Happy Holidays everyone! Please enjoy the latest chapter for Cochlea's Janitor and don't forget to leave a review!
Nao stared at the desktop screen, reviewing a superior's schedule and making adjustments where necessary. Her fingers tapping lightly on the keyboard while around her voices murmured and phones rang. There were two things Nao had learned working at the office. One: the outside world had no effect here. Their private lives had little influence on the work they produced, and even if it did it was played off by others as a bit of pointless small talk. And two: time went by very fast.
Two weeks had gone by since her private chat with Minatsuki and Shinichi, and very little had happened. The night following their talk, Minatsuki had taken Nao aside and relayed Shinichi's idea about the wine. She didn't say as much, but Nao felt sure the plan would work. Misa would never give up on the wine until she'd gotten a mouthful, and Nao had no doubt that she would try to steal another bottle. She was especially certain when Misa had taken the liberty of patching things up with Nao—begrudgingly accepting her constant assurance that she had been unable to gather the merest whiff of wine before it had shattered upon the floor. Misa wasn't the type to back down easily. Neither did she give up until she'd gotten what she wanted.
It made Nao uneasy not knowing when Misa would make another attempt.
Saving her work, Nao sent the file off, closing out of the window. Hidden behind it was a gossip-rag website. The article staring at her had a gruesome headline and a hazy picture of police tape quartering off an intersection. It wasn't very recent, but it had happened well after Nishikawa had died. Nao clicked out of it before someone could look over her shoulder.
When Shinichi had let slip Nishikawa's activities, Nao had made many attempts to keep herself from researching. She had tried to distract herself and make herself too busy to investigate who those women were, and to whom the pearl earrings had belonged. She'd managed to do this all of two days before her will had broken and she'd looked up recent attacks in the Third Ward. There weren't many cases to look through—the Ward was one of four that had a low ratio of ghouls in them—and there were no photos of the victims. All Nao had to go on were names and ages. Her jaw clenched a little each time she found a possible match.
She'd kept it up for nearly a week before deciding Shinichi and Minatsuki were right. She should just forget about Nishikawa and let go of any lingering doubt. It was a difficult thing to do, however, then he kept popping up in her dreams. Even worse was that her nightmares had changed as well, evolving. Now a woman screaming over and over 'it should have been you!' played in the background before she was cut off on a guttural choking sound. After a while Nao had grown numb towards the nightmares, accepting that her internal guilt would remain until it eventually died down and she had successfully moved past it. They were already becoming less frequent, the most recent one being several days ago.
Nao pulled up the managing director's schedule for the next week, flipping through the notepad beside her until she'd found her scrawled notes. Her body worked on autopilot while her mind started to wander. Nothing had changed in the last two weeks. Twelve days had passed by quickly in a boring succession of reports, schedules, and droning philanderers. It felt like no time had passed. It felt like an eternity since she'd last seen Yamori.
Her fingers stilled on the keyboard. Yamori hadn't changed in her dreams. Still tortured, still flickering between his past and present self.
Still naked and covered in blood.
Nao felt her face warm. She had half a mind to slap herself for just thinking about it. It was bad enough seeing it involuntarily, she didn't need to think about it. Unbidden, her mind brought up the image of Yamori kneeling over her, whispering softly against her skin before kissing her.
There was always a moment before her mouth filled with blood. A slim second where it felt like a kiss in a normal situation that didn't have anything to do with guilt or death or anything terrible. A momentary sensation of a man's lips slanting over hers.
Nao ran a finger over her lips, recalling a kiss she'd had months ago that had never been repeated. The inside of her lip had felt sore for days. She still remembered the heady taste of coffee and the sharp undertone of metal. His tongue twinning with hers inside her mouth. His body's warmth enveloping her. In the moment she had been afraid, confused. But now…
Nao flinched, a barely concealed yelp escaping her lips as something freezing cold touched the back of her neck. Condensation stuck to her skin and dripped down her spine, leaving an icy trail. Nao's hand left her lips to clap over the cold spot, rubbing some warmth into her startled flesh. A water pipe had probably started leaking above her. She looked up to locate the water stain in the ceiling before she called maintenance. What she found instead was the smiling visage of Matsuru looking down at her.
