Sunday came in quietly. The air conditioner hummed. A strip of pale light lay across the floor where the curtains didn’t quite meet, and somewhere below the window a bicycle bell rang once and faded. Yoshino woke slowly and lay still, watching the ceiling until the last of sleep let go of her. Then she turned her head. Shouma was asleep. Not the way he usually slept, with one part of him left on watch, so that a door closing two rooms away would open his eyes. Not the other way either, with his forearm over his face so he could pretend to sleep through a conversation he didn’t want. He was simply gone, breathing slow and even, one hand lying open on the mattress between them. She smiled. Asleep, he looked like someone else. The line between his brows had smoothed out. His jaw had let go of whatever it held all day. His mouth was slightly open, and his hair had fallen across his forehead in a way he would never have allowed in a mirror.

He looked younger. He looked like the boy who used to fall asleep in the back of Renji’s car on the drive home from Osaka, his head knocking against the window.

Even unconscious, you’re handsome, she thought. That’s unfair.

She turned onto her side and tucked a hand under her cheek. She’d spent most of her life reading his face. She knew the slight narrowing of his eyes that meant someone had started to irritate him, and the small downward pull at the corner of his mouth when he was trying not to laugh. She knew the blankness, too. People who didn’t know him mistook it for calm. It was the face he wore when he was angry enough to hurt someone. This face, she almost never got. Her eyes moved over him, and the night came back to her all at once.

Ask me tomorrow.

She pulled the blanket up to her nose. She remembered all of it. The terrace. The drones. Her own voice in the hallway asking him if he didn’t find her attractive, which she would have paid a great deal to take back. The bedsheet. Him standing beside the bed swearing at the floor.

I wouldn’t do that with you.

She waited for the embarrassment to arrive in full. It came, and then it settled, and underneath it was something steadier. Last night she’d been loose with drink and tired and nervous, and all of that had been knotted together with years of things neither of them had said. This morning she was sober. And sober, she couldn’t explain away what he’d told her. If she still wanted to kiss him today, she could ask.

From you, that’s practically a confession.

Her mouth curved behind the blanket. She wasn’t going to corner him over breakfast. She wasn’t going to make him explain himself. They’d already spent years misreading each other, and she didn’t want to start this by turning it into an interrogation. Today she could just be herself, and let him be himself, and see what the day did with them. If he moved first, she had no intention of stopping him. She sat up carefully. He didn’t stir. She slid out from under the covers, walked around to his side of the bed, and stood looking down at him. Nothing. She bent and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He didn’t so much as twitch. She straightened fast anyway, her pulse loud in her ears.

“You really are dead,” she whispered.

She gathered some clothes and slipped into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later she came down in sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, her hair tied back out of her face. The kitchen was cool and still. She opened the refrigerator and crouched in front of it. Eggs. Tofu. Green onions, mushrooms, half a daikon. A tub of miso. Leftover rice. In the bottom drawer, the salmon they’d bought yesterday. “Okay.”

She started pulling things onto the counter, and the meal assembled itself in her head the way it used to: salted salmon under the grill, tamagoyaki, chilled tofu with scallions, miso soup with wakame and mushrooms, a dish of pickles, and okayu from the leftover rice. While the broth came up to a simmer, she stood stirring the porridge, and the smell of it pressed on something under her ribs. She hadn’t known she missed this. Not cooking. Cooking for him. When they were younger, he’d eaten whatever she put in front of him. He complained when she made too much. He complained when she asked if he’d eaten. He complained loudest when she packed him food to take, and every container came back to her scraped clean.

Who fed you while I was gone? she thought. Nobody. You fed yourself out of a convenience store and called it dinner.

“You’d better be eating properly when I’m not here,” she told the pot. It bubbled at her.

“I mean it.” She pointed the wooden spoon at the ceiling. “And cigarettes aren’t breakfast.”

The soup simmered. “Neither is coffee.” Nothing. She sighed and turned down the heat. “I’m arguing with a pot.”

