When the door closed, the sounds from the hallway suddenly seemed far away.

Reina stood near the entrance with her bag still on her shoulder. The small room was lit only by indirect lighting. There was a neatly made bed and a low table. The clatter of dishes from the restaurant they had just left, the face she had seen reflected in the elevator mirror—none of it was here anymore.

Toru did not come closer at once.

He stood beside the door and looked at her.

The instant she noticed his gaze, the trapped feeling from the moment their eyes had met while she stood on the ladder came back to her, skipping across time.

Whenever Reina realized she was being watched, her body always reacted first. She did not think and then become troubled. Her breathing deepened; she no longer knew where to put her hands; only afterward did she start searching for a reason.

It was the same now.

But coming this far had not been an accident.

“Reina-san.”

Toru said her name.

“If you want to go home, I’ll take you.”

Reina looked down at the handles of her bag.

Yuto’s voice—*Make sure you go to the afterparty*—rose suddenly in her mind.

She knew she could not turn those words into permission for tonight.

Even so, Reina did not leave Toru’s side.

“I’m not going home.”

Only after saying it did she finally set her bag on the floor.

Toru did not move.

“Can I come closer?”

Reina looked up.

If she only nodded, she felt she could still blame it on something else.

Instead, she reached for the sleeve of Toru’s shirt and caught the fabric between her fingers.

“Yes.”

Then she stepped toward him herself.

Reina was the one who kissed him first.

It was brief, but she could not pull away immediately afterward. Toru’s breath was close. When Reina leaned in again, his hand came around to her back. It did not hold her down. It rested there with only enough pressure that she could have stepped away whenever she wanted.

The arm and back she had seen in the dressing room were no longer memories. Toru’s shoulder moved with his breathing, and between kisses, his breath brushed Reina’s cheek.

Reina closed her eyes.

The instant she did, it felt like running away.

When she opened them again, Toru was right there.

“Don’t rush,” she said.

Her voice was rougher than she expected.

“I won’t.”

Toru answered at once.

Reina touched the collar of her knit top. She let the fabric that had slipped over one shoulder slide a little farther, a small invitation.

Toru’s eyes followed the movement.

He was looking at her. Embarrassment made her breathing shallow. Still, Reina took his hand and placed it on her shoulder.

Toru’s palm settled gently beneath the black knit that had slipped from one shoulder. The warmth of his hand spread slowly over skin that should have been cold. His fingertips stopped near her collarbone and went no farther.

Reina kissed him again of her own accord.

When she pressed herself a little closer, Toru’s hand moved from her shoulder to her back and supported her there. It stopped at a place where she could have pulled away at once if she chose to.

When their lips parted, Reina tightened her grip on his hand.

From the entrance to the bed at the back of the room was only a few steps. Reina moved first, and Toru followed behind her, led by the hand she held.

When Reina sat down on the edge of the bed, the bare length of her legs below her faded black denim skirt sank lightly into the sheets.

She looked up at Toru without letting go of his hand.

He stood in front of her, simply looking back.

A little skin showed where the shoulder of Reina’s black knit had slipped. She had chosen the outfit herself. She had wanted to go to the afterparty still looking professional, without appearing too put together.

Now the shape of that fabric made her conscious only of where he might touch her.

“Reina-san.”

At Toru’s voice, Reina met his eyes.

“Is this okay?”

Something inside her chest went cold for a moment.

Yuto’s face came to her.

The memory of Yuto kissing her forehead, then telling her to go to the afterparty, rose suddenly in her. He might already be asleep. He still did not know she was not coming home.

If she stopped here, she could leave tonight on the near side of a mistake.

Reina took Toru’s hand.

“It’s okay.”

With their fingers still entwined, she drew in a small breath.

“But…”

Toru waited.

Reina searched for the words.

“Don’t look away.”

Embarrassment came after she said it.

She had thought she did not want to be looked at. And yet being looked at had brought her here.

Toru did not smile.

“I won’t look away.”

His fingertips gently moved her bangs aside.

Reina put her arms around Toru’s waist.

She pulled him closer, then slowly let her back rest on the sheets.

Reina pulled her knit top over her head. When her fingers found the buttons of Toru’s shirt, he waited for them to move before taking off his own clothes.

