Chapter 35: Red-Handed at the 'Starlight Inn'

My blood turned to ice. The Starlight Inn. The sheer, blasphemous audacity of her choosing a name so close to my sacred online identity was a profound and personal insult.

"No," I said, my voice flat and cold. I turned to leave.

"Don't be so boring, Rui-kun," she said, stepping in front of me, her body blocking my path. Her posture shifted, becoming more open, more inviting. "I went to all this trouble just for you."

"I am not interested, Ito-san. This meeting is officially over."

"Oh, I think it's just getting started," she insisted, her voice taking on a desperate, pleading edge. She saw her prize slipping away, and she panicked. "You are so frustrating! I have been trying so hard to get your attention, but you are so obsessed with Ectiqa, you don't even see what is right in front of you!"

"My relationship with Ectiqa is none of your concern," I said, trying to sidestep her. The narrow street made it impossible.

"I can be better than her!" she said, her voice rising with a frantic energy. "She is just a fantasy behind a mask! I am real! I am right here, and I like you, you idiot!"

Before I could react, she lunged.

It was not a graceful or seductive move. It was an act of desperation. She threw her arms around my neck, yanking my head down, and smashed her lips against mine. The kiss was clumsy, forceful, and completely devoid of any emotion other than a desperate need for conquest. It tasted like cheap lip gloss and defeat.

My entire body locked up in shock and disgust. My hands came up instinctively to push her away, my mind screaming a thousand protests.

It was in that single, horrifying moment, as I was trying to shove her off me, that a new voice cut through the charged silence of the alley. A voice choked with a pain so deep it was almost unrecognizable.

"Onii-chan…?"

We both froze and turned.

Standing at the entrance to the alley, bathed in the lurid, pink glow of the motel's sign, was Rina. Her face was a canvas of pure, shattering disbelief. Her friends, Miki and Hana, were standing just behind her, their expressions mirroring her horror.

Rina's frantic search, guided by a terrible intuition, had led her here. To this one street. To this one moment. She had arrived just in time to see the scene in its most damning possible configuration: her brother, her knight, her secret love, locked in a kiss with her mortal enemy in front of a love hotel.

The sound that escaped her lips was not a cry or a scream. It was a small, broken whimper, the sound of a heart audibly breaking. Her eyes were not on Haruka. They were locked on mine, and in them I saw a tidal wave of betrayal so immense it felt like it was physically pushing me away. The carefully constructed world of our secrets, our trust, and our complicated, forbidden feelings had just been detonated.