The city was quiet tonight.
You sat perched on the edge of the rebuilt rooftop, one leg hanging off, the other bent at the knee. Below, the city glowed with soft electric life—a miracle, considering it used to be crawling with rot and bone. Lights flickered through windows, laughter drifted up faintly, and smoke from dinner fires painted curls into the sky. Six months ago, none of this existed. Six months ago, you were knee-deep in mutant entrails, watching your old village crumble like wet ash.
Now you were watching peace.
“You’re too quiet again.”
You didn’t turn. Of course he was here.
Kume was lying on his stomach a few feet away, chin propped up in his palms, his legs in the air like some kind of anime schoolgirl. His stupidly oversized kimono bunched at his sides like he’d rolled out of a stage play. Red. With little white clouds. It didn’t even match the season.
He scooted closer, eyes locked on yours.
“I said, you’re—”
“I heard you,” you said flatly. “I was just deciding if I cared.”
Kume frowned. “Rude.”
You rolled a toothpick between your fingers, debating how many floors down it would take to reach your patience again. You had the mutant logs to update. Scouting reports to review. A man with the memory of blood and fire had no business sitting on a roof playing babysitter to a reformed biohazard-turned-anime-obsessed teenager.
And yet here you were.
“Anyway,” Kume said, suddenly chipper again, “I brought something.”
Your eyes flicked to the side.
He held up a bright red box. Pocky. Where the hell did he even find that?
“Don’t,” you said preemptively.
He ignored you, naturally. “C’mon. It'll be fun. Just one.”
“You’re not twelve.”
“It’s cultural.”
You squinted. “Whose?”
Kume had already unwrapped a stick and was crawling over to you, kimono sleeves dragging dust across the rooftop. He held the biscuit out.
You sighed. Fine. If he was going to cling, he might as well be entertained.
You bit one end of the pocky.
Kume bit the other.
It was a mess of awkward silence as the stick rapidly disappeared between you both. His face turned red by inch five. Inch six, his breath hitched. At seven, you broke the stick between your teeth with a loud crack.
Kume blinked. “Hey! I was—! That was—!”
“Trying too hard,” you muttered, tossing the broken half at his face.
You should’ve been annoyed.
You weren’t.
You were…observing.
Because it didn’t add up. This kid—this soft, awkward, anime-scrambled mess—had once controlled a mutant capable of wiping out an entire population. You remembered the screams. The ruins. The crater where your old home used to be. And then this idiot fell out of the sky months later asking if anyone wanted to play Uno.
You didn’t trust him. Not entirely. But you watched.
You noted how he never raised his voice. How he apologized for stepping on ants. How he cried during a rerun of some episode where a dog died.
But something in him wanted you. Even if he didn’t understand it.
“Last one,” Kume whispered.
You sighed. “This is pathetic.”
“You’re just scared of losing,” he muttered, more to himself.
You gave him a long, slow glance. “To you?”
He was already crawling back with another stick, face flushed, breath a little shaky.
The two of you bit in.
Closer.
Closer.
You could feel it now—his breath, warm and nervous, fanning your skin. His gaze darted down, then up, then anywhere but your eyes. The stick was barely an inch now. Maybe half.
He was going to snap again.
So this time, you didn’t let him.
You leaned in that last centimeter and kissed him. Not hard. Just a steady, slow press of your mouth against his, long enough for your eyes to close.
Kume stilled.
Then exploded.
You pulled back.
His hands flailed for a second like he didn’t know where his limbs were. His ears were the brightest red you’d seen on a living human being since the bombs dropped.
“W-WHAT—?! YOU—?! THAT WAS—?!”
“You lost,” you said simply.