The convenience store near the school was busy at this hour.
After-class crowd mostly — students from the regular university next door, a few salarymen, a mother with a kid having strong opinions about which juice to get. The kind of ordinary busy that felt almost aggressive after six months of the world being the way it had been.
Yuki had decided they needed snacks for the walk home.
This was not a quick process.
Kairo stood at the end of the aisle and watched her hold up two different bags of chips with the focused concentration of someone making a decision with real consequences. She'd been doing this for four minutes. They were different flavours of the same brand.
"That one," he said.
"You said that last time without looking."
"I'm looking this time."
"You're looking at the door."
He was, a little. Habit. "That one," he said again, pointing at the left one.
She looked at both. Looked at him. Put the right one back, kept the left, then immediately picked the right one back up too.
"Both," she said.
"You said snacks. Singular."
"Snacks is plural."
"You said a snack."
"Did I?" She tucked both bags into the crook of her arm and moved further down the aisle. "I don't remember that."
He followed. She stopped in front of the drinks, tilting her head.
"Yuki."
"Almost done."
"You said that three minutes ago."
"I'm thorough." She picked up a can, read the back, put it down. Picked up another. "Do you want anything?"
"No."
"You always say no and then drink half of whatever I get."
"I don't—"
"Last Tuesday. The melon one."
"You offered it."
"Because I knew you wanted it." She picked up two of the same can without looking at him. "You're welcome."
He looked at the ceiling briefly. She put everything on the counter and he paid without commenting on the total, which was more than it should have been for one person's snacks but was, at this point, just a fact of his life.
Outside the air was cold and the street was crowded. Yuki had her chips open before they reached the corner and held one out to him without looking.
He took it.
She watched him eat it with enormous investment.
"Well?" she said.
"It's fine."
"It's good."
"It's fine."
"It's the good one. You pointed at it."
"I pointed at random."
"You pointed at the good one by instinct," she said, "because deep down you have excellent taste."
He looked at her. She ate a chip and looked forward, entirely satisfied with herself.
They walked. The street opened up into the wider stretch near the station — more people, the low hum of a busy evening, voices and trains and someone's music bleeding through bad headphones. Yuki tucked herself under his arm the way she always did in crowds, less because of the crowd and more because that was just where she stood now.
She was quiet for a bit, eating her chips, watching people. He could feel her thinking about something.
"What," he said.
"Nothing," she said.
"You have a face."
"I have one face. It's my only one."
"You have a specific thinking version."
"You've catalogued my faces."
"You told me I have a relaxed jaw and a threat-assessing jaw."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Ate a chip. "That's different."
"How."
"It just is," she said, which meant he was right and she'd decided not to confirm it.
They came to the busiest stretch outside the station. Dense crowd, everyone moving, a man near the entrance handing out flyers that nobody was taking. Yuki stopped walking.
He stopped too and turned to look at her. She was looking at the crowd with the specific brightness she got when she'd just decided something.
"What," he said.
"Nothing," she said, which meant something.
She reached up, put her hand on his jaw, and kissed him — warm and deliberate and completely in the middle of the busiest part of the pavement.
He kissed her back without thinking about it because six months and that was just what happened now.
She pulled back.
He looked at her.
She looked at the crowd around them — a few people had glanced over the way people glanced at anything before moving on — and then she took a small breath and said, loudly and clearly and with complete sincerity:
"You're the best brother ever."
The words landed.
Kairo went very still.
Not the calm collected still he usually was. A different kind. The kind where his brain had received something and was taking a moment to fully process the damage.
He looked at her.
She was looking up at him with the expression of someone who had just done something and was fully committed to it.
He looked at the people around them.
The woman who'd been walking past had slowed. Not stopped — slowed, the way you slowed when something registered wrong. A man near the flyers had looked over. Two university students nearby had glanced at each other with the particular expression of people who had just watched something happen and weren't sure if they'd understood it correctly. An older man to their left was staring with his flyer half-raised, forgotten.
Kairo looked at Yuki.
She looked back at him. Chin up. Completely composed. Chips in one sleeve-covered hand.
They had the exact same white hair. The exact same red eyes. The exact same shade of both. They had just kissed, visibly, in front of all these people. And she had just called him her brother.
"Yuki," he said, very quietly.
"Hm?" she said pleasantly.
"What did you just say."
"I said you're the best brother ever." She ate a chip. Looked at him. "You paid for my snacks."
The older man with the flyer had not moved. The two university students were now very openly staring. Someone behind them had stopped walking entirely.
Kairo became aware, with unusual clarity, of exactly what this looked like from the outside. Same hair. Same eyes. Kissing. Then brother.
"We need to go," he said.
"Do we?"
"Right now."
