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Hanako stared at the welt on the palm of his hand, a swelling, puffy red mark. Normal wounds heal fast on him, but this time he’d accidentally gotten stung by the kid’s exorcist staff. In the back of his mind, he figured he should be annoyed over it. However, he found himself morbidly happy. He clenched his fist, reveling in the pain that surged up his arm like a live-wire.
A pain that made him feel alive.
“Hanako-kun!”
He whirled too quickly, nearly bumping into Yashiro, who stood about-face. Her scarlet eyes wide, and her mouth pulled down in a look Hanako couldn’t quite name? Was it worry?
“Oh, Yashiro?” He tried to keep his voice light and steady as he moved his hand behind his back—but—
Yashiro grabbed his wrist, and he stiffened—and stared down at her hand on his. So tiny, so fragile looking—paler than his own, and her nails looked delicately filed to little points.
“Eh? What are you—”
“What happened? I heard from Kou-kun that you might have hurt yourself…” She trailed off as her tiny fingers traced over his closed fist, while her thumb absently drew circles against the pulse of his wrist. Each touch set his skin ablaze, and goosebumps danced in its wake.
“Hanako-kun?”
And Hanako was certain his heart paused—and what was breathing? Did he even need to breathe? No one had ever touched Hanako with such delicacy, as though he were fine china that would easily crack under the slightest of pressure. It made him feel…weird.
Her hands—so tiny and so delicate, but entirely his undoing as she pried each finger of his closed fist open, one after another, after another. And he gave no resistance. She could do whatever she wanted to him, and he’d let her. And he had no idea why.
She stared at the wound at the very center of his hand. And she traced over it faintly. The sting was like a play button, his heart came back to life—rapid palpitations, and his breath came back in gasps.
Yashiro’s hands felt as warm as the day he’d held them through the Star Festival, he wondered if his felt cold and gross, and if she’d pull back repulsed.
But she didn’t.
It was as though she didn’t care in the slightest that his hand was different from hers. That he held no warmth—while she was nothing but heat and fire, and things that set his body burning.
Her long, ombre hair brushed against his skin—and Hanako swallowed thickly. So badly he wanted to run his fingers through it—like the day she’d kissed his cheek, and his fingers found themselves tangled in her hair as he debated what to do—to kiss her or to not kiss her? Ultimately he chose not to…
Because he was dead.
And Yashiro deserved her first kiss with an alive boy, and not just someone Yashiro had only kissed out of pity to cheer him up.
Hanako’s hands clammed up with nervous sweat, but Yashiro didn’t seem to mind as her fingertips stroked his palm like a flame.
“How did it happen?” she said at last. Or maybe it wasn’t at last; perhaps she’d said it right after she’d said his name. It was like time had stopped existing the moment Yashiro touched him—time and space, for that matter, because Hanako suddenly forgot where they were, too.
“Uhh…” He scratched the back of his head and laughed, trying not to think about her fingers brushing the heart of his palm. “Well…I grabbed the kid’s staff the wrong way—and yeah…” Ah, he sounded so lame, it made him almost wince—almost, because Yashiro decided to seize his hand firmly at that very moment.
Delicate fingers, but a tight hold. “Looks painful,” she said, but Hanako could barely hear her from the thump, thump, thump in his ears. If the thumps had a name, it was Dead, Dead, Dead. He was dead. Yashiro was alive.
It was as simple as that.
There was nothing he could do about it. There wasn’t a chance they could be together…
And yet…
“Yashiro?” his voice was but a question. A plead.
Nene looked up from his hands, her eyes filled with a warmth and something else... The same something that Hanako remembered again from that very day she’d kissed him and when he’d tilted her chin upward.
His stomach tightened.
Did that look have a name?
Yashiro licked her lips, and found himself being pulled in Hanako by some unknown force. Her bangs mingled with his own with a slight tickle.
“Yashiro,” he said, and again, it sounded like a question, but he couldn’t figure out why.
Her cheeks swirled a delicate shade of red as she silently nodded, answering the very question Hanako didn’t know he was asking.
And Yashiro kissed him. Her lips so soft and light—the word chaste came to mind. Hanako’s eyes rounded wide—trying to process everything—that the girl weird, hopeless romantic girl—that he happened to meet by coincidence—that he fell desperately for—was kissing him.
His eyes slowly closed as he melted into the kiss. Hesitantly, he ran his fingers through her soft, wavy hair, like cool silk against his heated palm—the palm Yashiro heated with her simple touch.
She was his entire undoing, unraveled him from the very core as he deepened the kiss, pulling Yashiro flush against him. She was soft in all the places he was hard; how different her body was from his own.
Each kiss, each touch set an inferno inside him and around them. A kiss so deep, it made the whole world disappear, and Hanako found himself lost in everything that was Yashiro.
Her gentle hands explored his body in ways no one had ever before, running up and down his chest, fisting his hair, and the kiss deeper than befand Hanako realized he was in too deep—so deep that he was drowning in Yashiro—her scent, her touch, her kiss. Everything made his heart race more and more—his body burn hotter and hotter, and he wished more than ever before that he was alive.
That he could be with Nene this way. Forever.
But…he was dead.
But just this once, he would let himself forget.