This was still a public place, after all. Sasaki didn't dare push things too far for too long. His lips released her pinky finger, and in the same fluid motion, he bit down on the fishball still dangling from the toothpick, chewing with an expression so unbothered he might as well have been commenting on the weather.
Ruri stared at her own finger—glistening, slick with the warmth of his mouth, a thin thread of saliva catching lamplight before it broke. The sensation lingered like a phantom. Heat flooded upward from her collarbone into her cheeks. She snapped back to herself, glared at him hard enough to bruise, then snatched a paper napkin from the counter and scrubbed at her pinky with a ferocity that bordered on violent.
That—that was my finger. In his mouth. In front of everyone.
Sasaki's eyes creased into happy crescents. He speared a beef ball on a fresh toothpick and held it up to her lips, steady as a surgeon. "Here. Open up."
Ruri pressed her mouth into a thin, furious line and refused to look at him.
He didn't withdraw the offering. Instead, he nudged the beef ball directly against her lower lip—warm, seasoned, slightly oily—until it sat right against the seam of her mouth, a slow, insistent pressure.
If she thinks ignoring me will make me stop, she hasn't been paying attention.
Something between shame and raw irritation blazed through Ruri's dark eyes. She parted her lips just enough and bit down, pulling the beef ball inside, then clamped her jaw and chewed with a deliberate, punishing intensity—each grind of her molars a small execution, as though the meat had done something personally unforgivable.
Sasaki wasn't watching the food.
His gaze had dropped to her mouth: the way her lips moved as she chewed, pressing together and parting in small rhythmic motions. Full and naturally flushed, like she'd bitten into something sweet that stained them. A faint gloss clung to the surface—residual broth, maybe, or just the way her skin caught the overhead string lights—either way it looked like someone had painted a translucent layer of honey across her bottom lip.
Sasaki swallowed. Hard. The sound was audible only to himself, a dry click at the back of his throat. The impulse to lean in and press his mouth against hers surged through his chest with a sudden, almost nauseating force. He glanced sideways. Two middle-aged women at a neighboring stall were watching them with knowing, amused expressions. A group of high school boys further down the row had paused mid-bite to stare. Too many eyes.
He crushed the urge flat and buried it somewhere below his ribs.
"Let's go," he said, voice deliberately light. "I want to walk around somewhere else."
Ruri's face brightened like a match catching. She nodded immediately, almost too fast, relief radiating off her in waves. The feeding routine, the constant provocations, the way he kept finding excuses to put parts of himself near parts of her—she couldn't stand another minute of it. Her internal dignity meter was bottomed out, needle bent against the peg.
Thank god. Anywhere but here. Anywhere that doesn't involve his hands near my face.
Sasaki noticed how quickly she agreed—how her shoulders dropped, how her breathing loosened. The corner of his mouth twitched upward by a fraction. She had no idea that "somewhere else" meant somewhere without witnesses.
He suppressed the smile before she could catch it. Stepped forward, reached down, and took her hand.
His fingers laced through hers—warm, firm, unapologetic. His palm was dry and his grip confident, the kind that made resistance feel like it would require an actual scene. Ruri's body went rigid. Her fingers twitched, instinct screaming at her to yank free, but the memory of the photograph slammed back into her awareness like ice water down her spine. The leverage he held. The images on his phone.
The fight drained out of her in a single deflating breath. She let him pull her toward the exit, her hand limp and begrudging inside his.
To anyone watching—and several people were—they looked like any young couple wandering through the evening crowd. His tall frame angled slightly toward her, her smaller figure tucked half a step behind, fingers intertwined. The picture of a date winding down. Sweet, even.
Ruri wanted to die.
Yesterday, when he'd grabbed her hand on the way home, she hadn't thought much of it. The streets had been packed with commuters—heads down, earbuds in, rushing toward dinner and television and the end of their day. Nobody had looked twice. But here, in the leisurely after-dinner flow of the food street, people had time. People lingered. People noticed.
She caught an older woman smiling at them with a grandmother's warmth and felt her stomach twist into a knot that could anchor a fishing boat.
---
They cleared the food street's entrance and stepped onto the main sidewalk. The sky had begun its shift—pale tangerine dissolving into a bruised violet near the horizon, the first few stars punching through where the city lights hadn't yet drowned them. The air was cooler out here, carrying the mineral smell of asphalt that had baked all day and was only now beginning to exhale, layered with exhaust fumes and the faintest sweetness of osmanthus from someone's garden wall.
Ruri's anxiety changed texture. She didn't know where he was taking her, and the dimming light made everything feel less safe, less certain.