When Reina reached for the skirt she still wore, Toru looked into her eyes and waited again.

Their breaths mingled, warm and close.

With one arm supporting Reina’s back, Toru hooked a finger under the clasp of her bra with the other. He opened it lightly, and the fabric slipped from her chest. Cool air touched her skin for an instant before Toru’s palm covered it. The hand supporting her back pressed just enough to lift her body a little. Her breasts, small and beautifully formed, rose naturally toward him.

He began at the curve of her breasts, laying slow kisses across her soft skin. Gradually he moved toward their center, until at last his lips touched a nipple. It had already begun to harden. He kissed it gently, traced it with the tip of his tongue, and kissed it again as though drawing it into his mouth.

Reina’s breathing became visibly ragged. Her shoulders rose and fell in small movements, and her breath touched Toru’s hair. Tension gathered in her thighs. Her legs drew inward, carrying a pressure that seemed to hold Toru’s waist between them.

He moved to the other nipple and touched it in the same way. From time to time, he caught it very lightly between his teeth. Each time, Reina’s body gave a small shiver.

Then he left her breasts and slowly kissed his way lower. Across the hollow beneath her ribs, over soft skin, he continued as if tracing a path. Once, around her navel, he breathed out deeply against her.

Reina’s hips lifted a little, as though expecting something. Toru felt the movement as her waist left the sheets.

He returned one hand to her chest. This time he did not touch her nipples directly. His palm followed the line of her ribs, carefully tracing each one as it moved lower. When he reached the curve of her waist, he stroked it downward and began to make small circles with his fingertips. Reina’s body arched faintly into his hand, and her hips almost lifted again.

Toru tightened the arm supporting her back and drew her closer to him. At the distance where their chests touched, he kissed her collarbone again. Reina’s fingers tightened slightly against his back. The pressure was quiet, but certain enough to feel like an answer.

And in that moment, she began to think about why she was here.

It was not the last train. It was not the restaurant closing.

She could not make it anyone else’s fault.

Something warm ran down her cheek.

“Wait.”

At Reina’s voice, Toru stopped at once.

Only their breathing remained between them.

Toru’s eyes did not leave her.

“Do you want to stop?”

Reina shook her head.

“No.”

Her voice caught.

“I’m sad.”

Toru did not hurry her.

The tears on Reina’s cheeks were not because she disliked him.

It was because, at this moment more clearly than ever, she knew Yuto had done nothing wrong.

She loved Yuto. She truly loved being touched by him, and being kissed on the forehead before sleep.

And she was standing before Toru while still holding all of that inside her.

It hurt enough to tear at her chest.

But being sad did not mean she wanted to stop.

When Toru began to reach for her cheek and stopped himself, Reina pressed her face into his palm instead.

“I’m not okay.”

When she put it into words, more tears spilled over.

“But I don’t want to stop.”

Toru gave a short nod.

The hand at Reina’s waist did not move.

Reina placed her fingers on Toru’s shoulder.

The shoulder she had seen at the previous joint show had been hidden under a black T-shirt. The arm she had caught at the edge of a mirror, the moment their eyes had met from the ladder—both had remained inside her body all this time.

Now all of it was in front of her.

It was not because Yuto was not enough. It was not because she did not love him.

Reina did not know why it was Toru.

Was it because he had watched her? Because she had watched him? Because that night, when she had tried to cool the heat alone, only the memory of Toru had refused to disappear?

She could list reasons, but none of them became an answer.

The only thing she knew was what her body wanted.

She could stop if she chose to.

But she already knew that she could not bear to.

Reina drew Toru closer by the shoulder and brought her legs toward him.

“Toru-kun.”

When she said his name, his eyes did not leave hers.

“Keep going.”

She said it through tears.

Those tears were not because she wanted someone’s permission.

They came because, together with her sadness, she had admitted what her body wanted. She had admitted the inescapable nature of herself.

Hearing her words, Toru kept the same position as he supported Reina’s waist and back, but changed what he was doing.

The palm supporting her waist moved slowly inward. The moment his fingertips touched the heated place where her thigh met her body, Reina shuddered. Toru laid his middle and ring fingers along her wet cleft.

Reina was startlingly wet.

