The Quiet After

(Shin's PoV)

—

And then... we walked home in a silence that didn't feel empty.

Akane's fingers stayed threaded through mine the whole way, her grip loose but also steady, her thumb occasionally moving against the back of my hand in a small, absent motion that I didn't think she was aware of doing.

Her boots tapped against the pavement in that heavy, deliberate rhythm of hers, half a step slower than her usual pace, as if her body were still catching up to the weight of the last few hours.

I didn't even ask her what she was thinking, since I had learned that Akane's silences were not like other people's.

Other people went quiet because they had nothing to say, while Akane went quiet because she had too much to say.

So I walked beside her, and I let her have her filing time.

I watched her out of the corner of my eye instead, the way she was staring at the pavement two meters ahead of her feet, her breath coming out in soft, controlled puffs in the cool air.

The streetlamps caught the edges of her cheekbones in that specific, sharp way that always made something quiet twist behind my sternum.

Her lashes were still slightly wet from the wind, and the tip of her nose was pink from the cold. She looked, in that specific moment, like a wolf that had decided to walk beside a boy instead of eating him.

I would never say that to her out loud, even though I knew that she'd secretly like it.

Halfway home, the warm neon light of a konbini spilled out onto the pavement ahead of us, and I slowed my pace.

Akane glanced up at me, her eyebrows lifting slightly.

"What's wrong, Shin?" She asked, confused. 

"Two minutes," I said quietly, giving her hand a small squeeze and pointing the konbini with my other free hand. "Wait here. I need to buy something."

Akane stared at me for a few instants.

"You're buying food for what? I am full..." she said flatly, her voice not really a question.

"For the horror movie," I replied, smiling.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "A horror movie wasn't in our plans."

"Now it is. We're watching a horror movie." I said, my voice leaving no room for argument.

"Tch—" She sighed.

"You always want a horror movie." I smiled.

Her mouth twitched at the corner, but she didn't answer. She just pulled her hand from mine, folded her arms into the pockets of her coat, and jerked her chin toward the door.

"Two minutes, Ghost Boy. Don't get lost in there." She said, looking at me, "I'll start counting. If you take more than two minutes, I'm gonna cry." She smirked.

"Don't worry about that," I replied, before kissing the top of her head and stepping inside.

"Dumbhead," Akane whispered softly.

The konbini was warm and slightly over-lit in that specific late-night way, the fluorescent tubes buzzing softly against the ceiling, the coffee machine sputtering to itself in the corner, an elderly clerk half-asleep behind the register with a paperback resting against his stomach.

I moved through the narrow aisles with an unhurried, deliberate purpose, picking up items with the small internal precision of a person who had actually paid attention over the last few months.

Salted rice crackers, the sharp ones, the brand with the black-and-red packaging. I remember that she broke them in half before eating them during breakfast.

Dried squid, but the strips, not the shredded kind. She hated the shredded kind. She had once told me that shredded squid was the food equivalent of small talk.

Two Yakisoba Pan, the ones she brought me during lunch break at school, along with the same bottle of Sugar-free Green Tea. 

Then, in the last aisle before the register, my eyes caught on the box.

Lilibat cereal. The dark chocolate one, with the small purple mascot on the front, the version aimed at kids that she absolutely, categorically did not fit the demographic for.

I stood in front of the box for a moment, tapping my fingers against my thigh.

'Ah... She loves Lilibat... and she'll probably love cereals and dark chocolate... guess it will be perfect for her.'

After a few instants, I reached out and took the box. I even added a second one, just to be safe.

Then I brought the pile up to the counter, paid, thanked the sleepy clerk, and stepped back out into the cold.

Akane was standing exactly where I had left her, her boots planted against the pavement, her breath fogging softly in front of her mouth. She glanced down at the plastic bag in my hand, then up at my face.

"Oh, four minutes and 24 seconds. I was about to cry." Akane teased, smiling, "So... what did you buy?"

"Snacks," I replied.

"How many snacks?" Akane's lips curved into an amused grin.

"A reasonable amount of snacks," I replied, showing her the bag.

Then, she reached forward and pulled the top of the bag open with two fingers, peering inside with the flat, assessing expression of a customs official.

Her face didn't move, but something in her eyes did.

Her gaze paused on the corner of the Lilibat box, its purple mascot catching the streetlamp light.

She stared at it for exactly two seconds, and then she closed the bag, released it back into my hand, and turned her face away from mine.

"You bought cereal," she said. Her voice was completely flat.

"I bought cereal," I repeated.

"For me." She said, her eyes softening.

"For us."

I saw Akane's body twitching for an instant.

"But I've never seen you eating this cereal." She teased.

"I do now. I'm a Lilibat fan."

Akane covered her mouth, but I could hear her giggle. "And you even bought two boxes?"

"Well... yeah. Backup supply, since you eat like a monster." I joked.

"Dumbhead," She said, keeping her face averted. But I saw the small, unmistakable curl at the very corner of her mouth, the smile that appeared only when she was trying very hard not to let something show.

"Thank you, Akane," I replied.