"I should head home," she said, and her voice came out smaller than she wanted. She cleared her throat. "My mom will worry if I'm out too late."
Sasaki looked at her—really looked, his gaze tracing the downward curve of her mouth, the way she held her free arm tight against her body as though hugging herself. He considered this for a moment.
"Fine," he said. "I'll walk you back."
"No—that's okay." Ruri shook her head so fast her low ponytail swung. "I can go by myself. Really."
Every additional second spent in Sasaki Fuyumi's proximity was another tick on a countdown she didn't want to reach zero. She could feel it—some invisible line she hadn't crossed yet, but was inching toward with each encounter, each concession, each moment she let him touch her without fighting back.
One more minute with him and I'll lose something I can't get back. I don't even know what it is yet, but I can feel it slipping.
"Don't be ridiculous." Sasaki's tone was the textbook definition of shameless sincerity—earnest enough to sound noble, hollow enough to echo. "We're on a date. What kind of guy would I be if I let you walk home alone?" He paused, seemingly pleased with himself. He'd noticed, dimly, that ever since the system had loaded into his life, his capacity for audacity had expanded like a muscle being trained. Things that would've made him hesitate a week ago now rolled off his tongue as if they'd always belonged there.
Ruri's jaw tightened, but she recognized a wall when she walked into one. She regrouped.
"Fine. You can walk me home." She held up a finger, and her voice hardened into something resembling a negotiation. "But you are not holding my hand. If someone I know sees us—"
"Deal." Sasaki released her hand so quickly it was almost suspicious. "I promise. No hand-holding."
Ruri blinked at him, momentarily thrown. Since when was he this agreeable? The sudden compliance felt wrong—like finding a door unlocked in a house where every window had bars. She filed the unease away and resolved to stay on guard.
He gave in too easily. He's planning something.
"Although," Sasaki added, his eyes sliding sideways in a way that should've come with a warning label, "I do have one condition. We walk. No bus, no taxi. Just walk the whole way."
Ruri's rigid posture loosened so abruptly it was almost comical. She nodded. "Okay. Fine. Deal."
When she didn't know what he was scheming, the anxiety was unbearable. But walking? Walking was innocent. Walking was public sidewalks and streetlights and other pedestrians and a complete absence of enclosed spaces where his hands could wander. Walking she could handle.
Besides, the route home was all residential avenues—well-lit, well-traveled, crowded with evening joggers and dog walkers and salarymen trudging back from the train station. He wouldn't dare try anything.
She didn't notice the subtle upward curl at the corner of Sasaki's mouth.
She's already gotten used to the baseline. She doesn't even realize the floor keeps dropping.
---
They walked.
Ruri's home was several kilometers from the food district—Sasaki had chosen the location deliberately, far enough from their neighborhood to avoid running into classmates or family acquaintances. On foot, the trip would take at least thirty minutes. Plenty of time.
Within the first five minutes, a pattern established itself. Ruri walked briskly, her white sneakers striking the pavement in clipped, purposeful strides, and she kept a solid four or five meters between them at all times. Every time Sasaki closed the gap, she'd accelerate—not quite running, but close, her ponytail bouncing with each quickened step. The message was as subtle as a billboard: Stay away from me.
Sasaki registered this, weighed his options, and decided not to chase. He settled into a comfortable pace behind her, hands in the pockets of his uniform trousers, watching the way the evening breeze caught the hem of her skirt and the rigid set of her narrow shoulders.
His mind wandered to the system. He frowned internally. The route selection prompt still hadn't appeared. He'd been trying to trigger it all evening—testing boundaries, escalating contact, reading her reactions—but the thing seemed to operate on its own inscrutable schedule. The midnight evaluations clearly fed into the route options somehow, but the exact mechanism remained opaque. Nothing to do but wait.
Come on. Give me something to work with.
They covered roughly two kilometers in near-silence. The streetlights had fully taken over from the sunset now, casting everything in that particular amber-sodium glow that made shadows long and faces warm. The smell of the district shifted as they moved deeper into the residential blocks: charcoal smoke from a yakitori cart, someone's laundry detergent drifting from a second-floor balcony, the green dampness of a recently watered planter box.
Then Sasaki noticed the change.
Ruri's pace had slowed. Noticeably. Her stride shortened, each step landing with a careful, almost measured quality that hadn't been there before. Her brow pinched. Every few seconds, her gaze darted sideways—scanning storefronts, side streets, the gaps between buildings—searching for something with an urgency she was trying very hard to disguise.
Sasaki's eyes narrowed, and then understanding clicked into place with a satisfying precision.
