Chapter 470 | I Kick With Love

Chapter 470: 470 | I Kick With Love

Kumiko lay across Jordan’s chest and decided the couch was her permanent address now.

Her legs had stopped answering her texts. One lavender ribbon sat on the rug two feet from her hand, and reaching it felt like a hike up Mount Fuji in flip-flops. Under her cheek, Jordan’s heart thumped slow at sixty-four beats a minute. She counted every beat, because counting kept her brain from floating out the factory windows.

"You need to sit up and eat, Kumi." His voice rumbled through his ribs straight into her ear.

"I can’t sit up, Jordan-kun. I’m a mermaid now, and mermaids eat seaweed and feelings."

"This mermaid eats what I cook, or she goes back in the harbor."

Chloe set two bowls on the coffee table hard enough to rattle the spoons. Kimchi jjigae, red and glossy, with fat cubes of tofu and curls of pork belly floating under a raft of scallion. Steam fogged her gold glasses. She wore Jordan’s black shirt and nothing Kumiko could see below the hem, and a red crescent from Jordan’s teeth peeked over the collar.

Kumiko peeled herself off his chest in stages. First her cheek, then her shoulders, then the rest of her, wobbling. Jordan caught her waist before she tipped into the soup. She ended up sideways in his lap because her thighs refused every other arrangement.

Jordan picked up a spoon and blew on it. Then he held it to her mouth.

She stared at the spoon. She stared at him. Her face went so hot she worried her eyebrows would combust and leave her looking permanently surprised.

"You can’t feed me," she whispered. "That’s a page forty thing, and we’re only on page thirty-four."

"Then skip ahead and open your mouth."

She opened her mouth. The broth hit her tongue sour and bright, then the gochugaru bloomed behind it and set her sinuses on fire. Tofu melted against the roof of her mouth. Her eyes watered so fast she had to blink twice.

"It’s just spicy," she said. "My eyes are reacting to capsaicin, which is a chemical, and chemicals aren’t emotions."

"Sure they aren’t." Chloe sat on the rug with her own bowl, legs folded under her.

Kumiko watched Chloe eat because watching Chloe was a hobby she had picked up in October and never put down. Chloe took a bite. She waited. She took another bite. Her left hand stayed flat over her stomach under the shirt, and she did not seem to notice it there.

Nine bites. Chloe set the bowl down after nine bites, same as lunch on Sunday.

Kumiko wrote it in her head, since her notebook was across the room under the ribbon. Chloe-chan, nine bites, hand on tummy, glasses pushed up twice. She would transfer it later in pink ink.

Chloe pulled her laptop off the end table and opened a document. Kumiko leaned around Jordan’s shoulder to read it. The title said RUN OF SHOW in all caps, and under it the lines went down in seconds.

7:59:49. Lila sign-off.

8:00:00. Raid lands.

8:00:11. First note.

"Lila wants the first note at second eleven," Chloe said. "So I spent forty minutes today practicing ten seconds of silence."

"That’s the hardest part," Kumiko said. "Silence on stream feels like falling down a well. Everybody in chat thinks your internet died."

"Lila says they’ll think it’s art if I keep my eyes closed."

Jordan stole a piece of pork from Kumiko’s side of the bowl. "Are you scared?"

"I’m prepared." Chloe didn’t look up from the screen.

"That’s a yes," Jordan said to Kumiko.

"That’s a yes," Kumiko agreed. She pressed her face into his neck so Chloe couldn’t throw a scallion at her.

Chloe threw a scallion at her anyway. It bounced off Kumiko’s twin tail and landed in Jordan’s lap. He ate it.

Kumiko lifted her head. She had a thought, and the thought had already turned into a plan, and the plan had a page number. "Can we all sleep in the loft tonight? Page thirty-five, sub-point A. Nobody sleeps alone the night before a big thing. Dr. Nakamura says shared co-regulation lowers cortisol, and I have notes."

Chloe looked at her over the glasses for a long beat. "You kick in your sleep."

"I kick with love. It’s a different force."

"You stole the whole duvet on Sunday."

"I borrowed it, and I gave it back at five in the morning, warm."

Chloe closed the laptop. She stood, winced, and put a hand on Jordan’s head to push herself up. "Fine. Middle is his, and you’re on the wall side."

Kumiko made a sound that frightened a pigeon outside the window.

At 2:14 in the morning, Kumiko was still awake.

The loft glowed orange from the harbor lights. Jordan slept on his back in the middle, one arm flung over his eyes and the other tucked under Kumiko’s neck. His breathing had that hitch she had written down weeks ago. Four counts in, five counts out, a tiny catch at the top.

The other side of the bed was empty.

The sheet there had gone cool. Kumiko slid out from under his arm one inch at a time and replaced herself with his pillow. He turned his face into it and mumbled something about eggs. She pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t laugh.

The stairs creaked on the fourth step, so she skipped it. Her bare feet found the cold concrete at the bottom.

Chloe sat on the kitchen island in the dark. Her laptop was closed beside her. A mug of chamomile steamed between her hands, and the blue streak in her hair hung loose against her cheek. She was singing under her breath. Kumiko recognized the bridge from the recording, the part where Chloe’s voice had cracked open and turned into something nobody could clip and sell.

Chloe stopped the second she saw her.

"Go back to bed, Kumiko."

"I can’t. The wall side is cold without you on the other side to balance it."

"That isn’t how heat works."

"It’s how my heat works." Kumiko padded over and hopped up onto the island next to her. The quartz bit cold through her sleep shorts. She tucked her hands under her thighs and waited, because Chloe hated being chased into talking and loved being waited for.

Chloe drank her tea. Outside, a car alarm went off three blocks away and stopped.

"My dad sang off-key in the car," Chloe said finally. "Every Sunday on the way to the shop. He was terrible. He’d miss every high note and do it louder the second time."

Kumiko didn’t move. She barely breathed.

"He said I’d be on the radio someday. He said it like the weather report." Chloe turned the mug in her hands. "If I crack tomorrow, it lives on the internet forever. Somebody makes it a sound on TikTok. Some guy in Ohio uses it to fail a video about breakups."

"If you crack, I’ll clip it myself," Kumiko said. "I’ll make it the best crack in human history. I’ll put sparkles on it and set it to a lo-fi beat."