Chương 397: 181.Christmas Eve 2

Snow melted the second it hit my face. I'd barely cleared the gate before starting to wonder whether this weather was testing road safety or my nervous system. The surface was slick, visibility bad, and the snow kept coming harder. The beam from my headlamp cut a tunnel through the white, but everything beyond the immediate stretch looked like someone had gone at it with an eraser—clean in the most infuriating way. Hedwig sat behind me, her hands at my waist.

With this many layers between us, there shouldn't have been much to feel, but where her palms rested was… present. Too present. Present enough to make it feel like the whole rest of the evening had just been rehearsal, and the real problem had only just started. I swore at myself, silently, and eased the speed down.

"Cold?" I asked. Her answer came right by my ear.

"I'm alright," Hedwig said.

"You?"

"Right now I'm more worried that if this gets any worse, we're going to end up as one of those cases in the campus news where it says, 'two students nearly murdered by romantic snowfall on the way home.'" She went quiet for two seconds. Then laughed, softly.

"You're still saying things like that at a time like this?"

"What else am I supposed to do?" I said.

"You can't seriously expect me to start composing poetry in this mess."

"I don't."

"Good. I'd hate for you to develop unrealistic expectations about my cultural refinement." Snow tapped against our helmets and shoulders, a fine, relentless sound. The tires hissed faintly where they brushed snow at the edges. The roads were nearly empty—just the occasional car inching past in the distance, its lights half-eaten by the snow haze, the rest looking almost unreal. We were skirting the outer edge of the campus when we passed a small park. Its lights were still on.

I'd just meant to slow down and swing past. As we reached the turn, Hedwig's hand brushed my side, light.

"Shimo."

"Yeah?"

"Stop for a second." I hesitated, then pulled us over to the curb. The park was tiny. The kind with kids on swings in the day and nothing but lights and benches left to prove it existed at night. With the snow, it looked like it had been pressed into another world entirely. A layer of white on the bench, on the slide, along the railings. The metal shone with cold. The streetlamp cast that familiar warm yellow, making the snow look less like snow and more like slow-falling broken light.

I killed the engine, took off my helmet, and breathed out a puff of white.

"What is it?" I asked, turning.

"Feel sick?" Hedwig took her helmet off too. Her hair was mussed from the strap, a few pale strands stuck to her cheek. She brushed it back first before meeting my eyes.

"No," she said.

"I just wanted to get off for a moment."

"…That's a very princess reason."

"Is that not allowed?" She asked it so calmly that I genuinely couldn't tell whether she just wanted to stretch her legs, or whether she knew exactly that if we went straight to her place, something would be missing. I locked the bike and walked over.

"Fine," I said.

"After a closed overpass, stranded guard captain, and emergency scooter reroute, Her Highness demanding a brief stop in a park does fit the pattern."

"The sarcasm ratio in that sentence seems high," she remarked.

"It's not sarcasm," I said.

"It's an incident report summary." She looked at me, the faintest curve at the corner of her lips.

"And in your incident summary, do you write yourself in?"

"Me?" I raised a brow.

"I'm just the unlucky Vice President caught up in an imperial logistics failure."

"Just unlucky?" The way she said it was so light, so smooth, that something under my sternum felt like it'd been poked. I looked at her and didn't answer right away. The snow was still falling. The lamp was right there. Everything was quiet, even the distant traffic muffled like through thick cloth. Leave two seconds of silence in the air at a time like this and things you could've pretended not to hear would start rising on their own. I looked away first, glancing at the snow-buried bench.

"Not entirely unlucky," I said.

"The bentos were decent." That got a real laugh out of her. Not the paper-thin, almost invisible hint from earlier. A clear, slightly helpless one. When she laughed, that too-neat, too-formal composure she wore most of the time loosened at the edges just enough, and that sliver of looseness was…dangerous. I deeply resented that I was starting to categorize her smiles. That was how you knew things were going somewhere they shouldn't.

"You seem in a better mood tonight," she said.

"And where do you see that?"

"You stopped the bike," she said.

"And you didn't immediately push me to get back on."

"What kind of image do you have of me?"

"Efficiency first. Sharp tongue. Looks like you're always ready to roll your eyes at the world, but somehow catches everything that needs catching." I stared at her.

"Hedwig."

"Hm?"

"You realize you're more dangerous than usual when you talk like this, right?" She didn't retreat. Didn't play dumb either. She just watched me quietly.

