Fuyumi's palm landed flat against the back of Mitsuki's skirt.
His fingers curled inward through the fabric, finding the plush give of flesh beneath pleated wool, and he squeezed—firm, deliberate, the kind of grip that left crescent-shaped impressions even through clothing. Before she could jerk away, he stepped forward, closing the remaining six inches between his chest and her shoulder blades, so that from any angle it looked like nothing more than a boyfriend standing behind his girlfriend at the shelf. Intimate. Normal.
The fluorescent strips overhead hummed their dead-white tone across towers of instant ramen and discounted mirin bottles. Somewhere two aisles over, a stock clerk's pricing gun went ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk in steady rhythm.
His ring finger shifted lower, found the seam of her skirt where the fabric pulled taut between her cheeks, and pressed inward against the cleft—right against the tight, puckered spot he could feel even through the wool and whatever thin layer she wore underneath. He didn't push hard. Just a slow, circular grind of his fingernail pad, tracing that small ring of muscle through cloth.
"Mmnh—"
The sound that escaped Mitsuki's lips was involuntary—half-swallowed, caught somewhere between a whimper and a moan. The kind of noise a girl made when she was trying very hard not to make any noise at all. Her eyes, those striking amber irises that had been razor-edged moments ago, glazed over with a sudden wet sheen, lashes fluttering as moisture gathered along the lower rims. The sharpness dissolved like ink in water.
This isn't happening. Not here. Not in the middle of—
"Stop it," she hissed through clenched teeth, her voice barely above a whisper and trembling at the edges. "This is a supermarket, you absolute—"
"Few days apart and your body's still this sensitive?" Fuyumi kept his voice low enough that only she could hear, his mouth close enough to her ear that his breath stirred the fine baby hairs along her nape. He watched the flush crawl up from her collar—pink to red to something almost feverish—and the corner of his lips pulled into that crooked, infuriating smirk.
His fingers didn't stop. If anything, they pressed harder, the ring finger grinding the fabric into that tight knot of nerve endings while his other fingers kneaded the soft, yielding flesh of her ass through the pleats. "Getting wet from being groped in a supermarket. That's a new level, Mitsuki."
She winced. The pressure behind her skirt sharpened into a pinch—he'd grabbed a fistful of her right cheek and squeezed until the ache bloomed hot and immediate, the kind of rough handling that made her gasp—but then the pain receded, leaving behind a strange, buzzing warmth that pooled and spread, almost like the soreness was metabolizing into something softer. Something that tingled.
Why does that feel—no. No.
Mitsuki's thoughts stuttered. She blinked, lips parting on nothing, and for a single suspended moment she simply stood there with her fingers frozen around a bottle of soy sauce she'd been pretending to examine.
When cognition snapped back into place, the shame hit first—a scalding wave that turned her ears scarlet beneath the dark curtain of her hair. She glared up at him over her shoulder, teeth gritted so hard a muscle jumped in her jaw.
"You've lost your mind," she spat.
This was a public space. Families with children pushed carts ten meters away. The overhead speakers were playing a tinny instrumental version of some J-pop song she couldn't name. And this psychopath had his hand clamped on her ass like he owned it.
If someone turns down this aisle right now, I will die. I will actually, literally die.
Fuyumi knew the risk. He wasn't stupid—if her driver came back, or some random housewife rounded the endcap with her cart, this would become an incident, the kind that ended with security footage and a police report.
But the image of Mitsuki standing at that display, picking out condoms—condoms that could only be for some other man—had detonated something in his chest that he hadn't managed to reassemble yet. Jealousy wasn't the right word. Jealousy implied competition. This was closer to territorial fury, irrational and hot, like someone had broken into a room he'd been told was his and rearranged all the furniture.
And now she was here, trembling, face flushed, teeth clamped on her lower lip to keep from making another sound, and she couldn't cry for help because that would mean admitting what was happening, and the thrill of that—the control—was intoxicating enough to override every survival instinct he had.
His ring finger pressed deeper into the cleft. Rotated. Slow.
"Don't— hahh... s-stop—"
Mitsuki's protest fractured mid-syllable. Her manicured nails dug into the metal shelf edge, knuckles white. Her face contorted—brows pinching upward, lips pressed into a thin line that kept trembling apart—and then her eyes squeezed shut. Both thighs clenched together, quaking visibly beneath her skirt hem, her knees threatening to buckle. The box in her other hand wobbled dangerously.
She's about to—from just this?