Upstairs, Shouma opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. Something smelled good. For a few seconds his mind declined to take part. Then it caught on miso, and rice under it, and he turned his head. The other side of the bed was empty. He looked at the dent in the pillow, and the night arrived in order, with no mercy. Her in the hallway with her arm around his neck. Then kiss me. Him telling her she mattered to him in a way the others hadn’t. Him telling her he’d close his eyes. He shut them now. “Fuck.”

He lay still and took inventory. He had said too much. He had said a great deal more than he’d said to anyone in his life. He waited for regret to show up, because it usually did, the morning after he’d let anyone see more than he meant to. It didn’t come.

That’s the problem, he thought. I’d say it again.

He dragged his hands down his face and sat up. He pulled on black sweatpants and a hoodie and went down. She didn’t hear him. She was at the stove with her back to him, humming something he didn’t recognize, stirring with her weight on one hip. He stopped in the doorway. He’d seen this before, a long time ago, in Renji’s house in Osaka: Yoshino half awake in a kitchen with her hair tied up, cooking for people who hadn’t asked her to. For the last 9 months he’d walked into this kitchen and found it empty, and he hadn’t let himself notice how much that had cost him until right now, watching it be full.

Like she never left, he thought, and didn’t like how much he wanted that to be true. He crossed the room and stood behind her. She caught his reflection in the steel of the range hood a moment before he leaned over her shoulder and breathed in. “Smells good.”

She smiled without turning. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

She dipped a spoon into the soup and held it up. “Open.”

He looked at the spoon. Then at her.

“Do you want to taste it or not?”

He bent and took it. She watched his face. He swallowed and nodded once. “Good.”

Her brows went up. “That’s it?”

“It’s good.”

“I made you a full breakfast, and I get one word.”

“You asked me to taste it, and it’s good and I just woke up.” He reached past her toward the pot. She slapped his hand away without looking. “You’ll get more when you eat it.”

He looked at the back of her head. “Is this how it’s going to be?”

“Bowls are in the cabinet.”

He sighed. “Yes, boss.”

“Chopsticks too.”

He opened the cabinet. “Anything else?”

“Gratitude would be nice.”

He shut the cabinet and leaned against it. “I tried to steal from the pot. That’s gratitude don’t ya think?.”

She laughed, and he turned away before she could see what it did to him.

They ate across from each other at the kitchen table.

For a while neither said much. Shouma ate the way he always ate, steadily and without commentary, like a man getting through a task he’d been assigned. Yoshino watched him put away a second bowl of okayu.

“Do you like it?”

He looked up. “I’m eating it.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t eat it.”

“You eat konbini onigiri standing up over the sink.”

“They’re good.”

“You think cigarettes are good.”

“Mm.” He took another piece of salmon and said nothing, and she narrowed her eyes at him, and he went on ignoring her with great dedication. She smiled into her soup.

This is fine, she thought. We’re normal. We’re not being strange about it.

Except they weren’t quite normal. Every so often she’d look up and find him already looking at her. Before, he’d have dropped his eyes the moment she caught him. Now he held it. A second. Sometimes two. Then he went back to his food as if nothing had passed. It was small enough that anyone else would have missed it. She noticed each time.

So it wasn’t the alcohol, she thought. Not for him, either.

Across the table, Shouma was thinking about the hour ahead. They didn’t need to leave for a while. If she remembered what he’d said last night, and the way she kept looking at him made it plain she did, then this morning was hers to use. He’d already decided he wouldn’t stop her. Somewhere around the second bowl of okayu, he’d started to wonder whether he should stop waiting for her to ask. The doorbell rang.

Yoshino was up before he could say a word. “I’ll get it!”

“Yoshi—”

Yoshino was already through the doorway. He sighed and took out his phone and opened his camera security app.

Tsubaki stood on his front step, adjusting her sunglasses. Shouma looked at the screen.

Of all the mornings.

