The darkness inside Room 203 thickened, carrying an invisible pressure that compressed everything into the silence of three in the morning.
On the single bed pushed against the corner, a figure was tossing and turning in an unnamable nightmare. His breath hitched, heavy and ragged. The thin blanket had been kicked to the floor. His sinewy fingers gripped the bedsheets tightly, crumpling them until his knuckles turned white.
He saw himself sinking into a hazy space, overflowing with the refreshing, intoxicating floral scent so familiar to Ichinose Chizuru. He saw her light brown eyes drooping, veiled in a misty haze, looking at him with a burning desire. He felt the temperature of her soft skin beneath his fingertips. He heard the heavy breathing, the enchanting moans echoing in his ears, striking straight at the most primal, base instincts of a man.
In that terrible, lustful dream, he put up no resistance. He completely surrendered. He craved her to the point of madness, frantically embracing her, crushing all the pride and moral principles he had personally established, just to drown in that sweet, wet lust. Primal desire surged, swallowing the ruthless coldness of the absolute loner.
And then he shot up.
His body jolted as if a high voltage current had run through his spine. His eyes stared wide open, glaring into the dark space before him. His chest heaved violently, the air whistling through his lungs, creating hoarse, raspy sounds. His entire body was drenched in sweat. The thin t-shirt clung tightly to his flesh, icy cold.
A terrible, obvious, and highly instinctive physiological phenomenon of a twenty year old young man had just occurred.
He looked down, staring at himself, then brought his trembling hands up to tightly grip his head. His fingers buried deep into his hair, squeezing so hard his scalp stung. A wave of nausea surged from his stomach straight up his esophagus. It wasn't nausea from food, but an ultimate disgust and contempt for himself.
"Damn it." He meant to curse, but the sound that left his larynx suddenly shattered, turning into a dry, pathetic rasp.
He froze. A sharp, piercing pain, like thousands of broken glass shards slicing across his throat, struck him. He tried to swallow. The pain instantly exploded, burning so fiercely that physiological tears sprang to his eyes. His tonsils had swollen so much they completely locked his vocal system.
He could not speak. Even the smallest syllable demanded a horrifying physical torture.
But this forced silence could not stop the riot happening in his mind.
It was that dream again. This was the third time this week he had been tormented by that lustful illusion involving the girl in the next room.
He was scared. He was truly terrified.
Simultaneously with the fear in his mind, a chill ran down his spine. His body temperature was skyrocketing. Sweat poured down like a bath, but his joints trembled violently from the cold. He had a fever. An acute viral fever hit as an inevitable consequence of the afternoon he spent in the rain dealing with Sarashina Ruka, compounded by nervous exhaustion from continuous insomnia.
He gritted his teeth, trying to force himself up. Dizziness struck, making the world sway. Every object in the room seemed to spin.
A normal person in this situation would obediently bundle up in blankets, sleep until morning, and then call for help. Or at least, they would realize they were being surrounded by the classic "falling ill" script of this world, creating an opportunity for a romantic caretaking scene.
But he refused. He refused to become a weak puppet. He hated the feeling of being stripped of control over his body.
He staggered toward the wardrobe. His burning throat let out no sound, but his extreme will screamed continuously. He hastily grabbed a thick fleece hoodie, pulling it over his head, and shoved his feet into his sneakers without bothering to tie the laces. He reached into his pocket, grabbing his keys and wallet.
He would drag himself down to the 24 hour convenience store on the street. He would buy fever reducers, antibiotics for his throat, and extinguish this trashy fever himself. He had to prove that his will was in absolute control of this body that was showing signs of betrayal.
Click.
He opened the door and stepped out into the open air hallway.
The air at three thirty in the morning was bone chilling. The wind from the alley blew up, slicing through his sweat soaked hoodie, making him shudder, his steps staggering and swaying. His vision was blurry, covered by a milky white fog due to his dangerously high body temperature.
He leaned one hand against the cement wall, the other gripping the rusty iron railing, fumbling his way step by heavy step toward the stairs. With every step, his head throbbed with splitting pain. His ribcage ached as if someone had smashed it with a sledgehammer.
When he managed to drag himself to the first step area, the hand holding the keys trembled violently. The muscle bundles seemed to no longer receive signals from the brain. His fingers went limp.
The keys slipped from his hand, fell onto the concrete floor, slid down the slope, and dropped straight into the gap of the drainage grate below the dark hallway.