Fuyumi's brows rose. Through the layers of wool and cotton, he could feel the heat radiating from her skin, could feel the involuntary way her hips had shifted backward—not away from his hand, but into it, a micro-movement she probably wasn't even conscious of.
His mind flashed to that day in the Principal's office. Her foot in his lap. The way she'd gasped when his tongue had dragged across the soft pad of her toes—the same shocked, electric response, the same full-body tremor that said her wiring was different from most girls'. Certain places that should have been merely uncomfortable or ticklish were, for Mitsuki, something else entirely.
And his finger was currently pressing against one of those places.
A place some people considered filthy. A place others craved.
She likes it there.
The realization landed like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples through every assumption he'd made about the ice-cold heiress. Fuyumi's expression shifted—surprise first, then something darker, something that catalogued and filed the information away for later use.
Then he pulled his hand back.
Mitsuki didn't notice immediately. Her palms were braced against the shelf, head bowed, chest heaving in shallow, ragged pulls. A thin sheen of sweat had gathered along her hairline. Between her slightly parted thighs, the hem of her skirt was trembling with the residual shaking of her legs. A faint, sweet-sharp scent clung to the warm air between them—arousal mixing with her jasmine perfume and the sterile chill of supermarket ventilation.
It stopped. He stopped. Why did he—
She lowered her heels. She'd been on her tiptoes without realizing it, her body arching instinctively into a touch that was no longer there. A long, shuddering exhale left her lungs. Relief and disappointment tangled together in her chest like two cats fighting in a bag—neither winning, both drawing blood.
She turned around.
Fuyumi was gone.
In his place, rounding the far end of the aisle, was her driver—Miki, mid-thirties, stocky build stuffed into a black polyester chauffeur's blazer two seasons old, her square face ruddy with exertion—pushing a flatbed cart stacked with ten bags of rice, each one the 5kg variety, the tower of white plastic threatening to topple with every uneven wheel rotation. The cart's front left wheel squeaked on every revolution. Squee. Squee. Squee.
"Mitsuki-sama," Miki panted, stopping before her employer with both hands still gripping the cart handle. Sweat beaded along her temples, and the collar of her white dress shirt was darkened with moisture. "The rice—all ten bags, like you asked."
Ten bags. My back is going to file a formal complaint. I can already hear my spine writing the resignation letter.
Mitsuki understood instantly why Fuyumi had vanished. She smoothed her expression into its default mask—cool porcelain, untouchable—and kept her voice flat. "I'd like to leave."
Miki's face lit up like a child told Christmas had come early. "Then the rice—"
Mitsuki's gaze slid to her, cold enough to frost glass. "Go pay."
The light in Miki's eyes died. She managed a weak, lopsided smile and turned the cart toward the registers, the mountain of rice lurching forward with the reluctant momentum of something that did not want to be moved. Mitsuki fell into step beside her, eyes scanning every aisle entrance, every cluster of shoppers, every tall figure that might resolve into Fuyumi's silhouette.
The smell of fresh bread from the in-store bakery drifted past—yeast and butter and warm dough—mixing with floor cleaner and the faintly metallic bite of refrigerator coils.
---
The checkout area was a bottleneck. Weekend crowds had compressed the lines into dense, shuffling columns of carts and baskets, each register manned by a clerk scanning items at varying speeds while the overhead beep-beep-beep of barcodes created an arrhythmic soundtrack. A toddler somewhere was having a meltdown. An elderly man argued about an expired coupon.
Mitsuki's brow creased. She turned to Miki. "You handle the line. I'll wait here."
This was the most populated section of the store—dozens of people in every direction, the warm press of bodies and the low hum of collective impatience. Even Fuyumi wouldn't try anything here. She planted herself near a gumball machine by the exit corridor, arms folded beneath her chest, expression arranged into careful neutrality.
Miki nodded and steered the groaning cart into the shortest queue, which was still eight people deep. The sight of a single woman pushing ten bags of rice drew curious glances from nearby shoppers—a college-age girl in a Jujutsu Kaisen hoodie leaned over to whisper something to her boyfriend, who stifled a laugh.
I am going to put in my two weeks' notice. I am going to become a monk. Monks don't carry rice.
Mitsuki stood with her arms crossed, face blank as a marble bust.
Thump.
Something collided with her backside—a firm, blunt impact against her right cheek that sent a sharp sting blooming across the spot Fuyumi had been squeezing minutes ago. She flinched, spine snapping straight, and whipped her head around.