"I'm eating my—"
He took her hand and walked. She had to half-jog to keep up, chips clutched to her chest, and she lasted about twenty steps before she started laughing — trying not to, pressing her free hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking, failing entirely.
"That wasn't funny," he said.
She laughed harder.
"Yuki. That was not funny."
"The man with the flyer," she managed. "His face—"
"I saw his face."
"He looked like he needed to sit down."
"He probably did." Kairo kept walking. "We have the same hair and eyes and you — in front of all those people—"
"I know," she said, still laughing.
"They're going to think—"
"I know—"
"That's not—" he stopped. Ran a hand through his hair. Kept walking. "That's genuinely not a situation I want people thinking we're in."
She came up for air, wiping her eyes, still smiling enormously. "You kissed me back immediately," she said. "Without even thinking about it."
"I didn't know you were about to—"
"And then I said it and your face did something I have never seen your face do before."
"I don't make faces."
"You made a face," she said. "A very specific one. I'm keeping it."
"Colour coded?" he said, flatly.
"Separate folder," she said. "Special category. Labelled — Kairo genuinely horrified."
He looked at her. She looked back up at him, bright and completely unrepentant, chips bag crackling in her arm. Her ears were still pink from laughing. She'd done that on purpose, completely on purpose, in the busiest part of the street outside the station, with their matching white hair and matching red eyes, after kissing him, in front of what had to be thirty people.
"You did that because of the school," he said.
"What do you mean."
"Everyone there thought we were siblings."
"Yes," she said.
"So you decided—"
"I decided," she said, "that if everyone was going to think it anyway, we might as well commit."
He stared at her.
"We're not siblings," he said.
"I know."
"I want that extremely clear."
"Crystal," she said.
"We have the same hair and eyes because—"
"We don't know why," she said. "We've established that."
"Which makes it worse."
"Which makes it funnier," she corrected.
He made a sound that was not quite a word. She tucked herself back under his arm with the ease of someone returning to their exact right place and ate another chip like nothing had happened, like she hadn't just mortified him in front of a significant portion of the Shinjuku evening commute.
The street got quieter past the station. Less people, the evening settling into its ordinary pace, the light going orange and low.
"I'm not your brother," he said.
"I know," she said.
"Say it."
"You're not my brother," she said, and then glanced up at him with the small smile she had when she was about to push something just a little further — "you're my best brother."
He stopped walking.
She walked two more steps, felt his hand go still in hers, and turned to look at him.
He was looking at her with an expression that was caught somewhere between completely done and something else he hadn't decided on yet.
"I'm joking," she said.
"I know."
"You know it's funny."
"I know it's going to be a problem if any of those people post the footage."
She blinked. Looked at him. "You think they filmed it?"
"Someone always films everything. We have matching white hair and red eyes. We kissed in public and then you called me your brother." He looked at her. "Someone filmed it."
She stared at him.
He watched her work through it — the sequence of events, the crowd, the man with the flyer who'd already looked like he needed medical attention.
"Oh," she said.
"Yes."
"That's—" she paused. "That might be bad."
"It might be bad," he agreed.
She thought about it for another second.
Then she started laughing again.
He looked at the sky. "Yuki."
"I'm sorry," she said, not sounding it. "I'm sorry, it's just — the comments are going to be—"
"Don't."
"People are going to—"
"I know what people are going to think. That's the problem."
"We could post a correction," she said.
"We're not posting anything. We're not on anything. We've actively avoided being on anything for six months."
She pressed her lips together. "Right."
"The whole point was to not be recognised."
"Right."
"And today you destroyed a wall and called me your brother in front of the Shinjuku commute."
"When you say it like that," she said.
"How would you like me to say it."
She thought about it genuinely. "You could say it faster," she said. "It sounds less bad if you say it faster."
He looked at her.
She looked back at him and the laugh she was holding back was visible in every part of her face and she wasn't doing anything about it and he was very aware that in about four seconds he was going to lose this entirely.
He kissed her instead. Properly. His hand in her hair, her chips bag crinkling against his jacket, and she made the small sound and kissed him back and for a moment everything else was just background noise.
When he pulled back she had the slightly dazed look she always got that she covered by eating a chip with enormous dignity.
"What was that for," she said.
"The record," he said. "Clearly."
She looked at him for a second. Then she turned forward, tucked back under his arm, sleeve-covered fingers finding his hand.
"Recorded," she said quietly. "Very clearly."
Their building was at the end of the block. Cold air, orange light, the city doing its ordinary evening thing around them. The map would have new dots by the time they got upstairs. The archive file was still locked. None of it was anywhere near as important as the fact that she was under his arm eating chips and stealing his hand out of his pocket to hold it, hoodie sleeve flopping over both of them.
He let her.
Some things were very simple.
End of Chapter 17.