At the first touch of his fingers, hot slickness dampened him to the knuckles. When Toru pressed lightly, the thick sensation closed around his fingers; when he drew them away, a soft wet sound stretched in the quiet room. Reina’s body was more than ready. Even when he eased a finger only shallowly inside her, warm, yielding walls tightened around it.

Toru measured the rhythm of Reina’s breathing and moved slowly. He drew his fingers in and out at a shallow pace, sometimes curling them gently to touch deeper inside her. The wet sound grew thicker. With each movement, heat spilled out and dampened his palm.

Reina’s inner thighs closed tightly around him. Her breathing began to break apart; her shoulders rose and fell more sharply. With her head resting against Toru’s arm, she made a small sound in her throat.

“Mm… ah…”

The sound escaped before she could contain it. When Toru pressed his fingers a little deeper, Reina’s hips lifted again without her meaning them to, and her body tightened hard around him. As if asking for more, the hot walls of her body closed around his fingers, unwilling to let them go. Toru added another finger and moved slowly, easing them apart. Wetness slipped between his fingers and left a small dark mark on the sheets.

Reina’s body was visibly coming undone.

At first, she had tried to control her breathing. Gradually it became shallow and fast. The strength of her body leaned into the arm Toru held behind her back. Her hips trembled in small movements; tension passed through her legs, and from time to time her body clenched around him as if in spasms. Each time his fingers moved, her hot breath fell across his shoulder and her nails pressed into his back.

With the palm he had left above her hipbone, Toru held the shaking of her body. His fingers did not stop moving.

Only the wet sound and Reina’s unsteady breathing overlapped in the room.

Then Toru himself entered her—slowly, but with certainty.

Reina’s body tensed a little.

The body of the man she had imagined again and again. The sensation that had heated the deepest part of her on nights without her boyfriend, and even on nights with Yuto. It was now widening her from within as something real.

“Mm…”

Her breath caught low in her throat. It was not tears this time, but another kind of heat rising all at once. The fact that she, with a boyfriend, had accepted this man. The irreversible feeling of having crossed a line.

A profound sadness toward herself. A sharp guilt toward Yuto.

And yet—

Or perhaps because of it—

The pleasure was unbearable in its intensity, passing straight through the center of her body.

Toru moved a little deeper into her. Her body closed around the hot weight inside it, tightening as if it did not want to let him go. Her hips lifted of their own accord, and her legs tightened more firmly around Toru’s waist. Seeking kisses as though pleading for them, Reina caught her breath again and again.

Toru did not move violently. He waited, quietly, until Reina’s body could fully take him in. His palm continued to support her waist, and the arm around her back held only enough strength to keep her from breaking apart.

Little by little, Toru’s presence settled inside Reina. Strangeness, heat, and an overwhelming sense of fullness came over her at once. Guilt intensified the pleasure. A sweet despair, as if she were coming apart, rose from there and filled her chest.

Reina slowly rubbed her forehead against Toru’s shoulder. At last, she began to move her hips a little.

Shallowly, as though testing it. As though confirming with her own body what she had accepted.

Toru answered that movement by drawing back slowly and sinking into her again. This time friction passed distinctly through Reina as pleasure. Her breathing broke clearly. The strength in her legs grew, and her nails pressed lightly into Toru’s back.

“Ah… ah…”

She was making sounds. Breath she could no longer keep down spilled hot against Toru’s shoulder.

Reina did not run anymore. She held the sadness and the guilt inside her and began to move in time with Toru. At first in small movements, then little by little, deeper. As though affirming with her body the fact that she had wanted this man.

Toru’s palm grew warmer above her hipbone. This time, he actively received the movement of her body.

Reina’s movements became more urgent. Her body tightened with heat, and her breathing came in broken pieces.

“Mm… mm… ah…”

Her sounds grew longer, aching. Reina sank her teeth lightly into Toru’s shoulder.

Each time Toru moved within her, her body answered with a tremor unlike pain.

Tears ran down her face, but her breath was hot.

The night she had been with Yuto, Reina had come apart more intensely than she ever had before.

At the time, she had thought it was because the memory of Toru had intruded between her and Yuto. She had not wanted to admit it.

Now the person from that memory was before her.