Fuyumi stood directly behind her, shopping basket hanging from one arm, his expression arranged into a mask of earnest contrition that was so perfectly calibrated it could have won an acting award.
"Sorry about that," he said, loud enough for the two or three people who'd glanced over to hear. "Didn't see you standing there. My bad." He performed a small, apologetic bow—just enough to sell it. The onlookers lost interest immediately. A man bumping into someone in a crowded checkout area. Happens every day.
Mitsuki's eyes narrowed. She studied his face—the angular jaw, the disarming half-smile, the way his dark eyes held a challenge beneath their surface warmth—and her folded arms tightened.
"What do you want?" Her voice came out flat, stripped of inflection.
Fuyumi tilted his head, openly amused. That cold mask of hers was impressive. Fifteen minutes ago she'd been trembling on her tiptoes with her eyes rolled shut, biting her lip hard enough to leave marks, and now she looked at him like he was something unpleasant she'd found on the bottom of her shoe. The contrast made his chest tight—not with anger, but with the sharp, predatory urge to peel the mask off again and see what was underneath.
Then the condoms surfaced in his memory and the warmth curdled.
His smile didn't change, but his voice dropped—low, private, meant only for her ears. "You drove here. Go to your car and wait for me. Once you're there, send me your location. And don't let your driver know." A beat. His eyes held hers without blinking. "You know what happens if you do."
He turned and walked toward the exit without waiting for an answer, weaving through the crowd, shopping basket swinging at his side. He didn't look back.
---
[ Underground Parking Level B2 ]
Mitsuki stood frozen for what felt like a full minute. The color in her face cycled—white to red to white again—like a traffic signal stuck in a loop. The noise of the checkout area washed over her without registering. The toddler was still crying. The barcode scanner was still beeping. The world was still turning.
Miki appeared at her elbow, slightly out of breath. "All paid, Mitsuki-sama! The total was—"
"The car can't fit all that rice." Mitsuki's voice was steady, automatic, running on a script her conscious mind hadn't written. "Call someone from the house to come pick it up. I'm tired. I'll wait in the car." She held out her hand. "Keys."
Miki blinked, then fished the car keys from her blazer pocket and placed them in Mitsuki's palm. "Should I come with—"
"No. Handle the rice."
Miki watched her employer walk away, the click of her low heels precise and measured against the tile floor.
Something's off. She looks pale. Did she eat today? She never eats.
Mitsuki did not go directly to the parking garage. She turned, walked back through the store, navigated to the health and personal care aisle—now empty—and picked up one box of Okamoto Zero One condoms, ultra-thin, 12-pack. She carried it to the self-checkout without making eye contact with anyone, scanned it, paid with her phone, and dropped it into her handbag with the mechanical precision of someone defusing a bomb.
The elevator to B2 was empty. The descent was silent except for the hum of the cable and the faint ding as each level passed. B1 had been full—weekend shoppers, SUVs circling for spots, the bark of engines echoing off concrete. B2 was different. Sparse. Half-lit. The kind of floor where only long-term parkers left their cars—dusty sedans and forgotten compacts with yellowed parking tickets tucked under their wipers. The air tasted of motor oil and cold concrete, with the faintly sweet chemical undertone of exhaust residue.
Mitsuki's heels echoed as she crossed the open floor. Each click bounced off the low ceiling and returned to her a half-second later, doubled, as though someone else were walking just behind her. Her shoulders were tight. Her fingers gripped her handbag strap hard enough that the leather creaked. Her body trembled—a fine, continuous vibration, like a tuning fork struck against stone—and she couldn't tell if it was fear or anticipation or both braided so tightly together that the distinction had ceased to matter.
Her car was parked in a far corner. A black Lexus LS, this year's model, its polished surface catching the anemic glow of the overhead strip lights. She unlocked it with the fob—chirp chirp—slid into the back seat, and pulled the door shut. The cabin sealed around her with the dense, padded silence of expensive soundproofing. Cream leather seats. The lingering scent of the cedar air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, mixed with Miki's faint tobacco smell from the driver's seat, and beneath both, the clean, animal warmth of Mitsuki's own skin.
She did not feel safe.
The enclosed space made it worse, somehow. She was boxed in, visible through tinted windows to anyone who walked past, but unable to see clearly out. Her trembling intensified. She pulled her phone from her bag and stared at the messaging app, thumb hovering over Fuyumi's contact.
She bit down on her lower lip until the flesh whitened. Then she typed her location and hit send.
The replies came in rapid succession—each one a footstep closing the distance.
> Fuyumi: Three minutes.
