Touma was exhausted.

It wasn't the type of exhaustion that comes with physically wearing yourself out- although he had been running basically non-stop for the past few days- but the type of exhaustion that comes from extended periods of stress.

"Touma," Index was tugging on his sleeve as he lay collapsed on his bed, face buried in the sheets. "Touma! You know what time it is? Are you planning to starve me?"

Touma groaned, peaking over at his gluttonous roommate. "How do you still have any energy after all that?" He demanded.

Index huffed. "I'm worn out too! That's why I need to eat! Food is the only way to replenish energy-"

"You saw the food stands as we came in, huh?" Touma guessed.

She pouted.

He sighed.

Touma was used to threats. He was used to getting chased around by people who had every intention of killing him or others, people who didn't hesitate to cause widespread devastation. He was no stranger to fighting for his life, and he was always at a disadvantage when he did. Dangerous situations didn't scare him.

But this one… this one was different. An attack that targeted the mind. He'd managed to break free of the magician's spell… but the images were lingering.

He needed a break.

Touma pulled out his phone, initially to check the time, but he hesitated when he saw the notifications for unread messages.

Right. People had probably been trying to get a hold of him.

He scrolled through a couple, shooting quick replies to the people who'd been wondering where he was. He was nearly through them all when he paused on one.

Misaka Mikoto: MIA, huh? I'm guessing something happened. Let me know when you get back.

Touma wondered if she'd stopped by the area and seen that he wasn't home. She knew where he lived, after all.

He smiled slightly, and the feeling washed over him like a wave.

He wanted to see her.

More than anything. Just the simple freedom of having her next to him, of being able to reach out and hold her hand if he wanted to… He just wanted that reassurance that everything was normal. That she was okay.

He messaged her back: Just got back. Are you free right now?

He was surprised by her quick reply.

You're in luck, Kuroko just got called in for some Judgment work. Where do you want to meet?

Touma smiled. He answered: the bridge

She didn't need to ask for clarification. When the two of them referred to 'the bridge', there was only one place they could be talking about. Okay. 20 minutes. Don't be late.

He chuckled a little at that. He was the one inviting her, and she was the one telling him not to be late?

Index tugged at his sleeve again. "Touma!" She cried. "Why are you ignoring me?! Who are you texting?"

Touma pushed himself up off the bed. Fishing through his wallet, he pulled out some cash and handed it to Index, saying "Here, go explore the food stalls."

She took the cash, smiling gleefully for a second, before narrowing her eyes suspiciously. "What are you gonna do?" She asked.

"I'm gonna go meet Mikoto." He admitted.

Index's expression softened, and she gave him a small smile. He hadn't told her the full details of what he'd gone through with that magician, but she knew the basics. "Good." She told him. "Make sure you talk to short-hair properly."

Tell her what happened, in other words.

"I know." He promised her. "I will."

"So you've been chasing down this magician for the past few days?" Mikoto asked him.

The two had met on the bridge a full five minutes before the time they agreed on, which for Touma might've been a new record. The two were now standing near the railing, looking out at the river with the sun setting in the distance, Mikoto leaning on the railing while Touma stood behind her and gave her the short summary of what had happened.

"Pretty much." He answered her. "Tsuchimikado was able to sneak us back in without any trouble, but we're supposed to keep our heads down while he explains what happened to the higher-ups."

"I'm sure there's a bunch of people who like to know where you are."

"There's definitely a lot of people who yell at me when I disappear." He was practically mobbed when he got back from Russia.

"Like me?" She smirked back at him.

"You didn't yell at me." He pointed out.

"I wanted to. I stopped by your place when you went quiet. Maika was the one who told me you'd been out." She poked him a little roughly. "You could tell me when stuff like this happens, you know."

Touma avoided looking at her. "It happened pretty fast." He told her. "There wasn't really time..."

And he hadn't wanted to drag her into it. He trusted her wholeheartedly, but he couldn't bring himself to involve her if he didn't have to.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I get it. But still…. I wish you'd tell me about it. I know you don't always need my help, but I'd feel better about it if I knew you hadn't been kidnapped or something."

"Kidnapped?" He smirked.

"You know it could happen." She retorted.

Well, he couldn't argue against that.

"Sorry."

She sighed, looking back out at the river. "So?" She asked. "Why call me out here? I can't be the only one who was worried about you. Don't you have other people to call?"

