[Sasaki Fuyumi's Apartment — Saturday]
---
The second stroke of Sasaki Fuyumi's signature curved into its final flourish at the exact moment Sato Ruri broke.
Her spine arched off the mattress in one sharp, involuntary spasm—thighs clenching, fingers twisting into the bedsheet hard enough to pull it free from the corner. A choked mewl caught somewhere between her teeth and her throat, and then her head lolled sideways against the pillow, eyes rolling shut, body going slack as unconsciousness swallowed her whole.
Nnhh—
The faintest whimper escaped her parted lips as she slipped under, like the last bubble rising from a drowning swimmer.
Sasaki Fuyumi capped the Libido Marker with a quiet click.
He sat back on his heels, still straddling the edge of the bed beside her, and looked at his handiwork. Her cropped t-shirt had ridden up past her ribs during the ordeal, exposing the full canvas of her lower torso—pale skin stretched taut over a stomach so flat it barely rose above her hipbones. And there, just below her navel, inked in strokes that gleamed faintly wet against her flesh, sat his name.
Sasaki Fuyumi.
The characters rode the natural curve of her pelvis, dipping low enough that the waistband of her ruined jeans—already unbuttoned, zipper half-collapsed from how violently she'd been squirming—revealed the elastic hem of her underwear. Cotton. Powder blue with a thin white lace trim. A few stray wisps of dark hair peeked just above the fabric line, fine as calligraphy brushstrokes against porcelain.
She's completely out. Sasaki Fuyumi's throat worked around a dry swallow. Two signatures. That's all it took.
His palm drifted down before he could stop it—settling flat against the surface of her lower belly, fingers splayed wide. The skin beneath his hand was impossibly smooth, warm to the touch like sun-heated ceramic, and so soft that even the slightest pressure left a faint depression that slowly filled back in.
He could feel the faint rhythm of her breathing transmitted through her abdominal wall, the slow rise and fall of someone deeply unconscious, and beneath that—deeper, subtler—the tiny flutter of her pulse where the femoral artery ran just beneath the surface.
He rubbed his thumb in a slow circle around her navel. Then lower. Tracing the edge of the signature, following the path his pen had taken, feeling the residual dampness of the ink against his fingertip.
Ruri's body shuddered beneath his hand.
"Mmn... hahh..."
A breathy, unformed moan slid from her lips—wet and involuntary, the kind of sound a girl made in the deepest stage of a dream she'd never admit to having. Her hips shifted a fraction to the left, pressing unconsciously into his palm, and the muscles of her lower abdomen tensed and released in a slow, rolling contraction that traveled all the way down past the waistband of her underwear.
God. Sasaki Fuyumi's jaw clenched. He pressed his hand flatter, letting the heat of her body soak into his skin, feeling the silk-fine peach fuzz of her belly catch against his calluses. Even knocked out, she reacts like this.
The apartment smelled like her now—warm vanilla from whatever lotion she used, mixed with the sharper, headier musk of arousal that had been building since the thigh-rubbing. It clung to the sheets. It clung to his fingers. Every inhale dragged it deeper into his lungs, thick and sweet and maddening, like honey dissolving in hot water.
He exhaled hard through his nose. Closed his eyes.
His free hand gripped his own knee until the knuckles blanched white.
Not yet. Not like this.
It took everything he had—every scrap of self-discipline he'd built across years of calculated patience—to peel his hand away from her stomach. The separation left a ghost of warmth on his palm that wouldn't fade. He stared at the unconscious girl for three more seconds: the sweat-dampened hair stuck to her temple, the flush that ran from her cheeks all the way down her throat and across her exposed collarbones, the shallow hitch of her breathing, the dark wet spot he could just barely make out through the denim between her thighs.
The marker's doing its job. She won't last much longer. A few more sessions and she'll be the one reaching for me.
Sasaki Fuyumi leaned forward and tugged her zipper back up, teeth by metal teeth, slow enough not to wake her. The button took more effort—her hips had shifted during the episode, pulling the waistband slightly askew—but he managed it with a firm tug and a practiced twist of his fingers.
He stood, adjusted himself discreetly, and walked out of the bedroom.
The hallway bathroom was three steps away. He turned on the cold tap, cupped water in both hands, and pressed it to his face. The shock of it hit like a slap. He did it twice more, water dripping from his jaw onto his shirt collar, staring at his own reflection in the small mirror above the sink.
Patience. The face staring back at him was flushed, pupils dilated, a vein visible at his temple. She's already halfway there. Rushing it ruins everything.
The cold water helped. Marginally.
---
In the bedroom, Sato Ruri's eyelids fluttered.
She blinked once at the ceiling—unfamiliar, off-white, a hairline crack running from the light fixture toward the far wall—and for a blissful half-second, her mind was completely empty.
Then everything crashed back in.
