"Just a picture," Ren said, shifting his weight on the stiff hotel mattress. "A very, very cute picture. You're already in the bathroom. I hear dorm bathroom lighting is incredibly flattering."
The line went dead silent. The faint rustling sound of the towel completely stopped.
"I am going to reach through this phone and strangle you," Maki hissed.
Ren let out a quiet laugh, resting his free hand behind his head. "Just a suggestion. It's dangerous out here in Kawasaki. A guy needs something to keep his spirits up."
"You already saw me yesterday, you absolute creep."
"And it's been a very long twenty-four hours."
He heard her let out a long, exhausted breath through the receiver. She wasn't actually mad, just aggressively flustered, likely staring a hole into her own reflection in the mirror right now.
"Go to sleep, Ren," she muttered.
"Think about the picture," he shot back effortlessly.
"Goodnight, idiot."
The line clicked dead. Ren pulled the phone away from his ear, shaking his head with a slow chuckle.
He tossed the device onto the empty pillow beside him and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the faint hum of the city traffic outside his window.
...
Maki lowered the phone slowly, staring at the black screen as if it had personally offended her. The faint hum of the dorm bathroom's exhaust fan seemed deafening in the sudden silence.
"Idiot," she breathed out, though the word lacked any real heat.
She turned toward the door, hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then flipped the heavy metal lock with a solid click. Just in case. Nobara had a terrible habit of barging in unannounced to borrow toothpaste, and Maki absolutely could not afford witnesses for what she was about to do.
Stepping back toward the sink, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Damp green hair clung stubbornly to her neck and collarbones. She was wearing one of Ren's absurdly large black t-shirts, the collar slipping haphazardly off one shoulder.
She frowned, adjusting the fabric. Was this cute? She didn't do cute. She exorcised curses and hit people with polearms. She didn't know the first thing about taking a flattering picture. Whenever she tried to take a selfie, it usually just looked like a mugshot or a threat.
What exactly constituted a "very, very cute picture" in his eyes, anyway?
Biting the inside of her cheek, Maki unlocked her phone again and opened her browser. She felt ridiculously stupid as her thumbs hovered awkwardly over the digital keyboard. She glared at the screen, quickly and aggressively typing out: cute pictures to send to a guy.
She hit search, leaning against the counter as she waited for the page to load. She expected some harmless inspiration. Maybe a specific angle that didn't make her look so rigid, or maybe a stupid peace sign.
The image results populated instantly.
Maki stopped breathing.
The grid of photos staring back at her were emphatically not innocent peace signs. They were girls biting their lips, strategically dropping bath towels, arching their backs on hotel beds, and wearing significantly less clothing than the oversized t-shirt she currently had on.
The sheer amount of exposed skin, suggestive angles, and explicit posing made her brain completely short-circuit.
Her entire face ignited. A violently hot flush swept over her cheeks, burning down her neck and painting the tips of her ears a brilliant, glowing red.
"What the—?!" Maki choked out.
She frantically fumbled with her phone as if the device had literally caught fire. She mashed the power button in a panic, slamming the phone face-down onto the bathroom counter with a sharp smack.
She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her cool, calloused hands against her burning cheeks. Her heart was hammering violently against her ribs, the scandalous images burned into her retinas.
Did Ren think that was what she was going to send him? Did he actually expect her to drop her towel and—
She let out a frustrated, incredibly flustered groan, leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror.
Ren was definitely going to die tomorrow. If a curse didn't finish him off in Kawasaki, she absolutely would the second he got back.
Maki lifted her forehead from the cool glass of the mirror, letting out a long, deeply aggrieved sigh. She was not going to let him win, but she was definitely not copying those internet girls.
She snatched her phone off the counter, quickly closing out the cursed browser tab before she could catch another glimpse of it. Opening the camera app, she aggressively propped the device against a bottle of hand soap on the mirror's ledge.
She tapped the screen, setting a three-second timer, and immediately stepped back.
Three. She refused to look at the lens. Two. She raised her arms, gathering her damp green hair to twist it up out of her face. One. She caught a spare black hair tie between her teeth, her gaze focused on the tiled wall to her left.
Flash.
Maki grabbed the phone and glared at the screen. It wasn't a posed selfie. It was just her, looking off to the side, tying her hair up.
But because her arms were raised, the hem of Ren's oversized black t-shirt had hiked up just enough to expose a sliver of her toned stomach, while the loose collar hung precariously off one shoulder, highlighting the sharp line of her collarbone.
It wasn't explicit, but it felt dangerously, painfully intimate.
Before she could overthink it and delete it, she hit Send.
Her thumb immediately jammed down on the microphone icon next to the chat bar to record a voice note. She needed to establish dominance before he got any ideas.
"There. Here is your stupid photo," Maki's voice hissed into the receiver, her tone dripping with defensive venom to cover up how hard her heart was beating. "And don't you dare ever bother me to send you perverted photos like this again, you absolute creep. If you get distracted and die tomorrow, I'm going to track down your ghost and exorcise you myself. Go to sleep."
She let go of the button, watching the little audio wave shoot across the screen. She instantly locked her phone, practically threw it onto her pile of clean clothes, and splashed cold water on her burning face.
Miles away in Kawasaki, the quiet darkness of the cramped hotel room was broken by a sudden, bright buzz on the mattress.
Ren shifted, rolling over to grab his phone. The screen illuminated his face in the dim room.
///
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