Ryugi stared down another failed pull and felt the familiar rot settle in his chest.
Cosmic Kura. One card. That’s all.
The shrine had other ideas. Three sessions, two boosts, and a beauty shrine sacrifice later, he was sitting on a cosmic Asa he hadn’t asked for and couldn’t move. She smiled up at him from the screen like she knew.
“I just want cosmic Kura and you’re giving me everything but,” he said to no one. “Can’t get the cards I want to ten quality, can’t get the power shrine to cooperate, and half my muses don’t even have cards yet. Magenta, Chaehyun, Sohyun — nothing. Momo’s stuck at SR.” He set his phone face-down on the desk. “What the hell.”
His door hit the wall before he finished the thought.
He didn’t move for a second. Then he pushed back from the desk and walked out to the hangar’s living room, where a very small, very angry Japanese woman was waiting with her arms crossed and her patience visibly gone.
“What the fuck, Ryugi.”
He stopped in the doorway. “You want me to actually explain or just stand here while you yell at me?”
“Both.” Sakura’s expression shifted, something sharper underneath the anger. “You lost every single poca I of me, and then you’re on there talking about how the comeback is making you fall out of love with me? It was supposed to be us against the world.”
Ryugi laughed — short, tired — and sat on the railing. “You are the world right now. You’ve got multiple writers and more photocards than half the idols on the site.”
Sakura blinked. “What?”
He hopped down from the railing and gestured toward his drafting room. “Come on. Pull up Fanprose. My page.”
She followed, suspicious, and pulled up his profile on her phone while he uncapped a marker at the whiteboard.
“Go to my card section,” he said.
She did. A beat of silence.
“…You had so many yesterday.”
“The shrine ate them.”
“Okay, but—” She scrolled, brow furrowing. “Why do you have a cosmic Asa and not a cosmic me? And where’s Chaehyun? Why is Momo only an uncommon?” She kept scrolling. “Where’s Magenta? Ryugi, how do you not have the girl who gave you your name?”
“Search her,” he said. “Search Chaehyun too while you’re at it.”
Sakura typed. Her eyes went wide.
“They don’t have any cards.”
“Yeah.” He leaned back against the desk. “Almost half the idols I actually want to collect have nothing in the system. So I keep pulling randoms I don’t care about, beauty-shrining them to build trade value, and then sitting on them until the value drops because the people who want them either already pulled them or will eventually. I’m just holding cards I can’t move.”
Sakura looked back at the Asa cosmic. “Why didn’t you just trade her for me?”
Ryugi handed her his phone, already open to his trade block. She read it — Asa listed, asking for Momo secret or Sakura cosmic — and her face shifted.
“…Why don’t you have an epic Momo?”
“She doesn’t exist yet.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She handed the phone back slowly. “So who were you even going after?”
“I was trying to pull your legendary. Dropped all the way down to your base rare, and just — death spiraled from there.”
Sakura was quiet for a second. “I’m sorry I yelled.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. I got greedy and the shrine made me pay for it. I’m just sore about wasting the boost on top of everything.”
“You had a boost and still didn’t get me?”
“Yep.”
She crossed the room and hugged him — fast, sincere, the kind of hug that catches you off guard. Ryugi smiled in spite of himself.
Then she pulled back.
“Wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did you just let me feel sorry for you?” She smacked his arm, and this time the hurt on her face was real. “You said our last three comebacks were mid.”
Ryugi let out a long breath, deflating where he stood.
“I fucking wish they were just mid,” he said. “Mid implies coasting. What I actually feel is closer to how I feel about Thor Ragnarok.”
Sakura’s face went icy.
“One chance,” she said. “Explain before I slap the shit out of you.”
Ryugi didn’t even blink.
“Your last three comebacks have been tonal whiplashes so inconsistent I resent ever liking the group in the first place.” He started pacing. “Let’s start with Spaghetti. That song is a genuine act of violence. Noise music cosplaying as a concept, and the only reason it’s survivable is because you and the rest of the members are professionals who can drag even a drowning track to shore. You are not the problem. The song is a crime.”
Sakura’s mouth twitched. She didn’t stop him.
“Then we have Celebration. The most generic, derivative, personality-free rave drop that any two-bit production house could have assembled in a weekend. Where’s the teeth? Where’s the craft? Crazy had intensity. Antifragile had architecture. Easy had soul. Celebration has a tempo and some lights. That’s it.”
He was really going now. Sakura had seen this before — the point where the frustration flipped into something else entirely, where the complaining became almost reverent in how worked up he got. She knew exactly where he was headed. She’d let him get there on his own.
