Quiet Power

(Kenji's PoV)

—

That evening, the luxury private karaoke room on the fourth floor of the building smelled of cheap vodka, expensive perfume, and the faint plastic tang of the leather booths that lined the walls.

The lighting had been dimmed to that specific purple-red frequency that karaoke rooms always dropped into after a certain hour, the screen at the front of the room cycling through a muted J-pop music video that nobody was watching, its subtitles scrolling past in bright pink characters against a black backdrop.

Shiratake was slumped in the corner of the booth to my left, halfway through his fourth vodka soda, laughing too loudly at something Nishimura had said. Nishimura had his arm slung around one of Tsubame's friends — the redhead, the one with the loud voice and the questionable eyeliner — and was making the kind of jokes that stopped being funny after the second drink.

The rest of my athletics club circle was scattered across the booth in various states of decomposition, half of them singing badly into a microphone that had been passed around at least six times, half of them slumped into the shoulders of girls whose names none of them would remember tomorrow.

During those moments, I was drinking slowly. I always did.

I had learned very early in life that being the sober person in a room full of drunk people was a form of quiet power, and I had never once let it slip.

Two drinks in three hours. Enough to look loose. Not enough to lose track of what my hands were doing.

Meanwhile, Tsubame was pressed against my side on the booth, her honey-blonde hair spilling across my shoulder, her long legs folded up under her with the practiced ease of a girl who had figured out exactly how to sit against a man to look decorative. Her fingers were tracing slow, absent circles against the fabric of my shirt over my ribs.

"I missed that too-serious face of yours way more than I should," she murmured, her lips brushing lightly against the shell of my ear.

"I didn't miss yours at all," I said flatly, drinking a small cup of water.

She let out a soft, offended gasp and reached up to swat at my chest, and I caught her wrist with a lazy grip, held it for a second, and let it drop back into her lap.

Then, without shifting my expression, I moved my other hand to the low curve of her back, just under the hem of her cropped top, and let my palm land with a slow, deliberate slap against her.

"Ah~"

The sound that escaped her lips was small and involuntary, half-startled and half something else.

She melted against my ribs, her eyes fluttering closed for a fraction of a second.

"Your hand..." she whispered, laughing softly against my neck, "...is saying the exact opposite."

I let the smirk touch the corner of my mouth for one convenient second, enough for the rest of the room to catalog what they were seeing, and then I let it drop, my voice moving back into its flat, working register.

"So..." I started speaking.

She lifted her head slightly, blinking up at me through her mascara.

"So...?" Tsubame said, her voice teasing.

"How did it go?" I asked.

After my question, Tsubame's smile shifted, and she held the flirtatious mask in place for another instant before her gaze sharpened behind it.

She kept her fingers tracing lazy patterns against my shirt as she spoke, her voice pitched low enough that it wouldn't carry past the leather booth.

"Well," she murmured. "Shin didn't react at all. No embarrassment... no flustered face. Nothing. I hit him with every trick I had, but he just kept looking at me like nothing was happening."

"Mmh..." I kept listening.

"Every guy falls for my charm eventually. Even the shy ones give me something, but that boy gave me nothing. Not even the first time I we met." A small, thoughtful curl touched the edge of her mouth. "That, honestly, was intriguing. Would you be jealous if—"

"Get to the girl, Tsubame. I don't care about your libido." I said.

Then, Tsubame's smile faded a shade.

"Yeah," she murmured, and for the first time since we had walked into the karaoke room, something like a genuine shiver passed through her body. "The tomboy girl, right?"

She reached up and pressed her palm briefly against her own collarbone, as if she were checking that her pulse was still there.

"I felt her murderous intent on me the second I hooked his arm. I've never — Kenji, I'm serious — I've never felt anything like that in a public place. She wasn't jealous the way girls are jealous. She was... She was standing there as she had already decided which of my bones she was going to break first. It was so quiet. That's what got me. It was so quiet, and so cold, and so precise. Even an idiot like me could tell." She said, her voice almost scared.

"Mm."

"Moreover... I saw your eyes in her, you know." Tsubame lifted her chin slightly to study my face. "That specific look. Same shape. Same weight. For a second, I actually got scared thinking that I was looking at you. Like, genuinely scared. I made a joke about it in my head to survive the moment — but I promise you, for one full second on that pavement, I thought I was going to die." She said, while getting closer to me, "I wouldn't be surprised if you tell me that you two are related, even though I know it would be impossible." She added, drinking a small cup of Vodka.

After her words, I let the corner of my mouth lift again for the crowd. But there was nothing behind it. 

"Don't worry, we're not related," I said, my voice calm.

"I know, it's impossible. You two are too different," Tsubame replied.

"And Shin?" I said quietly. "What do you think of that guy?"

Tsubame paused for a moment. Then her expression softened into something almost thoughtful, something she rarely permitted anyone to see.

"He's a good guy," she said quietly. "I mean it. You can tell. There's something clean about him. He didn't look at me with hunger or any kind of disgust... he just... looked at me. Politely. Like a person. And I could tell he really, really cares about that girl. I don't just mean he likes her. I mean he's built something around her. Every time I moved on him, his shoulder subtly angled toward where she was standing. Not away from me, but toward her. Like he was checking that she was still there." 

"Good," I said, my lips curving into an invisible smirk.

Tsubame's eyes flickered. "Good? What do you mean?"

I didn't answer; I just looked her straight in the eyes, my gaze speaking for me.

And in that moment, she understood.

Tsubame smirked, and then pushed herself up from my side with a smooth, unhurried movement and, before I could stop her, swung one long leg across mine and settled herself directly onto my lap, facing me, her knees folded around my hips, her hands landing lightly on my shoulders.