He stopped, his sluggish eyes looking down into that deep grate. He opened his mouth to curse, but his swollen throat only let out a painful, choked gasp.
"Lost the keys." Such a tiny event, yet it was the straw that broke the camel's back, crushing the last bit of strength of the man running a fever of over thirty nine degrees.
He tried to hold onto the railing to take another step, but his vestibular system had completely collapsed. The ground beneath his feet suddenly tilted. Gravity disappeared. He could no longer feel his legs.
His tall body pitched forward, his shoulder slamming hard onto the floor, and he tumbled down to the foot of the stairs.
He squeezed his eyes shut. There was no strength left to struggle. The darkness quickly swallowed his flickering consciousness, plunging him into an endless void.
...
In Room 204.
Ichinose Chizuru was still awake. She was hunched over her small desk, diligently writing down script analyses for tomorrow's audition under the sallow light of the desk lamp. Since Grandma Sayuri's funeral, she had suffered from mild insomnia. She always tried to bury her head in work and scripts to fill the cold, quiet emptiness in her room.
Suddenly, a series of dull, heavy thuds echoed from the hallway right outside. It wasn't too loud, but enough for her to hear clearly.
Chizuru jumped, the pen in her hand slipping and leaving a long ink streak across the paper. She frowned, straining her ears to listen. It was nearly four in the morning. This cheap apartment complex was usually incredibly quiet; any strange noise carried a sense of unease.
She stood up, threw on a thin cardigan, and tiptoed toward the door. She pressed her ear against the wood, hearing no footsteps, only the silence of the night.
When she was sure there was no one or nothing threatening nearby, Chizuru carefully cracked the door open, slipped out, and tiptoed toward the stairs leading down to the first floor. And that was when her pupils instantly dilated to their maximum.
Lying face down on the cold concrete floor, right at the foot of the stairs, was a familiar figure wearing a hooded fleece jacket.
"Kinoshita?!"
She cried out in panic, hurriedly throwing the door wide open and dropping to her knees on the floor. She rolled him over. The angular face that usually bore a calm, arrogant expression was now pale and ashen like a corpse. His forehead was covered in cold sweat, but the moment her hand touched his cheek, a heat as intense as burning coal immediately transferred to her skin.
He was running a fever so high he was delirious. His cracked lips moved continuously, but no sound came out. He frowned, his face twisted in extreme pain.
"Kazuya! Can you hear me?!" Chizuru frantically shook his shoulders.
He gave no significant response.
She immediately thrust her hands into his jacket and pants pockets looking for his room key. Empty. He hadn't brought his phone, and he had no keys. She ran over to Room 203, trying the doorknob. The door had been deadbolted from the inside before he slammed it shut on his way out.
The situation became incredibly urgent. He couldn't lie out in this cold dew for another minute. The outdoor temperature would kill him before the fever did. Take him to the hospital? She needed to call an ambulance, but his current condition required him to be warmed up immediately before he could even be transported.
There was no time to hesitate or worry about gender boundaries. Chizuru gritted her teeth and slipped her arms under his armpits. She tensed all the muscles in her back and legs, summoning all the strength of a young woman accustomed to doing chores, and bit her lip as she arduously dragged the tall, heavy body of the unconscious man into her room for fifteen agonizing minutes.
She used her foot to kick the door of Room 204 shut, locking the cold night out.
After struggling for five minutes, she finally managed to haul him onto her single bed with its pale pink sheets. He collapsed, breathing heavily and laboriously. Chizuru panted, brushing the loose strands of hair from her forehead. She hurriedly took off his shoes and stripped him of the sweat soaked fleece jacket, leaving only the thin t shirt underneath.
She ran into the bathroom, soaked a cotton towel in warm water, wrung it out, and returned to place it on his forehead. Then, she opened her personal medicine cabinet, took out two fever reducers, and broke them into smaller pieces.
"Kazuya, open your mouth a bit. Take the medicine." She lifted his head, bringing the rim of a water glass to his lips.
But he didn't react. His throat was so swollen that any attempt to swallow in his delirium was accompanied by an agonizing frown. The water spilled from the corners of his mouth, running down his neck. He refused to ingest anything through his throat.
Chizuru was helpless. She couldn't force him to take the medicine while his throat was severely inflamed. She had to put the glass down, pull her thick blanket over his chest, and tuck in the edges to keep him warm.
