Sakura and Dairyu decompress
It was past eleven by the time Dairyu and Sakura made it back to her apartment.
The ride had been quiet — not uncomfortably, just the particular quiet of two people who had spent the better part of a day in cheerful chaos and were now letting the silence do some work. Ahyeon had hugged you both goodbye outside the karaoke bar with the full commitment of someone who considered today a foundational memory. Leonardo had looked mildly traumatized in the best possible way.
Sakura kicked her shoes off at the door. Dairyu followed her in, instinctively ducking the low lamp in the entryway the same way he had a week ago, already learning the geography of the place.
She put the kettle on. He sat on the kitchen counter, and for a few minutes the only sound was the kettle and the distant noise of the city outside and Kakashi watching them impassively from his shelf.
Sakura set a mug in front of him. He wrapped both hands around it.
“So,” she said.
“So,” he agreed.
She leaned against the opposite counter, cradling her own mug, and looked at him with the expression he’d catalogued by now — the one where she was asking something real while appearing calm enough to absorb whatever answer came back.
“You were saying something at the palace. Before Leonardo happened.”
“I was.”
“That the word boyfriend is ahead of schedule.” A pause. “But you’re not offended by the direction.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I want to know what that actually means to you.” She tilted her head slightly. “Not the wrestler answer. Not the funny version. What it means.”
Dairyu was quiet for a moment. Outside, something — a scooter, a distant laugh — passed by and faded.
“It means I like you,” he said. “All of you specifically. Not the famous version, not the idol version — though for the record I think you’re genuinely good at your job even if I don’t like the music.” He got a look for that but kept going. “I like the version that drinks Jack and Coke alone at a bar and has Kakashi on one shelf and Gojo on the other and goes into older sister mode whether she wants to or not. I’ve spent about twelve cumulative hours with you and I’m already curious about all the versions I haven’t seen yet.” He looked at her steadily. “That’s what it means.”
Sakura looked down at her mug.
“I told you I’ve been complicated before,” she said.
“You did.”
“I meant it. I don’t have a great track record with —” she made a small gesture that covered the general territory of this — “letting people in. It takes me a long time. And I leave for things. Tours, schedules, obligations. My calendar is not mine.”
“I travel for work too. My calendar’s a mess.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s not exactly the same. But I’m not asking you to rearrange your life. I’m not asking you for anything you’re not ready to give.” He set his mug down. “I’m on vacation for four more weeks. You’re here. I’d like to spend some of that time with you, without either of us overthinking the shape of it. And if something grows out of that, we figure it out when it comes.”
Sakura was quiet for a long moment.
“You make it sound very simple,” she said.
“It’s not simple. I just don’t think complicated has to mean bad.”
She looked at him over the rim of her mug. The lamp in the kitchen was warm and low and the city outside had settled into its late-night register, and she was doing the thing again — looking at something else, in this case the middle distance just past his shoulder, so she had somewhere to be if she needed it.
Then she looked directly at him instead.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Four weeks. No overthinking the shape of it.” She set her mug down. “But I’m picking what we do.”
“That’s fair.”
“And if you play music like that in my apartment I’m making you sleep on the roof.”
“Also fair.”
She laughed — the real one, the unguarded one, the one she kept almost catching before it got out. This time she let it go. It sat in the kitchen between them like something decided.
Dairyu picked his mug back up. Sakura reached over and turned the kitchen light down a notch, and they stayed like that for a while — not saying much, not needing to, the day unwinding slowly around them.
Eventually Sakura looked over at him. “You’re still on the counter.”
“It’s a good counter.”
“You’re going to leave a mark.”
“I’ll fix it.”
She rolled her eyes. He smiled into his mug.
Outside, Seoul kept going. Inside, something quiet and unhurried had made itself at home.