Hearing the unmistakably feminine voice drift through the phone speaker—soft, guileless, asking about shared quilts of all things—the smile on Takahashi Mio's face didn't just freeze. It shattered. Like a thin sheet of ice struck by a hammer, the fragments falling silently into the pit of her stomach.
So. This is what you meant by 'being busy.' Busy playing house with your ex-girlfriend. Busy sharing blankets and playing domestic. I see. I see perfectly now.
The accusations lined up on her tongue, sharp and ready. The words were right there—at the tip, on the edge, practically vibrating with the need to be screamed into the receiver. But no sound came. Not a single syllable. Her throat had locked itself shut, a fist clenched around her voice, trapping everything inside.
Cold raindrops struck her face, one after another, indifferent to her misery. The dazzling lights of Tokyo at night—that famed Nihon no akari she usually found so beautiful—reflected in her wide, glassy eyes, but the glow was smeared and fractured now, blurred into meaningless smudges of gold and white.
A sharp, twisting pain lanced through her lower abdomen—the physical manifestation of emotional devastation—and her body began to tremble uncontrollably. She was no sturdier than a single petal clinging to a branch in a storm, battered by wind and rain, one gust away from being torn loose and cast into the mud.
Four words surfaced in her mind, cold and cruel and perfectly apt: A name, no substance.
She was his girlfriend. Officially. Publicly. She had the title, the label, the social media post to prove it. But what did that title actually mean? What did it grant her? He had never looked at her the way he looked at Saori. Never held her with that same desperate, tender intensity. She was a girlfriend in name only. A placeholder. A line item on a contract.
Even though she had always understood—deep down, in the quiet, honest corners of her heart—that the gifts fate bestows are never truly free, that every blessing comes with a price tag attached in invisible ink, the understanding didn't make it hurt any less.
Right now, in this moment, standing alone in the rain while he was warm and dry with her, she felt so profoundly, achingly wronged that she wanted to scream. To sob. To sink to her knees and let the tears come until there was nothing left.
Why does this scoundrel have so many women orbiting around him?! What is he, a harem protagonist? Some kind of human gravitational singularity? It's infuriating. It's unfair. It's... it's...
On the other end of the line, Shiratori Seiya stared at the phone with a mixture of exasperation and something uncomfortably close to guilt. He turned to the girl beside him—Saori, still holding the bedding, still blinking those impossibly innocent eyes—and raised his index finger to his lips in a universal shush gesture.
Seeing this, Saori's rosy mouth obediently curled shut. She pressed her lips together and nodded slowly, her expression blank but somehow conveying a childlike awareness of having done something wrong. Saori messed up. Saori will be quiet now.
"Hello? Mio? Are you still there?"
The phone remained silent. The absence of her voice was somehow louder than any accusation she could have hurled. Shiratori Seiya called her name again, his tone shifting from surprised to genuinely concerned.
"Mio. Answer me."
Two seconds of dead air. Then, finally, her voice emerged—small, thin, laced with a bitterness she couldn't quite hide.
"Seiya... am I disturbing you right now? Should I... should I just hang up and leave you to your evening?"
The question was a trap. The kind of trap that had spikes at the bottom and no ladder to climb back out. She was testing him—giving him the opportunity to dismiss her, to confirm her worst fears, to prove that she really was just an inconvenience in his life.
Shiratori Seiya drew a long, steadying breath. The feeling of being caught in the act—even though, rationally, there was no act to be caught in—prickled at his skin. It was annoying. Frustrating. He hadn't done anything wrong. He shouldn't have to defend himself. And yet...
He controlled his tone carefully. Made it steady. Earnest. Serious. The voice he used when he needed her to listen, truly listen, without letting her emotions twist his words into something they weren't.
"If you were genuinely disturbing me right now, I wouldn't have answered your call. Think about that. If the situation were exactly what you're imagining in your head—if I were truly, actively doing something I needed to hide—would I have picked up the phone? Would I be talking to you right now?"
A pause. Let the logic sink in.
