“I don’t know,” he said. And that was the real betrayal. Not the kiss. Not the motel. But the fact that he had destroyed a friendship for a reason he couldn’t even name.
Erito had laughed then. He wasn’t laughing now. He was watching the way the condensation from her beer dripped down her index finger.
Her breath caught. A tiny, involuntary sound. And then she was leaning forward, and he was leaning forward, and the space between them collapsed like a star going dark. The kiss was not gentle. It was hungry, desperate, the kind of kiss that happens when two people have been drowning separately and finally find a single piece of wreckage. Her hands fisted in his shirt. His fingers tangled in her damp hair. The cobalt ink smeared between them. Erito - Rina Kawamura - Best friend-s girlfrien...
Kaito found it in Rina’s coat pocket—a ramen shop in a neighborhood she had no reason to visit. The same neighborhood where Erito lived. Kaito was not stupid. He was a systems analyst. He spent his life connecting dots.
Erito Saito had never been afraid of heights. He’d climbed the old transmission tower behind the school in his second year, just to prove a point. But standing in Rina Kawamura’s apartment doorway, watching her towel-dry her hair, he felt a vertigo far more paralyzing. “I don’t know,” he said
“You’re late,” she said, not unkindly. Her voice was the same low, smoky murmur that had haunted his dreams for six months. “Kaito’s stuck at work. He said you’d keep me company.”
That was all.
“Traffic,” Erito lied, stepping inside.
They sat in the thick silence of two people who have already said everything safe and are now navigating the minefield of what they shouldn’t . The television murmured a variety show. Neither of them watched it. Not the motel
“No. You were perfect. That was the problem.”
“And yet?” Erito’s voice was a whisper.