She immediately felt her irritation spike.
Nao swiveled around in her seat; her brows drawing down in uncontained annoyance. He didn't seem to notice—but when had he ever when the only time he seemed to was when someone was ignoring him? His eyes went half-lidded, his smile softening into something warm and flirty. "You looked a little red, so I thought I'd…cool you down." He gestured with the can of soda, though he'd wiggled his eyebrows for extra emphasis. She glanced down at the drink. Take the soda, and she took his offer. Is that what he would think?
"I don't need it," she told him, swiveling back around to her computer, her fingers easily finding the keyboard as her eyes refocused on the screen. She heard a reluctant sigh behind her. Matsuru tossed the can in the garbage by her desk before sliding his hands onto her shoulders. Nao's eyes left the screen to dart around the room, checking to make sure no one was watching them.
"C'mon Kohana-chan, it's been weeks since we've gone out," he murmured lowly, just low enough for only her to hear. He ducked low to her ear. "It's been weeks since we've done other things, too." His hands left her shoulders to slide under arms. When she felt his fingers brush against the curves of her breasts, Nao nearly made a scene scrambling to get out of her chair. Several pairs of eyes looked over at her in curiosity. Matsuru had a mischievous grin on his face as he watched a blush spread across the bridge of her nose.
"Stairwell. Now!" Nao hissed under her breath, glaring at him murderously before walking away. She did not wait for him to follow as she left the secretarial office. What the hell was he doing?! There were people around. Her coworkers were right there! The door to the stairwell nearly hit the wall with how forcefully Nao pushed it. She let it swing shut of its own accord, her nails digging into her palms as she angrily paced from one side of the landing to the other. Seconds passed without Matsuru's appearance. Rather than cooling down, her rage began to boil.
That wasn't in the rules. That wasn't what they did. He was friendly, sure, but to be outright flirty? To touch her when other people were present? They'd been clear when they started hooking up. They'd made sure it was never anything more than a romp in the sheets between friends—no matter how cheap it made Nao feel once it was over. They'd made rules to keep everything only between them; no one else had to know. No one else could know. Even when he'd press her up against the breakroom vending machine and stir her up before leaving her cold, even when he'd slide his hand beneath the waistband of her skirt in the stairwell, there was never a real chance someone would catch them. He'd made absolutely sure of that.
Nao slowed. Her brows pinched down as ice slowly dripped down the back of her skull as a slow realization washed over her. Is he…embarrassed of me?
Before she could give it a proper thought, Matsuru slipped inside the stairwell, shutting the door carefully behind him. Nao's thought was pushed to the back of her mind as her earlier anger flared. "What the hell was that out there?!" she demanded.
One corner of his lip lifted in a smile. "A little taste of what's to come." He crossed over to her in two quick strides. Before Nao could blink, he slid his hand into her hair, palming the back of her head and pulling her close to him. His lips briefly touched hers before she planted her hands on his chest and roughly pushed him back.
"You said we'd keep this private."
He raised a brow at her before his quizzical expression melted into an easy grin. "Trust me, no one was looking at us." He ducked his head down to capture her lips again. This time was Nao was quicker in sidestepping his advance, her hand stayed on his chest, keeping him at an arm's length. His smile cracked the smallest bit at the continued refusal. "I said it's fine," he insisted.
Nao stayed adamant. "That's not the point! We made rules for this." Nao bit the inside of her cheek when she added, "You said no one needed to know about us." Or maybe he just didn't want people to know he was sleeping with her.
Matsuru scoffed. "Everyone flirts; it doesn't mean anything.
He reached for her again, his hand barely touching her waist before Nao slapped it away. "Don't touch me!" she said. Matsuru's face scrunched up in disappointment and mild astonishment. He wasn't used to being so adamantly rejected—not to the point that someone would actually fling his hand away. Nao ran a hand through her hair, using the smoothing motion to calm herself down a little. This wasn't working. He wasn't listening to her.
"I want to go back to just being friends."
"We are friends," Matsuru insisted, his grin sliding back in place. The better to tempt her with, she supposed.