Each time her body changed with Toru’s breathing, a place deeper than anything she had known that night opened inside her.

Reina did not know what to call it.

She had heard the phrase *physical compatibility*.

But if it truly existed, perhaps it was this: the body answering before there was any reason for it.

“Ah… ah…”

The deeper the pain of thinking of Yuto became, the harder Reina bit Toru’s shoulder.

If she did not, she felt she would lose sight of what she was choosing. She felt she would lose this pleasure.

She had been the one to ask him not to look away. She had never been this honest with her desire.

Reina lifted her face.

She knew on her own that the moment was close.

She reached for Toru’s cheek and looked back at him through wet eyes.

“Watch me.”

Her voice broke around the tears. She no longer knew what kind of tears they were.

Toru did not say anything. He only looked at Reina.

Under his gaze, the pain she wanted to hide did not disappear, but her body still sought him.

Toru’s movement deepened slightly. He drew a careful path of sensation upward inside her, not letting the feeling slip away, yet never hurrying her. The palm supporting her waist grew warmer; the arm around her back pulled her closer. Reina’s legs tightened around Toru’s waist as far as they could.

“Mm… ah, ah…”

Her voice spilled out before she could hold it back. The breaths that had first leaked from her in small sounds began to take shape.

“Watch me… please…”

It was close to a cry.

Reina did not look away from Toru’s eyes. Each time Yuto’s face crossed her mind, pain cut sharply through her chest. Even so, her body lifted toward Toru and tightened hotly around him. Pain and pleasure lost the boundary between them and became one.

Toru met her eyes directly and matched his movement to her. Each time her hips shook, he sank deep, drew back, and sank again. He supported her waist with his palm, as though receiving every trembling movement. He layered his rhythm over Reina’s broken breathing.

“Ah… I can’t… I’m… I’m coming…”

Reina’s voice rose. Something beyond anything she had ever experienced was rushing toward her. A heat far beyond the sensation—"I can feel this much"—that she had first discovered only a little while ago, when Toru touched her, burst through her lower body. Her fingertips went numb, and the edges of her vision blurred white.

“Ah… ah… ah…”

Her legs shook as if convulsing, and her body clutched Toru hard inside her. Reina tightened the hand on his cheek, nearly pressed their foreheads together, then lifted her face again. Desperately, she tried to keep the promise she had made to herself: not to look away.

When Toru sensed that Reina was close to the edge, he did not stop. Instead, he caught exactly the depth she sought and strengthened the movement of his hips by the smallest degree. With the arm supporting her back, he drew her close and laid his lips softly to her forehead. There were no words, only that heat answering her.

“Toru… ah… I’m— I’m coming!”

Her voice broke completely.

For an instant, Reina’s whole body went rigid.

Her legs tangled around Toru’s waist and stopped moving. Her toes curled sharply inward. Inside her, it was no longer a wave but a series of pulsing contractions—tightening fiercely, loosening for the barest moment, then closing around him again with all her strength. Heat surged from the depths of her lower body, ran up her spine, and numbed the back of her head. Her breathing stopped completely, then a long breath broke free as if a dam had burst.

“Ah… haa… ah…”

In Toru’s arms, Reina’s body continued to shake in small, unending tremors.

Toru received all of it. Until her trembling settled, he kept moving slowly, taking in the hot touch of her ragged breath against his shoulder without a word.

Reina did not know when the tears on her cheeks had become different tears.

She had begun by crying because she was sad. But the stronger the feeling rising from the depths of her body became, the more another kind of tear overflowed.

She had never imagined that pleasure could make her cry.

But that pleasure did not drive the sadness out.

The pain of thinking of Yuto, the excitement of being watched by Toru, the fear of knowing that she herself was choosing to continue—all of it remained unresolved and sank into the deepest part of her body.

She was sad enough to cry, and yet it felt good enough to bring different tears.

There was a height she had never known before.

If she reached that depth, Reina felt she would know she could not make this only tonight.

The instant she thought it, another tear—like despair, though different from pleasure—wet her cheek.

It was not because the time she spent with Yuto had been a lie.

It was simply that what had entered her time with Yuto as a memory had become real in front of Toru.

And Reina’s body had accepted that reality too completely to pretend it had never known it.