"Are you warning me," she asked, "or reminding yourself?" That one wouldn't do. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. That one was cheating. I'd been about to snap something sharper back, something that would yank us back into familiar ground, but the words stuck. Because I knew she wasn't trying to corner me or play coy. She was very calmly stating the line, and waiting to see if I had the guts to cross it. And people like that are the worst.

Because even their approach is polite. I pulled in another breath of knife-cold air and stepped a little closer.

"I'm reminding you," I said.

"Road's slick. Vice President's been on overtime too long. My condition tonight is not what I'd call stable. If you stand too close, you might get hit." She didn't step back.

"And if I'm already close?" she asked. I looked down at her. She looked up. Snow on her lashes. On her shoulders. On the edge of the scarf I'd watched her straighten in the office. Her face was a little red; maybe the wind. Either way, at this distance, it was a problem. A very serious one. Serious enough that I could see the white fog of her breath bloom and vanish, replaced in the next second by a new breath. In that moment, all those forms from earlier felt laughable.

Paperwork, at least, came with columns to delete and lines to slash and people to fire. This? This wasn't in any process chart. I lifted my hand, meaning only to brush the snow off her hair. My fingers landed on her shoulder instead. Lightly. But more direct than anything I'd said all night. Her breath hitched. So did mine.... I could still pull out here. But pulling back now would feel an awful lot like running. I frowned, then committed, sweeping the snow from her shoulder and the bit stuck by her collar.

"You'll catch a cold like that," I said. Hedwig watched me and, after two seconds, asked, very soft:"Are you taking care of me?"

"No," I denied instantly.

"I'm preventing the Secretary from calling in sick tomorrow and tanking the Council's administrative efficiency."

"... That does sound like you," she murmured.

"Then I'm still stable." She dipped her head, laughing once. Too close. Close enough that for an instant I regretted stopping, regretted standing with her under the lamp, regretted giving this little park the chance to turn into the perfect stage for an accident. A second later, Hedwig lifted a hand and brushed her fingers lightly against the front of my coat. I went rigid.

"What," I croaked.

"Snow," she said. She dusted the flecks off my shoulders and collar, fingers feather-light, like she wasn't touching me so much as checking whether a line had indeed been crossed. If anyone could stay calm through this, they weren't whole to begin with. I was not. My hand closed around her wrist before I'd even decided what I planned to do with it. I didn't squeeze hard. It was just reflex.

Even through glove and sleeve, her wrist felt slim, the heat beneath the fabric travelling up my arm and straight into the part of my brain that had been barely holding it together all evening. Hedwig looked up. She didn't pull back. Didn't say anything. The little park was too quiet. Swings still. Slide mute. The snow on the bench pressing down like it was holding its breath. The lamp was warm. The moon was cold.

And the two of us were standing in the middle, right at that worst possible, hardest-to-step-away-from point. When I finally heard my own voice, it was lower and rougher than usual.

"Hedwig."

"Hm."

"If you keep this up," I said, eyes locked on hers, my throat tight, "it's going to be very hard for me to treat tonight as just giving you a ride home." She didn't look away. Her eyes were bright, but not sharp—more like something she'd kept folded away very carefully for a long time, and tonight had quietly opened a slit in.

"What do you want to treat it as, then?" she asked. … What the hell was wrong with her tonight. Quiet as a grave half the time, and then at a moment like this, every sentence lands straight. I'd wanted to toss something venomous back, anything to keep myself looking like the Shimo who survived on trash talk. But the words stuck. Because I knew she wasn't angling for a confession, and she wasn't playing games. She was just standing there, laying the choices out, and watching if I'd take one.

And my problem at the moment was— I fucking wanted to. Not just to get her home. Not just to keep seeing her smile. It was worse than that. Pettier. Not fit for any official record. I looked down at her. At her lashes wet with melted snow. At her flushed cheeks. At the way her lips parted as she breathed, the white fog building and breaking, again and again. Too close. Close enough it felt like someone had locked my rationality and impulse in this park and walked off with the key. I leaned in, just a little.

She didn't move. She just watched me. Quietly. Openly. Even, if I were being honest, indulgently. Ruined. The word flashed through my head right before another face barged in. Not hers. Maki's. It wasn't wind or snow or some inconvenient conscience that yanked me back. It was her. Her under the lights this afternoon, flipping the master sheet. Her not even looking at me and still saying, "Snow's heavy, ride slow."

Her always being calm, always having a way to pull us all back onto the rails, and somehow never feeling like only the President. That silhouette flashed in, very briefly. But vicious enough. Like someone had stomped on the brakes exactly as I was about to spin out. The guilt hit just as hard. Not the righteous, easily-defended kind. The worse kind— The kind even I wouldn't bother defending to myself. I stared at Hedwig, breathing off-kilter, still holding her wrist. It was close. Stupidly close.

