A single minute dragged by.
Then five.
Then ten.
The silence of the bedroom grew incredibly heavy.
Liora let out a long, shuddering sigh. The mattress shifted slightly under her weight. The heavy cotton blanket rustled loudly in the dark.
Zenjiro snapped his eyes shut. He violently clenched his jaw. He braced his entire body for the sudden physical impact. He expected the heavy weight of her arm to drop blindly across his chest. He waited for the intense, burning heat of her bare thigh to trap his hip. His muscles locked tight.
Nothing happened.
He slowly opened his eyes. He turned his head to the right.
Liora had only adjusted her soft pillow. She was still lying firmly on her back. The ten-centimeter gap remained perfectly intact.
A crushing wave of disappointment hit his chest. The dark hunger in his empty stomach twisted into a sharp, physical cramp. He swallowed hard. His throat was completely dry.
Another five minutes bled away into the cold, dark room.
She moved again.
Her bare foot slid slowly against the cotton bedsheet. The rough, scratching friction sounded incredibly loud to his hyper-aware ears. Her knee twitched upward. She mumbled a completely incoherent, sleepy word into the quiet air.
Zenjiro instantly held his breath. His hands balled into tight, shaking fists at his sides. He silently begged her to just fall forward. He desperately needed her to close the tiny distance. He needed the physical contact to drown out the painful memory of Asuka's face.
The mattress springs groaned heavily. Her left shoulder tilted forward. Her body weight began to shift toward the empty space.
Zenjiro dug his fingernails hard into his own palms.
Here it comes.
But she stopped entirely. She settled back down onto her left side, facing slightly away from him. The gap remained about ten centimeters wide.
It was absolute hell.
Every single tiny twitch of her sleeping fingers destroyed his focus. Every slow, heavy shift of her hips sent a massive spike of raw adrenaline straight into his panicked brain. He constantly braced his body for a heavy collision that simply never arrived.
The brutal cycle of intense anticipation followed instantly by total disappointment began to tear his rational mind completely apart. He was starving to death right next to a massive feast. He was just lying there in the dark, pathetic and desperate, waiting for the food to accidentally drop into his open mouth.
It was entirely absurd. He was physically shaking over a simple touch she normally forced onto him fifty times a day without a single second thought. The pathetic irony of silently begging in the dark for her usual, annoying clinginess made the deep ache in his stomach twist even harder.
He started sweating heavily in the freezing room. His skin burned with a violent, restless energy. The cowardly trap was backfiring perfectly. The ten-centimeter gap was driving him completely insane.
He couldn't take the psychological torture anymore. His heart hammered rapidly against his ribs. The loud thudding filled his ears.
The cowardice of his perfect alibi tasted bitter and dry in his throat. He finally realized the absolute truth of his situation. He wasn't a clever hunter waiting for a trap to spring. He was just a pathetic, starving dog begging for accidental scraps in the dark.
The ten-centimeter gap wasn't a safe zone at all. It was a suffocating physical wall of his own making, and it was crushing his lungs.
He squeezed his eyes shut. A heavy, cold wave of absolute defeat washed entirely over his burning skin.
He lost.
The alcohol still hummed dangerously in his blood, but the sheer, agonizing exhaustion of fighting his own instincts finally broke his will. He simply couldn't do this.
He couldn't just lie here and vibrate with raw, violent hunger while she slept completely oblivious beside him. If he stayed in this bed for even one more minute, the last fragile thread of his self-control would snap.
He would throw the alibi away and forcefully drag her warm body against his chest. Or worse, he might just lose control entirely. He would tear the dark clothes right off her skin and commit a physical act he could never undo.
The harsh reality of the aftermath hit his panicked brain hard. If he got caught, the punishment would likely be terrible. His own father would probably violently disown him. He might lose his entire family forever.
He had to retreat.
He needed to crawl back to his own freezing, empty mattress. He had to put the long stretch of cold floorboards between them again to survive the night.
He slowly opened his eyes. He stared blindly up at the pitch-black ceiling and swallowed the heavy lump in his throat. The dead silence of the bedroom pressed firmly down on his tense shoulders.
He carefully tightened the muscles in his thighs. He flattened his sweating palms against the rough cotton bedsheet. He mentally prepared to push his heavy body upward and slide quietly away from her intense, teasing heat.
He slowly turned his head to the right. He just wanted to look at her peaceful face one last time before he surrendered entirely to the cold.
Then, the soft mattress violently dipped.
Liora suddenly threw her entire body weight forcefully to the side in a dead sleep.
The ten-centimeter gap completely vanished in a fraction of a single second.
She crashed heavily against his right side. The sudden, intense heat of her body soaked instantly through his gray shirt. Her head dropped heavily onto his right shoulder. Her face fell directly toward his own.
Zenjiro didn't have a single millisecond to react or brace his muscles.
A low, heavy groan vibrated deep in Liora's throat.
A firm, smooth ridge of skin brushed blindly against the exact center of his face. The force of that sleepy sound pushed a steady, warm stream of breath downward from the base of the ridge, fanning directly across his cheek. The heavy air carried a faint, sharp sting of fermented bitterness.
At the exact same time, an incredibly soft pressure landed perfectly just below the ridge. It was wet and violently hot. The impossibly soft, damp friction entirely sealed off the cold air escaping his own mouth. A tiny, quiet slip of moisture parted slightly against him. The last, fading vibration of her voice hummed directly into his skin.