He smiled a little.

She was right. There wasn't any real need to call her out here, and he knew it wasn't exactly easy for her to sneak out of her dorm at this time of the evening.

But he remembered it so clearly… those dreams that sorcerer wove.

Touma lowered his head for a second, his bangs falling over his eyes.

"Please don't hit me for this." He told her quietly.

"For wh–? Eek!"

Before he had a chance to change his mind, he wrapped his arms around her from her back and pulled her in tightly against his chest.

"W-w-w-w-what are you–?!"

"Sorry." He apologized automatically, but he didn't loosen his hold on her in the slightest. "I just…"

Mikoto listened to him trail off, her wildly pounding heart starting to settle as she got used to the feeling of his arms around her. With him being so close, she realized that he was trembling very slightly.

Words abandoned her entirely as she realized what was going on.

"... This was a rough one, huh?" She finally managed.

"Mm." He acknowledged, resting his chin on her shoulder.

She sighed, laying her arms on his and relaxing into his hold.

The two stayed like that for a few quiet minutes.

She didn't ask for the details of what he'd seen. A magician that attacked the mind by weaving nightmares… she could pretty much imagine what had happened, whether he told her or not. And though it might bother her that she hadn't been able to help him in the fight, the fact that she could help him now, like this, just by letting him hold her… well, she really had nothing to complain about.

He lost track of how long he indulged himself, but eventually he let her go, pulling away with a sigh.

He kept hold of her hand, though.

"Come on." He gestured with his head to their left.

"Where are we going?"

"No idea."

She chuckled a little, letting him pull her along.

They walked along the river for a while, completely aimless.

"So?" He asked her. "What happened here while I was out?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Nothing that lives up to getting trapped in a dream world by a magician driven crazy by revenge."

He smirked. "Good. It would've been just my luck to come back to something just as crazy, though."

She rolled her eyes. "Well not this time. There was this Judgment case that I was helping out with… some connected cases of trespassing and property destruction… but they don't have a suspect yet, so mostly it's just been investigating crime scenes after the fact. Not much for me to do."

He nudged her a little. "You sound like you're complaining. Looking for a challenge?"

"Good fights are hard to come by." She told him shamelessly.

It was his turn to roll his eyes at her. "Trigger-happy zapper– ow! Wait! I take it back–!"

She huffed, turning her chin away from him indignantly, and he silently cursed himself for having thoughtlessly taken her right hand in his left when they started walking.

As she turned, the light of the setting sun glinted off her hair pin.

Oh yeah! In the hectic chase of dealing with that magician, he'd almost completely forgotten about it. Quickly, he dug into his pocket, hoping against hope that the little trinket he'd picked up was still there.

He felt the package in his hand and almost caught himself breathing a sigh of relief. But no, he couldn't relax yet- not until he was sure that the thing was still intact. He pulled it out of his pocket, glancing down as discreetly as he could so that Mikoto wouldn't notice to check on the state of the item.

He grinned.

Looks like he managed to catch a bit of a break after all.

"Mikoto?" He called out to her.

She looked over immediately, the annoyance from a moment before already gone. Her eyes widened in surprise as he tossed her the small package. She let go of his hand as she scrambled to catch it.

"What's this?" She asked him.

"Bought it right before that magician started the chase." Touma explained. "At first, I thought there was no way you didn't have it already, but if you did have it, I would've seen you wearing it at least once, right?"

As Touma explained himself, Mikoto carefully opened the small package. Once she had the little item in her hand, she froze, her eyes wide and glittering.

It was a hairpin. Or, more specifically, a limited-edition Gekota hairpin.

"….. you got this for me?" She asked in a small voice.

"Well yeah. Of course I did." His cheeks were starting to feel warm again.

She held the little pin close to her chest, like a mother bird protecting her eggs.

For Touma, buying that hairpin had been the most obvious thing for him to do. It wasn't the cheapest accessory, but he knew how much the little mascot meant to this girl. The moment he'd realized she must not have a Gekota hairpin, it was a foregone conclusion that he would get it for her.

She perked up, immediately pulling her current hairpin out of her hair and replacing it with the new Gekota one. She fiddled with it for a few seconds, then looked straight at him and said "Is it in the right spot?"

"Close." He answered. "Here, let me fix it."