"If you want to know what's actually happening here—the reality, not the catastrophe your imagination is constructing—then come see for yourself. I'm not hiding anything from you."
Another pause. Then, softer. "Where are you right now? Tell me. I'm coming to get you."
His words cut through the fog of her misery. The rational part of her brain—the part that had been drowned out by the roaring static of jealousy and hurt—slowly reasserted itself. Wait. Could it be... could I have actually misunderstood the situation? Jumped to conclusions? Let my insecurities write a narrative that doesn't exist?
Drawing a shaky, shuddering breath, Takahashi Mio forced herself to calm down. The tears that had been threatening to spill receded just slightly. She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and, her voice still small but steadier now, reported her location.
By the time Shiratori Seiya's car pulled up to the curb, Takahashi Mio had been squatting at the entrance of the convenience store for what felt like an eternity. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, her shoulders trembling with a cold that had seeped past her skin and into her bones. She looked, in that moment, less like the proud, vibrant girl who had verbally eviscerated Hojo Shione just hours earlier, and more like a rain-soaked stray kitten.
Seeing the familiar car pull to a stop, she scrambled to her feet—her legs numb, her joints protesting—and stumbled toward him.
Shiratori Seiya stepped out of the driver's side, a thick down jacket draped over his arm. He swung it around her shoulders, the heavy fabric swallowing her frame, and looked down at her thoroughly drenched state with a frown that was equal parts exasperation and genuine concern.
"Didn't it occur to you to go inside the store to take shelter? You know, where there's heating? And a roof?"
Takahashi Mio lifted her chin to glare at him, her lips pale and trembling from the cold. "Go... go inside? Like this?" She gestured vaguely at her soaked, disheveled, utterly bedraggled appearance. "Walking into a brightly lit convenience store looking like a drowned rat? I would literally rather die. Like, genuinely. Death would be less embarrassing."
Shiratori Seiya pinched the bridge of his nose. "So standing at the entrance—still fully visible to every single person who walks past, I might add—is somehow less embarrassing?"
"The entrance has shadows. The light doesn't hit my face there."
Her logic was so flawlessly, idiotically vain that he couldn't even muster a rebuttal. So concerned with appearances that she's willing to freeze half to death. Unbelievable.
He bundled her into the passenger seat, the car's heater already running full blast. Once inside, he fished a clean towel from the backseat and unceremoniously dropped it onto her head.
"Dry yourself off. You look like you just lost a fight with a lake."
"Oh."
While she was occupied with the towel, scrubbing at her dripping hair, Shiratori Seiya leaned across the center console. His intention was simple. Practical. Help her fasten her seatbelt so they could get moving, get her home, get her warm. But halfway through the motion, his gaze involuntarily flickered downward—and stopped.
The rain had plastered her thin clothes against her skin like a second layer of translucent fabric. A damp, subtle, distinctly feminine fragrance rose from her—shampoo and rainwater and something else, something warm and skin-deep. It entered his lungs with his next breath, and suddenly the small, enclosed space of the car felt significantly smaller.
He had always known, on a purely factual, measurements-on-paper level, that Takahashi Mio possessed an exceptional figure. But knowing something abstractly and seeing it—truly seeing it—from a distance of mere inches were two entirely different experiences. The fullness. The curve. The way the wet fabric clung and revealed.
It's... only slightly smaller than Shione's, I think. The comparison surfaced before he could stop it. And completely, entirely different from Saori's. Worlds apart. Different universes, really.
The mental image of Saori—flat, slender, almost boyish in her borrowed shirt—flashed through his mind. Then Shione. Then back to Mio. A subconscious, automatic cataloguing that his brain performed without his permission.
He caught himself. Snapped back to reality so abruptly it almost gave him whiplash. What am I doing? What kind of comparison is this? Focus. He clicked the seatbelt into place with perhaps more force than necessary and straightened back into his own seat, his expression carefully blank.
But Takahashi Mio had noticed. Oh, she had noticed everything. The flicker of his gaze. The fractional pause. The way his jaw had tightened just slightly before he pulled away.