He put the phone face down on the table. At the door, Tsubaki’s face lit up. “Good morning.”

“Tsubaki?”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

From the kitchen: “You are.”

Tsubaki’s smile widened. Yoshino laughed and stepped aside to let her in. Tsubaki walked into the kitchen and stopped beside the table. “Good morning, Shouma.”

He kept eating.

“Shouma.”

He took another bite.

“It costs you nothing to say good morning back.”

He finally looked up. “Why are you here?”

“How welcoming.”

“It couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

“She used to do this when we lived with Gramps,” Yoshino said, coming back in. “Every Sunday. You remember.”

“I remember hiding from her every Sunday.” Shouma, opened his phone to scroll on Twitter, “This is my house,” he added, to nobody in particular.

“And yet,” Tsubaki said, settling into the chair at the end of the table, “here we all are.”

Yoshino covered her mouth.

“Akira woke me at an unreasonable hour,” Tsubaki said. “He had to go into Osaka to finish some work at his office before tomorrow. He offered to take me.”

“And?” Yoshino asked.

“I declined. He left me the Lexus.”

Shouma looked at her. “Then drive it.”

“I don’t like driving.”

“Train.”

“No.”

“Taxi.”

“No.”

“Walk.”

“To Osaka?”

“Leave now. You’ll make it by Tuesday.”

“Shouma,” Yoshino said, laughing.

Tsubaki folded her hands on the table. “So I thought my dear cousin and her lovely dog could take me.”

“No,” Shouma said.

“Yes, but also Tsubaki, don’t call him a dog. Be nice.,” Yoshino said, at the same time.

He turned to her.

“We’re going to Osaka anyway,” she said.

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is Shouma?” He held her eyes for a second too long, and she understood exactly what the point was, and her face went warm.

“I’m not her driver,” he said.

Tsubaki pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re hurting my feelings.”

“You don’t have any.”

“Neither do you, apparently.”

Yoshino looked between them. “We’re taking Tsubaki.” Shouma looked at her. She smiled at him, sweetly and without mercy.

He exhaled through his nose. “Fine.”

Tsubaki beamed. “Wonderful.”

Shouma stood and began stacking dishes. “Go get ready.”

“I can help clean.”

“I’ve got it.”

Yoshino hesitated. He’s getting rid of me, she thought, and then, looking at Tsubaki’s face, or he’s getting rid of her and doesn’t want me here for it.

“Okay,” she said, and went upstairs.

The kitchen went quiet. Shouma carried the dishes to the sink. Tsubaki stayed in her chair and watched him. He rinsed a bowl. She watched. He put it in the dishwasher. His shoulders drew up.

“Stop looking at me.”

“I’m not doing anything.” She sighed. “What would you prefer I do?”

“Leave.”

“No.”

He shut the dishwasher harder than he needed to. Tsubaki rested her cheek on her hand. “You seem different.”

Nothing.

“Calmer.”

Still Nothing.

“Almost domestic.”

He turned his head slowly. “Think hard about your next word.”

Her smile turned angelic. “Did Yoshino sleep here?”

“Where else would she sleep?”

“Renji keeps a rental two streets over. It has a gate and a guard. You could have put her there.” She tilted her head. “But you didn’t.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“I thought so.”

He wiped the counter.

“Same room?” she asked.

“Why are you still talking?”

“Same bed?”

He threw the towel in the sink. “Why are you like this?”

“I was born observant.”

“You were born irritating as fuck.”

“And you love me.”

“I put up with you because killing you would upset people.”

Tsubaki laughed softly. Then, with exactly the same pleasant face, she asked, “Did you sleep with her?”

He went still. Then he turned around. “No.”

She blinked. “Really? How disappointing.”

“For who?”

“Me.” She studied him. “I was hoping you’d finally done something.”

“Stay out of it.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her smile stayed where it was, but her eyes changed. “You love her,” she said.