Touma reached out, adjusting the hairpin ever so slightly while Mikoto held completely still. Her hair brushed up against his hand, and he gulped, pausing for a moment, enjoying the soft, silky feeling of her hair running through his fingers.

"Th-there." He said, pulling his hand back once he had the pin where it was supposed to be.

She touched the pin, smiling softly.

His breath caught. There was that look again– the one that practically made her glow, and was definitely going to kill him one day.

She was a stunningly pretty girl. The thought might've been embarrassing once, but at this point it was just a matter of course. Something he should be used to but still managed to take his breath away.

"Thanks." She said.

Mikoto knew her voice was laced with more affection than she knew what to do with, but masking it was impossible. Not with something like this.

Not everyone in her life was openly critical of her fascination with Gekota in the way that Kuroko was, but even the people who indulged her never went so far as to get her anything. The collection process was entirely on her. Even her own mom had given up getting her merchandise a couple years back. So to have someone go out of their way to get her a Gekota accessory already meant the world to her. To have it be him, knowing that he found this hairpin and bought it for her as though it were the most obvious thing to do…

She knew her face was beat red. The heat was running right down her neck. And so she stepped closer and buried her face in his shoulder. She wasn't sure if she was doing it to thank him or hide her embarrassment, or maybe a bit of both, but he chuckled a little and gently returned the embrace.

"So all it takes to get a hug from you is a Gekota accessory, huh?" He teased.

"Shut up. Idiot." She grumbled a little, tightening her hold. Then quietly, and a little boldly, added "If you want to hug me, you can hug me, you know. I'm not gonna hit you."

"Really?!"

"Always with the surprise." She rolled her eyes.

He shouldn't be surprised. He should know, right? The amusement park, the sports competition between the schools, the half-dozen hangouts in between disguised as study sessions… not to mention the magician-related crises. They'd been skirting the lines of 'friends' for a while now. Holding hands, hugging, borrowing his coat, stealing drinks from each other… what could you call that if not 'flirting'?

What were they?

He wasn't just a friend. Obviously. And he didn't treat her the way he treated his other friends, either. But were they dating? Could they call it that? Doesn't there need to be some sort of confession before you could start calling it that? A k-kiss? Should she say something?

But she couldn't. No way. Not something as embarrassing as that. Not yet.

Still feeling flustered, Mikoto eventually pulled back and hopped down to the river's edge. She needed something to take her mind off of this before her brain shorted out from it all.

She scooped up a few rocks as he slowly followed her, lining up a shot and skipping the pebble across the water's surface.

"Nice." He commented quietly, watching the little rock bounce four times before sinking into the water.

"Care to try and beat it?" Mikoto challenged him, offering him a couple flat stones.

He took the stones with a grin. "You're on."

So started a light competition between the two. Neither of them were expert stone skippers, but they were both decent enough at it that they were basically evenly matched. As they kept out-skipping each other, the challenge eventually morphed into trying to skip a stone across the entire river– something they both kept getting tantalizingly close to but weren't quite managing.

One of Touma's launches seemed to be going perfectly, and his eyes widened hopefully as it closed in on the opposite bank of the river, but just before it reached the edge, a fish jumped out of the water and snatched the rock out of the air.

The two stared at the rippling surface, stunned.

Touma sighed loudly. "Just my luck."

Mikoto burst out laughing.

"You really do have some rotten luck sometimes, huh?" She said, sitting down on the grass a few paces away from the water's edge.

Touma sat down next to her, leaning back on his hands. "'Sometimes' doesn't cut it. Kamijou Touma's life is cursed with nothing but misfortune."

She rolled her eyes at him. "You're exaggerating. It's not that bad."

"C'mon, Mikoto, you've seen it! My Imagine Breaker cancels out even luck. The universe conspires against me."

She seemed taken aback by his emphatic, earnest insistence.

"Wait," Mikoto started, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. "You really believe that you're that unlucky?"

Touma shrugged.

She was so startled, for a moment, all she could do was stare. But his serious expression didn't yield, and after a few seconds of processing, she gave a long, exasperated sigh. "You're such an idiot."

"Hey!" He protested.

She shifted her weight to her knees, turning to him and jabbing him lightly in the chest. "Is there something wrong with your brain? There's no way someone with timing as perfect as yours can be nothing but unlucky."

"Ow, Mikoto- what do you mean?"

