Before turning in, Eiji shoveled ash over the embers in the hearth.
One by one, the glowing red dots vanished, draining the dirt-floored room of all color. The only thing left was the moonlight filtering through the gaps between the window planks. Even that did little more than cast slender lines across the floor; the walls, the beams, and their very contours dissolved into the dark.
Together, they headed toward the back room. Not a sound could be heard except for their own footsteps.
Just as they passed through the doorway, Yuna gasped softly and stopped in her tracks.
"What's wrong?"
"...Go on ahead without me for a sec."
Leaving those words behind, Yuna hurried back toward the living area.
In the darkness, only the faint rustling of her rummaging through her bag reached his ears. A small, firm click of a lid popping open. Then, the soft sound of something being smoothed over skin. Just when he thought he heard the lid snap shut, the delicate brushing sound of someone combing their hair drifted over two or three times. Naturally, Eiji had no idea what she was actually doing.
Standing around waiting felt awkward. Eiji lifted the blanket and slid into the left side of the bed. Just that simple motion was enough to set his heart racing. All he had done was get into bed, yet here he was, wound up tight.
Shortly after, Yuna returned. Her footsteps past the doorway were softer than before.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
Her voice was terribly quiet, too. Standing outside the sliver of moonlight, her face was hidden in shadow. Even without seeing her, though, he could tell she was looking down. Her voice came from a slightly lower angle.
He had no idea what she had been up to. The mood didn't lend itself to asking, and even if he did, he could already see her playfully deflecting with a "It's a secret."
Stopping beside the bed, Yuna hesitated. Feeling guilty for having crawled in first, a belated question slipped out of him.
"Oh. I kind of just grabbed this side, but did you have a preference for which side you sleep on?"
"N-No. It's fine. This side is good."
He hated his own terrible timing, asking such a pointless question at a moment like this.
The blanket peeled back, and the right side of the bed sank. Under the weight of two people, a single wooden slat groaned. It was originally built for one. Yuna seemed to lie down facing away from him. Their backs brushed faintly against each other.
When two people lay on a single bed, their bodies were bound to make contact. Trying to avoid touching was practically impossible.
Through his shirt, he felt the fabric of her gym clothes. And beyond that, the warmth of her body.
As if trying to escape reality, he squeezed his eyes shut. Today, they had fought monsters, built a bath, and planned out tomorrow's schedule. There was no way he wasn't exhausted. He should have been able to sleep. Yet despite thinking that, drowsiness didn't come at all.
Through his back, he felt her breathing. Being this close, he could track the rhythm of every breath. Inhale, exhale, a brief pause, and inhale again. Whenever she shifted, the blanket rustled in response. The moment he realized he was counting those sounds, he forced himself to stop.
Outside, the wind whipped around the corners of the house, accompanied by the faint, steady trickle of the waterway below. In a life without clocks, he had no way of telling how much time had passed. It felt like an eternity, yet it also felt like only a few minutes.
Sleeping was part of their job. He had firmly reached that conclusion, yet here he was, staring at the wall with his eyes wide open. While rest was indeed necessary, this bed lacked the basic conditions required to actually fall asleep.
With a soft rustle, Yuna shifted behind him.
"Eiji-kun, are you asleep...?"
She asked hesitantly.
Her tone was ambiguous—as if she were half hoping he was awake, and half wishing he was asleep.
Or maybe it carried a bit of both.
For a second, he considered playing possum, but decided to answer honestly.
"No, I'm awake."
"Me too."
"Figured."
If she weren't, she wouldn't have spoken up in the first place.
After a brief pause, Yuna spoke in a nostalgic tone, like reminiscing about old times.
"We used to sleep together like this back in the day, too, didn't we?"
"Come to think of it, yeah, we did."
Being reminded brought the memory back.
It had been during summer vacation, right around when they started elementary school. If he recalled correctly, they had laid their futons side by side at Yuna's house to sleep. It had been over something silly, like getting too tired from playing to bother walking home, or getting completely hooked on a video game together.
Trying to recall that day, a different memory surfaced first, making his cheeks burn on their own. Right. Come to think of it, that night. Looking back, a major incident had happened.
"About that sleepover, though."
Yuna's voice caught for a moment.
Rather than searching for words, she seemed to be hesitating over whether she should voice the ones she had already chosen. Then, as if bracing herself.