The thigh rubbing. The way his fingers pressed into her inner leg. The heat that had climbed through her body like a lit fuse. The sounds she'd made—desperate, shameless, animal sounds. The words she'd actually said out loud, begging him not to stop, telling him she liked it—
"Nnh—!"
Ruri slapped both hands over her face. Her palms were clammy against cheeks so hot they felt sunburned, and the sound that came out of her was less a whimper and more a full-throated wail of mortification, muffled against her own fingers.
I told him I liked it.
I actually said that. Out loud. To his face.
While he was rubbing my thigh.
Like some kind of—of—
She couldn't even finish the thought. Her eyes burned, and she could feel tears gathering at the corners, hot and acidic, threatening to spill. She pressed her palms harder against her face as if she could physically push the memory back inside her skull and seal it there forever.
What is wrong with me? The question spiraled through her head in a tight, nauseating loop. It was just my leg. He was just touching my leg. Normal girls don't—they don't react like that. They don't lose their minds and start moaning and—
But the worst part wasn't the memory.
The worst part was the present.
Between her thighs, her underwear clung to her skin—soaked through, warm, the fabric sticking and pulling with every micro-adjustment of her hips. The sensation was unmistakable and utterly humiliating. She could feel it. She could smell it—that faintly briny, intimate musk that she normally only encountered in the privacy of her own shower.
He rubbed my thigh and I... I actually...
I'm going to die. I need to die right now.
I need to just stop existing as a person—
"Oh, you're awake."
The voice came from the doorway—casual, unhurried, carrying exactly the kind of detached amusement that made her want to put her fist through drywall.
"Hurry up and go make dinner already. I'm starving."
Ruri swiped frantically at the moisture leaking from the corners of her eyes, sat bolt upright, and fixed Sasaki Fuyumi with the most venomous glare she could muster. Her jaw was set, nostrils flared, spine rigid—every line of her body radiating the cornered fury of a small animal that knew it had already lost the fight but refused to stop baring its teeth.
Sasaki Fuyumi leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, one ankle hooked lazily over the other. The fluorescent hall light behind him caught the edges of his silhouette and threw his expression into partial shadow, but she could see the corner of his mouth—and it was doing that thing. That infuriating thing where it lifted just enough to let her know he was enjoying every second of her misery.
She looks like a wet kitten trying to intimidate a wolf. He tilted his head slightly. "What? You want me to rub your legs again?"
Every muscle in Ruri's body seized.
The threat landed like a physical blow—not because it was violent, but because her traitorous body responded to it. A pulse of heat flared low in her belly, sharp and immediate, and she felt her thighs clamp together involuntarily beneath the sheets.
No. No no no no—
She looked away. Her shoulders collapsed inward. The fight drained out of her like water through a cracked glass, and what was left behind was just a tired, humiliated girl sitting on someone else's bed in damp underwear.
"...I understand," she muttered, voice flat and small. "I'm going."
She swung her legs off the bed and stood. The motion was jerky, graceless—and the moment her weight settled on both feet, she felt the wet fabric shift against her skin and had to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound.
She walked past him with her head down, moving quickly toward the kitchen, and Sasaki Fuyumi watched her go with quiet interest.
There it is. His eyes tracked the subtle awkwardness in her gait—thighs pressed too tightly together, steps a fraction shorter than natural, hips stiff instead of swaying. She's absolutely drenched and trying to pretend she isn't.
He smiled.
But he didn't follow her, didn't tease her further. His stomach was genuinely growling—a low, insistent rumble he'd been ignoring for the past hour—and besides, she'd passed out twice today. Even tools needed maintenance. Pushing her further tonight would yield diminishing returns.
Let her rest. Let the marker's residual effect do its work overnight. By next time, she'll be even more sensitive.
---
The kitchen filled with the sounds of cooking—the rhythmic percussion of a knife against a cutting board, the sizzle and pop of oil heating in a wok, the metallic scrape of a spatula turning vegetables. Ruri moved through the motions mechanically, muscle memory carrying her while her mind churned.
The scent of garlic browning in sesame oil drifted through the small apartment, layered over the lingering ghost of sandalwood from his soap and—beneath that, faint but persistent—the musky reminder of her own arousal that she was desperately pretending didn't exist.
She set the finished dishes on the table—steamed rice, stir-fried greens with garlic, braised pork belly that glistened under the kitchen light—and stepped back as Sasaki Fuyumi approached.
Two full steps back. Three. Putting the entire width of the dining table between them.
"I made what I promised." Her voice came out clipped, controlled, a performance of composure that fooled neither of them. She kept her eyes fixed on a point somewhere past his left shoulder. "I have things to take care of, so I'm heading back now."
Sasaki Fuyumi's gaze dropped from her face to her legs. The ripped jeans gaped open at mid-thigh, the tear wide enough to expose a palm-width strip of bare skin—and, just visible at the edge, the dark ink of his signature.