Her chest hurt again at the thought of Yuto.

Rather than flee that pain, Reina wrapped her arms around Toru’s back.

She looked at him through tearful eyes.

“Not yet. More…”

Reina drew Toru closer herself and deepened the movement of her hips with their chests pressed together. The support Toru gave spread across her whole back, and their breathing overlapped, fast and close. Reina’s fingers moved across Toru’s back; each time her nails sank lightly into his skin, Toru’s breath fell across her forehead.

“I’m close,” Toru said.

“It’s okay.”

Toru’s movements grew larger, harder. Reina no longer tried to keep her voice down. They held each other tightly. He drove into her again and again, and each time Reina cried out as if she could not contain it.

Their shared heat reached its peak.

Deep inside, her body tightened once, fiercely. Tremors ran from her thighs into her abdomen, and her voice escaped as breath. In the same entwined position, she took Toru into herself. As the heat began to ebb, Reina rested her forehead against his shoulder.

For a while, she could not move until her breathing returned.

The heat left inside her did not disappear. First, it slowly changed shape. She could find no words that would deny how full she felt.

Toru’s shoulder was warm against the cheek she had cried against.

For now, Reina let herself receive that warmth.

Toru stroked her back only once and did not say anything right away.

After a while, he took a glass of water from beside the bed and handed it to her.

“Can you drink?”

Reina nodded and took a small sip.

Toru took the glass back, then tucked her disordered hair behind her ear. His fingertips did not seem to be trying to comfort her or to put a name to tonight.

Still lying there, Reina looked at the ceiling.

All at once, she became aware of the phone in her bag.

She reached for it.

Her exchange with Yuto was still open on the screen.

*You’ve probably already fallen asleep, right?*

There was still no reply.

If he was asleep, she had not had to wake him.

She knew how convenient that thought was.

The absence of a reply did not forgive what she had done tonight.

Even so, Reina felt relieved that she had a little more time in which she did not have to explain anything.

When she turned the phone face down, Toru looked at her.

“Reina-san.”

The sound of her name alone unsettled her chest again.

Toru did not ask anything.

Not whom she had been messaging, nor why she looked the way she did now.

It was not that his silence protected her.

He simply did not fill in what Reina chose not to say.

Reina set the phone on her chest.

“Toru-kun.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t make this just tonight.”

Toru looked at Reina.

So that she would not run, she looked back into his eyes.

“I don’t know why I want to be like this with you again so badly.”

Once she said it, tears fell down her cheeks again.

“I love Yuto.”

“I don’t want to lose what I have with Yuto.”

Even when she tried to steady her voice, she could not.

“But I can’t make this with you only tonight.”

Each time she spoke the words, her chest hurt.

“I can’t keep holding myself back.”

Toru did not let Reina’s tears decide anything for her.

“I understand.”

He did not say anything more.

Reina nodded.

“If I don’t say it now…”

Even she knew what she was about to say.

“I won’t be able to say it tomorrow.”

Toru glanced at Reina’s phone beside the bed.

“We don’t have to exchange numbers.”

His voice left her an exit.

Reina saw that exit.

On the other side of the screen was the ordinary life she had with Yuto. She could pick up her bag, walk out of the room, and return to tomorrow’s self with tonight concealed.

Even so, she could not leave without knowing how to contact Toru.

“Please. Tell me.”

Reina held her phone out to him.

Toru looked at her once.

He seemed surprised, but he did not ask why.

“Okay.”

He took out his phone as well.

With trembling fingers, Reina entered her number into Toru’s phone.

Then Toru entered his number into Reina’s.

When Reina saw the name that had been saved, her fingers stopped.

It was something she would not have needed if tonight were to end here.

But she could no longer call a lie the thought that she would not be able to say it tomorrow.

She did not want to destroy the daily life that included Yuto.

She did not want to turn what she had with Toru into a romantic relationship.

And yet Reina knew that she would want this body again.

Even leaving herself that path was a choice she had made.

If there was such a thing as a red thread in this world, Reina wondered what color the thing left in her hand now could be.

She could not think it was red.

But neither was it transparent enough to pretend that nothing had happened.

Before she turned the screen off, Toru’s name remained there, small in the dark room.