His face went blank. Tsubaki knew that face. She’d known it since they were teenagers. It wasn’t the absence of feeling. It was the door he shut when a feeling got too close to the surface.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “You’ve loved her for years.”

He turned back to the sink.

“And she has no idea,” Tsubaki said. “Or—” She stopped. He hated that she stopped. “Or maybe she does now,” she finished.

He looked at her before he could stop himself.

Her smile sharpened. “There it is.”

“There’s nothing.”

“Your face moved, I know when I hit a nerve Shouma. I always know.”

“It didn’t.”

“You looked frightened.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“No. You’re Shouma Toraishi. Men cross the street when they see you coming.” She tilted her head. “And one smile from my cousin undoes you completely.”

He walked past her toward the hall.

“Did you kiss her?” she called. He stopped. Tsubaki had to bite the inside of her cheek. “You didn’t. Huh.”

He turned. “Why do you care?”

“Because I’ve watched the two of you circle each other since we were fourteen, and I’m tired.”

“Fuck off.”

“I don’t feel like it. This is one of my favorite hobbies.”
“How pathetic.”

“I’m having a lovely time.” She lifted her teacup. “Shouma. She’s probably waiting for you.”

He stood at the bottom of the stairs for half a second. It was enough. Her grin spread.

And instead of turning around, he decided to go up the stairs, and if she did say anything, he was going to yell back without a remnant of his facial expression.

“Good luck!” she called after him.

“Go to hell.”

She laughed into her tea as she spoke to herself, “God, he’s so predictable and so pathetic. He’s too easy to taunt.”

Shouma changed quickly: brown chinos, a black short-sleeved shirt, what he wore most days once the weather turned. He ran a hand through his hair and looked in the mirror once, then away.

You’re not dressing for her, he told himself. You’re getting dressed. People do that. She’s probably waiting for you.

He went down the hall. Her door stood half open. He knocked once on the frame and stepped in.

She was at the mirror in high-waisted blue jeans that fit close through the hips and flared below the knee, and an ivory boat-neck top that left her collarbones bare. Her red platform high-tops sat by the bed, waiting. She tucked a strand of hair back. “Does this look okay?”

He closed the door behind him. “Yeah.”

She caught his eye in the mirror. “Just yeah?”

“You look good.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He didn’t answer. He walked toward her.

“So who’s driving,” she said to the mirror, “you or—” She stopped.

He was right behind her. His arms came around her waist, and he drew her back against him.

She stopped moving. He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to the back of her head. Yoshino stared straight ahead. In the mirror she could see herself, red to the ears, and behind her the dark shape of him, his face lowered into her hair. He breathed in. Then another kiss, lighter, closer to her temple. Then another, so faint it was more his breath than his lips.

What is happening, she thought. What do I do with my hands.

She looked down. His hands were folded over her stomach. She knew those hands. She’d watched them work a wrench into an engine block, and she’d watched them take a knife away from a man in an alley behind a pachinko parlor when she was sixteen. Now they lay against the soft cotton of her shirt as though she might break.

Turn around, she told herself. Say something. Anything.

“Shouma,” she whispered.

“Mm.” She felt it more than heard it, a low hum against her hair.

She laid her hand over his. “Let me turn around.”

He loosened his hold without letting go. She turned inside the circle of his arms, and his hands followed her and settled again at her waist. She looked up. She’d been this close to him more times than she could count. She’d slept against his back on the motorcycle and cried into his shirt the night her mother almost died in a hospital bed.  But never when they both knew.

That was the difference. Not the distance. The knowing. Knowing that there was a feeling, and it was mutual. His eyes were so dark a brown they read as black until the light found them. She’d seen them go hard and flat when he was angry, with a hot glint of gold where the light struck, and she’d seen men step back from that look without knowing why they were doing it. They weren’t like that now. They were warm, and they were only on her. His hands tightened at her waist. He drew her a little closer. She lifted her hands and laid them against his face.

His eyes flickered. “Why did it take us so long?” she said.

That voice, he thought. She hasn’t used that voice on me in years.