The corners of her lips—still pale from the cold—curved upward into a small, satisfied, deeply gratified smile. Her eyes, still rimmed with red from her earlier tears, glinted with a spark of renewed confidence. So. I'm not entirely invisible to you after all, am I, you blockhead?
The satisfaction, however, was short-lived. As the car pulled away from the curb and began its journey through the rain-slicked streets of Tokyo, a heavy silence descended. Shiratori Seiya kept his eyes fixed on the road. His hands on the steering wheel. His expression unreadable. He seemed to have absolutely no intention of offering any explanation for the phone call. The female voice. The "shared quilt." Any of it.
Mio turned her head, her gaze sweeping over his profile. The firm line of his jaw. The slight crease between his brows. Say something, she silently begged. Explain. Deny. Defend yourself. Give me anything to work with. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Opened. Closed. A fish gasping for words.
Two intersections passed. Then, at the third red light—the glow of the traffic signal painting the rain on the windshield in washes of crimson—she couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Um... can you please, for the sake of my rapidly deteriorating sanity, tell me what's actually going on?"
"I know I said I wouldn't interfere with your personal life. And I meant that. I did. But if I have absolutely no idea what's happening, my brain just... it fills in the blanks with the worst possible scenarios. And the speed at which you two seem to be, I don't know, rekindling your old flame is honestly just a little bit terrifying from my perspective. A heads-up would be nice."
Shiratori Seiya turned his head slightly, his gaze meeting hers for a brief moment before returning to the road. "If I tell you the truth, will you actually believe it? One hundred percent? I've told you before that I don't lie to you. But there's a saying—seeing is believing, hearing is just hearing. Even after I explain, you'll still harbor doubts, won't you? That's just human nature."
Takahashi Mio lowered her eyes. She couldn't argue. He was right. Even if he laid out every detail with perfect, logical clarity, a small, suspicious part of her would keep asking: But what if he's just really good at lying? What if he's telling a partial truth to cover a larger deception? She might believe fifty percent. Sixty, if she was feeling generous. But a hundred? Absolute, unquestioning faith? That was a lot to ask.
Still. She pursed her lips, the pressure of curiosity overwhelming the caution.
"But you should at least say something, shouldn't you? This is exactly how misunderstandings happen in every single drama I've ever watched. The male and female leads refuse to communicate, so everything spirals into a huge mess, and by the time they finally clear it up, they've already wasted half the season being miserable and avoiding each other. I don't want that. I don't want to waste time."
Her attitude now was a stark contrast to the fierce, defiant woman who had faced down Hojo Shione. Gone was the razor tongue and the blazing eyes. In their place was something softer. More vulnerable. Her voice carried a girlish bashfulness—a shy, almost pleading quality that she would have been mortified to hear played back on a recording.
Shiratori Seiya glanced at her. Saw the slight pout of her lips. The way her fingers were nervously twisting the edge of the towel. His heart stirred—just a little, just for a moment. With a quiet sigh, he began to explain. Intermittently at first, then more steadily, he laid out the situation: the rain. The collapsing ceiling. The apartment that was less a home and more a indoor waterfall. Saori, soaked and smiling, waiting for him in the storm.
As the details accumulated, Takahashi Mio's eyes grew wider and wider. Her mouth formed a small, incredulous 'o'. The skepticism was still there—she couldn't banish it entirely—but it was now wrestling with something unexpected: sympathy.
Is it really... that bad? Is someone actually living like that?
Her eyes clearly conveyed the unspoken question. Shiratori Seiya met her gaze and nodded.
"I know you don't fully believe me yet. I didn't believe it either at first—not really, not until I saw it with my own eyes. And when I did..." He shook his head slowly. "The reality was even worse than the video. Worse than anything I could have imagined."
He paused. The windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm.
"I contacted a real estate agent today. Tomorrow, you and Saori are both moving into my apartment complex. Separate units. If you're willing—if you want to truly understand—you can come with us tomorrow. See for yourself. Seeing is believing."
