After Hikari left, Suzume lay on the couch for another twenty minutes or so, just staring at the ceiling and replaying the kiss in her head for the 500th time. Naturally, this made her groan for the 100th time, and she pressed her pillow over her face, genuinely considering whether suffocating herself might be preferable to dealing with the consequences of her actions.

  [I kissed Yumi.]

  The memory was fuzzy around the edges, sure, but the important parts were crystal clear. The grab. The pull. The tongue.

  Oh god, the tongue.

  [I kissed Yumi in front of everyone.]

  She groaned again, louder this time, and kicked her legs against the couch cushions like a toddler throwing a tantrum, because apparently that was the level of emotional maturity she was operating at today.

  Eventually, once the tantrum had run its course, she checked her phone. Forty-seven notifications stared back at her, most of them from the guild group chat, which had apparently been very active while she was unconscious. She scrolled past Emiko's blurry photos of what might have been Kasumi's face or might have been a lamp, past Yumi's string of laughing emojis that felt pointed somehow, past Honoka asking if Suzume was okay and then, about an hour later, asking what "frenching" meant and whether it was related to France.

  One message sat separate from the rest, though, and it made Suzume's blood run cold.

  Kasumi: We need to talk.

  Sent at 2:47 AM.

  Suzume's stomach dropped straight through the couch, through the floor, and probably into the apartment below where that nice old lady lived. She typed back a response with fingers that were definitely not shaking:

  About what?

  The reply came instantly, like Kasumi had been sitting there staring at her phone, just waiting for Suzume to wake up and face the music.

  You know what. Park near the station. 3pm.

  Suzume checked the time. 1:34 PM. So, she had just under ninety minutes to shower, change, and figure out how to have a conversation she was absolutely, catastrophically, in-no-way-shape-or-form prepared to have.

  Great.

  ---

  The park was quiet for a weekend afternoon, with just a few joggers circling the path and an old man feeding pigeons on a bench nearby. Children shrieked on a distant playground, their voices carrying across the grass, and the whole scene felt aggressively peaceful.

  She found Kasumi waiting near the fountain, and, well.

  That wasn't fair.

  Kasumi wasn't even trying today, was the thing. No designer clothes, no perfect makeup, no carefully curated celebrity image that made normal humans feel inadequate just by existing near her. Just jeans, a simple white t-shirt, and a ponytail. Her arms were crossed and she was glaring at the water like it had personally insulted her mother, and she still looked like she'd walked out of a magazine shoot.

  Meanwhile, Suzume was wearing the same clothes from yesterday because she'd been too hungover to go home and change, and she was pretty sure there was still a coffee stain on her collar from this morning. The contrast between them was, frankly, embarrassing.

  [Cool. This is going well already.]

  Suzume's heart was doing something complicated in her chest as she approached, hammering away like it was trying to break free and make a run for it. Honestly, she couldn't blame it.

  "Hey," she said, and her voice came out relatively normal, which felt like an achievement.

  Kasumi turned to face her, and those green eyes locked onto Suzume immediately, sharp and focused. There was something intense in her expression, something that made Suzume feel very much like a small animal that had wandered too close to a predator and was only now realizing its mistake.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "Hey."

  Silence stretched between them. The fountain bubbled away in the background. A pigeon cooed.

  Suzume shifted her weight from one foot to the other, because standing still felt impossible right now.

  "So, um. You wanted to talk?"

  "Yeah." Kasumi uncrossed her arms, then seemed to reconsider and crossed them again, then gave up on the whole arm situation entirely and shoved her hands in her pockets instead. "I did."

  More silence. Silence: The Sequel was somehow even worse than the first silence.

  Suzume had never seen Kasumi fidget before, she realized. This was the Valkyrie Lancer who'd faced down B-rank monsters without so much as a flinch, the celebrity Player who turned down yacht party invitations because she found them boring, the girl who moved through the world like she owned it and was just generously allowing everyone else to live there. Right now, though, she looked almost agitated, like she was working up to something and wasn't entirely sure how to get there.

  It was terrifying in an entirely different way than monsters were terrifying. Monsters, at least, Suzume could run away from.

  "I'm just gonna say it," Kasumi said finally, her voice coming out clipped and sharp. "Because if I don't say it now, I'm gonna lose my nerve, and I don't lose my nerve, ever, so this whole situation is already pissing me off."