He knew exactly when he’d last heard it. He was seventeen, in a hospital bed in Osaka, with two cracked ribs and his face swollen past recognition, because he’d let her ride his bike and she’d put it into a guardrail, and Renji had held him responsible in the only way Renji held anyone responsible. For eleven days she’d come straight from school. She’d sat beside the bed doing homework, fixing his blanket when he kicked it off, feeding him when he couldn’t lift his arms, and scolding herself, blaming herself for how he ended up. She’d looked at him then the way she was looking at him now. He hadn’t let himself think about that hospital room in a long time.

His face eased. He leaned in until his forehead was almost touching hers.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m sorry—”

Her hands pressed harder against his face. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

He stopped. Her eyes searched his. “Shouma. Is it really not obvious that I’ve been in love with you?”

Everything in him went quiet. His hands went still at her waist. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Yoshino—”

“I’ve been in love with you.” She didn’t look away. “And this time I’m not pretending I’m not.”

He looked at her and couldn’t make the words fit anything he knew. For years he’d built his whole life around one reality: she loved him the way you love the boy who grew up in your grandfather’s house. Protector. Something close to a brother. That was the line. He’d stayed on his side of it. He’d taken other women to bed because of it, so he’d have somewhere to put what he couldn’t give her. He’d kept his mouth shut because of it. He’d stood at the gate at Kansai and watched her walk through security because of it, and gone back to the car, and sat there for an hour before he could drive. And she was standing in his arms telling him the line had never been where he thought.

Six years, he thought. Six years ago, I was fourteen, and that was the first time I realized I was falling in love with her. His eyes slid away.

“Don’t,” she said at once.

He looked back. “I’m right here.”

“You’re not.” Her thumb moved along his cheekbone. “You’re doing the thing where you go somewhere in your head and leave your face behind.”

His brows drew together.

“I know that look,” she said, more quietly. “Stay with me.”

His grip on her waist tightened. “I’m here.”

Her eyes went to his mouth, and came back. “Let me kiss you.”

He couldn’t breathe properly. He’d been hit hard enough to lose time. He’d had a blade go into his side in a stairwell in Shibuya and walked himself to a clinic. He’d knelt in front of Renji after the guardrail and not looked away once. None of that had prepared him for her hands on his face.

He felt seventeen again, lying in that bed, wondering what it would be like if she ever looked at him the way he looked at her. He’d pictured it more often than he’d admit under oath. The picture had never told him what to do with his hands. She moved first. She came up onto her toes, and his eyes closed. Her nose brushed his. Her breath touched his lips. She tilted her head, and her mouth grazed his—

“TSUBAKI!”

Both their eyes snapped open.

Renji’s voice came up through the floor.

“WHERE ARE YOSHINO AND SHOUMA?”

Neither of them moved.

“THEY COULDN’T LEAVE AN OLD MAN ANY FOOD?”

Yoshino’s mouth fell open.

“YOSHINO DOESN’T CARE IF HER GRANDFATHER STARVES, I SEE.”

Shouma stared at her. She stared at him, their faces still a breath apart. Her lips twitched. So did his. She snorted. He dropped his forehead against hers, and his shoulders shook without a sound.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Of course.”

“Why is he here?”

“Apparently my house is the landing lounge for everyone in this fucking family.”

She laughed harder, her hands sliding down to grip his shirt. Renji shouted something else. Yoshino turned her head toward the door. “I’M COMING, GRAMPS! HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW YOU WERE COMING?”

She turned back to Shouma, her face still furious from the yelling, and the moment she saw him, it changed. She smiled at him like the shouting had never happened. It undid him. He laughed again, quietly, into her hair. For a while neither spoke. Renji and Tsubaki’s voices rose and fell below them. Shouma closed his eyes and took a long breath. When he opened them, he was steadier. “It can wait,” he said.

Her smile softened. His thumb moved along her waist. “I want it to be right for you.”