Nao leveled an unamused look at him. "Friends who don't have sex with each other," she clarified.
A moment of silence followed. Accompanied by Matsuru's smile dripping down into a disappointed frown. That single fourteen-second interval of silence was when Nao knew she truly had been deluding herself into thinking they were friends. It was when she knew for sure that she'd spent the last two years as a cheap source of entertainment. One that he apparently didn't want to let go of since the first words out of his mouth were:
"Are you seeing someone?"
Nao folded her arms across her chest. "That's not the reason why."
His mouth slanted in a half-smile. "So, you are then," he decided.
Her lip curled at his insistence. Did he think he was a God among men? That the only reason a woman would refuse to continue to sleep with him was because she was sleeping with someone else? The audacity that he could only reason this as being her fault rather than his was astonishing to say the least. Not to mention infuriating.
"Touch me," Nao commanded suddenly.
Matsuru narrowed his eyes. "You just said—"
She held out her left hand, her palm facing up for him. "Touch me," she repeated, staring at him as he glanced between her face and her injury. The indentations of Yamori's teeth scraped along the inside of her wrist, leading up to the surgical scaring the doctors had left when they'd removed the index knuckle from her hand. She'd found it disturbing at first, before coming to terms with it. It was ugly, but it was something she had to live with. It was also something she wanted other people to live with, too. This was her normal. They didn't have to find it pretty, but they at least had to accept it as being part of her. When his face grew tight and withdrawn—when he slid his eyes away from her person completely—Nao let her hand fall to her side. "Yeah. That's what I thought."
He looked back at her quickly, his mouth opening. Nao was out of the stairwell before he'd even said a single syllable.
|13|
Time moves at different speeds, and for Nao the day went by very fast after her confrontation with Matsuru. He hadn't tried to talk to her again afterwards, keeping himself confined to the upper floors where he worked. Nao stayed at her desk, her frustration ebbing and expanding every so often until the time to go home finally came.
The cold air outside helped to cool her head, numbing her outer extremities enough that her thoughts were pulled away from Matsuru and towards getting home quickly. When she returned, however, when her body warmed up and she reached a lull in her cooking, those thoughts returned. Everything that he had ever done—especially the things that he had not done—came back to her with stunning clarity. A brand-new explanation giving light to her relationship with Matsuru.
Nao was one among many—of that she had no illusions or doubts. A name on a list he kept in his head, a notch on his bed post. The salesgirl on fifth, the receptionist in the lobby, the HR rep, the manager, the secretary, the other secretary, the freak…
Her chest tightened at that.
He'd never said it. He'd probably never thought it. But the hidden agreement they had, the secret rendezvous', the overly conscious way he put his hands on her. Actively avoiding her left side, shying away from her hand. The look of disgusted curiosity he thought she'd never seen.
"Shit!" Nao pulled her hand away from the pot she had been stirring—or should have been stirring had she not gotten caught up in memory lane and let her hand drift too close to the metal rim. She stepped over to the sink, yanked the faucet to cold and held her hand under the stream. A red line traced along the side of her hand; the freezing water numbed the area while her fingers pricked and froze. When she turned the water off, her skin started to heat again—an active pain she knew how to ignore while she turned back to her dinner. She scrapped the bottom of the pot and along the sides, making sure the contents didn't burn before she turned off the stove and removed the pot.
Why was she letting herself think about useless things that no longer mattered? Why was she giving him rent-free use of her headspace?
Because even if he was an asshole, I still liked him at least a little, Nao reminded herself. She left her dinner where it sat cooling off to grab a cold compress from her med kit.
Knock-kn-knock.
Nao froze in her tracks, barely a step taken inside her bedroom. Unease fluttered through her. There were very few possibilities as to who it could be, and considering she'd already paid Kazuo the week before, she had little doubt as to who it was. Slowly she stepped up to the door, reluctance flooding her every move. Nao hadn't seen Yamori since that night two weeks ago and hadn't honestly given much thought to his "offer". Seeing him now felt like she'd be pushed into a decision she wasn't equipped to make.