  "Okay," Suzume managed, which was about as much as she could contribute at this point.

  "I like you."

  Suzume's brain crashed.

  Full system failure. Blue screen of death. Someone had walked up to her mental computer and yanked the power cord right out of the wall without bothering to save anything first.

  "I've liked you for weeks, actually," Kasumi continued, apparently unaware that she had just murdered Suzume with three words. "I've been flirting with you for weeks, too. And then, last night... You kissed Yumi."

  "That was—I was drunk—"

  "I know you were drunk, I was there watching the whole thing." Kasumi stepped closer. "I watched you grab her by the collar and shove your tongue down her throat like you were trying to win some kind of award for it."

  "... There wasn't that much tongue."

  "Oh, believe me, there was that much tongue."

  Suzume's face was on fire. Actually, genuinely on fire. She was going to spontaneously combust right here in this public park and they'd have to scrape her ashes off the pavement and explain to her parents that their daughter had died of embarrassment. It would be a first in medical history.

  "I wasn't—it didn't mean—"

  Suzume sputtered and stammered, unable to string together a coherent set of words that would alleviate the situation.

  Then, Kasumi met her eyes directly, and Suzume forgot how to breathe, which was becoming a real problem.

  "So... When's my turn?"

  Suzume stopped.

  "What?"

  "When's. My. Turn?"

  "Your... turn?"

  "To kiss you."

  Kasumi said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, like she was asking when her turn was to use the bathroom or order at a restaurant, and not when she got to put her mouth on Suzume's mouth.

  Suzume's brain, which had just barely started the reboot process, crashed again. Harder this time.

  "I..." Her tongue had apparently forgotten how to function. "You... I mean... We... You're..."

  She gestured vaguely at Kasumi, at all of her, at the general concept of Kasumi existing in the world and being interested in someone like her. The gesture did not communicate anything useful, but her hands seemed to think it was worth trying anyway.

  Kasumi watched her struggle for a moment, one eyebrow climbing slowly higher and higher up her forehead.

  "Is that a yes? A no? A complete mental breakdown? I'm having trouble interpreting whatever's happening right now."

  "I don't—you're so—and I'm just—" Suzume's hands were fully flailing now, completely beyond her control, apparently determined to gesticulate her way through a conversation her mouth couldn't handle.

  And Kasumi just stood there, blank-faced, staring her down, waiting for Suzu's IQ points to gradually go back to the triple digits.

  Then, Suzume's phone rang.

  Both of them froze. The ringtone blared through the quiet park, obnoxiously loud and spectacularly poorly timed, and Suzume fumbled for her pocket with hands that were still shaking. Her first instinct was to silence the damn thing and throw it directly into the fountain, but then she saw the caller ID.

  Emiko.

  "I have to—"

  "Yeah?"

  "It might be important—"

  "Really?"

  Swallowing, Suzume hit the accept button.

  "Hello?"

  "Suzume!" Emiko's voice was urgent in that way that meant something had gone wrong. "Where are you? We have a situation."

  "What kind of situation?"

  "The Association just called. They're sending inspectors here now, something about verifying our operational standards before we can take on official contracts."

  Suzume's stomach, which had already been doing Olympic-level gymnastics, decided to add a few backflips to the routine.

  "What? Now? They can't just—we only got certified yesterday!"

  "Apparently they can, and apparently they are. Hikari and I are already at headquarters going through our documentation, but we need you here. Now, preferably."

  Suzume glanced over at Kasumi. Kasumi, whose face was still completely unreadable, gave her one... slow... blink.

  Suzume swallowed again.

  "I'll be there in twenty minutes," Suzume said, and hung up before Emiko could add anything else.

  The silence that followed the call was somehow worse than anything that had come before it.

  "Guild business?" Kasumi asked, her voice flat in that specific way that meant she was holding back approximately seventeen different things she wanted to say, none of them polite.

  "Inspectors. Tomorrow. Yagami's trying to—"

  "Sounds important."

  Suzume swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry. "Kasumi, I'm sorry. I know this isn't—I didn't mean to—"

  "Go." Kasumi waved a hand dismissively. "The guild needs you. Whatever. We'll finish this conversation later."

  "We will?"

  "Obviously we will."