When he returned to his room, the smile on Uesugi Hara's face had not quite faded by the time the lock clicked softly behind him.
He sat down at his desk and first plugged the voice recorder into his computer. On the screen, Kushida's voice was cut into segments: from her fierce threats, to her flustered, indignant "Pervert," to her sweet "Yay!" Even the breathy notes she couldn't hide at the ends of her words were crystal clear.
"The tremor in her voice when she threatens someone, the way her tone wavers when she blushes..." He tapped his fingers against the desk, his gaze passing over the waveform for "Pervert." Suddenly, he chuckled. "She's a lot more vivid than she is in the anime."
Next, he took out the pinhole camera that had been most useful that night and inspected it. Its metal casing gleamed coldly beneath the desk lamp, reflecting in his eyes like a silent mark.
Finally, his gaze fell on the motionless dot on the Terminal. Kushida had returned to her dorm, and her location was no longer moving. He switched screens, and the scene where she'd pressed her fingerprint onto the paper appeared.
After closing the Terminal, Uesugi Hara shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair. Then he went to the window and opened it a crack.
The night breeze, carrying light from the distant classroom buildings, streamed into the room. He gazed out at the nightscape, lightly tapping his fingers against the window frame.
"A shared secret?" he murmured, repeating the words. The familiar curve returned to his lips. "Maybe."
The mystery novel on the corner of his desk was still open to the page he'd been reading, but now it seemed like a dull backdrop compared to the real-life "scene" he'd just shared with his opponent.
He shut down the computer and decided to sort out the audio and video tomorrow. After all, compared to the tricks in a book, his prey—who blushed when she made threats, then turned around and smiled sweetly—was clearly worth looking forward to.
At 6:30 in the morning, the first ray of sunlight slipping through the curtains had just crept onto the desk. Uesugi Hara was already sitting at his computer.
On the screen, the previous night's audio waveforms had been split into several segments: the metallic clatter of Kushida kicking the railing, her shrill voice cursing "that bitch Horikita," and her final, sugary "Yay~ Now we have a secret together." Each segment was marked with a timestamp precise to the second.
His fingers moved over the mouse. He found the segment where Kushida had snapped "Pervert" and selected it for deletion without hesitation. There was no point keeping a clip that was useless to him.
He skimmed the rest of the recording and confirmed that what remained was only her emotional outburst, her threats as she tried to appear calm, her willingness to press her fingerprint onto the paper, and their exchange after she switched back to her sweet tone. Only then did he start sorting through the important segments.
After removing the relevant material, he selected the two audio clips with the sharpest contrast:
The first was her, eyes red, kicking the railing with ferocious anger: "Why does everyone only look at her?!"
The second was her, turning around with a saccharine smile in her voice: "I trust you."
For the video, he selected a side view of her fierce expression as she gripped the iron railing, and a close-up of her smiling as she hooked her arm around his wrist at the end. Side by side on the screen, the two images looked like opposite reflections of the same person.
He bundled the edited audio into a file and sent it to Kushida Kikyo's Terminal. He typed three characters for the filename: "Last night's batch."
Before sending it, he added a note: "Just finished organizing everything. I deleted some unnecessary parts. The rest is more like what a 'shared secret' should be, don't you think? By the way, my room number is 506. Remember to come see me."
Sure enough, less than three minutes later, a new message popped up on the Terminal. Kushida's avatar was bouncing.
He opened it. The message had her usual soft, sweet tone: "You're up early, Uesugi! Got the file. But is there something you need when you say 'come see you'? (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧" The emoji at the end was just like her, doing its best to maintain an impeccable air of friendliness.
Uesugi Hara tapped the screen with his fingertip, then sent a brief reply: "Nothing important. I just want you to see for yourself where these 'secrets' are stored. After all, you can't call it 'keeping them together' unless you know where they're hidden, right?"
After sending it, he turned and sat at his desk, waiting patiently. Sunlight had already spread across the desktop, falling just right on the open mystery novel and illuminating a passage about "safekeeping evidence."
When he heard footsteps outside, the dot on the Terminal moved toward his location. A moment later, there was a knock at the door.
Uesugi Hara stood and went to open it.
As the door opened, the morning breeze stirred the curtains in the hallway. A few shafts of sunlight fell perfectly across Kushida Kikyo's face.
She stood in the doorway, her uniform skirt still swaying slightly from her hurried walk. The loose strands of hair by her temples were neatly tucked away, but her right hand was unconsciously clutching the hem on her left side. The fabric was pinched into several deep creases, wrinkling the front of her uniform. That told him more about her unease than any expression could.
"Come in." Uesugi Hara stepped aside to let her through. His gaze swept over the hand clutching her hem, and he lightly tapped his fingers against his side.
The room was quiet, save for the computer's low hum. When Kushida reached the desk, her fingers loosened their grip on her hem, then quickly clenched again.
Her eyes darted over the desk: the open mystery novel, the lit-up computer screen still on the audio-editing interface, the empty folder in the corner, and finally the voice recorder Uesugi Hara had just picked up. Its metal casing gleamed coldly in the morning light.