It was one she was spared from, however, when she glanced through her door's peephole and found—not a solid wall of muscle encased in a pristine suit—but the exuberant expression of her best friend.
Surprise was etched into every feature of her face as she unlocked the door and pulled it open. Nao could barely get a word out before Misa started talking. Her entire being was animated, she was practically buzzing with excitement. "Guess which lucky bitches are gonna drink super mysterious, forbidden wine?" she asked, her grin practically splitting her face.
"You didn't," Nao said, her tone near emotionless and saved only by the surprise still coloring her face.
Misa scoffed. "I already told you I'm Houdini, Na-chan," she reminded Nao—as if Nao didn't already know. "Let me in already, it's freaking freezing out here."
Nao hastily stepped aside, opening the door wider for her. "Can I take something?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow at the thick padding of Misa's coat and the long scarf wrapped doubly around her throat. Misa toed off her boots, nearly flinging herself forward as she simultaneously started to unzip her coat. Trapped under one arm she held a dark green bottle; around its neck she held a white-knuckled grip.
Misa glared back at her. "Ah-ah! I'm not letting you near this bottle after what happened last time," she nearly snarled. Her socks slid against the floor; one arm freed itself from a coat sleeve. "Just grab some glasses and a corkscrew and let's break open this bad boy!"
"What if you drop it?" Nao asked, locking the door behind her before bending down to right Misa's boots. She heard a soft thud as Misa set the bottle on the table. Nao looked up just in time to catch Misa draping her coat over the back of a chair, her scarf quickly following.
"Then my dignity will die on this floor because I will lick it off the ground if I have to. I'm not spending another minute not knowing what this tastes like." She said all of this with a fierce expression on her face, her jaw set in determination to further illustrate her serious intent to follow through on her words. Nao found that she was half-way tempted to knock the bottle over just to see if Misa would actually do it.
Instead, she asked, "How did you get it? It's barely seven—the bar should be open right now." The last time she had tried to steal a bottle, Misa had had the cover of darkness and barely any witnesses. Right now, the bar would be crawling with hostesses and customers. Not to mention Minatsuki's keen eye. And despite knowing that the wine was fake—or rather, for a human, very, very real—she'd never drop the pretense of being controlling. So, if Misa had stolen the bottle, it must have been because Minatsuki let her have an opening.
Nao's suspicions were confirmed a moment later when Misa said, "I stole it yesterday while Barista Bitch went to restock." Her frown transformed into a grin as she continued to relay her story. "You should have seen me! In and out. Quick with no mess and no one the wiser—well, I mean," she stopped, her smile pinching into a grimace, "Kako-chan saw me, but I promised her a taste later. So, we gotta leave at least half—what's with your hand?"
Nao froze, her fingers in her hair as she brushed a lock behind her ear. Her eyes went to her left hand, wondering if her fingers had locked into a strange position again. It looked normal. "Did you burn it?" Misa clarified. Nao pushed her hair back before examining her right hand. It'd gotten much redder in the last few minutes. And now that it was getting attention, the heat from her burn flared up with a vengeance. Nao scowled down at it.
"Dinner mishap," she explained, "I made curry yesterday; I was reheating it on the stove."
"Go get something on that, it looks painful."
Nao walked past her to her bathroom. Over her shoulder she told Misa, "Grab a plate, I'll be right back."
"While you're gone, get out of those clothes!" Misa shouted, loud enough for Nao to hear her, "You know how much I hate your office wear. So…drab and boring." Nao rolled her eyes at her bathroom mirror. Her reflection cracked a grin as she applied aloe to her burn and wrapped a piece of gauze around her hand.
"Have you seen an office," Nao called back, "That's the standard."
"Standards are dull."
Nao unzipped her skirt, letting it fall to the floor. "Does that mean you have none?" she asked jokingly, dragging on a pair of sleep pants. She pulled on a long-sleeve shirt, balling up her blouse and skirt and tossing them in her laundry basket.
"Slut-shaming? That's so high-school."
Nao walked back into the main room in time to catch Misa dipping a spoon into the curry to taste. "Rice is in the pressure cooker."
"Thanks."