"The bridge!" She reminded him. "You showed up at the exact moment I was at the end of my ropes! And during the Daihasei, you just happened to meet up with Saten at the right time to get involved with that ridiculous experiment to shift me to level 6! Not to mention the time you just happened to be in a store in the exact moment a bomb happened to go off and I happened to fumble with my railgun that one time- although I guess you wouldn't remember that one- but the point stands!"

With every example she provided, she jabbed him in the chest. It didn't hurt that much, but it still made him flinch every time.

"Did you ever think that maybe your bad luck in all the mundane things is just the universe balancing out your good luck in being in the right place when people need you most?" She finished.

He stared.

He wanted to refute her. Being unlucky was an undeniable fact of his existence. He got into the most ridiculous of scenarios because of it. It wasn't normal to get hit in the head with a soccer ball and land flat in a girl's chest. It wasn't normal to walk in on a classmate changing in the classroom, of all places. But that's the sort of thing he could expect from his everyday life.

In a sense, though, she wasn't wrong. He always felt like he was rushing to help, but when he thought about it, there were a number of times where him being in the right place at the right time to help was pure coincidence. How could he possibly call that unlucky? He was beyond glad he'd been in the right spot to save someone when they needed saving. And more than anything, he was incredibly grateful that he'd been able to catch up to Mikoto that night on the bridge when he did. He hadn't known where the experiment was happening that night, after all. Just a few minutes later…. Just a few minutes, and there wouldn't have been anything he could do.

"… maybe you're right." He conceded. "Finding you on that bridge when I did was definitely lucky."

"There, see?" She said, leaning back. "You have your own brand of luck."

A tingling warmth spread through his body as he watched her tilt her head up proudly.

Without thinking, he reached over and snuck an arm around her waist, pulling her toward him.

Her cheeks went red again, but she let him pull her in without any resistance, adjusting the way she was sitting a little as he held her.

"You're clingy today." She teased him lightly.

"Yeah, yeah." He couldn't help it. She was cute and he'd been given permission. Besides, he loved the feeling of having her in his arms.

Mikoto shifted again, leaning into him a little heavier, and for a moment he lost the ability to think. Before he could reboot, she used her right hand to push him down, and he complied automatically, laying on his back.

She followed him down, giving him a moment to shift the position of his arm before scooting closer again and using his shoulder as a pillow.

Mikoto stretched, letting out a yawn as she got comfortable on the grass. "There we go. That's much more comfortable."

Touma chuckled softly. "So I try to give you a hug, and you decide to turn me into a pillow instead?"

"Hmph. I could just get up if you want-" She shifted as though she were about to move away.

"Nope." He protested immediately, catching her by the waist and pulling her back down.

She smiled smugly up at him, a look he met obstinately. She had him, and they both knew it, but Touma was a touch too stubborn to admit it.

The two lay for a couple minutes in comfortable silence, watching the sky as night fell and the stars started popping out one by one.

"You can actually see the stars from here." Touma noticed, a little in awe at the sparkling night sky above them.

"Mm. The light of the city drowns out the dimmer stars and constellations, but you can still make out the brighter ones." She scooted a little closer, pointing to the sky. "See that cluster of stars over there?"

Touma tilted his head a little, following the direction she was pointing out, and spotted the cluster she was talking about. "I see it."

"That's Subaru. Or the Pleiades, if you're from the west. And if you follow that to the right a little..." She shifted her hand a few centimeters. "You find the Ram, Aries."

"That's a Ram?" Touma exclaimed skeptically.

Mikoto laughed a little. "Well, there's some creative interpretation when it comes to constellations. If you look that way-" She dropped her hand closer to the horizon. "See that 'M' shape over there?"

"Yeah."

"That's Cassiopeia."

"A person?"

"Yep. The Chinese named it after a person too- Wang Liang. But the Egyptians called it the Leg."

"How is an 'M' a leg? Is it a broken leg?"

She nudged him a little at the joke, but she kept smiling. "It was a tool used by the god Set. For the Celts, though, it was Llys Don, the home of the fairies."

"But no one just called it the 'M'."

"Of course not. That would be boring."

He chuckled softly, catching her hand absent-mindedly as she dropped it back down onto his chest and fiddling lightly with her fingers. "Am I going to get tested on this?" He teased.

"Hmph. Maybe."

Touma took the threat seriously and made a point of committing the information to memory.

