full day and night without sleep—reddened at the corners. A hot, unwelcome moisture gathered along his lashes.
Seeing this, Hasegawa Saori leaned forward again. Her pink lips brushed feather-light against the corner of his eye, kissing away the gathering tears. Her cool fingertips smoothed over his furrowed brow, gently pressing out the creases of tension and grief and exhaustion that had etched themselves there over the past twenty-four hours.
Then, with infinite, unhurried tenderness, she placed her palms on his shoulders and guided him down—down until his head came to rest in the soft, warm cradle of her lap.
"Before," she murmured, her voice a gentle lullaby above him, "Seiya used to massage Saori like this. When Saori's muscles were sore from training. When Saori was tired and sad. Now..." Her slender, pale hand rose into his field of vision. Slowly, gently, she lowered her palm until it covered his eyes, blocking out the light. "...now it's Saori's turn to take care of Seiya."
"Seiya can rest now. Saori will keep watch."
The clean, comforting scent of her—lavender laundry detergent, warm skin, the faint lingering trace of the rice ball she'd been eating—mingled with the calming sandalwood incense drifting through the room. His head pillowed on the gentle curve of her thighs, feeling the soothing warmth of her body radiating through the soft fabric of her tracksuit...
Shiratori Seiya tried to say something more. His lips moved. But his thoughts were already scattering like dandelion seeds in a warm wind. The weight of exhaustion—held at bay for so long through sheer necessity—finally crashed over him in an irresistible, drowning wave.
His eyes closed beneath the shelter of her palm. His breathing slowed. Deepened.
Within seconds—less than seconds—consciousness slipped away entirely, and he fell into the deepest, most peaceful sleep he'd had in months.