Nao scrounged around her cupboards looking for wine glasses while Misa helped herself to the food. Two enormous scoops of rice and a ladle-full of curry later, Nao and Misa sat at the table. Steam wafted off Misa's plate as she twisted the corkscrew into the bottle. She had the thing locked between her thighs, her eyebrows scrunching together in concentration as she worked to uncork the wine. Nao shoveled a spoonful of rice into her mouth, watching the show. After a few minutes of working at the stubborn cork, Nao joked, "My God am I thirsty."
"Shut up," Misa growled, her teeth gritted as she tried to pull the cork out.
Before Nao could ask if she needed help, a loud pop! shot through the air. Misa let out a whoop, quickly setting aside the corkscrew to grab a wine glass. A trickle of worry went through Nao's gut. Briefly it had crossed her mind that Misa might have somehow grabbed the right bottle. That what she was pouring right now was blood and not fermented grape juice. The label had told her otherwise—nowhere on it had it said Château—but the fear remained.
"I thought you worked tonight?" Nao asked, reaching across the table for the corkscrew. She sniffed at the cork still impaled on the end. Sourness filled her nose, bitter fruit and a cloying sweetness underlying the smell. Wet metal and rot did not cling to the cork, lightening Nao's worry.
"I called in sick. Said I have cramps," Misa replied. She stopped pouring and set the bottle on the table, nudging it towards Nao. "Boss gets really flustered about female problems."
Nao took the bottle, wondering idly if it was because Shinichi was a man, or if ghouls were like sharks and blood. A mere whiff and they were set to instant kill-mode. The thought put a damper on her mood until she realized that if it were true there would have been a lot more murders over the centuries.
"Mmm~ This even smells good!" Nao heard Misa purr. She poured herself a moderate amount while across from her Misa sipped delicately at the wine with all the finesse of a connoisseur. Nao took a swallow full, the bittersweet tang coating her tongue and leaving a dry feeling in her mouth. Talk after that revolved around the wine. Its taste, its smell, the notes—and whatever else Nao did not really understand about the proper tasting of a wine. As far as wine went with Nao, so long as it didn't taste terrible it was a good bottle. Misa had often remarked over the years that the finer things were wasted on her—though that didn't stop the woman from gifting Nao pricy bottles of vodka for her birthday.
By the time conversation shifted to a different topic, Misa was on her second glass and Nao was clearing the last grain of rice from her plate.
"How's your day going, by the way?" Misa asked before quickly adding, "I mean, before I came and gifted you delicious wine."
Nao set her utensils on her empty plate, her eyes drifting to the ceiling and the wall and as she thought over the question. How was it? Emotional.
"I broke things off with Matsuru-san," Nao reported.
Misa stared at her over the rim of her glass. "And are we loving or hating that decision?" she asked cautiously, a slim eyebrow arched in question.
Nao grabbed her empty glass and raised it high. "Good-fucking-riddance!" she announced.
Misa grinned as she grabbed the bottle of wine from between them and poured Nao another glass. "Not seeing stars anymore, I take it?"
"If I ever saw them at all," Nao said, waving a hand when the liquid sloshed past her limit. Misa set the bottle back down, leaning back in her seat with an amused expression on her face. "And because he's an asshole."
"A complete and total one," Misa parroted back.
Nao tilted the glass to her lips, gulping down half the contents before she went on to say, "You know what he said when I told him I was through?" Misa nodded for her to go on. "He asked me if there was someone else."
Misa sat up straight, interest flickering across her face. "Is there someone else?"
Briefly Yamori flashed through her mind. Nao scowled, her mood darkening. Unwilling to confirm or deny Misa's inquiry, Nao said instead, "I couldn't even get it across to him that he was the problem."
Whether Misa noticed the slight hesitation to answer, or the blatant ignoring of her question, Nao could not tell as she hummed in agreement and took another hit off her wine. Nao followed suit, drinking the remainder of her glass down to the dregs. She slumped back heavily in her chair, her fingers twirling the glass stem as she glared at the table. "Did I have to get on my knees and call him my king just to get a good orgasm?" she asked, her question more to the air and to herself than to the woman seated across from her.
