This crush is disastrous.

"Uh, Matoba." Natori turns to face him, a sheepish expression familiar on his face. Seiji doesn't let his gaze linger. He's been getting better at that. And at least it's rather dim in here. His sister always says that he has a propensity to blush. He sorely wishes she was wrong.

Seiji hears it now—the futile jiggling of the door's handle.

What in the ever-loving rom-com—

Swanning about the place and, in Seiji's opinion, barely scraping by on charisma alone, this Natori Shuuichi is impossible to ignore.

Like some celestial body pulling everyone around him into his orbit—Seiji has to scold himself for thinking in metaphor.

He does not have a type.

Natori is an unaccounted-for variable in Seiji's kitchen. And it's beyond infuriating that he can fix just about anything—botched recipes or persistent late attendance—with a grin as carefree as a breeze or a tongue as quick as silver.

Again, this poetical thinking.

"Locked?" He forces himself closer to the door. Towards Natori.

"It would appear so."

Matoba Seiji holds himself like a prince and is very easy on the eyes. He would be Shuuichi's undoing, typically, but Matoba doesn't give him the time of day. Instead, he has perfected ten different glares reserved for Shuuichi alone. Maybe he should be touched. It's something.

Shuuichi is not unused to staring, though it can be tiring and meddlesome.

He'd had a brief but fun (and ultimately disastrous) stint as an actor. That proved the meddlesome aspect most of all.

But Matoba's stares are electrifying.

And though he knows better, Shuuichi can't get enough.

It's thanks to his hairpin that they get out. But of course! Seiji could hit himself. This proximity is dangerous for his mental faculties.

The sooner he's out of this small, enclosed space with Natori Shuuichi, the sooner he'll regain them.

"Ha, where'd you learn that?"

"My sister locked me in a closet once."

"What? That's terrible!"

"Only once." A cat-eye's gleam in the low light. Just the one. Matoba's hair, now undone, has fallen over the right side of his face.

Shuuichi doesn't think twice. He brushes it back, tucks it neatly behind his ear.

Matoba freezes.

Oops.

Seiji can feel everything. Too much.

The sweep of Natori's knuckles as they brush his temple. That scar—not yet fully healed?—courtesy of a slip of Natori's knife. So careless! Seiji's heart had nearly beaten out of his chest at the sight of so much blood. Natori had smiled all the way through; Seiji elected the one to patch him up.

"Oh." The sudden absence of his touch feels wrong. "My bad."

Natori opens the door. "After you."

Shuuichi is late, but Hinoe has nowhere in particular to be. Playing harmless tricks on commuters is entertaining after all and Takashi isn't here to scold her. She returns their little trinkets only when their mounting hysteria becomes annoying.

When Shuuichi finally arrives, Hinoe has just given a cat-shaped lollipop back to a young child on the verge of tears.

As if she wants to hear any of that.

"No sweets today? Madara will have your head!" A worryingly cheerful declaration as Hinoe tucks her arm through Shuuichi's and tugs him along. To his end at Madara's jaws, no doubt.

"It's not really my fault," he mutters.

"No?"

The Incident has been replaying in his head the whole way home.

"You're all red!" She delights in his now-visible anguish. "Who is it?" Hinoe's appetite for gossip is ever unsatiated.

He waffles internally for a moment before deciding. Maybe he would feel better if he talked about it.

"Well, get this—"

"Your hair!" Shinobu cries in dismay. She'd spent over an hour this morning on that updo, damn it! "Seiji, get back here!"

His bedroom door slams in her face. How rude!

She contemplates the door but decides she won't pry for now. Of course, she won't be deterred so easily.

Investigative journalism is what she does best, after all.