The alert didn't fade; it hummed at the base of my skull, a low-frequency vibration that turned the silence of the room into something thick and pressurized.
The air-conditioning hummed, a cold contrast to the shimmering wall of heat still radiating from our tangled limbs. My skin felt tight, drying with the salt and silver of our encounter, the leather of the sofa sticking to my back with every shallow breath.
Kyouya lay across me, her weight a grounding mass, her pulse still a frantic, disorganized throb against my collarbone.
The high-tension wire had snapped, and we were currently floating in the wreckage.
"Mayo-san," she murmured.
Her voice was stripped of its lethal edge, reduced to a soft, tactile resonance that vibrated directly into my chest.
I didn't answer immediately.
