Noona’s Prey

You’d known about Dayeon’s crush for a while now. She wasn’t subtle about it at all.

It started with her hair.

She cut it short — not a trim, a real cut — and you knew exactly why, because you’d mentioned it offhand once while you and your roommate (her brother) were going through celebrity crushes like a bracket tournament. Elle Fanning. Mina Myoui. Momo Hirai. You’d said something about short hair being your weakness and moved on. Apparently, she hadn’t.

The next time she came around she walked through the door, caught your eye, and said, “Hey, Dragon” — her and her brother’s nickname for you — “what do you think of the hair?”

You’d said it looked good. You meant it. You also had no idea that was just the opening move.

The second thing was the cleaning.

When her brother was out of town, Dayeon used the spare key she kept for emergencies. She did actually clean — washed his clothes, scrubbed the bathroom, put things back where they belonged — so it wasn’t like she could be accused of anything. But she also spent a significant amount of that time watching you, which you were only half-aware of at any given moment.

One of those times you were running a ZZZ session with Promeia, Yuzuha, and Jane Doe. She settled onto the couch beside you without much ceremony and watched you work through a fight in comfortable silence—nothing unusual about that on its own.

Then she asked, casually, “So which are your two favorites?”

“Waifu tier — Jane and Promeia, tied,” you said, eyes still on the screen. “Non-waifu? Billy Kid, no contest.”

She laughed a little. “Okay, can you show me them?”

“After this boss. Three, two —” you finished off the fight with something close to surgical precision “— one.”

You pulled up the agent screen. Billy first, decked out in the Starlight Knight skin. Then Promeia. Then Jane Doe.

Dayeon leaned in when Promeia came up. “Oh, she’s cool. The design is actually sick.”

Jane Doe got a different reaction — a sharp intake of breath, a beat of silence, then: “Okay. That’s a lot. Damn.”

You laughed. “Yeah. But they’re both sweethearts. Well —” you paused “— Jane and Billy are. Promeia’s more of a case-by-case situation.”

Dayeon laughed and said, “I’ll take your word for it.”

The next day, she showed up in a red tube top, a mesh overshirt, and shorts that did little to hide how good her legs looked. She wasn’t dressed for cleaning anything.

That was the moment you became suspicious.

When her brother came back that evening you pulled him aside and said, “Hey. I think your sister is hunting me.”

He looked at you like you’d said something genuinely ridiculous. “Dragon, come on. You really think Dayeon is running some kind of operation on you?”

You shrugged. You didn’t have a clean answer for him. Not yet.

But none of that compares to your birthday.

Her brother was out of town for a work thing, which meant it was just the two of you in your bedroom watching Kamen Rider OOO. It felt right and wrong at the same time — comfortable in a way that made you uneasy, like you’d walked into a room and couldn’t quite find the exit.

It started slowly. Questions, casual ones, spread out between episodes like she was just making conversation.

Which rider was your favorite? Fourze, easy. What belt did you actually want? The CSM OOO Driver, the real one. Which rider did you identify with most? Cross-Z, no hesitation.

You answered each one without thinking much about it. What you were thinking about, eventually, was how close she’d gotten. Somewhere between Fourze and Cross-Z she’d closed the distance until her hands were resting over yours and she was tucked into your side with her head angled up toward you, watching you with something that was unmistakably patient and unmistakably hungry.

She smiled when you finally looked at her.

The heat came first. Then your heart is doing something embarrassing in your chest. Then, somehow, her lips on yours — and you hadn’t even clocked the moment it happened, just suddenly found yourself in the middle of it. The kiss was nervous and earnest and deeply sure of itself all at once, the kind that doesn’t leave room for second-guessing. She pressed into it and you felt the wave of her and couldn’t find the footing to do anything but let it happen. Your hands found her waist. Her arms looped around your shoulders like she’d done it a hundred times. She shifted and settled and the world got very small and very warm.