For reasons he couldn't quite articulate, even though both women were exchanging perfectly pleasant smiles, Kazama Haru could swear he smelled gunpowder in the air—sharp and acrid, like the moment before a fireworks display goes catastrophically wrong.
He felt like a piece of mochi caught between two erupting volcanoes, getting slow-roasted from both sides.
This is fine. Everything is fine. I'm definitely not about to witness a yandere showdown in my own living room.
"Ara, ara~ Since you two are discussing work matters, I won't disturb you any further."
Sena Ajisai didn't pursue the implied provocation woven into Togawa Sakiko's honeyed words. Instead, as if this were her own home—which, given how often she invaded, it practically was—she turned and glided into the Kazama family's kitchen with practiced ease.
She emerged moments later with a tin of butter cookies that even Haru didn't know existed, the metal container decorated with faded European pastoral scenes.
Under their astonished gazes, she approached him with deliberate slowness. The light caught the edges of her hair, turning the strands into threads of spun gold. Her perfume preceded her by half a step.
Then, with the casual possessiveness of someone marking territory, she extended her index finger and pressed it gently against Kazama Haru's forehead. Her touch was cool, her skin soft, and the gesture intimate enough to make his breath catch.
"You mustn't bully Togawa-San, understand?" Her voice dropped to a whisper meant only for him, lips curving. "Mr. Villain~"
Mr. Villain?!
A chill cascaded down Haru's spine like ice water.
Ajisai... why would she repeat that embarrassing nickname?! And when the hell did she start eavesdropping on our conversation?!
He hadn't heard her approach. Hadn't sensed her presence at all until she'd materialized in his living room like some beautiful, terrifying specter. The woman moved like a ghost when she wanted to.
Mission accomplished, Ajisai seemed to float on considerably better spirits. She hummed a familiar tune—the opening notes of some idol anime he vaguely recognized—and departed with a smile that somehow conveyed "you two get along well" and "I'll be watching" in equal measure.
The door clicked shut behind her with terrible finality.
"..."
It wasn't until that decisive click echoed through the apartment that Kazama Haru, like a fish finally breaching the surface after too long underwater, released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. His lungs burned. His shoulders ached from tension.
The suffocating pressure in the room dissipated by degrees—only to be replaced by something else entirely. Something thick and sticky that clung to the silence like humidity before a summer storm.
Haru stole a glance at Togawa Sakiko.
She wasn't looking at him. Her attention appeared fixed on the tin of cookies Ajisai had abandoned, delicate fingers selecting a small bear-shaped biscuit and bringing it to her lips with studied casualness. The cookie crunched softly between her teeth. A faint crumb clung to the corner of her mouth.
Her brow remained furrowed—just slightly, just enough to notice.
Just as Haru gathered his courage to shatter the unbearable quiet—
"Hehe." Sakiko looked up, and her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "Kazama-kun, I didn't expect you to have such a beautiful childhood friend hidden away at home. It truly makes one... envious."
The way she said envious made it sound like a curse.
"Also," she continued, each word precise as a scalpel, "when I was speaking with that childhood friend just now, I felt like we were already rehearsing a script for Ave Mujica."
"What do you mean by that?" Haru asked, genuinely bewildered.
"Didn't you feel it?"
Togawa Sakiko's gaze settled on him—cool, assessing, carrying that particular weight unique to people who understood exactly how much power resided in careful observation.
"Kazama-kun had completely entered the role of a backstage hand. Watching a pantomime that had nothing to do with him, yet somehow required his participation." Her fingers traced the rim of the cookie tin. "As for the show's outcome, you cleverly chose to let the two actresses on stage improvise, maintaining an attitude of being thoroughly uninvolved."
She's... resenting my silence. Blaming me for not standing firmly by her side.
"I... that's..."
The realization tightened around his throat like a noose. He ransacked his brain for any words that might serve as adequate defense, but every excuse crumbled before it could form. What could he have said? What could he have done?
In that invisible war between two forces of nature, any intervention would have been kindling on the fire.
Watching his increasingly flustered expression, something in Sakiko's eyes softened. The frost melted by degrees.
"Hehe. It was merely a joke, Kazama-kun. Please don't take it to heart."
Merely a joke. Sure. And I'm merely having heart palpitations.