She then reached her hand out sideways, without looking at me, and hooked her cold fingers back into mine.

"You're an idiot," she murmured.

"Noted."

"A complete idiot." She added.

"Also noted."

And then, she started walking again, tugging me forward by the hand.

She didn't turn to look at me for another full block, but her fingers, threaded through mine, tightened by a small, measurable amount and stayed like that all the way to my house.

—

The air was cool when we stepped inside, the kitchen light I had left on earlier casting a warm yellow rectangle across the entryway tiles.

Akane kicked off her boots without a word, dropped her coat over the back of the couch, and stood for a moment in the middle of my living room, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, her hair slightly disheveled from the wind, and her eyes half-lidded with the specific fatigue of a person who had been performing composure for a very long time and was finally in a room where she didn't have to.

After that, she looked at me across the small space for a few instants.

"Shower," she said.

"Shower," I agreed.

"Together." She added.

I paused with the konbini bag halfway to the counter. She was already walking toward the bathroom, pulling her hoodie over her head as she went, dropping it in a soft dark heap on my hallway floor.

"That was not a request, Ghost Boy," her voice called back at me from the bathroom doorway. "Move."

After her words, I set the bag on the counter and moved.

That was the time of the day when Akane and I could finally be ourselves and spend some quality time together. 

Without realizing it, even during these simple moments, I was happy. I could say that Kurone was dead and buried. I didn't even want to see or hear her name anymore.

Only Akane.

—

When we undressed and stepped inside the bathroom, Akane had immediately turned on the shower.

The water was hot. Steaming, almost too much, the way she always insisted on it, the mirror fogging over within thirty seconds of turning the tap on.

We stepped in together, our bodies falling into the small, unhurried choreography we had developed over the past time we spent together: her back to my chest, my arms loose around her waist, her head tilting to let the water run down through her dark hair in warm sheets.

For a few minutes, neither of us spoke.

The water hammered softly against the tile. Steam curled up between us and along the glass door. Her shoulder blades rose and fell against my chest with a slow, even breath.

Then, without turning around, she reached down, picked up the bottle of body wash from the shelf, and squeezed a generous amount into her palm.

"Hands off, Ishibaka," she said flatly. "I'm handling this tonight."

"Handling what?" I asked, confused.

"You. I need to clean every millimeter of your body to eliminate every single trace of that gyaru bitch," Akane said.

I couldn't help but smile. 

"Go on, I'm all yours," I said.

Then, she turned around, her wet hair sticking in dark strands against her cheekbones, her eyes serious and focused despite the small water droplets catching in her lashes, and she pressed both soaped hands flat against my chest.

She started scrubbing.

Not hard, but thorough. Her fingers pressed with a small, precise pressure across my collarbones, down my sternum, across my ribs, over my shoulders.

Her thumbs worked in slow, deliberate circles across every single square centimeter of skin where Tsubame Yamamoto's palm had briefly rested earlier that evening.

She said nothing while she did it, and I didn't move.

She then scrubbed my chest. My shoulders. My upper arms. She spun me around in the small space, her hands moving methodically across my back, across the nape of my neck, across the tops of my shoulders. She spun me back to face her. She did my chest again, for good measure.

Then she looked up at me from beneath her wet lashes, her expression completely flat, her hands still resting against my sternum.

"There," she murmured. "Now every residue of that virus has been removed from your body."

"Virus?" I asked.

"The Gyaru virus." She said, joking.

"That's not a real virus, Akane." I said, patting her head.

"It is now."

Her eyes held mine for another long, water-heavy second. Then, quietly, without her expression changing, she pressed her forehead against the wet skin of my chest and stayed there.

Her fingers, I noticed, had curled a little too tightly into my sides.

I lifted my hands and rested them gently against her back — one against her shoulder blade, one at the low curve of her spine — and held her there under the water, in the steam, in the quiet.

I didn't say anything. I just held her.

She let out a small, slow breath against my sternum.

"Thank you," she whispered, so quietly I almost missed it under the rush of the water.

"For what?" I asked.

"For not thinking that I'm crazy. A lot of people would've already left, you know?" Akane said, her hand gently roaming my back.

"You're not crazy, Akane, trust me," I replied, resting my head on top of hers.

"I am, Shin. It's only a matter of time until you'll run away from me..." Akane said, her voice soft but carrying a glimpse of sadness. 

For an instant, I felt her nails digging into my back.

"It's too late to run away, Akane," I replied, "and I don't want to. You're the only one who can make me smile, you know..." I added, kissing her forehead.

She didn't answer for a moment. Then, very quietly, she pressed a small, wet kiss against the center of my chest — right over the spot where the milk stain had been earlier, right over the spot where Tsubame's palm had rested — and murmured against my skin:

"I love you, Ishibaka." She said, my body reacting to her words.

I closed my eyes, but I did not say it back. Not yet.

I brushed the wet hair away from her forehead with my thumb, pressed my mouth softly against her temple, and let the answer live in the shape of the gesture instead of the shape of the words.

She understood. She always understood.