Five More Minutes…

(Shin's PoV)

—

My arm was dead.

That was the first thing I registered upon waking: the specific, buzzing absence of sensation in my right arm, which had been serving as Akane's pillow for what I estimated to be several hours.

She was still asleep on top of me, her cheek pressed into my chest, one hand fisted loosely in my shirt, her breath slow and even against my collarbone.

Her hair was everywhere. Tangled across my shoulder and up the side of my face and probably woven into the couch cushions in ways we'd have to cut out later.

I lay there for a moment, not moving, because I didn't want to wake up this beautiful 'princess'.

My face felt raw in a way that meant I'd been crying at some point.

Her eyes were a little swollen too, and there was a faint redness at the bridge of her nose that hadn't been there yesterday.

We looked like the two survivors of a shipwreck in a library — bruised, bookish, and thoroughly done.

Under my hand, Akane's breathing stayed slow and deep and perfectly even, the breathing of someone who was finally allowing herself to relax. No twitches, no sudden grips on my shirt... nothing.

I'd learned to read her sleep the way she read my expressions, and this was the rarest kind: total surrender. She felt safe enough here to be gone.

Then I tried to move my dead arm, and the pins-and-needles sensation arrived like a small army with spears.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound.

Akane stirred anyway, because she's tuned to my discomfort the way a dog is tuned to the rustle of a wrapper from across a room.

"Mm...?" she murmured, not opening her eyes. Her grip on my shirt tightened a fraction. "Stop moving. You'll wake me up, dumbhead." 

'Okay, she's returned to normality.'

"I'm already awake, Akane. And my arm has left my body. It's gone. It's joined the ancestors." I said.

"Goodbye, arm. We'll remember you." She snuggled deeper into me.

"The ancestors don't want it. It still has pins and needles." 

"Shh." Her voice was a low, sleep-rough purr. "It'll come back. I'm still here. Don't be so dramatic."

I let out a quiet laugh, and the vibration moved through her too, and she made a small, contented sound against my chest.

"Five more minutes, please," she murmured. "You're way too comfortable."

"You always say that." 

"Time is a social construct. I'm not bound by its rules." She said, snuggling even more.

I lifted my other hand and set it on her head, and she hummed.

The house was quiet. Outside the curtains, evening had already deepened into night, leaving only the faint glow of the streetlights around the edges, and the whole weight of what we'd talked about hours ago was still sitting in the room somewhere — but not on us. Not right now.

Right now there was just her on my chest and the slow rhythm of her breathing, the faint smell of her shampoo, the dead arm, and the small, ordinary miracle of waking up next to someone who'd chosen to stay.

But then, my phone started screaming, destroying the peace.

Not ringing. Screaming — full volume from the coffee table, buzzing itself in a slow circle across the wood, and Akane's whole body jolted against mine with a muffled snarl.

"Kill it. Right now." She demanded.

"Don't forget that I have only one working arm."

"Then kill it with that one."

I stretched for the phone, caught it on the third pass of its little circular journey, and looked at the screen.

Tsubame Yamamoto.

Akane cracked one eye open, read the name upside down, and let out a long, doomed sigh into my shirt.

"Of course," she muttered. "The virus has a schedule. I had almost forgotten about her." Then, magnanimously, she pushed herself half-upright on my chest and waved a royal hand at the phone. "Answer it. Speaker. If I have to suffer, I'm suffering informed."

I answered.

"SHIIIIN-KUUUUN~"

The voice detonated out of the speaker at a volume that made Akane recoil like a cat from a hairdryer.

"Sorry for calling at this hour! I'm so sorry! But I seriously need you to check the material! I sent it days ago, and the rehearsal is coming. I've been staring at my phone like a woman waiting for war news!" A dramatic gasp for air. "Did you listen to the tracks? Did you see my messages? The dead spot? Shin-kun, the dead spot—"

"The dead spot at one-forty," I said, dragging my brain up to speed. "Second track. Yeah — I saw your messages. I'm sorry, Yamamoto-san, yesterday and today were..." I glanced down at Akane, at her swollen eyes and pillow-creased cheek. "...complicated. I'll go through everything tonight, I promise. The gap at one-forty, and the speech."

