Hozuki Nozomi caught Alisa Mikhailovna Kujou's sidelong disdain out of the corner of his eye and let it slide off him like water. He had a warmer target in front of him.
He caught Shiina Mahiru's small hand under the desk and dragged the pad of his thumb in a slow circle across her palm. She squirmed at the tickle and turned in her seat, cornflower-blue eyes narrowed in reproach — though the reproach cracked halfway, softening into something helplessly fond. Honey-blonde strands slipped over her shoulder as she looked at him.
Something in his chest turned over. An idea landed.
"Mahiru. Come to a movie with me after class. I already asked Yukino."
She blinked. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"What about the others? Sayu, and…"
A movie was fine on its own, but three-in-a-line with him and Yukinoshita alone had the shape of a domestic disaster in the making. A shuraba waiting to bloom.
Hozuki Nozomi grinned and leaned close enough that his breath brushed her ear.
"We'll make it up to Sayu tonight. Properly."
Shiina Mahiru's cheeks pinked immediately and she pinched his forearm with two fingers.
Bad. He's so bad.
"…Fine. Together, then." She hesitated. "But — the movie. Which one?"
"Let me check." He thumbed his phone. "Ah. This one. 'The Record of the Nine-Turn Large Intestine Incident.'"
"Eh? Nine-turn… large intestine? Why does it have a name like that?"
She tilted her head, mouth working around a comment she didn't quite find.
He laughed under his breath.
"A title that strange has to be entertaining, right? If you hate it we'll walk out and try another. Deal?"
"…I'm curious now, actually. Let's do it." She sighed. "I'll have to reschedule shopping with Yumiko and the others, though."
Shiina Mahiru was well-liked and ran with Miura Yumiko's circle; if it had been anyone else asking, she'd have kept the plans without a second thought.
The chime rang before they could keep bantering. She snapped back into her upright honor-student posture, spine straight, notebook squared.
...
The next class happened to be Kirisu Mafuyu's.
The teacher walked in and caught Hozuki Nozomi in the act of reluctantly releasing Mahiru's fingers under the desk. Something ugly and undefined turned over in Kirisu Mafuyu's stomach — she refused to name it. She smoothed her pencil skirt, set her jaw, and pushed the feeling down into the flat, glacial register she used with unruly students.
Iceberg-sensei. Emotion: none.
Her clear, low voice filled the room. Hozuki Nozomi went through the motions of paying attention while his gaze slid — repeatedly, deliberately — to the shape of her mouth as she formed each syllable. He remembered exactly how she'd looked the last time he'd caught her off guard. The color she'd turned. The small, involuntary noise.
He exhaled through his nose. Truly, he was too naughty. He'd just locked in a movie with Mahiru and Yukinoshita, and here he was already coveting the beauty of the woman lecturing about integration by parts.
Kirisu Mafuyu felt the heat of that stare between her shoulder blades and stiffened, chalk pausing mid-stroke. A quick glance confirmed the culprit. Of course. That boy.
She looked away without a word and kept teaching. Distance. She should keep her distance from him. Not because she was afraid — she was absolutely, definitively not afraid — but because certain misplaced feelings should not be given room to grow.
She talked herself through it one careful step at a time and made it, barely, to the bell. She forgot to assign homework, gathered her materials with unusual haste, and left the room a beat faster than dignity strictly allowed.
Her cheeks were pink at the edges.
That awful boy had watched her the entire hour. As if he wanted to devour her.
So annoying.
Hozuki Nozomi's mouth curled as he watched her retreating heels click down the corridor. Kirisu-sensei really was adorable when she fled.
---
Afternoon. Club-activity hour.
Hozuki Nozomi walked Shiina Mahiru and Yukino Yukinoshita into the lobby of the cinema, and the ambient noise dropped a full register.
Mahiru's honey-blonde hair caught the overhead light like spun sugar; Yukinoshita's straight black fall of hair and glacier-blue eyes did the rest of the damage. The boys in the lobby lost the ability to aim their gaze anywhere that wasn't the two girls, and a chorus of small, sharp intakes of breath was immediately followed by a chorus of small, sharp corrections from the girlfriends attached to their arms. One girl pouted, spun on her heel, and marched out of the theater without her boyfriend at all.
The envy came at Hozuki Nozomi from three directions.
He'd walked in with a hand held by each girl — Mahiru on the right, Yukinoshita on the left — two of the most obviously luxurious "ships" any harbor-jockey could imagine. The two-timing tableau was flagrant. Some of the darker looks came from boyfriends whose girlfriends were, unfortunately, now looking at him.
Being this handsome was its own small burden. He allowed himself a private smirk.
Yukino Yukinoshita caught the smirk and rolled her eyes with practiced precision. She had no intention of stopping him. She hated crowded places, hated being stared at like display glass — but with him beside her, all of that noise dulled to something she could ignore. And, more privately: Yukino Yukinoshita was a hopeless navigator, directionally speaking, so she let his fingers stay wrapped around hers the whole way.
"~Come on. Drinks and popcorn."
He steered them to the counter, ordered milk tea and a large caramel popcorn, then herded them through the ticket gate. He'd deliberately chosen seats near the back — three consecutive, aisle-adjacent.
Yukinoshita wanted, badly, to make a comment. He had genuinely dragged her out to see something called The Record of the Nine-Turn Large Intestine Incident. A title like that. Was it going to be watchable at all?
But he rarely invited her out on his own, and refusal wasn't in her tonight.
The lights dropped. The screen bloomed to life.
...
The opening scene featured a round-cheeked boy in a watermelon-rind haircut and a stained apron beaming as he presented a platter of dark, glistening intestines to a panel of judges.
"I washed them! But I left a little bit inside — otherwise how would the judges know they're eating intestines?"
Yukino Yukinoshita's expression underwent a slow, glacial transformation.
If he left a little inside, then he was, functionally, serving the judges —
Her cheeks lit red. She swung her head toward Hozuki Nozomi and glared. What kind of degenerate film have you brought me to?
Hozuki Nozomi, seated between the two girls, caught the glare and smiled the exact smile that had gotten him into trouble in class. His palm settled — light, warm, entirely without permission — on the slender line of her thigh, just above where her black over-the-knee sock ended and pale skin began.
Yukinoshita's breath hitched. Her hand shot up to cover her own mouth on instinct, muffling the small sound before it could get anywhere near the row in front of them. Her face burned. She leaned in until her lips almost touched his ear, hissing.
"What do you think you're doing? Do you still want to keep that hand?"
Unhurried, he slid the hand from her thigh up around her waist instead and drew her a half-inch closer, the side of her body brushing his ribs.
"Yukino. This is the correct posture for watching a film. Look at Mahiru — she isn't objecting."
He tipped his chin toward the row of couples further down.
"And look at them. Some of them are being far more improper than we are."