The Delayed Handprint

Kiryu Yume left the library after night had already fallen.

He stood at the entrance for a few seconds as the evening breeze blew in from the direction of the athletic field.

He had only gotten through three pages of that Japanese-language reference book today. Ever since Class D came in, he had been unable to focus at all.

He adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and headed toward the dorms. At the fork in the road, he turned onto the narrow path behind the school building. There was rarely anyone there at night, and the streetlights were spaced far apart.

When he neared the side entrance of the school building, he heard a voice.

Someone was cursing, speaking quietly but with force. Kiryu Yume paused.

Kushida Kikyo stood with her back to him, leaning against the wall with her head lowered. Her voice was hoarse from being held down, and her lips were so dry that faint sticky breaths could be heard between her words. The sounds squeezed out of her throat.

"...Horikita, who do you think you are? What are you acting so high and mighty for? Looking down on other people with that attitude of yours when you can't do anything but make faces. So what if your grades are good? You're still in Class D. Nobody pays attention to you, so what makes you think you're such a big deal?"

She began kicking at the base of the wall with her toe, once for every person she cursed. Nail-sized flakes of paint bounced dully against the toes of her canvas shoes.

"And those idiots like Sudo. One of them only knows how to slam tables and throw notebooks around. He can't even spell 'beautiful,' yet he has the nerve to lose his temper at me. Teach him the same word ten times, and he forgets it the moment he turns around. He tears up his notebook, then makes me copy out another one for him. Ike Kanji just cowers beside him and doesn't even dare speak. Ask him if he understands and he says he does, but tell him to spell it himself and it comes out completely wrong."

When she mentioned him tearing it up and making her copy it again, she missed her kick. The toe of her shoe scraped against the wall with a sharp squeak, but she did not stop.

"Yamauchi Haruki can't do anything except nod. He nods and says he understands, then gets the very first letter wrong as soon as he picks up his pen. He copied his notes on the wrong lines and didn't notice until he'd filled three pages. Helping them review wasted my entire weekend. They can't even copy vocabulary correctly, yet they still give me attitude. What gives them the right? A bunch of useless deadweights. Without them, Class D would've moved up ages ago."

Kiryu Yume slipped his hand into his pocket, his fingertips brushing the button on the side of his phone. The last time he had recorded Ryuuen Kakeru in the bathroom, his finger had pressed the button before his mind caught up. This time was the same. The recording icon lit up inside his pocket.

He accidentally stepped on a dry leaf. It cracked.

Kushida Kikyo's voice cut off. Before turning around, she withdrew the foot she had been using to kick the wall beneath her school skirt, and pulled her fingers from the wall back into her sleeve.

Streetlight fell over her face. Kiryu Yume saw an expression he had never seen on her before—her eyes wide, lips pressed into a line, her entire face taut, completely unlike the ever-smiling Kushida Kikyo he knew.

The panic that had just surfaced in her eyes was swiftly suppressed. Her lips moved before her brain did, forming the habitual smile she always wore, only for her to forcibly flatten it into a straight line before it could take shape.

Then came that cold smile. Her lips curled, but her eyes did not follow; the lingering heat from her earlier cursing remained in them.

She was smiling, but her breathing had not yet broken free of the rhythm of her rant.

"Kiryu-kun." Her voice regained its gentleness, but Kiryu Yume could hear something being held down beneath it.

"Kushida-san." His voice was a little dry. His hand still gripped his phone inside his pocket.

Kushida Kikyo stepped out from around the corner and moved one step closer. Kiryu Yume wanted to retreat, but there were bushes behind him. She stopped in front of him and looked up at him, her eyes bright under the streetlight.

"Did you hear all of that?" Her voice was soft, as if she were asking what he had eaten today.

"...No."

Kushida Kikyo smiled. Her smile grew colder. Suddenly, she reached out, her fingers icy as she grabbed his right wrist. Her fingertips pressed against the jut of his wrist bone, gripping tightly enough for her nails to dig into the seam of his cuff.

Her fingers were trembling. Fine tremors caused by excessive force traveled from her knuckles to his wrist bone, like a string pulled taut to its limit quivering faintly beneath the skin.

Kiryu Yume lowered his eyes to look at her hand. Before he could speak, she had already grabbed his wrist and lifted it.

Instinctively, he tried to pull back. Her nails made an extremely faint scraping sound against his sleeve. He could not move it. She was stronger than he had expected.

She pressed his hand against her chest.

She forced it down firmly. The thin fabric of her school shirt wrinkled beneath his palm, the crease spreading outward from the center of his hand in thin lines that rose and fell slightly with her breathing. When she inhaled, the wrinkles flattened; when she exhaled, they gathered again.

His mind went completely blank in that instant.

There was only that thin layer of fabric between his palm and her shirt. Beneath it, the edge of her bra pressed against the heel of his hand and his fingertips—a firm outline, with softness beyond it, warm with her body heat.

Her heartbeat traveled into his palm, thudding squarely against the center of it again and again, so fast that he could not count the intervals. Every beat was a small impact, striking outward from inside her chest, hitting his palm, bouncing back, then striking again.

