The sounds of the breathing, sleeping forest behind him were of little comfort against the silence that followed his outcry. She was gone, and based on the direction she headed, he had absolutely no idea where she was going.

Why didn't I move?

Something brushed up against his ankle and he looked down to see a branch of primrose at his feet, the little yellow flower suddenly stabbing him in the heart with the fear of what consequences would arise from all this.

Why am I so... anxious? Is it anxiety, orー a -and why couldn't I move? Why was she so upset and who was she talking about that was 'never hers to lose'?

Once again, Senku Ishigami inwardly cringed at the thought, his eyes petrified, staring in the direction she had gone. He would have to wait now for her to return to the village in the morning in order to explain himself and make it right; which meant he would spend the rest of the night trying to figure out what went so badly wrong... and why.

Defeated, he turned away from the river facing west by northwest, and began walking slowly back up to the village.

As the young scientist expected, his return to the village was met with mingled sounds of relief circling around an absolutely excruciating squeal of delight and dramatic despair coming from the blur of pink sparkle that bumrushed him upon entering.

"SSSENNNKUUU!!!"

Is she trying to blowout my eardrums? This is ridiculous.

"SENKU, BABY, OH I WAS SO WORRIED, I THOUGHT MY BOYFRIEND WAS GOING TO BE EATEN BY LIONS--"

"Boyfriend?" He cut in immediately. No time, point, need, nor want to drag it out longer. "That wasn't the deal."

But he hadn't meant to sound so... cold.

"Wh-what?" Luna blinked the giant crocodile tears out of her sparkling eyes and then started giggling. "Senkuuu, babyyy... What are you talking about--"

"Our deal."

"What deal?" she asked, either feigning or truly ignorant, tilting her head with a cute little bounce to the side.

Not the brightest crayon in the box, is she? How on Nihon was this girl ever a med-student?

He sighed, and pushed onward with the unpleasant task at hand.

"Your promise, Luna. You broke it."

She understood now what he meant, and looked absolutely dumbfounded. He would have felt bad, if his mind hadn't been taken far away, east by south east to be exact, in the last hour.

"What...what do you mean... I broke it? But, I thought--"

He had no idea why he wasn't bothering to keep his voice down. Maybe his frustration was getting the best of him, but he didn't understand his frustration, either. Maybe he just wanted to make sure the news spread like a wildfire; to make sure the right people would hear about this in the morning.

The 'right' people?...

I'm going to have to put myself under the microscope tonight, for sure.

"You promised I would like it," he continued flatly, utterly devoid of any kind of chivalry or gentleness. "I didn't."

Luna was now a sparkly, angry pink fish out of water. Her confu-sad pouting turned into angry pouting in a heartbeat. "B-but, you kissed me back! You were, you did, you kissed back!"

He could hear the villagers whispering excitedly behind them. Surely this would be enough gossip to get them through the whole winter and beyond. What a shame, he always hated petty personal problems taking the stage, anywhere. That's why he always maintained that there was nothing more illogical, time-wasting, and dangerous than a relationship. He sighed and continued.

"An experiment. Trial and error, remember?"

"...Then I get to try again!"

"A deal's a deal, Luna. No."

"But-but-but we were interrupted! I was s-scared because of the lio--"

"--That wouldn't have changed the outcome." He tried to cut her off before she mentioned lions, as he was sure the right people would read between the lines of the lioness that interrupted the kiss.

"Senku, stop it!" Her whining grated on his eardrums once again. "This isn't fair!"

"Fair? Fairness is to respect consent, which I no longer do."

"NO!" She grabbed his wrist as tightly as she could, her desperation lending her strength. It started to hurt a bit, and it seemed immediately that she was not letting go any time soon. "Hey, no way okay?! I'm your girlfriend, so you have to let me try again!"

"Luna. It's over."

Everyone in the village was watching them now, their whispers dying down as they switched to full blown listening. He was now standing centre stage at the Luna show, somewhere which he found himself all too often ever since they landed in America and she'd manage to put him in her debt by sewing up all those unlucky bullet holes. Gratitude aside, he'd had enough of it. He was downright drained, and already very busy thinking of all that he could possibly do to repair his broken and most important friendship.