Right, she thought. Not perfect. I don’t care what perfection is. It’s going to be perfect if it’s him. She nodded. “If we do it now,” she said, and her eyes went to his mouth again, “I don’t think I’ll stop.”

Color came up along his jaw. He looked down at her hands where they held his shirt.

“I want you to remember it,” he said. Her eyes widened. He looked almost embarrassed. “Trust me, I want to kiss you too.”

She put her palm against his cheek. “I don’t care where it happens. It’ll be you. That’s the part I’ll remember.”

He covered her hand with his and held it there. “We’re going to talk about what you said,” he said. “Later.”

“Okay.”

“I have things to say too.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ve waited long enough to hear them.”

He took her hand and led her toward the door. His other hand closed on the handle. She pulled him back by his shirt. “What—”

She tugged him down and kissed his cheek and he froze.

She let go, looking satisfied with herself. “I’ll go first,” she whispered. “Give it two minutes.”

She slipped out before he could answer. He stood alone in the room. A moment later he heard her on the stairs.

“GRAMPS!”

“There she is!”

“Why are you shouting through Shouma’s house?”

“Because nobody feeds me!”

“You’re a grown man!”

“I’m your grandfather!”

“THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T OPEN A REFRIGERATOR!”

Shouma lifted a hand and pressed it over his mouth. His face was hot. He closed his eyes.

I’ve been in love with you.

“Fuck,” he said into his palm.

He had spent his life learning to keep his face shut. Anger, fear, the rest of it. He’d been good at it. Renji had made sure he was good at it. With her, none of it held. She looked at him and read him like a page she’d written herself. Something else occurred to him, and he lowered his hand.

He hadn’t had a cigarette. Not this morning. Not since the terrace last night. On any other Sunday he’d have gone through three before he’d finished his coffee. Instead he’d sat at the table and eaten two bowls of okayu and watched her across from him, and it hadn’t once crossed his mind. He leaned against the doorframe.

What will we be like next month? he thought. Will her shoes still be next to mine by the door? Will I wake up and find her there, and not have to wonder whether I’m allowed to—

“SHOUMA!”

Renji’s voice shook the floor.

“YOU DIE UP THERE?”

His face went flat. He straightened his shirt. He pushed his hair back. He took one breath and let it out slowly, and by the time he reached the top of the stairs, there was nothing left on his face for anyone to read. He was fairly sure of that.

Renji stood in the kitchen examining the empty dishes the way a detective examines a body.

“You ate everything.”

Yoshino leaned against the counter. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“You could have called.”

“And said what? ‘Good morning, Gramps, are you planning to break into Shouma’s house today?’”

Renji grunted. “Would’ve been polite.”

Tsubaki sat at the table with a cup of tea, looking much too pleased with herself.

Shouma came in.

Renji looked at him. “Morning, Shouma.”

“Boss. Good morning to you too.”

Something in the room shifted when he said it. Shouma stood a little straighter without seeming to. Renji was in a cardigan with a cup of tea on one hand and an old man’s complaints in his mouth, and still, when Shouma came into a room with him, Shouma stood the way he’d always stood in the back office in Osaka, waiting to be told what had to be done.

Renji pointed at the stove. “Nothing left?”

“No.”

“Not even salmon?”

“Didn’t know you were coming.”

Renji clicked his tongue. “Useless, the pair of you.”

Yoshino laughed. Shouma glanced at her. She glanced back. One second. No more. Tsubaki saw it. Her eyes went from Yoshino to Shouma and narrowed slowly. Shouma caught her staring and gave her a look that would have cleared a bar. Tsubaki raised her cup and hid her mouth behind it.

Almost? she mouthed.

His jaw tightened, as she silently snickered to herself.

“What’s so funny, sweetheart?” Renji asked.

Tsubaki rested her chin on her hand. “Nothing, Renji. It’s just nice to see Yoshino and Shouma like this.”

Renji looked at the two of them. Shouma looked at the wall. On his way past Tsubaki’s chair, Shouma said, low enough that only she heard, “I hate you.”