He lay on her bed. The refreshing floral scent from Chizuru's blankets enveloped him. In his delirium, his brain, baked by the high temperature, could no longer distinguish between reality and hallucination. He only felt a soft, safe warmth that he had been craving to the point of madness in his tormenting dreams over the past week.
Since he was a child, he had a habit of needing to hold something to his chest to fall asleep. It was a reflex seeking safety for a soul that always lacked confidence. And in that desperation, he wanted even more to reach for whatever saved him, no matter how distant it might be...
At that moment, Chizuru was standing right at the edge of the bed, leaning over to replace the wet towel on his face with a fresh one.
Suddenly, from under the blanket, a large, sinewy arm swung out with incredible speed and force for someone in a deep fever.
He grabbed her wrist tightly and yanked hard.
"Ah!"
Chizuru cried out in surprise. Losing her balance, she tumbled onto the narrow bed, falling halfway across his body.
Before she could react, both of his arms wrapped around her back, hugging her tight with the grip of iron pincers. He pulled her down completely onto the mattress, pressing her body flush against his chest, which was as hot as burning coal. One arm slipped around her waist, the other buried into her long hair, forcing her head to rest in the crook of his neck. He hugged her exactly the way a child hugs their favorite teddy bear to ward off the monsters in the dark.
"Kazuya! Let me go! What are you doing?!"
Chizuru panicked, struggling and pressing her hands against his chest to push him away. Her face flushed bright red. This overly intimate physical contact made her brain stall.
But the strength of a man driven by feverish instincts was something she couldn't resist. He didn't care about her struggles. He only knew that the thing he was holding radiated a scent that soothed the pain in his head, bringing absolute peace. He buried his face in the cascade of her hair, taking a deep breath. His burning breath fanned against Chizuru's earlobe, causing a strange sensation to kindle within her.
His swollen throat didn't allow him to speak. He only let out deep, hoarse grunts and whines from his throat, exactly like a large beast moaning for comfort. He tightened his embrace even more, rubbing his chin against the top of her head - an incredibly childish and bizarre gesture for a man who always acted cold and ruthless.
Chizuru froze. She realized he had absolutely no lustful intentions. He wasn't trying to grope her; his hands were just clinging to her back desperately. He was delirious, and he treated her as a lifesaving body pillow.
She stopped struggling. Tucked securely in his large embrace, she felt the rapid, pounding heartbeat in the man's chest. His burning body temperature transferred through her thin clothes, making her flush with heat as well.
She looked up at him. The angular face was grimacing in pain, the dry lips pressed tight. The arrogance, the impenetrable wall of ice he usually wore, had been completely stripped away by the fever. Right now, he was just a vulnerable human being, needing warmth to make it through the dark night.
Chizuru sighed softly. The panic gave way to boundless pity.
"You really are a stubborn idiot." She muttered, very quietly.
She didn't push him away anymore. Instead, she slowly relaxed her body. One arm timidly wrapped around his waist, gently patting the broad, sweat soaked back. The other reached up, touching his messy hair, stroking it slowly and rhythmically.
The instinctive, soothing action of a woman took effect. Feeling the comfort, his tense body gradually relaxed. The painful groans in his throat subsided, giving way to steady, deeper breaths. He drifted into sleep, dragging his flesh and blood "body pillow" along into his dreams.
Chizuru closed her eyes. Her face pressed close to his firm chest, hearing every heartbeat clearly. In the small room, their two breaths merged into one. She was also exhausted from her streak of sleepless nights. The warmth from him, even though it was a fever, strangely brought her an unprecedented sense of security.
And so, in an incredibly awkward but inescapable dilemma, the young woman also fell into the deepest sleep she'd had in weeks, despite being held tight on her own bed.
...
Eight in the morning the next day.
The blazing summer sunlight pierced through the thin, pale pink curtains, shining directly onto the faces of the two people curled up on the bed.
The effects of the deep sleep and the body's self regulation of temperature had significantly brought down his fever. His mind gradually regained its clarity.
He slowly opened his eyes. His vision took a few seconds to adjust to the light. The first sensation that hit him was the dull ache in his joints, and a throat so dry and swollen that swallowing saliva felt like swallowing a handful of sharp nails. He grimaced, intending to curse this trashy illness, but his larynx refused to work. Not a single sound could escape.
And then, he realized this wasn't his room.
A white ceiling, and a compact chandelier, completely different from the shabby tube light in his room. The smell wasn't cheap air freshener or mustiness, but a refreshing, sweet floral scent that hit his olfactory senses straight on.
