Chapter 145: 145 | An Unscheduled Cinematic Cutscene
Kumiko had dated seven people since starting high school. Each relationship followed the same trajectory: she would fall immediately and completely, giving everything she had to someone who liked the idea of her more than the reality. The cosplay girl. The cute anime fan. The quirky friend who became a girlfriend for three weeks before the intensity of her devotion scared them off. Every single time, the other person decided she was too much. Too clingy. Too enthusiastic. Too present.
One ex told her that dating Kumiko felt like being watched by a very affectionate security camera.
Another said she texted too much.
A third simply stopped responding and then posted photos with someone else two days later.
Each rejection added another brick to a wall Kumiko pretended didn’t exist. She smiled. She streamed. She sewed costumes that took a hundred hours of meticulous detail work because pouring herself into fabric and thread was safer than pouring herself into people who could walk away.
But Jordan wouldn’t walk away. Jordan couldn’t walk away. Because Chloe was offering something that sounded insane and impossible and exactly like every fantasy Kumiko had convinced herself she would never get to live.
A boyfriend who would stay. Who had to stay.
If Jordan was hers, she would never let go.
She would learn his schedule and memorize his coffee order and show up where he needed her before he knew he needed her. She would make him costumes, couples cosplay, matching outfits that told the world they belonged together. She would stream with him, create content with him, build a life so thoroughly intertwined with his that the concept of separation would become architecturally impossible.
She would hold on so tight that nothing, no one, no force on earth could pry them apart.
The fantasy was beautiful. The fantasy was also, Kumiko knew with a lucidity she rarely possessed in these moments, the exact kind of thinking that had destroyed every relationship she had ever been in.
"You haven’t said anything," Chloe noted.
"I’m processing," Kumiko said. Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears. Too quiet. Too steady. The calm before the storm her therapist had warned her about, the one where she felt perfectly fine right up until the moment she absolutely wasn’t.
"Take your time," Chloe said. "He’s still getting snacks."
Through the windshield, Kumiko could see Jordan inside the Circle K, standing in front of the drink coolers with his phone in one hand and a basket in the other. He was reading the back of something. Probably a nutrition label. Probably because that friend of his, Kyle, had been lecturing him about macros and ingredient lists. The fluorescent lighting inside the store washed out his features, but even from forty feet away, Kumiko could see the way his shoulders filled out that black t-shirt.
She wanted to bite those shoulders.
The thought appeared and she did not chase it away.
"Chloe-chan."
"Yeah?"
"Are you serious?"
Chloe didn’t turn around. She kept her eyes on the store where Jordan was now heading toward the register with his basket. "I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t."
The bell above the Circle K door chimed. Jordan emerged into the afternoon sun, a plastic bag in one hand and three cans stacked in the crook of his opposite arm. He walked toward the car with that easy stride Kumiko had started noticing at karaoke, the one that was somehow both relaxed and purposeful. His hair caught the light, the natural dirty blonde that replaced the disaster box-dye job, and Kumiko’s stomach performed a maneuver that defied the laws of human anatomy.
The driver’s side door opened. Jordan folded himself into the seat, bringing with him the scent of cedar and the Circle K’s aggressive air freshener. He twisted to distribute his haul.
"Strawberry Pocky for Kumiko." He handed the pink box over the headrest, and Kumiko accepted it with both hands, her fingers brushing his for exactly one point three seconds. She counted. "Some kind of fancy sparkling water for Chloe because they were out of Ramune." He placed the can in Chloe’s cupholder. "And mango Arizona for me because I’m a man of simple tastes."
Jordan cracked open his Arizona and took a long drink, his throat working as he swallowed. A bead of condensation ran down the can and dripped onto his jeans. He wiped it with his thumb.
Kumiko held the Pocky box against her chest like a shield.
"We good?" Jordan glanced at Chloe, then checked the rearview mirror to make eye contact with Kumiko. "Ready to spend some money?"
The car was silent.
Not the comfortable silence of friends enjoying each other’s company. Not the loaded silence of an argument waiting to happen. This was the kind of silence that existed in the empty space between a lightning strike and the thunder that followed, the moment where sound itself held its breath.
Kumiko said nothing. She couldn’t. The Pocky box crinkled faintly in her grip.
Chloe said nothing. She sipped her sparkling water and looked out the passenger window at the gas station’s price sign, $4.89 for regular.
Jordan’s eyebrows drew together. He looked at Chloe. He looked at Kumiko in the mirror again. He opened his mouth, probably to ask what happened while he was inside.
A tumbleweed rolled across the parking lot.
Not metaphorically. An actual, physical tumbleweed, brown and round and perfectly spherical, emerged from behind the Circle K dumpster enclosure and drifted across the concrete at approximately three miles per hour. It passed directly in front of the Honda Civic’s bumper with the kind of cinematic timing that suggested someone, somewhere, had a deeply messed up sense of humor. The tumbleweed continued its journey across the parking lot, through a gap between two parked cars, and disappeared behind a chain-link fence bordering the adjacent property.
Jordan watched the entire journey with an expression that started at confusion, transitioned through recognition, and settled on a resignation so deep it could have been mistaken for spiritual acceptance.
He nodded once. Slowly. As though the universe had just confirmed something he had suspected but hoped was wrong.
He put the car in reverse, backed out of the parking spot, and pulled onto the street toward Micro Center without saying a word.
Kumiko sat in the backseat, the Pocky box still pressed to her chest, the afternoon sun warm on her face through the window, and thought about a boy with hazel eyes and a voice like honey and what it would feel like to finally, finally, finally have someone who wouldn’t leave.
The Arizona can sweated in the cupholder.
The GPS said twenty minutes to their destination.
Nobody spoke.