The words hung in the air. Takahashi Mio fell silent. The earlier feelings of betrayal and jealousy receded, replaced by a strange, complicated knot of emotions. She tried, genuinely tried, to place herself in Hasegawa Saori's position. To imagine waking up in a room where water dripped from the ceiling onto her face. To imagine calling that place home.
She couldn't. Try as she might, her mind simply refused to construct the image. She, who had always enjoyed a life of relative comfort and luxury and aesthetic pleasure, couldn't conceive of existing in such a space.
Compared to that... I guess I really am inferior to that lunatic in some ways. She endures. She survives. She never complains. She just... smiles.
But this was assuming Shiratori Seiya's account was entirely truthful. A faint trace of sympathy—genuine, if fragile—bloomed in the soil where disgust had previously grown.
It lasted approximately thirty seconds.
Then, the practical implications of the situation crashed down on her like a collapsing ceiling of her own. Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Hasegawa Saori was going to be living in the same residential complex as her? The same cluster of buildings? Potentially on the same floor? Within shouting distance? Within bamboo-sword-wielding distance?!
Wouldn't that make everything EVEN MORE dangerous?! And what about my plan?! My beautiful, carefully constructed plan to slowly, patiently corrupt Shiratori Seiya through sheer proximity?!
She had envisioned it so clearly. A neighboring unit. Casual morning encounters. "Oh, I accidentally made too much breakfast, would you like some?" Late-night script discussions that blurred into something more. The slow, inevitable erosion of his professional boundaries. Water droplets can wear away stone, that was the principle. She was the water. He was the stone. With enough time and patience, she could shape him however she wanted.
But now? Now that lunatic was going to be living in the same vicinity. It was like her gentle water droplets were suddenly competing with a fire hose. And instead of successfully eroding Shiratori Seiya's defenses, she'd be constantly looking over her shoulder, wondering if today was the day Saori finally snapped and finished what she started in the kendo club locker room.
My seduction strategy is completely ruined. Completely. Utterly. Ruined.
The atmosphere in the car fell into silence again. Takahashi Mio bit her lip, her fingers pressed against the cold glass of the window, watching the rain distort the city lights into abstract blurs of color.
It wasn't until the car pulled to a stop in the parking area beneath Shiratori Seiya's apartment building that a sound suddenly broke the quiet. A giggle. Soft at first, then louder. Then a full, helpless bout of laughter.
"Hahaha... ahahaha..."
Shiratori Seiya flinched. He turned his head sharply, staring at the girl beside him with open bewilderment. Did the rain give her a fever? Is she delirious? Has the emotional whiplash finally cracked something?
Noticing his alarmed expression, Takahashi Mio brought a hand to her mouth, trying to stifle the laughter. Her eyes, still red-rimmed, sparkled with a strange, manic cheerfulness.
"Do you actually, genuinely, like me? Like, like like me?"
"Huh?"
His brow furrowed so deeply it looked painful. He stared at her as if she'd just asked whether gravity was optional. "Hold on. I have fever reducers upstairs. Just... hold on a little longer until we get inside."
The flat, deadpan dismissal would have crushed her an hour ago. Now, she seemed to take it as confirmation. She leaned in closer, her smile widening, her eyes searching his face.
"Don't deny it. Don't even try. Think about it logically. If you truly, genuinely felt nothing for me—if I was just a business arrangement, a project, a transaction—why would you go through all this trouble to explain everything? Why would you care whether I misunderstood or not?"
"Even if the whole thing was a misunderstanding, Saori said what she said. And if you'd just ignored me tonight—let me stew in my jealousy, let me cry myself to sleep alone in my apartment—wouldn't you have had a perfectly uninterrupted, blissful night with her? A night of passion, even?"
She unbuckled her seatbelt with a decisive click and twisted in her seat to face him fully. Her gaze lingered on his face, tracing his features with an intensity that bordered on intoxicating. Her voice dropped to a knowing, almost teasing murmur.
"Just admit it, Shiratori Seiya. You like me. Maybe not as much as her. Maybe not in the same way. But you do. You definitely do."
"..."