(Although, if he were being honest, he wouldn't be forgetting anything about this night anytime soon.)

A voice suddenly echoed across the river, and they looked up reflexively toward the sound.

"What's going on over there?" Touma noted.

A boy and a girl were facing each other on the opposite bank. The girl's shoulders were hunched, her eyes scrunched shut while the boy stood frozen, staring at her. It was too dark to see much beyond that, and the two were too far for them to make out what was being said.

"A confession?" Mikoto guessed.

Ah.

Mikoto's guess must've been on the mark, because the boy had responded by stepping closer, grabbing the girl's arm, and–

Both of them immediately turned away, faces glowing matching shades of red.

"Geez." Mikoto complained, settling back down onto his shoulder, pointedly looking up at the sky to avoid watching the scene playing out across the river. "Why would they do something like that out in public?"

"Beats me." Touma grumbled a little.

Not like the two of them were keeping a friendly distance either... but neither dared point that out.

A confession.

He could feel her tense a little as she gripped his sweater, turning to hide her face in his shoulder.

Touma hadn't realized how tense a topic that would be until the word itself was hanging in the air between them.

Wouldn't now be a good time to say it? Did he need to say it? This was probably the most definitively 'romantic' hang-out they'd ever had. No one walking by would watch the two of them and assume that they were friends. There had never been a better time to say it.

But he also didn't want her to think that he was only bringing it up because they'd just watched some other couple go through it first.

Aaaaaah, he didn't know what to do. He had no experience with this sort of thing.

"Hey Touma," She started, cutting through the silence.

"Mm?"

"Have you ever been confessed to?"

He tensed… then slowly relaxed.

Not ignoring the topic, but diverting it just enough to make it less awkward. Clever.

He answered her. "Nope."

She looked up at him in surprise. "Seriously?"

"Not that I remember, anyways." He amended.

"Right…"

"What about you?"

"You know I have." She answered with a smirk.

He paused, then remembered his unfortunate encounters with her suitors in the past and corrected himself "I mean by someone you'd actually want to date."

"Nope."

A sigh of relief escaped him before he had a chance to snuff it out.

Catching it, Mikoto glanced up at him smugly. "Hmm? Does the idea of someone confessing to me bug you?" She teased.

He looked away from her, his cheeks burning. "Of course it does." He answered quietly.

"What was that?"

"Nevermind!" Embarrassed, he wrapped both arms around her and held her close so that her face was tucked into his shoulder again, cutting off any chance of eye contact.

Of course he wouldn't be okay with that. It might not be fair of him, especially since he hadn't worked up the guts to properly put this into words, but he knew what he felt. And he was pretty sure he knew what she felt.

He didn't want to share her.

She let out a slow, relaxed breath, wrapping an arm around his chest and nuzzling into him a bit. His heart pounded, which was doubly embarrassing because there was no way she couldn't hear it. His hold loosened a little as he relaxed into the grass again, his fingers tracing the line of her spine and settling on her lower back.

"That judgment case you were helping with…" He started after enjoying another few minutes of quiet peace. "You said there was no suspect. I'm guessing it hasn't wrapped up, then."

"Mm." She answered him, her voice a little muffled against his sweater. "Usually Anti-Skill would handle this sort of investigation, but apparently they're stretched thin right now, so Kuroko's branch is handling it. I offered to help." Mikoto started absent-mindedly fiddling with the string of his hood. "Usually that girl lectures me about getting involved in Judgment work, but this time, she was pretty eager for some reason."

"I figured Shirai would go out of her way to be able to fight with you."

"Not with Judgment stuff. She's always on about how 'I'm a civilian' and 'I don't have authorization' and 'I should leave it to the trained officers' or whatever. She's eased up on it over time… but I still get an occasional lecture."

"At least someone's telling you off for it." He said.

"I don't want to hear that from you." She jabbed back.

He grinned sheepishly. He knew he had no right to tell her off for sticking her neck into dangerous situations, but that didn't stop him from worrying about her. So he could at least appreciate Shirai for giving her heck for it, since there wasn't much he could say.

"Be careful, at least." He told her.

"Yeah, yeah."

A thought suddenly occurred to him. "Does Shirai know? About… all this?"