But even as she dismissed her own accusation, complex emotions stirred beneath Sakiko's composed exterior.
It seemed she wasn't the only one who had discovered just how precious a reliable Kazama-kun could be.
If she didn't establish some defensive perimeter soon, some shameless stray cat might very well steal him away.
This isn't selfishness, she told herself firmly. This is simply protecting Ave Mujica's essential band manager. A purely practical concern.
Having convinced herself with such flimsy reasoning, Sakiko drew a steadying breath. Her hands clenched quietly against her knees, knuckles whitening beneath the pressure. Her heart hammered against her ribs with alarming force.
"Um... Kazama-kun."
"Yes!" He straightened instantly, spine snapping rigid like a startled cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"We..."
Heat bloomed across Sakiko's cheeks—visible, undeniable, spreading from her face down to her neck in a wave of pink. But she forced herself to meet his gaze directly. Her voice emerged trembling, yet somehow achingly clear:
"We're... bound by fate, aren't we? So wouldn't it seem... a bit distant... to continue speaking with such formal language?"
"...Eh?"
Time crystallized around them.
Kazama Haru's expression froze mid-transition, caught somewhere between comprehension and complete system failure.
Now? We're doing this NOW?
The Togawa Sakiko before him was a version he'd never witnessed—soft, vulnerable, her usual poise crumbling at the edges. Her head dipped low, chin nearly touching her chest. The flush had spread to her ears, turning them the delicate pink of spring cherry blossoms.
Under the weight of his gaze, she turned redder still. Her eyes darted to the floor, the wall, the window—anywhere but his face.
"You see... just like I call our guitarist Mutsumi directly, I thought perhaps... we could also..." She swallowed visibly. "...call each other by name."
Her fingers twisted in her lap, and when she continued, the words came faster, tumbling over each other:
"Always using honorifics... it feels strange. Besides—" her voice sharpened almost imperceptibly, "—didn't that childhood friend just now call you 'Haru-chan'?"
Ah. So that's what this is really about.
The invocation of Sena Ajisai's name was simultaneously an excuse and a declaration. A line drawn in sand.
—If she can, why can't I?
"C-can I?" Haru's voice cracked embarrassingly on the question. His heart had abandoned any pretense of normal rhythm, throwing itself against his ribs like a caged animal.
Looking at Sakiko's expression—that mix of determination and terror, like a small animal that had cornered itself through sheer stubbornness—he felt heat creeping up his own neck.
In Japanese society, first names carried weight. Significance. Outside of childhood friends or family, calling someone by their given name meant something had shifted. Something fundamental.
It meant intimacy. It meant claiming.
"You can..."
She nodded, the motion jerky and graceless. Words seemed to have abandoned her entirely now; all that emerged from her throat was a small, muffled sound of agreement, barely louder than the whisper of fabric against skin.
"In that case..."
Haru's throat worked convulsively. His tongue felt like sandpaper.
"Then... from now on, please take care of me..."
He paused. Swallowed. Committed fully to his own destruction.
"...Saki-chan."
"Saki-chan?!"
The words struck her like lightning. Togawa Sakiko's head snapped up, eyes wide, ears burning so intensely she could feel her pulse throbbing in them.
She had expected Sakiko, perhaps. The same way Wakaba Mutsumi addressed her—familiar but still maintaining some thread of formality.
She had absolutely not prepared for Saki-chan. Not for the way those syllables would roll off his tongue with such easy affection. Not for the way they would resonate somewhere deep in her chest like a bell struck true.
And she certainly hadn't anticipated the warmth that flooded through her at the sound—embarrassing, overwhelming, and shamefully sweet.
"Mm."
The acknowledgment emerged barely above a whisper. Sakiko's head bowed low, hair falling forward to curtain her face, desperate to hide the smile she couldn't seem to suppress. It bloomed across her lips unbidden—shy and brilliant and utterly exposed.
Then, summoning every ounce of courage she possessed, she ventured:
"Ka... Haru-chan?"
The name felt foreign on her tongue. Intimate. Dangerous.
"Yes." His voice was rough. "From now on, please take care of me."
It was merely a change in address.
Just two syllables rearranged.
And yet the air between them shimmered with something new—charged and delicate and trembling with possibility.