And here it is! In the same week and everything! Ah~~

Next chapter will be up hopefully in a similar amount of time. I think you'll like it. Enjoy~!

Night Shots – Chapter 3

Walking back down the hall, Rin heard the shower abruptly cut off, and she froze. 'Oh, uh!' Quickly, she rushed to her room's door, tapped it open, and stood there hoping to look like she had only just walked out. Towel in hand, Rin tried to settle to urge to snicker at her findings. 'It's not like I can actually mention it, after all,' she thought. 'But wow, I wish I could ask.' She glanced to Len's room. His door was cracked to roughly where he had left it before his shower. Rin sighed internally. 'Relax…'

The shower door opened slowly, and Len stepped out with a hand running still through his hair. With a towel around his waist, and nothing else, Rin tried not to stare. 'Hopefully,' she thought, 'my face looks like I'm surprised at a coincidence— oh, you're out of the shower just as I go to take one, haha, that's funny— and not like I'm trying to mentally remove all cotton products from the building.' Len seemed to be double checking something, before glancing up at where he was going.

"Oh!" He noticed Rin with a startle. Quickly finding a smile, he gave a little wave. "Morning, Rin!"

Rin smiled back. "Hey," she said. "You're sure up early."

"Ah ha, yeah," Len laughed, "Guess so. It's not how I usually am, but I might try to make a habit out of it." He stretched his back a bit. "Though, that shower didn't do wonders for waking me up."

"You were in there for a while," Rin said, "I was, ah, about to come and knock on the door or something. Wondered when you would be out, ha-ha."

Len looked apologetic. "Oh, sorry if me getting in there first messed up your morning." He said, "I tried to be fast, but I wasn't totally sure when you were going to be up."

"It's no problem," Rin waved it off. "Nowhere to be today, after all."

Len nodded a couple times. "Right, right. Still," he started, "You were up pretty late last night. I thought I might have managed to actually get through completely before you even woke up, but I guess you're just not the type to sleep in at all!"

Rin lost all expression in her face. "What," she asked, "W-What do you mean I was up late?" Her mind blanked out.

Len blinked. "…Well," he began, "I guess I was up pretty late too, to have seen it, but I'm pretty sure you had a light on in your room around one?" He scratched his head. "I guess it's not that late. A light also doesn't necessarily mean you were awake." He asked, "Did you fall asleep working on something?"

Rin shook her head enthusiastically, trying to level her heartbeat. "No, no, no you were right. Sorry, I…" She gulped. "I guess I just misunderstood."

Len shrugged, not knowing what she meant.

Rin said, "I was just up late doing… nothing, I guess." She repeated, "Nothing at all."

Len looked at her for a few seconds silently. Rin could barely feel her face anymore. 'Do I look normal?' she thought. 'I hope I look the opposite of suspicious.'

The situation was surreal for her. Her brother was basically naked and she could have sworn he had just suggested that he was literally awake last night, and knew. 'That was almost a heart attack…' She tried examining his face for clues. Nothing. It probably was nothing, anyway. 'If he knew about it, he would have actually confronted me, right? He would have done something last night about it, right?' She thought about for a moment. '…Wait. Actually, would he have? Would he confront me about it? What if he were just… Dragging it out?' She wanted to stuff her head into a pillow and scream out with a weird kind of pleasure at the thought that Len might have been toying with her. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure he wasn't.

'…I always do this,' she thought, 'I always take something he says that's totally normal and not weird at all, and I twist it up in my head to be something it completely is not.' She looked Len in the eye. 'He isn't in to that sort of thing. He doesn't know, and I'm just kind of a creep.' She thought, 'The fact that I took his comment so seriously just makes me look like an even bigger weirdo.'

After a while, her brother smiled again. "Well, anyway," he said, gesturing over his shoulder, "The shower's all yours, sis."

"Right." Rin nodded. "Thanks."

Len walked past her, down the hall. His fresh smell wafted up to her as he walked by. Rin took a silent, deep, intoxicated breath. 'Mmmm…' Rin let herself get lost in it, closing her eyes. 'That's… Yeah, that's good.'

When his door shut behind him, Rin let out a gasp of air and put a hand on the wall to catch herself. Taking deep breaths, she smiled at nothing and enjoyed the moment. After a few seconds of indulgence, though, Rin stood back up, smile mostly gone. "…Geez…" she mumbled. "Am I some kind of idiot, or something…?"

Shaking her head, she went ahead with her shower.

/

Sometime later, Rin was dressed and eating breakfast alone in the apartment's common room. Len had eaten while she was still showering, and had gone back to his room right after. Left there by herself, Rin was silently looking out a window as she took occasional sips from a glass of orange juice.