He just wanted to go to bed.

But Luna was not giving up.

"NO! It's not over!"

Maybe it was his exhaustion, or the fact that he genuinely couldn't wrestle free from her grip and hadn't expected this, but when she pulled him with all her might and crushed her lips to his own in front of the whole village, he didn't fight back. He just stood there, his eyes unfocused and looking into a void at nothing. Not closed, yet not even looking at her. His mouth didn't move an inch underneath the very public assault it was now undergoing at the mercy of Luna's desperate lips. In the background, he heard gasping, cheering, laughing, dark muttering...

But most of all, a marked silence from the people who most mattered. The 'right' people.

He knew they were there, and that at least they found this all about as unamusing, uncomfortable, and unnecessary as he did.

Fuck's sake, is she going to stop or nah?

He tried to just wait for her to run out of steam, but it soon became clear that no amount of his clear disinterest would deter her from continuing to try for a trial with no error. Finally, he gently but firmly pushed her off him, gruffly wiping her essence off his face with the back of his sleeve. He heard the plethora of guys who were constantly drooling over her beginning to argue loudly amongst themselves and ignored them.

Something about 'is he fucking crazy?!' or other.

Senku felt Luna advance on him again and held out both arms to stop her.

"Luna. Enough. A deal is a deal. As to your 'promise,' I regret to inform you that I don't feel anything when you kiss me," and he grabbed her shoulders in his palms, bringing his face down and level with hers for emphasis. "At all."

He could see her trying and failing to process this news, getting angrier by the second, and resolved to just finish what he started.

"Therefore, as per our arrangement, this means that I'm no longer your boyfriend―"

"SENKU!"

"ーThe results of this experiment are conclusive."

"SENKU, STOP IT!!!"

She was incessant. But so was he.

"I no longer consent to this relationship. A deal's a deal. Accept that."

Senku Ishigami then turned away from his ex-girlfriend Luna's flabbergasted, furious, flushed face... and walked off the metaphorical stage towards his astronomy tower.

The village immediately erupted in an uproar of gossip and jabbering. On his way out and out of the corner of his eye, Senku caught sight of the right people. Chrome, Ruri, Taiju and Yuzuriha were sitting in the outer circle of the communal fire. He might have been imagining things, but he could have sworn that Chrome was smirking. On the other hand, he saw clearly that Taiju was grinningーbroadly, as though he'd been waiting forever for this moment to comeーand couldn't help but laugh. His eyes then lingered a bit on Ruri, picking up the smallest hint of an approving smile which he didn't fully understand, but somehow felt comforted by. Yuzuriha, as usual, was simply in bright, blushing shock.

He couldn't stop the warm hearted chuckle that escaped him. Nodding at his friends with as much a smile as he could muster, he walked away from the chaos to the comfort of his astronomy tower. There was a lot of work to do before he would see Kohaku in the morning, and he was determined to make this right.

Senku pushed open the hatch and let out a shaky sigh of relief. His true home. A gift built by the people whom he most held dear in this world. He looked at the belt of their galaxy through the wide observatory window and pulled himself up, standing and kicking over the hatch immediately to close it.

His astronomy tower.

He looked around and felt an immediate sense of peace. Being chief, he already had a much nicer 'house' in town, which the village had furnished to the nines for him. But somehow he always slept better when he came here. He looked to the corner at the the makeshift bed he called a bed whichーwith Kohaku's help aloneーhe had made to ensure a comfortable overnighter when his work left him unable to stop working. He thought of the masterpiece that Kaseki and Yuzuriha had made for him, wating back in his chief's chambers, mostly unused due to the disproportionate amount of times he ended up sleeping on the cot of cotton, straw and wood before him, and flashed back in his mind to the day it was made.

"Aren't you wondering why, though?"

"Why what?"

"Why I'm putting a bed in here. I swear it's not what you might think, I just-"

"I assume you get tired when you're up all night researching, and, uh, sciencing and stuff," Kohaku said, pushing together two of the wooden finishing panels of the bed together with an ease of graceful strength he still had never seen before or since. He might have laughed at her use of the word 'sciencing' had she not looked up at him in that moment, his bed in her lap as she pushed together another corner as though it were nothing, and smirked at him coyly. "Besides, I know you prefer sleeping under the stars, here inside this gift which makes you happy... Even if you'll never admit it."