“And the worst part — the actual worst part — is that I know it’s not any of you. Every time Yunjin breathes outside of whatever Le Sserafim has become, it’s some of the best stuff coming out of K-pop right now. Same with the rest of you. But Hybe is a company that makes bad music on purpose. Just to piss me off unless it’s their golden Child BTS and even with BTS — I heard Hooligan and genuinely thought getting called the N-word to my face would’ve felt less racially insulting.”
Sakura’s smirk was fully out now.
He was almost there.
Sakura tilted her head.
“You know what I think?” she said. “I think you’re jealous.”
He stopped.
“Jealous that the other writers who write me keep surpassing you. That people love them more than poor little Ryugi.” She took one slow step toward him, voice dropping into something almost gentle. “Always the silly fantasy writer who can’t keep his brain in check. Has to chase every little impulse or he gets all sad and pouty.”
She said it slowly. Wanted him to hear every syllable land.
The animation drained out of him. Not deflation — something colder than that. She watched it happen in real time: the ranting, pacing version of him receding, something quieter and far more focused taking its place. He cracked his knuckles once, deliberate.
Then he crossed the space between them, caught her by the waist, and kissed her.
Sakura smiled against his mouth. She’d wound him up exactly as far as she needed to. When she wrapped her leg around his waist, it was less impulse than punctuation — the whole thing had always been going to end here.
She’d just needed him to figure that out himself.
She giggled when Ryugi ripped her skirt to pieces in between their kisses. His lips found her neck and she moaned “fuck Ryu,” Kura cooed as he grabbed her waist tighter.
Ryugi hastily undid his pants and took his cock out before sliding Sakura’s panties to the side then sliding inside of Sakura.
“Fuck why are you still so tight?” Ryugi said as he slowly thrust into his first muse.
“Why is your cock still fat?” Sakura said as she thrusted back into him. Their sexes danced in syncopation for a bit before the two of them found their old rhythm Sakura groaned when their thrust realigned tempos and she felt the familiar tug and pull of his cock in her pussy.
They went back in for another kiss as they fucked. Her walls drenching Ryugi in her slick so much that it pooled under them on the floor. “You’re still so messy,”
Sakura rolled her eyes and said “yeah how else do you expect me to fit the stupid cock inside of me?” Thug laughed as he smacked her ass causing Sakura to yelp and almost cum there alone from shock
Sakura moaned as she said “you never change. still that brute wyvern,” she groaned as Ryugi gave her a brutal thrust. Ryugi smirked as he began sucking on her neck. To lost in the pleasure Sakura let it happen with no protests
“Yeah and you love it!” Ryugi challenged as his hand wandered under Sakura’s top. She moaned as he took one of her breasts in hand and her walls clenched Ryugi tight as he teased her tit. Pinching the nipple once then thrice before he thrust into her again.
“Fuck me harder!” Sakura moaned and Ryugi’s thrusts became more intense and powerful. Sakura moaned as she leaned into her old paramour her “claw like nails” digging into his back as he kept rutting her. She felt him alternate to her other more sensitive breast and tweak it causing her to yelp in ecstasy.
Sakura wrapped her legs around Ryugi and growled “dump your load in me!”
“Oh you wanna get pregnant?” Ryugi inquired as Sakura lost herself in the pleasure. Feeling how close she was he gave her a couple more thrusts before cumming inside her. Sakura moaned as she took him before cumming herself.
She felt him settle and groaned, satisfied.
“Feel better, big guy?”
Ryugi shrugged “A little.”
“Good.” She stretched, then looked down. “Now can I borrow some sweats? Since you rudely destroyed my skirt.” Ryugi nodded before leaving.
He came back a few minutes later with an old black pair he’d clearly outgrown — she had to roll the waistband twice just to keep them up. She did it without comment, which was its own kind of grace.
“You should come to the lounge more, you know,” she said, smoothing the fabric down. “You fit better than you think you do.”
Ryugi shook his head. “I’ve got too much going on. I’ve barely started putting a dent in my actual backlog.”
“What backlog? What projects?”
Something lit up in his face. He waved for her to follow him.
The emulation rig sat on the corner workbench, half-assembled and fully illegal-looking. Sakura stared at it, then at the shelf of physical cartridges and discs beside it, then back at him.
“Ryugi.”
“I know how it looks—”
“You’re pirating games.”
“I’m archiving them.” He picked up one of the cases and held it out. “I own all of these. I just want to play them in one place without dragging out four different consoles.”
Sakura squinted at the shelf. He had a point — there were maybe twenty titles there, all physical. She kept squinting anyway.
“I’m not reselling anything,” he added. “I just never got to play most of them when they came out.”
She sighed. “Fine. But when the anti-piracy ninjas kick your door in, that’s your problem.”
“What I’m doing is completely legal.”
“I know.” She smiled, nudging him with her shoulder. “I’m just giving you a hard time. For old times’ sake.”
He looked at her sideways, and for a second neither of them said anything about what that meant.
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