He cursed himself for not being able to make that less vague, but he was genuinely curious. Shirai hadn't struck him as being especially shocked when she came across them at the amusement park, but if she did know how often they were together, he felt like the teleporter would've been a bit more… murderous.

Thankfully, Mikoto understood what he was asking. "Not really. She knows I've been tutoring someone, but I haven't told her it's you. She would definitely try and follow me if she found out."

"Naturally."

What Mikoto didn't tell him was that she was pretty sure that Kuroko knew how she felt about Touma. It wasn't something she'd ever told her, for self-evident reasons, but Kuroko had guessed out loud what was going on when they'd run into Touma and Index in the underground mall during that one incident… then again during the Daihasei… and again during the penalty game… and going out of her way to track him down for her in Russia… At this point, she'd be astonished if Kuroko didn't know.

She doubted that Kuroko really imagined the extent of what was going on between them, though. And she was not looking forward to the scene that would unfold when she inevitably found out. There'd already been some close calls, especially in the past few days following the 'sports' competition.

"Hopefully she won't freak out too much." Mikoto said suddenly.

"Knowing Shirai? She's going to challenge me to a duel to the death." Touma predicted.

Mikoto grimaced, knowing it wasn't entirely out of the question. She was probably going to have to have a conversation with her roommate.

"At least you and Index are getting along." He continued.

Remembering the sister, Mikoto narrowed her eyes and asked sharply "You didn't ditch her to come out here, did you?"

He tilted his head at her. "Ditch her? I gave her some cash for food stalls and told her I was meeting up with you. I think her exact words were 'make sure you talk to short-hair properly'."

Mikoto sighed in relief. "Good." She'd made a promise to Index, after all. And she intended to live up to it.

Touma blinked, a little bewildered by the odd question, but decided not to press it. They were getting along. That's what mattered.

She yawned, snuggling into him a little closer and closing her eyes.

"Tired?" He asked, stifling a yawn of his own that hers had triggered.

"Mm." She acknowledged quietly. "I think I'm just gonna nap here."

"M'kay."

"Don't let me nap too long."

"Why would you assume that I won't fall asleep? Do you know how comfy this is?"

She yawned again. "Fair enough…"

She trailed off. He could tell from the way her breathing evened out that she was at least partially asleep already.

He sighed in contentment, closing his own eyes. He hadn't been kidding. He might be lying on the ground, but the grass was soft and cool, and he had Mikoto in his arms. He hadn't felt this comfortable in a long time. It barely took a minute for him to start drifting off too.

It so happened that around that time, on the opposite bank of the river, a middle-school girl with long, black hair was rushing home. She'd had to go out of her way to find some ingredients for the supper she was planning to cook, and she'd somehow ended up staying out past curfew. Night had already fallen over the city and she was still a ways from her dorm.

Saten Ruiko didn't really have time to stop and linger anywhere, but something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, and she stopped.

"Isn't that… Kamijou-san…?"

She squinted, peering across the river, trying to make out the figure in the dim lighting. It definitely looked like him. That mop of spiky black hair was pretty unique. But there also happened to be a girl asleep in his arms… one that was not wearing a Tokiwadai uniform.

Suspicious, she pulled out her phone, using the camera zoom feature to get a closer look at the pair.

Indeed, it was him. She was certain. At first, her heart sunk a little, thinking the boy must have found himself a girlfriend. But as she got a closer look at the girl in his arms, she caught sight of a pin glistening in the girl's hair– a pin that was very clearly designed to look like a certain frog mascot.

She nearly dropped her phone.

"Is that… Misaka-san?!"

Saten had never seen her friend wearing casual street clothes before, so she hadn't recognized her. But now that she was zooming in as far as her phone would allow, she could clearly recognize that short, light brown hair. And what other middle-school-aged girl would wear a Gekota hairpin?

"Wonder why she isn't wearing her uniform…" Saten said to herself, a huge grin plastered on her face as she snapped a few pictures of her friend with her crush. Maybe Misaka had snuck out of her dorm and was planning to stay out with Kamijou for the night? It was probably easier to get around curfew when she wasn't wearing the easily recognizable Tokiwadai uniform.

More importantly, though, she was asleep in the arms of the boy she liked. Saten didn't pry into how things were going with Kamijou too often, but clearly there'd been some developments that Misaka-san hadn't been sharing. Last time the two had had a proper conversation about the boy, it was after she'd run into the two at the underground mall, and Misaka had seemed convinced back then that Kamijou wasn't seeing her in that light.