The pulse traveled from his palm to his wrist. His own pulse was beating at the radial artery, overlapping with hers. He could not tell which beat belonged to whom.

His palm began to sweat. Moisture seeped from his pores and was absorbed by the shirt fabric. First, the deepest line of his palm print became damp, then his entire palm.

The damp shirt was no longer slippery. It clung to his skin instead, making the friction even stronger.

He drew his fingertips back slightly. His knuckles touched the curve of bone beneath her collarbone, hard and smooth, a shallow arc beneath thin skin.

Her body was warmer than his palm. Heat seeped from her through the shirt, through the sweat, through the outermost layer of his skin, all the way into the capillaries in his palm. His entire hand was warmed through.

A faintly damp layer of vapor formed between their body heat.

The sweat gave the shirt a semi-transparent quality. The color of the skin beneath showed through faintly, and several loose threads from her cuff were caught between his fingers.

His breathing grew heavier by half a beat. When he inhaled, his palm rose slightly with his chest; when he exhaled, it pressed back down, out of sync with the rise and fall of her ribs.

Her breathing was shallower and faster than his. Every breath she took made the shirt cling more tightly to his palm.

"Who do you think everyone will believe?" Her lips were beside his ear, her voice low enough for only him to hear. Her breath brushed his ear, damp and hot, spreading from his ear to the side of his neck. The roots of his ears began to burn.

Her expression was calm, but the fingers gripping his wrist continued to tremble.

"...I understand."

Kushida Kikyo stared at him for several seconds before releasing him.

Kiryu Yume drew his hand back and looked down at his right hand. Her wrist's chill still lingered on his fingers.

His heartbeat pounded from his eardrums all the way to his fingertips. He pulled his left hand from his pocket. The phone screen was lit, and the recording timer was still running.

Kushida Kikyo's gaze fell on those ticking numbers. The cold smile on her face froze in place rather than disappearing at once. Her lips remained curved, but her eyes had already shifted from those of a threatener to those of someone being threatened. Her fingers loosened around his wrist, then tightened again.

Kiryu Yume pressed stop. The recording was two minutes and forty-seven seconds long.

"I started recording from the first thing you said about Horikita." He raised the phone between them. "You can say going public would be an invasion, but if this recording gets released, it'll be social death for you. You know better than I do which one costs more."

Kushida Kikyo stared at the audio file on the screen, her breathing stopping for more than half a beat. She suddenly reached for it, moving so fast that her light brown short hair swung forward and struck her cheek. Kiryu Yume raised his hand higher. She was half a head shorter than him and could not reach it.

"Give it back." Her voice tore away that layer of gentleness. Her lips pressed white, her nose wrinkled, and moisture welled in her eyes. Her disguise had been ripped clean off.

"I won't. If I give it back, you'll tell the whole class tomorrow that I cornered you by the side entrance, and I still won't be able to explain myself." Kiryu Yume put the phone back into his pocket. His heart hammered against his ribs, but he kept speaking. "I have a condition. Agree to it, and I'll delete it."

Kushida Kikyo's chest rose and fell several times, her expression rapidly shifting beneath the streetlight. After several long seconds, she forced out one word through clenched teeth.

"Say it."

"From now on, when no one's around, I get to call you Mama Kushida, and you can't refuse."

Kushida Kikyo froze completely.

She had still been tense and guarded just moments ago, but upon hearing that, her brow furrowed halfway before relaxing. She crossed her arms over her chest, more like she needed somewhere to put her hands.

"...What does that mean?"

"Exactly what it says."

"Are you sick?" Her tone slid from anger into confusion.

Kushida Kikyo stared into his eyes for two seconds. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, then she swallowed it back.

"...That's your only condition?"

"That's it."

"...You really are sick." She muttered it quietly, the coldness gone from her voice, replaced by the helplessness of someone who had been utterly thrown off. "Fine. Call me whatever you want."

Kushida Kikyo's expression was so complicated that she looked like she wanted to curse him but could not find the right words.

"Mama Kushida," Kiryu Yume said.

Her ears reddened first, then the side of her neck. The color surged up from beneath her skin all at once, rather than spreading gradually. She opened her mouth, and the first syllable was "You," carrying the anger that had not yet fully faded, but the next syllable never came.

"...Pervert." Her tone had already turned, the ending falling away. She turned around and strode toward the dorms, her light brown short hair swaying beneath the streetlights.

After walking more than ten steps, she turned back and glared at him. "You can only use that name when no one else is around. If anyone hears it, I won't acknowledge it."

After turning away again, her pace did not change. Inside her pocket, her fingers repeatedly squeezed the metal edge of her keychain. She did not look back. When she reached a streetlight, she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and shoved it back into her pocket.

Kiryu Yume leaned against the wall and only let out a long breath after she had gone far away. His fingers were still cold, and his clothes had picked up a layer of dust from being pressed against the wall for too long. He patted his shoulder and headed toward the dorms.

When he passed beneath a streetlight, the system panel flashed.

[Kushida Kikyo: 1/30]

[New Bond: Son of Recording—Gained the ability to sense recording devices within five meters.]