"You can't wear those home." He pulled out a chair, sat down, picked up his chopsticks. "There's a pair of track pants in the bedroom. Go change."
Ruri went rigid. Her eyes narrowed, darting between him and the hallway, calculating threat vectors the way a gazelle assessed a clearing before crossing it.
He wants me to go back in there? Alone? With the door between us?
...Or is this another trap?
Sasaki Fuyumi didn't look up from his food. "You're really going to walk home like that? With half your underwear showing?" He lifted a piece of pork to his mouth, chewed, swallowed. "And if I actually wanted to do something to you—be honest with yourself, Ruri. Could you stop me?"
The words hit a nerve she'd been trying very hard not to touch. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
He's right.
He's right and I hate him for being right.
If he'd wanted to... when I was lying there, when my whole body was... he could have done anything. Anything at all. And I wouldn't have been able to—
"...Fine." The word came out like something extracted under duress. "I'll go change."
She turned and walked back down the hallway, shoulders hunched, head bowed—the defeated posture of someone retreating from a battle they never had a chance of winning.
Like a rooster that just lost a cockfight. Sasaki Fuyumi thought, watching her disappear around the corner. He took another bite of rice. Cute.
---
The bedroom door locked behind her with a satisfying ka-chunk.
Ruri pressed her back against it, exhaled shakily, and allowed herself exactly three seconds of leaning there with her eyes closed before pushing off and crossing to the bed.
The track pants were laid out on the mattress—dark navy, elastic waistband, a small brand logo on the hip. She picked them up and held them at arm's length, examining them. They were clearly too small for Sasaki Fuyumi's current frame; the inseam was shorter, the waist narrower. Old clothes, probably from middle school or early high school. Something he'd outgrown and never thrown away.
I'm going to wear his pants.
His actual pants. That touched his actual body.
She stared at the fabric in her hands, cheeks warming despite herself, and shook her head hard to clear the thought.
Just change. Change and get out. That's the mission.
She looked down at her jeans. The rip was obscene now—the denim curling back from the tear like the pages of a ruined book, exposing a wide swath of her upper thigh and, unmistakably visible through the gap, the dark blue ink of Sasaki Fuyumi's signature sprawled across her skin in bold, confident strokes.
Ruri's teeth ground together so hard her jaw ached.
That bastard.
If anyone saw that—his name, written on her thigh, in a location that could only have been reached by someone with their hand inside her pants—the rumors alone would destroy her. Every girl in class would call her easy. Every guy would assume she was his property. The thought made her stomach lurch with a queasy cocktail of rage and shame.
She scrubbed at the signature with her thumb, pressing hard enough to leave a red mark on the surrounding skin. The ink didn't budge. Didn't smear. Didn't even lighten. Whatever that pen was made of, it had bonded to her skin like a tattoo.
What kind of marker doesn't come off with friction? He rubbed my leg for—for ages, and the first signature is still completely intact.
She'd have to scrub it off at home. With soap. And a loofah. And possibly a prayer to every deity she'd ever heard of.
Ruri peeled off the ruined jeans—the denim rasping against her hypersensitive skin as it slid down, making her flinch—and stepped into the track pants. They fit surprisingly well: snug at the waist, loose enough through the thigh to be comfortable, the hem falling just above her ankle. The fabric was soft from years of washing, warm in a way that felt uncomfortably intimate, carrying the faintest trace of laundry detergent and something underneath it—something clean and masculine that she recognized, with a sinking feeling, as him.
I'm wearing his clothes. His scent is on my skin. His name is literally written on my body in two places.
When did I become an anime heroine in a doujin I'd never read voluntarily?
She stood there for a long moment, pants on, old jeans dangling from one hand, staring blankly at the far wall.
Then her eyes drifted sideways.
The room.
She'd been searching it earlier—before he'd interrupted her, before the thigh-rubbing, before everything had gone sideways. She'd been looking for something embarrassing. Something she could use as leverage. And now here she was, alone, with the door locked, and nobody coming to stop her.
You want to humiliate me? A cold, determined light entered Ruri's eyes. Fine. Let's see what secrets you're hiding, Sasaki Fuyumi.
She moved through the room methodically—desk drawers (textbooks, pens, a charger cable), nightstand (phone mount, a half-empty bottle of water, earbuds), under the bed (dust)—finding nothing of note. The room was frustratingly clean for a teenage boy's bedroom. No stashed magazines. No suspicious browser history left open on a laptop. Not even a crumpled tissue.
Her gaze settled on the wardrobe.
It was the one place she'd been avoiding, for obvious reasons. A wardrobe held clothes. Clothes included underwear. Opening a boy's wardrobe meant potentially confronting a boy's underwear, and the thought of touching Sasaki Fuyumi's boxers—even accidentally—made her skin crawl in a way she refused to examine too closely.