The room around us remained a purple-red blur.

Shiratake was singing off-key, while Nishimura was slurring out a joke against the redhead's neck, and I could tell that those poor girls were disgusted. They kept staring at me like they were asking to be saved.

Then, Tsubame leaned forward until her face was a few millimeters from mine, her breath sweet with cocktails and something floral underneath.

"So," she whispered, her lips nearly brushing mine. "Why did you ask me to do all of that? Why did you tell me to hit on him, you naughty boy?"

"You reek of alcohol, bitch," I said flatly, turning my face slightly to the side. "Back off."

She laughed low in her throat and did not back off. She simply pressed her forehead lightly against my temple instead, her fingers sliding up along the line of my jaw.

"Haha...! You're so cute, you know? If you tell me... I'll give you a lot of pleasure, like always..." She whispered.

"It's not your business," I told her quietly. "I only need to make sure he won't fall for you and cheat on that girl. Don't ask anything else now."

Then, my hands, without my instruction, had settled at her hips.

Tsubame paused. Her fingers stroked slowly along the line of my jawbone, tracing the shape of it with the same absent, exploratory focus with which she had earlier been tracing my ribs.

"Mm," she murmured. "I don't get why. But fine. I'll keep doing it. Because I owe you a favor for saving my life six months ago."

My grip on her hips tightened by exactly one degree.

"I only did what anyone would have done, Tsubame," I said, my voice low and clean. "A harasser deserves to be humiliated and placed in a position where he can't do it again. You don't have to thank me."

"Exactly." She smiled slowly, her lips brushing against the shell of my ear as she leaned in closer. "'What anyone would have done.' And yet you were the only one who did it." Her teeth caught softly at my earlobe. "So... ask me for anything you want, whenever you want, darling."

I said nothing.

Her mouth moved to the corner of my jaw. She placed a small, lingering kiss there, with the kind of kiss that was a question, not a statement, and then leaned back just enough to look at my face.

"And what about your girl?" she asked lightly, tilting her head. "Tsugikawa... Kurone... right? That rich bimbo?"

Something in my chest went cold at the sound of the name, but I let a slow smirk pull at the corner of my mouth.

"It's officially over with her," I said flatly. "I got tired of her. She's too much of a crybaby for me. Insecure at extreme levels. Incapable of having a single thought of her own. Always invading my space... and I could continue for hours..." I paused. "...But at least she was almost good in bed."

Tsubame's eyes lit up with something dry and mischievous.

"Better than me?" She whispered.

"You're way different." I let my thumb trace a slow, small circle against her hip. "But I prefer you."

Then she laughed, genuinely, and leaned forward toward my mouth, closing her eyes, but suddenly—

"LET'S CHEER!— hic — GUYS, LET'S DO ANOTHER — HIHIHI— "

In that moment, Shiratake's voice exploded from the corner of the booth, his glass already half-raised, his eyes bleary and unfocused.

I lifted Tsubame gently off my lap, set her down on the booth beside me, and stood up, because my mind remembered something very important.

"Give me one second," I said flatly.

Tsubame nodded, and then I walked around the low table.

Shiratake was slumped against the leather, his glass tilting dangerously to one side, his stupid buzz-cut head lolling against the seat back.

He grinned up at me with the wet, unfocused affection of a very drunk man who had entirely forgotten how to read a room.

"Kenji, brooo, come onnn, we drink — " He tried to say, but I reached down and closed my fingers around the front of his collar.

I lifted him up out of the booth by his own shirt with a single, controlled motion, held him just off the leather, and brought my face close enough to his that he could smell the two drinks I had allowed myself over the course of the night.

I kept my voice very quiet.

"The next time," I murmured, "you dare try to lay a single finger on Takanashi, even brush against her sleeve in the hallway, I will cut your useless head off, and I will hide your body somewhere your parents will never find it. Are we clear?"

Shiratake's eyes went entirely sober in the space of two seconds.

After my words, his mouth opened, but no sound came out. He just stared at me with the specific, animal terror of a person who had, until this exact moment, thought we were friends.

I held him there for another second and a half, and then I opened my fingers, let him drop back into the leather, and turned away.

The entire room had gone silent. The muted music video kept scrolling. Someone had frozen with a microphone halfway to their mouth. Nishimura's arm was still around the redhead, but he was not looking at the redhead anymore; he was looking at the floor.

I let the silence hold for one more beat.

Then I straightened the collar of my own shirt with a small, casual motion, walked back around the table, and sat down beside Tsubame.

"Ignore that," I said quietly to the room. "Keep going."

For a moment nothing moved, but then Nishimura let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh, and the redhead giggled with him, and someone at the far end of the booth cranked the karaoke volume back up, and slowly, uncertainly, the room resumed its purple-red blur of noise and drunkenness like a river deciding to flow around a stone it had noticed was too heavy to move.

Then Tsubame slid back onto my lap without a word, and this time she immediately leaned forward.

Her mouth found mine, warm and cocktail-sweet, and I let her have the kiss.

I even gave one back. My hand curled at the low base of her spine and pulled her in against me with the specific, unhurried force that I knew she liked, and she made a small sound into my mouth that had nothing to do with performance.

Across the booth, Shiratake sat frozen against the leather, his drink shaking in his hand, staring at the floor with the wide, hollow eyes of a boy who had just remembered exactly what kind of person he had been drinking with.

'Good. Let him remember...'

And then, the evening kept going. 

—

Author's Note: I'm in hospital right now, and I'm staying for a few days. If there are many mistakes, just tell me. Writing with my phone is pretty difficult. :')