And something even more horrifying: his sense of touch was sending red alert signals.
He felt both of his arms tightly embracing a warm object. His entire face felt a suspiciously soft texture, along with a devilish stuffiness that made him pull his head back a little to see who or what was next to him.
The moment he realized the situation, his eyes widened to their maximum, his pupils contracting like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, because everything was exactly what he wanted least.
The person tucked neatly in his arms, the person he had pressed his face against to sleep soundly, was none other than Ichinose Chizuru. One of her legs was unconsciously draped over his thigh, one arm wrapped around his waist, hugging him just as tightly as he was hugging her. Physical intimacy crossing all boundaries, taking place right on the signature pale pink bedsheets of a girl.
"Her room. Her bed. I am hugging her. The whole night."
His memories of last night were fragmented. He only remembered intending to drag himself down to the street to buy medicine, dropping his keys, and collapsing. As for why he appeared in Chizuru's bed, and why he was hugging her tight like a pervert starved of affection, he was completely clueless.
A massive wave of embarrassment, a destructive humiliation unprecedented in both of his lifetimes, crashed straight down on his proud self esteem. His face flushed bright red, from his ears all the way down to his neck. If there were a crack in the floorboards, he swore he would crawl right into it and never surface again.
He held his breath, trying to move his muscles as gently as possible. He slowly, stealthily pulled the arm she was using as a pillow out, centimeter by centimeter. He broke out in a cold sweat, terrified she would wake up and witness this lustful, weak, pervert styled embracing posture.
But the law of attraction for bad luck always worked perfectly.
Just as he had managed to pull his arm halfway out, Chizuru's long eyelashes fluttered. She frowned, smacked her lips, and slowly opened her eyes.
Her sleepy gaze met the wide, utterly panicked pitch black eyes staring right at her from less than ten centimeters away.
Time froze. The space seemed drained of air. Both brains simultaneously loaded the current data.
Chizuru's eyes widened. She looked at him. Looked at the position where the two of them were tightly hugging each other. The warmth of sleep vanished completely, replaced by a blazing red tsunami of embarrassment. Her face erupted in flames, turning as red as a ripe tomato.
Both of them simultaneously shot up like two broken springs.
He flinched violently, scrambling back to the edge of the wall, so flustered that he swung his arm and slammed his elbow hard against the wooden partition with a loud thud. But he gritted his teeth through the pain, not daring to utter a sound. His face was grimacing, his ears burning red, glaring away, exactly like a child caught stealing candy. He brought both hands up to cover half his face, trying to use a fake coldness to cover it up, but the panic in his continuous hair ruffling betrayed everything.
He wanted to open his mouth to explain, to say "This is an unexpected accident" or "I have no ulterior motives". But his swollen throat had stripped him of his strongest weapon. His silence now turned into the most pathetic admission.
Chizuru wasn't faring any better. She scrambled up, hastily grabbing the rabbit shaped pillow and clutching it tight against her chest as a shield. Her face was so red it looked ready to smoke. She looked awkwardly down at the bedsheets, then looked away, her fingers gripping the edge of the pillow. She intended to speak up and explain that he had been delirious with a fever last night, that he kept holding her tight and wouldn't let go, so she couldn't escape.
But looking at the silent, embarrassed, eye avoiding posture of the man who was always so venomous with his words, her explanation caught in her throat.
The room was left with nothing but the silence of ultimate awkwardness. There were no loud apologies. There were no panicked screams like in an anime script.
He was a guy who couldn't make a sound. And she was a girl so flustered she had lost the ability to speak.
He cleared his throat (though it was incredibly painful), pretending to straighten out his wrinkled clothes, trying to restore his superior demeanor. He glanced over, using his eyes to signal incredibly awkwardly instead of words "Forget this happened".
Then, he fumbled his way out of bed, his legs still slightly unsteady from the aftermath of the fever, and walked quickly toward the door like a criminal fleeing the scene.
Chizuru, still flustered, sat on the bed hugging her pillow, watching his pathetically fleeing back. When the door clicked shut weakly, the embarrassment within her suddenly vanished, giving way to an uncontrollable smile.
The man who claimed to be emotionless, ruthless, and always despised anything sappy... had just blushed, hugged her to sleep all night like a child, and ran away without daring to say a single word.
The absolute loner's wall of ice had completely collapsed, making way for the rawest, most adorable reactions of a flesh and blood human being.
And Chizuru knew, she had grasped his fatal weakness.