"Those files..." she said first, deliberately softening the ends of her words. "When you said you wanted me to see where they were 'hidden,' did you mean they're on your computer?"
Uesugi Hara didn't answer directly. Instead, he set the voice recorder on the desk in front of her. "Not just there. There's a backup of the audio here, and the video is in an encrypted cloud folder. The password is the number of times you kicked the railing last night."
Kushida's fingers tightened around her hem. The fabric dug deeper into her knuckles, and even her shoulders gave a slight tremble. When she looked up, the sweetness in her smile had faded a little. "You even counted that, Uesugi?"
"It's 'important evidence,' after all." He tapped the line about "safekeeping evidence" in the mystery novel. "The book says you have to remember every detail about key evidence. Like the way your knuckles turned white when you gripped the railing last night, and the way you're clutching your hem right now..."
Before Uesugi Hara could finish, the figure before him suddenly moved. Kushida snapped her leg up, her knee driving toward his jaw with a rush of wind.
The kick was fast and sudden, nothing like her usual soft and pliant manner. It was as if all the panic and anger she'd been holding in all night had finally burst out through her movements.
But Uesugi Hara was ready. The instant she raised her leg, he turned aside and caught her ankle. His fingers brushed the taut muscle beneath her uniform trousers. Before she could pull her leg back, his other hand had already pressed against her shoulder, shoving her sideways with the force of her own momentum.
"Ugh!" Kushida staggered backward, her lower back striking the edge of the bed. She had barely regained her balance when Uesugi Hara was already closing in.
He didn't use much force. He simply braced his knee behind hers and pressed, making her fall onto the bed before she could stop herself.
Before she could push herself up from the sheets, Uesugi Hara leaned over and pinned her wrists to the pillow with both hands. Then he sat down across her hips and abdomen. His weight wasn't heavy, but it was like a stone placed precisely on a lever, leaving her unable to move her limbs.
"Let go of me!" Kushida's voice had completely changed. All the sweetness was gone, leaving only a hurried, angry tremor. She twisted her hips and tried to drive her knees into his back, but her upper body was held firmly in place. Her wrists reddened beneath his hands, making the pressure on her abdomen feel even more pronounced.
"Don't move." Uesugi Hara's voice was steady, almost nonchalant. "If you keep moving, you might make me react. That would be a different kind of story."
The words doused most of her struggle like a bucket of cold water. Kushida froze for a few seconds and stopped twisting, her chest heaving. Several strands of hair had come loose and stuck to her damp temples.
She raised her head and glared at him. There wasn't a trace of a smile in her eyes anymore, only anger and panic she could no longer hide. "Uesugi Hara! Have you been scheming against me from the very beginning?!"
"Scheming?" He looked down at her. Morning sunlight slanted in through the gap in the curtains, falling just across her taut jawline. "Does it count as 'working together' if it started when you walked down that little path last night?"
"Working together, my ass!" Her voice was on the verge of tears, but she stubbornly held them back. "You sent that file to lure me here. You deliberately said those things to provoke me. What do you want?!"
Uesugi Hara loosened his fingers around her wrists but didn't get up. "I don't want anything. You were taking out your anger on the railing last night, and now I just want you to calm down. Kicking at me is a lot more dangerous than kicking a railing." He paused, watching the emotions roiling in her eyes, then added, "Of course, it's a lot more interesting, too."
"Interesting?" Kushida trembled with anger, struggling against his hold on her wrists again. "You've got me pinned down here, and you're calling it interesting?! What are you planning to do with those recordings and videos? Blackmail me? Make me do what you say?!"
"From the looks of it," Uesugi Hara said, glancing down at her still faintly twisting body, "even without the recordings, you seem pretty responsive to 'physical restraint.'"
The remark set her off completely. Kushida turned her head sharply and tried with all her strength to bite the hand he had pinned to the pillow. But he saw it coming and lifted her wrist just in time to dodge her teeth.
She bit at empty air and could only glare furiously at the ceiling. At last, she couldn't hold back her tears, and they slid from the corners of her eyes into the pillow. "You bastard... You've been laughing at me from the very start, haven't you?!"
Uesugi Hara fell silent for a few seconds. The body beneath him still trembled slightly, but it was no longer from struggling. It seemed more like the wounded indignation of someone whose disguise had been torn away.
At last, he shifted and moved a little off her, but he didn't let go of her wrists. He only leaned over and looked at her reddened eyes. "I wouldn't call it laughing at you.
"But you do look a lot more genuine like this than you do when you smile at me."
"Genuine?" Kushida sniffed, her voice hoarse. "You did all this just to see the real me?!"
"Not entirely." Uesugi Hara lightly touched the red marks on her wrist. When he saw that she wasn't struggling anymore, he slowly let go, though he remained seated on top of her. "Mostly, I wanted to know what someone who wears a smiling mask looks like when it's ripped off. As it turns out, you're a lot cuter than the villains in mystery novels."
Kushida rubbed her sore wrists as she lay on the bed and glared at him. Her eyes were still wet, but they had regained some of the ferocity she'd shown while kicking the railing last night. "Cut the crap! I asked what you want. Give me a straight answer!"