"Do you remember... what we did?"
She broached the topic timidly.
"...I just remembered now."
As he answered, his pulse spiked.
Behind him, she let out a soft breath. A laugh, by the sound of it. One tinged with embarrassment.
"That was my first kiss."
"......"
Words failed him.
Right. That night, lying side by side like this, just as Eiji was about to drift off. From the futon next to his, Yuna had suddenly blurted out something out of nowhere:
Do you know what a boy and a girl do when they get really close?
Back then, half-asleep as he was, Eiji had given a dismissive, "No idea." To which—
They say they do this.
Along with those words, she had leaned over, and the soft sensation of something resting against his lips registered a heartbeat later.
Wondering what was going on, he opened his eyes to find Yuna's lips pressed against his.
He even remembered how all his drowsiness had vanished into thin air. Even the vivid image of her bashful, childish smile remained etched in his mind.
Naturally, that was the one and only time anything like that ever happened. When they woke up the next morning, Yuna acted just as she always did, so Eiji treated her normally too, and before long, they had slipped right back into their everyday dynamic.
"What about yours, Eiji-kun?"
She asked in a teasing tone.
"...Obviously that was it."
"Thought so."
When he answered sullenly, Yuna let out an amused giggle. The gentle vibration of her laughter traveled straight through her back into his.
"I was so precocious back then. Pretty sure I got that from some TV drama I was watching."
So that childish, impulsive act had been the fault of a television drama.
Seriously, what kind of terrible influence was that show? If he could, he would have loved to call the network and give them a piece of his mind. A young kid's first kiss had been spent right then and there because of it.
(...It really is strange, though.)
To think they both remembered something they hadn't brought up once in over ten years. On top of that, he was amazed at himself for having managed to forget such a shocking experience until now.
Had Yuna remembered it all along? Throughout middle school and high school, talking to him with that casual look on her face, the entire time?
As those thoughts swirled in his head, silence settled over them once more. But this time... it was of a completely different nature than the restless quiet from before.
Yuna was the one to break it again.
"Since then... have you kissed anyone, Eiji-kun?"
"What?!"
The question came completely out of left field.
"N-No way. Not like I had anyone to kiss, either."
Admitting he had no prospects carried a pathetic sting, but a fact was a fact. Unlike Yuna, Eiji wasn't popular with the opposite sex. However—
"Thank goodness."
Yuna murmured, sounding distinctly relieved.
(Huh?)
What did she mean by 'thank goodness'? Before he could puzzle it out, the answer followed immediately.
"...Me neither, you know?"
Behind him, he felt the rustle of Yuna moving. The blanket brushed against her, and the bed slats let out a soft creak. She had rolled over.
Her breath felt closer now. The body heat that had been touching his back was now radiating directly against his shoulder blades from the front.
His heart rate climbed. The tension in the air was undeniably different from anything before. The atmosphere and distance between them had shifted since arriving in this other world, but this felt distinct from all of it.
Yuna spoke toward Eiji's back.
"About the free period, too."
"The free period?"
"You know, on the school trip."
"Oh, that."
She meant their conversation on the bus right before they were summoned, when they were discussing group assignments.
If he remembered right, when Eiji casually wrote down names for his group and mentioned he didn't even know who was in it, Yuna had offered to let him tag along with hers.
"Actually... I was planning for it to be just the two of us, Eiji-kun."
"Wait, what?!"
Another bombshell dropped on him.
Hadn't the plan been for him to join Yuna's group?
"I'd secretly arranged with the other girls in my group to head somewhere else, so it'd look like the two of us just got left behind... We'd coordinated the whole story."
"...Are you serious?"
"Totally serious!"
Yuna answered in a slightly playful voice.
To think she had invited him after scheming to that extent was something he hadn't imagined in the slightest.
That was when he remembered the bus ride. A notification had popped up on Yuna's phone, and she had hurriedly flipped the screen face down. While he hadn't caught the exact wording, he remembered a single line wishing her good luck and hoping things went well. So that was what it was all about.
(Wait, hold on...)
If that was true, then even before coming to this world, Yuna's feelings had already been pointing in a very specific direction.
Arriving at that realization, Eiji found himself at a loss for words. Lowering her voice, she continued.
"I was pretty impatient back then."
"...About what?"
Conscious of his racing pulse, he barely managed to squeeze out the question.
