She didn't know what she was doing there. All she knew was that suddenly, she couldn't breathe.

It seemed stuck in her throat, like the fizzy air from one of Gen's cola drinks whenever the bottle was shook up but not opened: practically shaking, and bound, eventually, to burst with 10 billion percent certainty. Science is science, and rules are rules.

The tiniest whisper of air passed through her lips, and she wasn't even sure if she had inhaled or exhaled. All Kohaku knew in that moment was that she had actually damn near stopped breathing; halted as much as as time had seemed to do so in this horrible, surreal moment.

"Please, Senku, pretty pleeease?"

"Okay, what's gotten into you, Luna? Heh... Don't tell me it's the full moon; the irony would be--"

"Stop it!" She giggled abrasively and playfully slapped him on the shoulder. They were holding hands; or rather, Luna was clutching Senku's hand in a weak girly-girl vice and drawing him forward into the forest. "A boyfriend shouldn't be so mean to his girlfriend, you know!"

Her voice made Kohaku want to both throw up and throw sharp things at everything simultaneously.

"Is that so?"

His smirk--which so often had made her smile with excited anticipation at his next words, or his new plan, or whatever brilliant move he was about to make--suddenly forced open a pit in her stomach that she couldn't make sense of. No, she couldn't make sense of that, nor of the why behind her furious and panicked heartbeat... which she swore Luna and Senku would soon be able to hear from its sheer ferocity.

Especially now that Senku had come to a stop a mere 8 meters away from where she was hiding.

She buried herself deeper into the bush and watched through the leaves as he sat down on the ground and leaned against a large boulder. He got comfortable, looking up at the moon as Luna bent down to sit next to--

Oh, please, no...

Check that: she straight up straddled him and sat down on his lap. Senku looked surprised, but not particularly perturbed, as her knees got cozy and settled on either side of him. Kohaku imagined that his smirk seemed to fade, but she couldn't be sure. Her eyes had begun to sting for some reason.

"Mhmmm, mister! That's totes so!"

She pressed her exaggeratedly kawaii hourglass body into him and hovered with her breasts in front of his face. If Kohaku hadn't been in such a state of shock, she might have shot out of the bushes like the lioness Senku always insisted she was and ripped Luna to shreds. Suddenly his annoying nickname for her made all the sense in the world. The anger level inside her took her as much by surprise as the nightmare scene that was unfolding before her.

"Come on Senkuuu, just one kiss? For your girlfriend? I promise you'll like it," Luna said in her sing-song way as she ran a hand through Senku's hair and rocked her hips back to bring their faces more level.

"You promise, eh?"

His hands went to rest on her thighs and now Kohaku could hear nothing in the entire world but them: as though Ukyo had come and swapped ears with her in that moment. The deafening rustling of his clothing as she shifted around in his lap. Her soft, stupid giggles and tiny, happy whimpers. Her own thunderous heartbeat threatening to break her chest open. Most of all, his breathing... Steady, if slightly altered, and underlined with the occasional, sincere chuckle.

Close... they're s-so close, why isn't he... Why is he letting h-her...

"And, what if you break that promise, Miss Luna? How are you going to compensate for the damages?"

Wait, wasn't this just a political relationship? Does... does he actually... want her?

"Heyyy!" She smacked him playfully again and tossed her head back, flexing her slender figure around from her spot sitting in his lap; flirting with feigned fury and syrupy sentences. "I said a boyfriend shouldn't be mean to his girlfriend! And anyway," she tossed her hair to one side and put both hands on his shoulders near the nape of his neck, once again pressing their bodies and faces in close. "I bet I'll make it worth your while... Now, preeeetty please?"

Didn't he say that a brain in love was the most illogical, useless thing? Why... why would he--

Luna's pouting was so exaggerated that it was visible through the growing wall of water attempting to blind Kohaku's stellar eyesight.

Don't kiss her, Senku, please... p-please...

Her inner voice was trembling in her own head. Her legs had gone painfully numb in her crouched position, but she dared not, and could not, move.

"And if I don't like it? How are you going to make it up to me?"

"You jerk!" She play-smacked him again and pressed into him, giggling wildly. "Hmph! Well, in that case, I guess I will just have to keep trying to improve, like you with one of your science projects!"

"Ah, trial and error, then?"

"Exactly."

His hands moved from her thighs up to her hips and Kohaku swore she saw his fingers grip her a little... but everything seemed to be blurring into a bubbling nightmare at this point, so she could no longer be sure. What was certain was that Senku was actively responding to her advances.

"Hmm... No, see, that still doesn't cover what my compensation is if the experiment fails," he said with that wide, devilish smirk. For a second Kohaku almost smiled. Something in Senku's words gave off an air that he was not particularly impressed or, in his words, thrilled about what was happening; at least, it seemed that he couldn't care less, one way or the other.

Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking at this point on her own part, because reality was putting on such a cruel show.

"Tch," Luna frowned--no, pouted--and brought her lips to hover a mere 10 centimetres north of Senku's. "Fine!" Her fake anger melted away into seduction sugar. "If sooomehow you end up hating it that much, then... I will let you off the hook, and you won't have to be my boyfriend anymore!"