Regardless of the direction it was intended, Misa replied cheekily, "If you're on your knees, it should have been implied that you expected to come." Nao heard the inflection behind it but chose to ignore it. Matsuru's dick in her mouth wasn't really an image she wanted to think about right now. Especially since the wine was starting to affect her in a negative way. Already her mind was starting to drift. Her tongue felt both heavy and loose. "That guy can go fuck himself if he thinks he can get away with being selfish," she heard Misa say.
Nao was silent at that, her eyes fixated on the empty glass in her hand. On the empty plate on the table. On the half-empty bottle between them. Why was everything so…empty.
Misa observed her, her black eyes piercing and undeterred by Nao's shift in mood. "Hey," she started softly, "I forgot to ask you something a couple weeks ago." Nao didn't budge, continuing to wonder what else was empty. Matsuru's promises. The inside of her fridge. Her bank accounts. Misa continued. "Who was that guy back then?" Nao slowly shifted her gaze back to Misa, her brow quirking up in inquiry. "You looked like you knew him," Misa clarified, glad that she had gotten Nao's attention at last, "You know, the one who looks like a mobster?"
Sudden understanding flashed through Nao. Swallowing thickly, she answered in as casual a tone as she could. "He's, um…He's just the…he's the guy—" She snapped her mouth shut. Casual nothing, she was floundering like a fish! She finally answered all in a rush, "He's the guy who collects the payments!" After a pregnant pause Nao added in a murmur, "He's no one special."
Misa smirked at her. "Sure." Nao scowled, grabbing the bottle of wine and pouring another glassful. She didn't bring it to her lips. "So, is he the someone else?"
"He's not the reason I dumped Matsuru-san, if that's what you're asking," Nao stated, her tone unwavering and sure. "I did that for my own reasons." Misa sipped at her wine, her trimmed brows drawn down. Nao stared back at her.
"But is he someone else?" she asked instead, her voice gentle compared to her earlier interrogative tone.
Nao's eyes darted away from her, boring into the table before drifting back to her glass. "He…he made me an offer that night. To give me what Matsuru-san wasn't," she confessed. Misa narrowed her eyes at that.
"Let me guess," she nearly snarled, "'Fuck me and I'll take a couple thousand Yen off your debt'?"
Nao was quick to negate her line of thinking. "No! He didn't offer an exchange, he just…offered." Misa deflated, her pitch in anger softening to a dull glower.
"I still don't like that your debt collector is propositioning you. Especially one that looks like they could kill you with a flick of their wrist." Nao didn't doubt that Yamori very likely could. "How do you feel about it?"
Truthfully Nao hadn't given it much thought. Taken separately her answers varied, but put together? Did she want sex? Yes, with an orgasm that actually made her see stars. But the thought of sex with Yamori sent a shiver down her spine and a spike through her gut. He terrified her and caused her insurmountable anxiety, but she was comfortable enough to be alone with him and have a halfway decent conversation. It was weird.
Nao didn't let her thoughts drift too far into actually thinking about engaging in such an intimate act with the same person who had eaten part of her. "The relationship we have…I don't want it to be sexual," she told Misa, "I don't even want the relationship we have."
"Just turn him down then. Once the debt is gone, you won't have to deal with him anymore," Misa said. She tipped her glass up to lick at the remaining drops of wine.
How true those words are, Nao thought grimly. She watched Misa silently as she placed the empty glass by her plate and pulled out her phone. She sighed, weightily. "It's already nine? I gotta get going before the next train leaves," she reported, sliding her phone back into the pocket of her coat before twisting the cork off the screw. "There should be enough in here for Kako-chan, right?" Misa held the bottle up for Nao's perusal while she simultaneously wedged the cork back into the neck. The wine sloshed around inside; there looked to be enough for one last glass. Nao nodded.
Misa set the re-corked bottle on the table as she stood, her movements just slightly jarred as she removed her coat from the chair and slid it on. "Good wine and good food with good friends. That's what life's about, right?" Misa chattered nonsensically. Nao hummed in agreement, not so much listening as she was trying to seem present as she rested her head in her palm and watched Misa get ready to leave.