"About Kumiko-chan."
"Kumiko-chan? You mean Saeki-san?"
An unexpected name entered the picture, throwing him into confusion.
Kumiko-chan had to be Kumiko Saeki, the girl who had come over on the bus to tell them it was their turn with the camera. The girl who had received the "Healer" job. At the very least, Eiji didn't know anyone else by that name. But he couldn't grasp what that girl had to do with Yuna feeling anxious.
Eiji asked frankly.
"Why were you anxious about her?"
Yuna fell silent, as if hesitating for a moment.
Then, she gave her answer.
"Because... it seemed like Kumiko-chan had feelings for you, Eiji-kun."
"Huh?!"
Once again, it was a complete bolt from the blue.
Kumiko liked him? That was a scenario he had never once entertained.
"There wasn't a single sign of that, was there...?"
"You just didn't notice, Eiji-kun. She's been talking to you a lot lately, hasn't she?"
"...Now that you mention it."
Looking back, she really had spoken to him quite often since before the summer break.
Having completely forgotten about it over the vacation, it occurred to him that she had paid almost as much attention to him as Yuna did. Thinking it over, even during that bus ride, she hadn't really needed to come all the way over just to pass along the camera.
Put that way, a lot of pieces started falling into place.
"Seriously...?"
Caught entirely off guard, the same stunned disbelief spilled from his lips.
This time, however, Yuna didn't tease him, perhaps because it wasn't about her own actions.
"Yeah. You can tell just by watching."
Girls were incredible. Or rather, terrifying.
Just as he was marveling at it, a doubt crept in. For someone who supposedly liked him, one part of the story didn't fit. That room with the semicircular arrangement of chairs. The majority vote called by Kaito.
"Wait, but hold on. If that's true, why didn't she object to me getting exiled?"
Exactly. While Kumiko had shown signs of hesitation, in the end, the only one who actually raised her hand in protest was Yuna. If so, didn't that poke a hole in the theory that she had feelings for him?
To that, Yuna had a clear answer ready.
"That's... probably because she couldn't leave her friends behind."
"Her friends?"
"There were those girls who got injured, right? Kumiko-chan was close with them."
"Ah, right."
Before Yuna left the castle, four students had been sent back to receive treatment.
Given her job as a Healer, she probably felt an obligation to stay by their side.
"Besides... in a world like this, I think she was scared to stand up to Dojima-kun."
"I get that. Honestly, that's the normal reaction."
Thrown into a baffling world, abruptly assigned classes, and told to defeat the Demon King in the middle of utter chaos. In that situation, nobody in their right mind would side with a weakling getting cast out by the class leader. Yuna was the only one crazy enough to do it; when it came to sheer survival, Kumiko's choice had been the sensible one. In fact, most people would have done the same. That was precisely why Eiji couldn't bring himself to blame the rest of his classmates.
Still, that brought his train of thought right back around. If Kumiko had feelings for him, and that was why Yuna felt so rushed... then the conversation was steering inexorably toward a single conclusion.
Dreading the weight of that answer, Eiji fell silent once more.
The quiet stretched on. Long and heavy. Beyond the wall, the wind still whipped around the corner of the house, and the trickle of the waterway remained faint. Only the sound of breathing behind him had grown shallower than before.
And then—as if taking a leap of faith, Yuna spoke.
"Hey, Eiji-kun... Look at me."
It was a plea. Yet her voice carried a sweetness and charm unimaginable from his everyday childhood friend.
Powerless to resist, Eiji rolled over. The blanket pulled taut, and the wooden slats creaked beneath them.
Faint moonlight from the window reached only the right side of the bed. Even in the dim light, he could tell how red Yuna's face was. But in her eyes burned an unmistakable look of resolve.
As he stared, captivated—
Gently.
The sweet scent of hair treatment brushed against his senses.
(Wait...?)
Yuna leaned in, wrapping both arms around his back. Just like that, she buried her face against his chest.
Today, he had bathed in the same hot water, using the exact same soap, shampoo, and treatment as she did. They should have smelled identical, yet coming from her, the fragrance felt completely different.
No. There was a single element woven in that Eiji didn't possess. A sweet scent that belonged neither to soap nor treatment.
With her face still pressed firmly against his chest, Yuna spoke.
"Eiji-kun... I love you."