"The speech runs forty seconds long," Tsubame wailed. "Forty! And I love every word of it, which is exactly the problem, so you have to be the executioner. Cut the middle paragraph. Or don't! You decide! You're the boss!" A rustle of paper on her end. "Oh — and ignore the stage layout PDF I sent; it's the old one. I keep forgetting to send the new one. I'll send it tonight. I'm a disaster; please don't tell the council president."

"Your secret's safe," I replied.

"You're a good man, Shin-kun. Thank you for existing." Then her voice swung up into a brighter register, the sound of someone arriving at the actual point of the call. "SO. The real question. Wednesday! Late afternoon! Concert rehearsal, full run-through, the whole club will be there. Are you free? I need you as my personal supervisor. It falls apart without you. I will personally cry if you won't be there."

I looked down at Akane. Tsubame already knew that she was coming with me.

The Death Lady looked back up at me. And then, with her chin still resting on my sternum and her eyes locked on mine, she raised her voice to carry, sweet as syrup:

"Wednesday? I'm free Wednesday. What do you say we do something, Shin?"

There was a half-second of silence on the line.

Then Tsubame cackled.

"Is that her?! That's her! Perfect — bring her too, then!" Zero hesitation, zero missed beat, pure delight. "It's a great way to make friends! I've been wanting a second meeting with the scary girlfriend anyway; the first one ended too fast, and I didn't even get her number!"

Akane's eyebrow twitched at 'scary girlfriend.'

"I'll be there," she said, louder, directly at the phone. "Count on it." I could literally hear Akane's unspoken words: 'you gyaru whore'.

"YAY! Okay! Wednesday, six o'clock, outside the front gates — don't be late, Shin-kun, and check the material tonight or I'll call again at breakfast! Byeee~!"

The call cut.

Silence settled back over the living room, ringing faintly at the edges the way it always did after Tsubame, like the air needed a moment to recover.

I set the phone down on the coffee table.

Akane pushed herself the rest of the way up, sat back on her heels on the couch, and scratched her chin slowly, eyes narrowed at the middle distance with the expression of a detective reviewing a closed case.

"You know," she said, "I was so furious with Kenji yesterday that I forgot to ask him one important thing about this walking slut virus." Her fingers kept scratching. "I should have asked him whether her particular way of being a pain in the ass is his doing. Whether the calls, the timing, the 'bringing her too' — whether it was part of some of his 'plans.'"

"It wouldn't change anything," I said.

Akane paused. Looked at me. Considered it.

"...No," she admitted. "It wouldn't. She'd still call at dinner. She'd still be loud. And we'd still be going Wednesday, because I said so in front of a witness." She sighed, and then something shifted in her face — the analytical squint dissolving into something warmer and considerably more dangerous — and she rose up on her knees and leaned in close, her hair falling forward around us both.

"Right," she said, her voice dropping into its most loving and most menacing register. "New agenda. It's practically dinner time, we slept for hours, I've cried twice, and I have earned the following things: delivery food, a horror movie, and that Mordecai Von Ravenloft plush you've been holding hostage for years. So here's the division of labor, my love—" the my love arrived dipped in sarcasm and honey in exactly equal measure "—you go dig through your storage room and find my raven, and I'll handle the ordering. Acceptable?"

I smiled, closed the distance, and kissed her.

"Acceptable," I said. "One condition. I want to have some of the extra spicy too this time. You always order it and then guard it like a dragon."

Akane's eyes lit up with slow, wicked delight.

"Oh?" A smirk spread across her face, and she poked one finger into the center of my chest. "Excellent. Order granted. You'll need the fuel anyway, because you need some extra energies for later, you know. Spicy things help." She planted a quick, smug kiss on my cheek and shoved me off the couch by the shoulder. "Go. Find my plush, Ishikawa. He waited all these years to meet his real owner. He must be free."

And then, I went, laughing, shaking the last of the pins and needles out of my arm — up the stairs, toward the storage room and a box I hadn't opened since middle school.

And behind me I heard her flop back onto the couch and pick up her phone, already muttering to herself about noodle options.