"Text me when you get home, so I know you didn't fall down somewhere," Nao commented as she witnessed the comedic stylings of Misa trying to tug her boots on. A hand shot out to wave her off, but Nao suspected it had more to do with keeping her balance as she stomped the stubborn footwear on.
"I'll see ya tomorrow, Na-chan," Misa shouted back, a touch too loudly as she cradled the near-empty bottle of wine in one arm and shut the door behind her with the other. The slamming door echoed around the room for a short moment before Nao was left in silence. She stayed where she sat for a while longer, closing her eyes as the alcohol in her system made its way sluggishly through her brain, knocking loose her inhibitions and whispering to her to drink a little more. To worry a little less.
Nao opened her eyes and looked to the full glass of wine set before her. Luscious red liquid beckoning her to let the world slip away. It was what she wanted most nights anyway, right? To forget for a little while, to let herself ignore all the things that kept her up at night. Slowly Nao reached for the glass stem.
In a rush that left her dizzy and teetering, Nao stood and stalked over to the sink. With barely a moment to think she tipped the glass and let the wine slip down the drain. When the last drop fell from the glass, Nao set it aside. She leaned heavily against the countertop, her left arm screaming in protest of the weight being forced upon it. Her right hand flared its own disapproval, her slight burn igniting. She welcomed the pain, letting it clear her mind and steady her enough so she could get through the clean-up.
Dishes clattered against one another, silverware scrapping against plates while pots clashed and dinged against the sides of the sink. Whatever remained of what she had made was placed back in plastic containers and stored in the fridge. She left the dishes to dry in the rack, cleared the table of residual debris, and left the room entirely once she was finished.
Later, after she had brushed her teeth and wound a dry piece of gauze around her hand, she laid in bed. Tucked under the covers with the top edge drawn up to her chin, staring up at the ceiling and unable to sleep. Physically, the day may have been like any other, but psychologically it had taken its toll. Nao had finally forced a cut between herself and Matsuru, bringing an end to their arrangement. Venting her frustrations to Misa had been uplifting, the weights upon her mind being discarded one-by-one until all that remained was a single, baffling question.
"How do you feel about it", her friend had asked. When Misa had said that, Nao could not find the words. How do you tell someone that you know a ghoul? That you had somehow created a prolonged acquaintanceship with the same ghoul who had given you a traumatic experience? How do you tell that person that the same ghoul had suggested a tryst to help you get over your sexual starvation? Nao could only interpret the question, not as "it" but as "him". "How do you feel about him." And the truth of it was that Nao no longer knew how to answer that question.
Before she had known him—when she had just met him, even—he had meant nothing to her. A body in a chair waiting to meet an unavoidable death. 'Nothing' had eventually changed to 'pity'. 'Pity' changed to 'empathy'. The day the incident occurred, all of it was washed away in a single tidal wave of horror and pain. Those weeks had turned him into a monster and changed her empathy into fear.
Nao had lived with that fear for three years. She had grown accustomed to seeing Yamori as nothing but the monster he truly was and had easily believed it when she'd met him again.
But…
Small things eluded her. Toying with her spoke to a very feline aspect of his personality. A predatory cat, a beast that enjoyed the sadism. Nao might have been able to play off the kiss as well as being a part of the act. But why would he suggest sleeping with her?
Why would a ghoul be interested in that way in a human?
Nao slipped the covers over her head, turning onto her stomach. A cat does not mate with a mouse. A human does not lay with beasts. And a ghoul does not fuck a human.
Or do they…?
They looked like each other. They acted like each other. The only difference separating the two species was a dietary need and a strange internal organ. So why wouldn't they have sex with each other?
Nao squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase from her mind such ideas. Whether they did, could, or have already, it didn't matter to her in the slightest. Sex with a ghoul was one thing—for all Nao knew it may have already happened—but sex with Yamori was another thing completely. If the stories from the Thirteenth Ward were true—if they were not, at all, exaggerated—then it may be the last thing she does on Earth. Nao had many regrets in her life, but she would not have that be listed among them. She would not give into her own urges for a short thrill.
Especially to Yamori's smug satisfaction.