Chapter Six
The Wrong Door
"I would like to formally blame the latch."
Day seven. Post-training.
The connecting door was unlocked.
I noticed this approximately one second after I'd already pushed it open and stepped through.
I looked.
Hana was on the bench doing something to her shoelace.
Training jacket gone. Just the white undershirt — which, after two hours of combat drills, had gone translucent with exertion.
Pressed tight against curves the standard-issue training gear had been doing significant structural labor to manage.
Generous. Soft. The kind of figure that announced itself without effort — and right now, without the reinforcement of the regular uniform doing its dedicated work, there was significantly more announcement happening.
Kaito's brain registered the information and immediately attempted to file it somewhere he couldn't easily retrieve.
It failed.
Mira had just come in from outside. One arm holding a towel across herself with the cheerful insufficiency of someone who has been comfortable in her own body since approximately age twelve.
Her head was thrown back. Laughing at something she'd been thinking about. Braids down. Damp. Utterly unguarded.
The particular phenomenon of Mira like this — warm, real, held by nothing — was a startling thing to walk into.
And Seraphina—
Seraphina was at the far end of the room.
Back to him.
Hair loose and still damp from the shower.
Wearing precisely the length of towel that the situation absolutely did not require her to be wearing.
Which is to say: very little.
The geometry of her from behind — the straight line of her spine, the severe elegant architecture she carried even like this — was doing something to the Sacred Gear in Kaito's chest that it had absolutely no business doing.
Time resumed.
Hana looked up.
"Door."
Kaito froze.
"Door," she said again. Pointing.
He closed it.
Instantly.
He stood on his side of it. Face doing things he had no control over. The Sacred Gear pulsing with what he could only describe as thoroughly inappropriate enthusiasm.
Silence from the other side.
Then Mira, muffled: "Did he just—"
"Yes," said Hana.
"How much did he—"
"Enough."
Pause.
Then Hana — and he could hear the grin in it:
"Seraphina, your face right now—"
"Hana."
Temperature: capable of flash-freezing water.
Kaito pressed himself to the wall and sincerely considered whether it was possible to simply cease existing for several minutes.
Hana came out first. Holding back a very specific kind of amusement by a thread.
"For the record," she said pleasantly, "I have zero complaints."
"I am so sorry," said Kaito.
"Don't be." Pat on the shoulder. "You looked so horrified. It was charming."
She drifted away smiling.
Mira appeared next. Visibly heroic in her effort to maintain neutrality — the corners of her mouth doing structural work they weren't designed for.
"Don't," said Kaito.
"I'm not." She pointed at her own face. "This is restraint. This is what it looks like on me. Very taxing."
"Thank you."
She leaned in. Critical intelligence mode. "Sera spent forty-five seconds doing her hair after you closed that door. She never spends more than twenty."
Beamed. Walked away.
Kaito stood in the corridor. Told the Sacred Gear to stop what it was doing. It declined.
Seraphina came out last.
Immaculate. Of course. Every piece composed — hair back, uniform precise, eclipse eyes at default temperature.
She found him. Direct. Immediate.
And for one moment — a faint, involuntary color at the top of her cheekbones.
No business being as significant as it was.
"The connecting door," she said, forensic report tone, "has been locked since the annex was built. I'll have maintenance examine the latch."
"Good idea," said Kaito.
Pause. The color was still there.
"Dinner. Thirty minutes."
"Right. Yes."
She walked away. He watched the straight line of her back.
Forty-five seconds on the hair. The color at her cheekbones. The bond conducting itself with enthusiasm that was going to require a serious conversation at some point.
At dinner: Seraphina sat across from him, opened her book, did not look at him.
Except the book was upside down for thirty seconds before she silently corrected it.
Hana noticed. Her smile over her tea cup was the smile of someone storing a memory they intend to keep for years.
Kaito thought: maintenance is absolutely never going to fix that latch.
He kept it to himself.
End of Chapter Six