If Maki's face hadn't shoved itself into my head, I probably would've buried whatever "Vice President judgment" I had left in the snow already. Hedwig seemed to register that momentary freeze. Something in her gaze flicked.

"Shimo?" she said quietly. Too close. Close enough that I almost tipped forward again. I stopped myself. My breath ran hot, my Adam's apple bobbing once, and I ended up, very slowly, easing my grip. Probably not cleanly enough. Because the way she looked at me was not the way you look at someone who had pulled back out of disinterest. It was the way you look at someone— Who had very nearly kissed you and then stopped, and was still carrying that unspent thing in their eyes.

I knew I looked like a disaster right now. Breath off. Eyes probably wrong too. Worse, the pause hadn't come from not wanting to. It came from wanting it too much, until guilt yanked on the leash at the last second. In other words— I didn't look like I was rejecting Hedwig. I looked like I was doing everything in my power not to actually do something to her. And that, frankly, was worse. Because she understood it. The tips of her ears flushed another shade, but she didn't retreat or look offended.

She just watched me, breathing light, eyes going softer in a way that screamed that this barely-held-together version of me had just tripped some very inconvenient switch in her. … Great. Now it wasn't just me. Now I knew, very clearly, that she liked this look on me. That was worse than all of it. I shut my eyes briefly and forced my voice back.

"Hedwig," I said, low.

"You really shouldn't be making that face right now." She blinked.

"Which face?"

"The one that says—" I stopped, knowing that if I said this out loud, there was no going back.

"The one that says you know exactly what I almost did and you're not planning on stepping away." She held my gaze. The snow kept falling, on her hair, on my shoulders. The lamp made everything too clear, even the exact shape of how wrecked I looked. After two seconds, she spoke.

"…I just wanted to know if you stopped because you didn't want to, or because you couldn't," she said. It felt like someone had slowly squeezed my chest. Too accurate. Too accurate for jokes. I stared at her, then let out a small, wrecked laugh.

"Did you come out here to ride home," I said, "or to interrogate me?"

"I'm not interrogating you," she said.

"I just… don't want to misread this." That line hit harder than anything else. Because that was the point. She wasn't trying to force a statement out of me. She just didn't want the kind of silence that would leave her guessing and pulling back in all the wrong ways until the line died. What she wanted wasn't a win. It was clarity. I breathed out hard, lifted my hand, and this time brushed a strand of hair back from her cheek.

"It's not that I don't want to," I said. Her breath stopped. I held her eyes and forced the words out, low enough I almost didn't recognize my own voice.

"It's that if I do exactly what I want right now, things are going to be very complicated afterwards." Her ears went redder. But she didn't look away. Didn't move her hand. Fair enough. I was the one she had just watched barely hold himself together. That, apparently, was what she liked.

"And in my current state," I added, "it's really not a good idea to let you take half a step closer. Otherwise it's going to be impossible to pretend I was just the Vice President escorting the Secretary home." The light in her eyes—small, quiet, impossible to hide—finally broke the surface. Her mouth moved in a tiny, shallow curve that felt like pushing me one last inch while I still hadn't fully regained my footing.

"So," she murmured, "you really were that close just now?" … This woman had no intention of letting me off the hook tonight. I stared at her and finally turned my face aside, because I could feel what my expression looked like and it wasn't salvageable—leftover momentum, forced restraint, and a thread of irritation at being read this cleanly, all mashed together. And that barely-contained edge? Exactly her flavor. Because I heard her draw in a breath. Not in fear. Not in recoil. Like she'd genuinely received it.

I pulled her scarf up a little, carefully, very deliberately not touching anything I didn't have to.

"Let's go," I said, voice rough.

"If we stay, I can't guarantee I'll stay this well-behaved." This time, Hedwig didn't push. She just watched me. Her eyes were unnervingly gentle, and there was a heat there that hadn't been, earlier. Not loud. Still restrained. Which somehow made it worse. Then she nodded, once.

"Okay," she said. Just one word. But that "okay" clearly no longer meant the simple compliance from earlier. I handed her the helmet.

"This," I said, "we can decide whether to admit happened after I get you home in one piece." Hedwig took the helmet. Her fingers brushed mine, pausing for the smallest fraction.

"Okay," she said again. Just one word. But for some reason, it sounded far more like she'd agreed to something than anything else she'd said all night.