Chương 310: 131.You're a Bit Dominant Tonight? 1

Honestly, by the time I made it back to the cabin, I almost didn't want to be there. Not because I was tired. Not because of the injury. Just — awkward. And not the ordinary kind, either. The kind where you know that once the door shuts, certain things stop being things you can pretend never happened. I'd barely gotten one foot inside when Maki followed me in. Click. The door shut behind me. The lock catching sounded absurdly crisp. I froze for a second and turned around.

What I walked straight into was Maki's arms. Not a polite hug. Not the pat-on-the-shoulder, friends-being-friends kind. Not the safe-distance version of good job, everyone made it back alive. This one was tight. Tight in a way that said she'd stopped bothering to leave either of us any dignity to hide behind. Tight in a way that put a foot squarely across the line neither of us had ever said out loud, the one that had always been sitting there between us — Hey.

Whatever this was now, we were probably past the point where playing dumb about it still worked. That was just how Maki Kushima was. She kept herself bound so tight it bordered on cruelty — like if she just wound every layer of feeling down far enough, hid it well enough, pressed it until even she could barely sense it herself, she could pretend it didn't exist at all. She probably always called that composure. Control. Maturity. But it wasn't control. It was only suppression.

And suppression looks quiet, most of the time. The moment it cracks, it doesn't even give you time to hear a sound before the whole thing comes down at once. I won't claim I fully understand how she's held herself together this far. But if you asked me what I actually wanted — it isn't anything grand. I just want her to be a little... happier. That's all.

"Shimo…" Her voice came low, almost landing right against my ear.

"Mm?" Maki pulled back a little, but didn't actually let go. She looked at me, close enough that breathing took effort. Something thin and unsteady pooled at the bottom of her eyes.

"Do you hate me?" She paused, like she was weighing the words — or like the second they left her mouth, she already knew the question had come too late.

"Earlier. In front of Jess." I went quiet for a moment. At this point, there wasn't much left worth pretending about.

"…No," I said, honestly. My voice came out a little muffled.

"If anything, I should've shut her down sooner." Maki didn't answer. She just kept looking at me. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! The look made the back of my neck prickle, so I pushed on.

"That said — I'm not making excuses for her." I wrinkled my nose, aware even as I said it that it sounded a little like exactly what I was doing.

"Jess is just like that. Sharp mouth, never serious, crosses lines like it's breathing. But she doesn't mean harm. At least not the kind that actually wrecks things." I paused. I wasn't even sure, at that point, whether I was explaining this to Maki or sorting it out for myself.

"That she'd be jealous over what's between you and me, though — that part genuinely caught me off guard." The instant it left my mouth, I realized how much it sounded like thinking out loud. Maki's hand was still resting on my back. She hadn't taken it away.

"Maki."

"Mm?"

"I don't want cracks in the team." I knew, the second I said it, exactly what kind of solution that was. Classic Shimo. Lead with the mission. Lead with the big picture. Get everyone else's position sorted first, and pretend you'll deal with yourself last. But I still had to say it.

"It shouldn't happen on a normal day. And right now, of all times, it really can't." Maki went quiet for a few seconds. Short. But short in the kind of way that's hard to sit through. Like she understood perfectly, and didn't like the answer at all. Finally, low:"I understand…" She said it, and didn't let go. She just stood there, looking at me in silence for a long moment. Then she spoke again.

"Understanding is one thing." Her voice was light, almost without any rise or fall to it — which somehow made it harder to dodge than before.

"But right now, I want to know what you think. Shimo." The air went heavy again. By this point, it was obvious: none of the tidy justifications — the mission, the bigger picture, team stability — were going to hold Maki back tonight. I didn't answer. Because I knew that the moment I actually said it out loud, things would move. Not a little. The whole floor would flip over, and everything underneath was something I had absolutely no desire to look at right now. Maki watched my face and didn't press further.

She just drew a soft breath, like she'd switched onto a more direct road.

"Shimo…" She was still holding me. By now the embrace didn't carry the same plain warmth it had at the start. It felt more like something quiet, soft, and built specifically so you couldn't pull free of it — a soft, patient instrument of restraint, dressed up as comfort.

"Where did she touch you?" I went stiff. She. Meaning Jess. I looked away, guilt doing the work for me.

"Why does that matter?"

"Because it matters to me." She answered fast, almost no pause at all.

"And you've been avoiding me since we got back."

"I have not." The denial came out almost instantly, a notch too loud. Maki looked at me. Her eyes didn't so much as flicker.

"You have." … Fuck. I suddenly felt like a boxer backed into a corner. And not the kind of boxer who pulls off a beautiful last-second comeback in some hot-blooded shonen comic. The kind who keeps swinging and missing, and the harder she struggles, the more obviously guilty and pathetic she looks doing it. I shifted, uneasy, in her arms — felt exactly like a fish hauled up onto a dock. Still alive. Still flopping. Not one shred of dignity left worth respecting.

Maki lowered her eyes, gaze settling along the side of my face. The next second, she leaned down and touched her lips, very lightly, to my ear.

"Was it here?" My whole body locked. Before I could process it, her mouth slid across my earlobe, teeth grazing it in a touch barely more than symbolic, followed by a breath — almost no sound at all — dropped right against my ear.

"Or here?" A thin shiver ran through me. … No need to keep testing. Direct hits, both. For one perfect, horrifying second, I wanted to file a formal request to evaporate on the spot — ideally accompanied by official shipboard paperwork stating that Lieutenant Hoshino Shimo had died in the line of duty from spontaneous psychological combustion, remains not recoverable.

Maki looked at me, and whatever expression I was wearing — half trying to bolt, half realizing there was nowhere to go — must have come close to making her laugh. But the smile that showed up was faint. Closer to resignation than amusement.

"Do I really have to use a different method?"

"Wha—" The protest hadn't even finished forming before her fingers found my side — short, wicked, and devastatingly precise. Just once. My whole body jerked, and something small and mortifying slipped out of my throat — short enough that I almost didn't want to admit it had come from me.

"W-wait — that tickles—" Damn it. She knew exactly where my worst weak point was. But Maki stopped right there. Not the kind of stop meant to keep dangling the suspense. The kind where something actually registers, and the hand pulls back on its own. I followed her gaze down and saw her looking at the scar along my waist. Faded now, but still there. The one from the forest exercise. I'd taken a round that time.

She was the one who did the field treatment — pressure, compression, immobilization, and that look on her face the whole time: hands steady as a machine, eyes like she was ready to cut me open right there just to check the damage herself. I still remembered that look. Great. I was done. My whole head was full of her.

"Does it still hurt?" Maki's fingers brushed the scar, light enough that it felt like she was handling something that would shatter if she wasn't careful.

"…A little." I lied. Because the actual problem had nothing to do with the old wound anymore. It was that wherever she touched now hadn't been just an old scar under the skin for a while now. Maki didn't call me out on it. She just looked at me quietly for two seconds, then bent down and pressed a light kiss to the scar. My breath caught.

"Shimo." She didn't lift her head. Her voice was low enough it felt like it was seeping straight in through the old wound itself.

"Every time you say it doesn't hurt, it never sounds true." I had nothing. Not a word. The cabin was quiet. Quiet enough that all that was left was the Yukikaze's deep, steady hum running through the hull, and my own heartbeat — behaving in a manner entirely unbecoming of a soldier. I knew. There was no pretending tonight hadn't happened.