Rays of sunset light had begun to come in through the wide observatory window and illuminated her eyes: her sky-meets-ocean blue eyes and that smirk which seemed to scream 'I and only I see through you so clearly.' Senku felt a lump growing in his throat and swallowed somewhat thickly, turning away from her for a second.

Well, he thought logically, reasoning the lumps away. No one said she isn't beautiful.

He coughed through and covered up his conflict with a 'kukuku,' as though he were toying with or testing her.

"Aren't you wondering why only you were asked to help? Or are you smarter than I thought, gorilla girl?"

He must have imagined the hurt in her eyes, because she immediately rolled them at his gorilla comment, bypassed the anger bit she usually did, then laughed it off whilst jamming the last planks of the bed into their last corner, looking up at him, satisfied.

"What, and risk Ruri-nee, Kaseki and Yuzuriha getting offended that you prefer a crude D.I.Y. cot to the other gift they made you?"

Senku felt punched in the gut a little at the thought that he might be so easy to read, but all the same he turned back to her, his face completely at the mercy of his big, genuinely impressed with something smile. He didn't understand it, but every time she made it so very clear that she knew him so well, so much better than any others, he felt that familiar exhiliration which he only got when chasing a new challenge for Science.

Kohaku slapped her hands together to dust them off and stood up straight, kicking the bed into place and looking up at Senku's brutally genuine smile before letting out a chuckle. She climbed over the bed and started walking towards him; something that triggered a mild bout of tachychardia in him for some reason. The closer she got, the louder he heard his heartbeat in his ears, and swallowed more thickly to dislodge the return of the lump which was back with a vengance. Kohaku gently crossed her arms under her chest in mock offence as she came to a stop right before him.

"As if I don't know you."

Her know-you-all smirk then met with his you-quite-impressed-me smile for a might while to come.

"Kukuku, it quite seems you do."

"Told you." Was it his imagination, or did she just move closer to him? "Now," she huffed happily, "I want my reward."

"Alright, I'll show you any planet you want," he conceded, and wondered if he had moved closer as well, as the devastating detail of the colour of her eyes seemed out to drown him under the light of that day's sunset. "Though you know I would have done that anyway, so I don't think it's a very big reward."

She smiled at him as though he were the silliest man and shook her head.

"It's more than enough for me."

Okay, that time he definitely felt himself step closer. Yet he ignored his solid certainty thatーat least that timeーhe had done it on purpose. He was letting himself be held by some kind of hopeful something. Deep in the depths of her blue eyes where Senku now swam, he realised their gaze had now been held much longer than he'd intended, because neither one of them was breaking away.

And something quite like gravity was pulling them together.

"GUYS! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! YOU HAVE TO COME SEE THIS, NOW!!!"

Each in their own subtle way; Kohaku and Senku both jumped, pulled out of their reverie with gravity at the sound of their friend's excited yet intrusive voice exploding into the room as Chrome crash-opened the hatch and popped his head into the astronomy tower. Both turned, breaking away from their mutual staring-into-your-soul contest to stare anywhere else. Both royal flushes being drowned out by the sunset and hidden away from themselves, their friend, and each other.

Senku pushed down the immediate yet inexplicable flash of anger that he felt at Chrome for interrupting, and filed away an urgent mental memo:

Gotta put a lock on that thing... Immediately.

Senku walked with his memories over to the bed and untied his belts, dropping his baggage in an untidy heap on the floor to undburden himself before flopping down on his favourite bed. He now had Kohaku's face with the light of that day's sunset dancing before him in the darkness, with only the stars through the window to remind him when in time he really was. He closed his eyes and dove deeper.

Swimming freely in memory now, he let go of logic. Using broad, strong strokes until reaching completion, he told himself that he was just further unburdening himself: The baggage of possibly losing what meant most to him was weighing heavy. Remembering her face that day made it all too easy, and he trembled out a release, followed by complete refusal of reason. He tried not to think of her, then gave up, cleaned up, and fell asleep; trying to think of how to make it right with her, instead.

Even if he still didn't understand how it had all gone so wrong.