Obviously, he was now.

"I have to get her to talk tomorrow." She vowed, putting her phone away. The real trick would be getting Misaka alone… there was no way she would give any kind of details with Shirai-san hanging around…

With various schemes forming in her head, Saten left the river behind. Misaka-san might be fine breaking curfew, but she would rather not risk getting caught herself.

She was very much looking forward to the next day.

Touma had no idea how long they lay there napping. What ended up waking him up was the feeling of the arm that was propping up his head having completely fallen asleep. It took considerable effort to shift the limp limb out from under his head without using his other arm.

It took around five minutes for the feeling to return to his arm, and another couple before he could lift it properly, but once he had full control again, he nudged the girl in his arms gently.

"Oi, Mikoto."

She groaned, shifting a little, slowly opening one tired eye to look up at him.

"... what time is it?" She asked him.

He pulled out his phone, then turned it to show her the screen.

It was almost ten. Which meant it'd been almost two and half hours since they'd met on the bridge.

She sighed, very slowly pushing herself off of him. She checked her own phone in a haze, expecting messages from Kuroko.

Those were definitely there, but it was a different message that shocked her awake.

Saten Ruiko: You and I are going to have a chat tomorrow :winky face:

Attached to the message was a picture of her asleep in Touma's arms.

Her temperature skyrocketed. She saw them! When?! How?! Why?! Aaaaaaaaah, how was she going to explain that?! Did she tell any of the others? Saten wasn't the type to spread stuff like this around, but if Kuroko caught sight of that picture–!

"Mikoto?" Touma tilted his head at her, noticing her sudden flustered state. "You okay?"

"Fine! Everything's fine!" She snapped her phone shut, stuffing it into her pocket in a haste. Dealing with Saten-san was a problem for later.

He shrugged, dropping it, pushing himself to his feet and offering Mikoto a hand.

She took it, letting him pull her up off the ground.

"I'm guessing you're heading back now?" He said.

She nodded. "The dorm manager does regular checks… the more that I miss, the worse it gets." She grimaced. Kuroko had been out late doing Judgment work, so the two were definitely getting demerit points for this one.

"Good luck." He told her jokingly. Then, with a more sincere tone, added "Thanks for coming out. I really needed this."

She blushed, smiling softly, gingerly tracing the shape of her new hairpin with her fingers. "Mm… Anytime."

His heart thumped in an odd rhythm, and a feeling he wasn't quite prepared for washed over him. He was impulsively moving before he had a chance to think about what he was doing.

He pressed a soft, quick kiss to her cheek.

He stepped back just as fast, face burning from the risky move, too overwhelmed to look directly at her.

"S-See you later?" He tried to say.

Mikoto brought a hand up to her cheek, eyes wide and head steaming, fingers ghosting over the spot where a tingling sensation lingered.

"R-right." She answered weakly. "See you l-later."

When Touma got back to his dorm, all Index did was smile. One look at his face told her everything she needed to know about how well his talk with short-hair had gone.

When Mikoto got back to her dorm, Kuroko nearly had a panic attack from the look on her onee-sama's face, convinced that something was terribly wrong. It took some shouting and shocking and a neck snap from their dorm manager to convince her that everything was fine. The two ended up getting assigned extra chores for the entire week.

Mikoto felt it was worth it, though.

[Author Notes]

So this chapter was short. Comparatively speaking, anyways. I realized this was going to happen partway through because this is pretty much the only chapter without an actual story to it. They're just hanging out, talking, and enjoying each other's company. It was also fast as heck. It's been what, a day since the last chapter? If I'm being honest, this one has been basically done for a week now. I just had to do some fine-tuning.

On that note, I LOVED writing this chapter. I feel a couple has to be able to do this- enjoy spending time together with no set goal- and yet I find it's rare to see those types of scenes play out in fanfiction. I know stories are driven by conflicts, but downtime is cute too, am I right?

Let me know what you think! I love hearing from you guys. The next chapter is going to be our third conflict chapter, and undoubtedly will be the longest. As of right now, there's a chance that it'll be split between two chapters. I'll see how it plays out. I have no estimation on when you might expect it (I'm looking at at least a few weeks right now), but I'll be working on it every day, so look forward to it and I'll do my best!

See you next time in 'The Beast Below'