Nothing about Luna's tone of voice implied any kind of belief that that would be even a possibility. Her smile was wide and her eyes heavy and lidded, hovering, heaving in front of and on top of Senku, awaiting her confirmation of his love in the form of a boyfriend's kiss. Kohaku tried desperately in that moment to read Senku's expression. His eyes seemed downcast and actively thoughtful, as though he were in the middle of doing some important and complex calculations. But she could no longer decipher anything more detailed, as her eyes had become full fucking fishbowls of biblical flooding, the water begging gravity to let it fall.

All her emotions, for years kept bottled up and secret (both from Senku out of respect for his goals and priorities, and to no small degree from herself, for her own sanity), were now like a bottle of Gen's cola.

And boy oh boy, was that poor carbonated vessel taking a serious beating right now.

"Heh... Fair enough."

No...

"Sooo... Deal?" Luna closed the gap a little more between them, waiting for her green light, now pressing her breasts to his chest.

No...wait, please, no--

The word seemed to leave his lips in slow motion.

"...Deal."

There was zero hesitation from good old capable Luna once that light had turned green. A funny squeak escaped her briefly right before she brought her lips crashing down onto Senku's, and the world around Kohaku seemed to be crashing down in spectacular tandem with them.

She blinked furiously, and the maxed out pools in her eyes finally brimmed over and unburdened themselves, plummeting to the ground in a falling frenzy. Now that the overflow was released, she could see the two of them now so clearly: as if her eyes had for that moment become a pair of glasses made to cure the fuzzy sickness... a pair which had been freshly forged, and left no room for error.

Yes. She could see them crystal clear. Luna had finally gotten her wish: she was kissing her publically-beloved Senku. Deeply, passionately, heavily... But that wasn't even the worst part for poor, confused Kohaku watching from the forest brush.

Senku was kissing her back.

...Sen... ku...

Kohaku had always wondered what he would look like, kissing someone. Now that she was witnessing, she felt entranced by it. His jawline had never seemed so... perfect. She had never noticed, or at least not consciously, how chiseled it really was, how smooth his moves, how coolly he put a hand on Luna's neck, how... strong and confident he was in that moment. The moonlight danced on his skin as the muscles underneath worked what looked like pure sorcery, magic, on the lucky Miss Luna's eager lips.

In reality it was only around 10 to 15 seconds that she sat there watching with horror, but to Kohaku, it seemed that time had stopped: frozen in between the moment Senku's lips had parted to partake in Luna's wager, and the moment when that cola bottle deep down inside her was hit with this finishing blow. Any kind of bottle, no matter what it is made of, will eventually burst when bowing to great pressure.

After all: science is science, and rules are rules.

As if it were a rope that had been holding the weight below it with one last thread, something inside her suddenly snapped. The breath she had been almost fully holding for the last 5 minutes finally exploded out of her in a single strangled, anguished sob; muffled only slightly by her instinctual and quick reflex to cover her mouth with her hand. She vaguely heard the sound of their lips separating, and Luna's timid, whiny voice squeaking something about: "what was that!?"

There was no hesitation in Kohaku, either. She knew they would find her, and she couldn't be caught like this; not by anyone, especially not Senku. Without having really reached a conscious decision, she rushed, crawling, crouching back out through the bush she had been hiding in. She had been innocently searching for medicinal herbs at Ruri's request when this whole fiasco began. She vaguely heard Luna whining again.

"Is it a wild animal!? Ohmigod Senku go check, I'm scared!"

"Uh, okay... First, you'll have to get off me."

Had she stayed put, Kohaku would have noticed the marked change in Senku's tone, the monumental shift in his energy and attitude... But she was in a blind, badly bruised emotional panic. She came reeling headlong and smashing into a realization of the magnitude of feelings she was not willing to admit to; feelings she had purposefully pushed down every day for the last 5 years since meeting him. But the dam had broken, and in her shock and unwelcome heartache, she arrived almost immediately at the conclusion that: even if she found away to face or accept it, or ever admit to how she felt, either to him or even herself... Senku, it seemed, would now never return them.

She heard his unmistakeable footsteps approaching and pushed forward faster through the forest brush, heedless of the rather deep cuts the branches and thorns were making all over her body. When she was finally out, she took off like lighting. Unable to mitigate whether or not Senku could see her in the distance, she made sure to disappear as quickly as possible. She sprinted through the woods, stumbling, blinded by tears and running at breakneck speed down the hill to the river and tripping various times thanks to the curtain of moisture that continued to mimick the fuzzy sickness in her eyes with an unprecedented strength, making it impossible to see and avoid smaller obstacles.

But every time she fell, she got back up and kept running, barely able to register the pain over the knowledge that Senku had finally chosen a mate... and it wasn't her.

She had no idea how badly she had wanted it to be her, until that moment.

And if the Kingdom of Science had taught her anything, it was that knowledge, once learned, cannot be unlearned.

She kept running. The river wasn't far, but it wasn't exactly close, either. Her feet must have known the way on their own from so many years living in the area, for she got there without thinking, or even looking where she was going for the most part. In any case, it was certainly far away enough that they wouldn't be able to hear her, no matter what. She made sure to go far enough. She had to. She couldn't risk anyone ever knowing anything about this, and her resolve and self-control were all but gone right then.

When Kohaku finally reached the river, she immediately collapsed, her knees splashing down into the water which was lapping languidly at the land; wrapping her own arms around herself as her entire being finally caved in...

And wept.