Their apartment was on the third floor, with a view of a small grass plain that had some short trees and a park, and in the distance, she could see the taller buildings of the city downtown. Most of the other residents, she was pretty sure, worked somewhere or other in there. Way off, beyond the city itself, was actually a beach. Len used to work as a part time life guard there during hot months, but he stopped without saying much about it. Rin went every once and a while by herself, and tried to have a good time— as good a time as you can have when you're at the beach alone. They used to go together, years ago, before they even moved into that apartment. Now, they occasionally went to a movie together, or got coffee, or something like that. Usually Rin would just end up staring awkwardly at Len at some point and not notice what she was doing. He had to notice it, but he never said anything. He probably just assumed that she wasn't having fun by then, and had zoned out trying to fake a conversation.

But Rin did have fun every time they went out somewhere together, for every second of it. It was less and less more recently, though, and generally, Rin had stopped initiating with invitations. She used to fool herself into thinking she might make a move on him, or something.

"Nah…" she said, taking a sip while gazing up at the sky. "Never…" She thought, 'I don't have the courage for that. Just quiet, lonely perversion, that's… my life…' She sighed.

How long ago was the first time she did something like last night? At least a year. Two…? At that point, they were still teenagers and in high school, so that sounded about right. Rin noticed her feelings long before she ever did anything with or about them. And that was sort of part of the problem; when Rin could barely take it anymore, she almost tried something more drastic than she ended up doing. The camera thing was one mistake away from a situation she couldn't explain her way out of, and, more than likely, permanent alienation from her brother. Rin thought it was hot, but after scaring herself to death thinking she had woken Len up, she held off from doing anything quite as daring as a late-night photo raid for a while. Still, she got her fix from lower-key incidents of indecency. 'Good memories…' she reminisced.

She really got ahead of herself by breaking out the camera again though. Risky wasn't even half of it. If she got caught doing that, that's the end. 'Even if he were cool with it, I'd probably die of embarrassment.' She thought, 'And, ah, he's probably not cool with it.'

Finishing her glass, she stood up and stretched out her arms. It was a really slow morning. Rin finished up, and went back to her room.

/

"Aw, damn it," Rin said aloud, "These pictures are awful."

Rin was laying on her bed, fiddling with her camera, clicking through her souvenirs from the night, and discovering that she really dropped the ball. "Half of them are almost completely black…" she grumbled. "The rest… Grr, not so great, either." The worst angles. For some of them, was she even trying to get Len in the frame?

Frustrated, she dropped it next to her and rolled on her side. "It was fun doing it, but…" She was poking it absent-mindedly. "Without anything to take back from it, it almost seems like it was a waste." She went face down into her pillow. "And it took so much effort, too… Agh, I can't just up and do that…!"

When she peeked her eyes out, she was looking dead at the camera lens, right by her face. She blushed at the thought of going right back into Len's room for a second night. That would certainly be more risqué than just accepting the poor results and waiting for her nerves to calm down about it. Which would take, what? Another year? Rin was conflicted. She really wanted good pictures. She really wanted good pictures of a sleeping Len. 'Am I willing to do that again?' she thought.

Tossing herself back on her back, she exhaled deeply. "Haaah…" She wondered out loud, "What to do…"

"What to do about what?" Len asked.

Rin shot up in surprise. "Wh-W-Wh— Len?!— What?" She stammered out, "Wh-What are you doing in m-my room!"

Len put his hands up defensively. "Hey, hey, relax, it's just the doorway, after all. There's, ah," he looked around, "Nowhere else to stand."

Rin frowned. "My room's not dirty."

Len nodded. "Sure, sure."

"So…" Rin sat up on her knees. "Um. What did you want?"

"I just wanted to ask if you were free tomorrow?" He seemed to have moved on from catching her talking to herself. "It's been a few days since we went out anywhere; I thought we could find a place to grab lunch, or something."

Rin nodded enthusiastically. "Sure, that sounds great!"

Len smiled. "Cool!" He said, "Then I'll definitely try and find somewhere nice. Maybe uptown, or…" He turned away, thinking to himself. "…Hmm. Well, I'll find something." He turned back to Rin. "Anyway, we'll figure out an exact time later. For now," he turned slightly, and pointed to a backpack he was wearing, "I'm going to head out and do a few things."

"O-Oh, alright then." Rin asked, "So, um, when will you be back?"

"Sometime tonight, probably." He said, "I need to run to a few places, but it might take longer than expected."

"Tonight?" Rin said bleakly. "So… you'll be gone… all day?"

Len nodded hesitantly. "Hmm… I think mostly, yeah."

"Oh." Rin tried to hide her disappointment. Badly. "Well, o-okay then." She smiled weakly. "H-Hope you have fun!"

Len smiled back. "Thanks! You have a great day, too." He turned to leave, but stopped with a foot still in the door. "Oh, and if you're not still up when I get back, then, early goodnight!"

Rin was having an exceedingly hard time hiding her sadness. "Haha, yeah. Who knows, I may still be up."

Then smiled at each other again, and Len left for good.

A minute passed, and Rin fell back into bed from her posture at the sound of the main door closing. "Ah… That…" She whispered to herself, feeling somehow defeated. "…That sucks."

Rin stayed like that for a while. "…You've been out alone so much more often lately…" She looked up at the ceiling fan, still keeping a slow rhythm. "Len…" she wondered, "I wonder where you go…"