But there was nowhere else left to look.
Just... don't look at the underwear. Focus on the back. The corners. That's where people hide things.
She pulled both doors open.
The wardrobe was packed—shirts, jackets, and hoodies jammed together on hangers, a shelf of folded jeans above, and at the bottom, a jumbled landscape of socks, gym shorts, and—
Ruri's hands dove in, pushing aside layers of fabric, fingers searching blindly for anything unusual. The clothes smelled like cedar chips and the same detergent she'd noticed on the track pants, clean and dense, the accumulated scent of someone's entire textile life compressed into a wooden box.
Then, in the bottom corner, her fingertips brushed something that didn't match.
She glanced down. A pile of boxer briefs—dark colors, plain designs, unmistakably masculine—had been shoved into the corner in a loose heap. And nestled among them, conspicuous as a rose in a pile of gravel, was a single garment in a completely different style.
Small. Cotton. Powder blue with a thin white lace trim.
Ruri's heart stopped.
That's—
She snatched it up, held it to the light, turned it over in her hands.
That's mine.
That's the pair I gave him. The ones from—from that day.
And he put them with his own underwear.
He MIXED THEM TOGETHER.
The implications crashed through her mind like a freight train derailing in slow motion. Her cheeks blazed so hot she could feel her pulse in her earlobes. Her fingers clenched around the familiar fabric—her own underwear, sitting in a boy's wardrobe, tangled up with his boxers as if they belonged together, as if this were some kind of—of domestic arrangement—
He's a pervert. He is an absolute, irredeemable, certifiable PERVERT—
Her first instinct was to stuff them into her pocket and take them back. Reclaim them. Remove the evidence.
But her hand hovered mid-motion.
If I take them... he'll know I opened his wardrobe. He'll know I was searching through his things. He'll know I found them, and he'll use it—he'll turn it around on me somehow, make me the weird one, say something horrible like "You went looking for my underwear?" in that awful smug voice and I'll want to die all over again—
Ruri closed her eyes. Exhaled through her nose. Placed the powder-blue underwear back in the exact position she'd found it, nestled between a pair of black boxer briefs and a charcoal pair with a white waistband.
She closed the wardrobe doors with exaggerated care, making sure the click was silent.
One day, Sasaki Fuyumi. One day I'm going to find something on you that you can't talk your way out of. And on that day, I am going to make you suffer.
---
She emerged from the hallway to find him already eating, chopsticks moving with the unhurried efficiency of someone perfectly at ease in his own apartment. Steam rose from the rice bowl, carrying the savory aroma of the braised pork she'd cooked, mingling with garlic and the faint sweetness of soy reduction.
"You don't need to walk me out," Ruri said quickly, before he could speak, before he could look at her with those calculating eyes and find another crack to exploit. "Just—eat. Don't skip meals on my account. I know the way."
She was already moving as she said it—sidestepping the table, crossing the living room in quick strides, grabbing her bag from where she'd dropped it near the entryway. The front door's handle was cool under her palm, and she turned it, pulled it open, and stepped through in one fluid motion that left no room for him to interject.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Sasaki Fuyumi chewed a mouthful of rice, staring at the space where she'd been standing.
"Don't skip meals on my account." He set his chopsticks down and leaned back in his chair, a slow, genuine smile spreading across his face. She's worried about me eating properly. That's not how you talk to someone you hate.
She's falling. She just doesn't know it yet.
---
Ruri had barely released the door handle when the apartment across the hall opened.
A woman stood in the doorway—late twenties, maybe early thirties, with the kind of effortless beauty that belonged on the cover of a josei manga rather than in a residential hallway. Her hair was dark chestnut, falling in loose waves past her shoulders, and she wore a fitted cashmere cardigan over a simple camisole that did very little to disguise the generous curve of her chest. High cheekbones. Full lips. A beauty mark just below her left eye that gave her entire face a knowing, slightly dangerous quality.
She smelled like white tea and bergamot, and her eyes—wide, amber-brown, sharp with curiosity—were fixed directly on Ruri.
A girl? Coming out of Fuyumi-kun's apartment? Ichinose Sayuri's perfectly shaped eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. Is this the one he's been pining over?
Ruri froze.
His neighbor. She saw me. She saw me coming out of his apartment wearing his clothes with my hair a mess and my face red and—
She's going to think we—
The blood drained from Ruri's face, then rushed back twice as hot. She ducked her head, clutched her bag against her chest like a shield, and bolted for the stairwell without a single word of greeting.
Her footsteps echoed down the concrete steps—rapid, panicked, fading—and Ichinose Sayuri watched the empty corridor for a long moment, one manicured hand resting on her doorframe, lips curving into a small, knowing smile.
Pretty little thing. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and glanced at Sasaki Fuyumi's closed door. So that's his type.