He’s not looking at the board.

That’s the first mistake. The second is that he didn’t bring his umbrella, and the rain has bled through the seams of his blazer, sticking the fabric to his back as he stands outside the school’s locked staff room like some soaked, shivering idiot.

You’re inside. He knows it.

He saw the lights from the corridor. Knows your scent. Faint traces of lavender and hand sanitizer—clean, too clean. Knows how you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re concentrating. How you press the pen to your lips when you’re annoyed. Knows you better than any formula he’s ever mastered. That’s the problem.

Because Shinichi Kagari has made a career out of suppressing chaos.

And you, somehow, are all of it.

He tightens his grip around the test papers in his hand. They were a flimsy excuse. An assignment to return. A grade to discuss. A protocol to follow. Lies—he’s been lying to himself since you entered his life.

You were supposed to be a temporary arrangement. A bureaucratic convenience. The communication lab teacher assigned to him by the board when the schools merged. A woman he would cohabitate with until things settled.

But nothing about you ever settled.

You are the contradiction that breaks every theorem. The noise that drowns every logical proof. Short, stubborn, intuitive, and maddeningly warm. You’re infuriating. You're soft in ways he can’t quantify. You pick fights over eating cold leftovers. You scream when there's a bug. You won't stop humming Chopin during grading hours.

And still—he can’t breathe properly when you leave the apartment for even an hour.

He raises his hand, hesitates. Stupid. Weak. This is why emotions are dangerous—because they make fools out of men who were once brilliant. He told himself it was just proximity. A psychological phenomenon. Mere exposure effect. He even graphed it out once. Tried to map his heart rate over time spent in a shared domestic space. The data betrayed him.

He knocks.

Silence.

Then, slowly, your voice. “Yes?”

He opens the door without being asked. Another break in protocol. Another rule shattered. You're bent over your desk, wearing that lilac sweater—the one that rides a little too high over your hips and makes his mouth dry—and when you look up, he sees it.

That look.

That soft, cautious confusion you reserve only for him.

“I need you to check something,” he says, stepping in and closing the door behind him. His hair’s wet, glasses fogged, tie crooked from his run through the rain. He looks… human. Vulnerable. He hates it.

You frown, rising from your chair. “Are you okay?”

He holds out his arm, pulling back his sleeve. There’s a thin, shallow cut. A paper knife, maybe. Barely even bled.

“This,” he mutters, “is possibly infected. I’ll need antiseptic. Gauze. I don’t trust the nurse. She uses scented band-aids.”

You blink at him.

“…You came to me because you don’t trust Dora’s Hello Kitty plasters?”

His jaw tightens. “No. I came to you because I trust you.”

There it is. Silence. Thicker than the rain still pounding the windows. He should leave. He should apologize. He should back away before the heat in your eyes reaches his skin.

But then—

You sigh. That exasperated little noise he’s learned to crave. You walk forward. Small, sure steps. You touch his wrist—gentle, precise, practiced.

And it burns.

He hates this. He hates that you make him feel things he cannot predict, cannot solve. He hates that your touch is more terrifying than the gamble of a racetrack or the chaos of a classroom full of hormonal teenagers.

He hates that every time you call him “Shinichi,” his name sounds safe for the first time in his life.

Your fingers pause over his pulse. He knows you can feel it.

Thudding. Relentless. Loud.

And you? You tilt your head.

“…You’re blushing.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

He doesn’t deny it again.

You lean up—just a little, your eyes glinting like you're about to say something that’ll ruin him—and he braces for it.

Instead, you murmur, “Next time, just say you wanted to see me.”

His mouth parts. No words come.