> Fuyumi: I'm on B2 now.
> Fuyumi: I can see your car.
> Fuyumi: Walking over.
Each message was a countdown. Each buzz of her phone was a heartbeat in her hand. He was narrating his own approach like a predator announcing itself—I'm here, I see you, I'm coming—and the deliberate, almost theatrical pacing of it made Mitsuki's pulse hammer against her throat.
She looked out the window.
A figure moved through the half-lit garage—tall, unhurried, hands in his jacket pockets, silhouette sharpening with each step. The overhead light caught his face as he passed beneath it. That jawline. That easy, rolling gait, like nothing in the world could make him rush.
Mitsuki's eyes widened. Her hand pressed flat against the window glass.
He's really here.
Fuyumi stopped beside the Lexus. Stood there for a moment, head tilted, examining the car with the casual appraisal of a buyer at a dealership. Then he raised one hand and rapped his knuckles against the rear passenger window.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound was impossibly loud in the silent garage.
Seconds passed. Five. Ten. Fifteen. The tinted glass revealed nothing of what was happening inside.
Then the rear door clicked open, swinging outward by a few inches—just enough.
Fuyumi's lips curled. He pulled the door wide and slid onto the back seat, pulling it shut behind him. The cabin's silence swallowed the sound of the latch engaging.
He looked at her.
Mitsuki sat pressed against the far door, spine rigid, knees together, hands clasped in her lap with a white-knuckle grip that made the tendons in her wrists stand out. Her face was a battlefield—the cold mask cracking in real-time, fear and anger and something hotter fighting for control of her expression. Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. A strand of dark hair had escaped her clip and clung to the damp skin of her temple.
Fuyumi settled into the cream leather, making a show of running his palm across the seat surface. He bounced once, testing the give.
"Nice," he said. "Soft enough. This would be comfortable for car sex."
The words hit Mitsuki like a slap. Her jaw clenched. Humiliation burned across her cheekbones—red and immediate—and her eyes, those gorgeous amber irises, went glassy with a fury that had nowhere to go.
Then she moved.
Her hand shot into her handbag, pulled out the box of Okamoto Zero One, and flung it at his chest. The cardboard struck his sternum with a soft thwack and he caught it on reflex, one hand snapping up. She closed her eyes, turned her face away, and sat there like a prisoner awaiting sentencing—chin raised, lips pressed flat, every line of her body radiating a defiance that was indistinguishable from surrender.
If this is happening, it's happening on my terms. He doesn't finish inside me. That's the line. That's the one thing I keep.
Fuyumi looked down at the box in his hand. Okamoto Zero One. Ultra-thin. 12-pack.
His gaze lifted to her face—eyes still shut, jaw still set, the rapid flutter of her pulse visible at the hollow of her throat.
"You bought the condoms for me?" The surprise in his voice was genuine.
Mitsuki's eyes stayed closed. When she spoke, her voice was ice over a river that was anything but frozen. "You can use every single one. As long as you don't come inside me, I don't care what you do."
A beat of silence followed. Then her lips twisted into a cold, thin smile—the kind that dared him rather than invited him. The implication was clear: You won't last through twelve. You don't have it in you.
Fuyumi stared at her.
The jealousy that had been coiling in his chest like a living thing—the image of her buying condoms for some faceless other man, the corrosive scenarios he'd been constructing for the past twenty minutes—all of it dissolved in an instant. She'd bought them for him. She'd known, somewhere in that ruthlessly pragmatic mind of hers, that this was coming, and she'd prepared for it the only way she could: by controlling what she was able to control.
Something warm and possessive spread through his ribs.
He lunged forward, closed the distance between them in one smooth motion, and pressed his lips hard against her cheek—a forceful, open-mouthed kiss that landed just below her cheekbone, wet and deliberate, the mwah of it obscenely loud in the sealed cabin. His hand cupped the other side of her face, holding her still.
Mitsuki's eyes flew open. Color flooded her face in a violent rush—from the bridge of her nose to the tips of her ears—and she shoved at his shoulder, scrubbing the back of her hand across her cheek where his saliva cooled against her skin. She glared at him with the incandescent fury of a cat dropped in a bathtub, every hair on end, every nerve lit.
"Don't do that—"
"Don't be so scary." Fuyumi was grinning—a real grin, wide and unguarded, the kind she'd never seen from him before. He reached over and cupped her face with one hand, thumb stroking across the apple of her cheek where the blush burned hottest, feeling the impossible softness of her skin beneath the pad of his finger.