“I know,” she murmured back.

They left for Osaka 30 mins later.. Renji had come in his own car and went back ahead of them, saying he had business to handle before dinner. That left Shouma at the wheel of the Lexus, Yoshino in the passenger seat, and Tsubaki in the back. The engine had barely turned over when Tsubaki leaned forward between the seats. “Can we have music?”

“No.”

“Yes,” said Yoshino, already connecting her phone.

“Mismatch” by &Team came through the speakers. Shouma looked at her. She smiled.

He looked back at the road. “Traitor.”

“You’ll live. It’s a great song and I love it.”

Tsubaki settled back. “Ooh I love this song! I love watching jpop idols~~. Sometimes I make Akira go with me.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. “Nobody cares.”

Yoshino turned in her seat to look at Tsubaki, and Tsubaki immediately lowered her face to look at Shouma through the rear view mirror, “Really? Akira does. Last month we went, I almost got the number of one of them. It’s been a while since I’ve been with someone younger than me. He was so cute, and Akira was a bit jealous. Nothing came of it though.”

“Ew,” Shouma said.

“Oh please, Yoshino likes them too. Right?” said Tsubaki.

Yoshino looked at him. He kept his eyes on the road. “Ignore her.”

“Well… I do like &Team.”

“….”

“See, I told you. Did you forget you would have to come with Yoshino and I to the concerts once in a while. You know Yoshino, I know someone that can have us meet them for our own private fan meet–” Tsubaki said.

Shouma reached over and turned the volume up.

Tsubaki watched him do it, and raised her voice over the music, “You know turning this song up isn’t helping your case.”

Yoshino looked back at her, puzzled. Tsubaki only smiled. Yoshino turned to the window and let it go, though she made a note to ask Tsubaki because meeting her favorite idols seemed like a fun idea.

Kyoto slid away behind them. The drive turned into a long stretch of Tsubaki’s commentary, Yoshino’s laughter, and Shouma promising more than once to leave his Tsubaki at the next service area. Under all of it, something had changed between the two in front. At red lights, Yoshino would look over and find him already looking. When she reached for the console to change a song, her fingers brushed his, and neither of them pulled away fast anymore. Somewhere past Takatsuki, “Overthink” by Key came on. The car went quieter. Tsubaki  sat elegantly looking out the window as she kept her eyes on Yoshino and Shouma. Yoshino rested her hand on the console beside his, and let her little finger touch the side of his hand. Shouma glanced down. She kept her eyes on the window as if nothing had happened.

Come on, she thought. I’ve gone first twice today.

Slowly, he moved his hand and hooked his little finger around hers. Her mouth curved toward the glass. Neither of them said anything. There wasn’t anything that needed saying. In the back seat, Tsubaki looked up. Her eyes dropped to the console, then rose to the rearview mirror.

Shouma met her gaze in it. Tsubaki smiled. He narrowed his eyes as he decided to ignore her because having Yoshino’s pinky hooked to his meant so much more than petty glances and exchanges between him and Tsubaki. Tsubaki looked back down at her phone. For once, she kept her mouth shut.

By the time Osaka rose up around them, the afternoon light had gone gold at the edges. Tomorrow the work would start. Ground would break on the spa. Renji’s plans would start moving, and with them the gumi and its business, and all the people who came attached to it. Tonight, Renji wanted everyone at his table one last time before Monday took them. Yoshino watched the city come in through the window. Then she looked at Shouma. He was watching the road, one hand loose on the wheel. His face had gone back to what he gave the rest of the world: calm, unreadable, a little hard. His other hand was still on the console. Their little fingers were still hooked together. She smiled and turned back to the window. She didn’t need the kiss today. Not anymore. She knew it was coming. She’d heard it in his voice upstairs, and she could feel it in the small, stubborn pressure of his finger around hers. And waiting for it, knowing what was on the other side, turned out to be its own kind of good.