The milk tea.
She'd drunk maybe a third of that oversized cup back at the boba stall, but a third of that particular cup was still a considerable volume of liquid, and it had been at least forty minutes since. Combined with whatever she'd had at school—Ruri was the type to carry a water bottle, he'd noticed it in her bag more than once—the math was straightforward.
She needed a bathroom. Badly.
There it is.
The air in front of him shimmered—a faint ripple, like heat haze, visible only to him. Text materialized in his peripheral vision, ghostly and luminous:
「Route One: Pursue the girl and refuse to let her find a restroom until she agrees to your perverted demand. Only then release her.」
「Route Two: You realize the girl is desperate. The degenerate in you hatches a plan—follow her into the women's restroom.」
Sasaki stared at the options. A dry, humorless laugh caught in his chest.
Of course. Of course these are the choices. Every time I think it can't get worse, it pulls out a new basement.
But he was critically low on Scumbag Points, and hesitation was a luxury he couldn't afford. He selected Route One almost immediately. Compared to Route Two—which was genuinely deranged, a full step beyond anything he'd attempted—Route One at least maintained the pretense of being merely awful rather than criminal.
The shimmering text dissolved. Sasaki lengthened his stride.
He closed the distance between them in seconds, falling into step beside Ruri so smoothly that by the time she registered his presence, he was already matching her pace. Her head snapped toward him, eyes wide, and he caught the flash of panic that crossed her features—not the usual irritation, but something sharper. She'd been so focused on scanning for a public restroom sign that she'd let her awareness of him slip.
"Sato-san." His voice was conversational, almost friendly. "You need to pee, don't you."
It wasn't a question.
Ruri froze mid-step. The bluntness of it hit her like a slap—not the words themselves, but the casual, unashamed way he delivered them, as if he were asking about the weather. Color rushed into her face, violent and instant, flooding from her cheekbones down to her jaw.
"N-no." She shook her head stiffly. "I don't."
Oh god. Oh god, is it that obvious? How long has he been watching me?
Sasaki smiled—not a smirk, not a grin, just a warm, patient smile that made him look almost trustworthy. "You don't have to lie. I've been watching you slow down for the last five minutes. You've checked every alley we've passed." He stretched his arms overhead in an exaggerated, lazy motion. "Actually, I'm kind of desperate too. Let's find a restroom—I know where there's a public one near here."
Ruri bristled at the vulgarity of the entire conversation, at the way he said restroom and desperate like they were perfectly normal things to discuss with a girl he was blackmailing into dates. Her teeth clenched. Everything that came out of his mouth was mortifying.
But the mention of a nearby public restroom snagged something in her gut—literally. A dull, insistent pressure low in her abdomen that she'd been white-knuckling since before they'd even left the food street. She'd needed to go since the end of the school day, had been holding it through the entire forced outing, and the milk tea had turned a manageable discomfort into something approaching emergency.
Still. Going to a restroom with him—
"Just tell me where it is," she said, her voice tight and clipped. "I'll go by myself."
Sasaki's expression shifted into wounded disbelief so convincing it could've earned him a supporting role in a shoujo drama. "Sato-san, that's really selfish. You're only thinking about yourself. What if I can't hold it? What if I end up—"
"Stop." Ruri's face was now the approximate color of a ripe tomato. "Stop talking."
Every single sentence out of his mouth makes it worse. He keeps saying it. He keeps saying the word. I'm going to lose my mind before I lose my bladder.
She realized, with a sinking feeling, that refusing to let him come along was unreasonable if he also needed to go. The logic was sound even if the source was rotten.
Sasaki's demeanor snapped from wounded to urgent in the space of a heartbeat. His brow creased. His posture shifted—weight forward, knees pressing together slightly, the universal body language of someone whose situation had just become time-sensitive.
"Seriously—we need to go now." His voice was taut with manufactured desperation. "Come on."
His hand shot out and seized hers. Before Ruri could process the broken promise—you said no hand-holding—he was pulling her sideways off the main sidewalk, his grip iron-firm around her wrist, hauling her toward a narrow side street that branched off between a shuttered dry cleaner and a vending machine glowing blue-white in the dusk.
Ruri stumbled after him, her free hand grabbing at his forearm, panic and pressure colliding in her lower belly with every jarring step.
"W-wait—" Her voice cracked, high and breathless. "Sasaki-kun, hold on a second—"
It's going to come out. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no—
Sasaki's fingers tightened around her wrist, and he pulled her deeper into the alley without slowing down, the amber glow of the main street shrinking behind them with every stride.