Work Text:
The Shape Of Water
“Better?”
Ayase Momo, her head wrapped in a towel and still somewhat restless, responded with a soft, muffled sound—barely more than a nod.
The truth was, the rain had caught them completely off guard. That morning, the day had dawned clear, not a single cloud in the sky; but, considering it was the middle of spring, it wasn’t unusual for the weather to shift within minutes and unleash its full fury in the form of rain upon unsuspecting passersby.
That was exactly what had happened to them. Stunned, they had done nothing but run in search of shelter beneath the nearest roof they could find—which, in this case, had turned out to be Okarun’s apartment.
It had come as quite a surprise to discover that he lived practically alone most of the time. His parents’ jobs—both of them diplomats—kept them out of the country more often than either of them would have liked. Still, seen from another angle, it also had its advantages.
Since then, Momo had gotten into the habit of showing up at his place under any pretext she could find. Study sessions that, somehow, inevitably turned into warmer and warmer touches and kisses that lingered a little too long; or horror movie marathons, complete with popcorn.
What mattered was that, deep down, they both knew they were nothing more than excuses.
Excuses to be together.
And he had never put up the slightest resistance.
The moment they stepped through the door, they both stopped, staring in stunned silence at their own soaked clothes, water dripping steadily onto the genkan. After slipping off their shoes, Okarun had hurried deeper into the apartment, only to return moments later with a couple of towels, which they awkwardly threw over themselves.
Momo, meanwhile, had barely managed to sit down on the step of the genkan, unsure of where she could even rest without making an even bigger mess, considering they were dripping everywhere.
For some time now, Okarun had gotten into the habit of picking her up after work and walking her home. And it wasn’t something that had started after they began dating, but long before that. It had simply become a kind of unspoken agreement between them—something he had begun doing out of nowhere, without needing to explain himself.
She hadn’t said anything about it either; from the very beginning, she had simply accepted it as just another part of her daily routine. Besides, Momo had long known that Okarun expressed himself far better through actions than through words—especially when it came to showing how he felt.
Still feeling her clothes clinging to her body like a second skin, sending small shivers down her spine, Okarun’s voice reached her again, soft, almost like a murmur.
“I brought you some dry clothes so you can change. You can take a shower if you want,” he offered kindly, “though… my clothes might be a little big on you…” he added under his breath, more to himself, as he held up the dark hoodie and examined it with a hint of doubt.
Momo seemed to pull herself together within seconds.
“Taking the chance to show off that you’re a bit taller than me now? How bold…” she shot back, feigning suspicion, though the hint of a smile was already tugging at her lips as she deliberately teased him.
In short, it was something she would never get tired of: putting her innocent—yet adorable—boyfriend in difficult situations. And, although she enjoyed it far more than she cared to admit, deep down she couldn’t help but agree.
Over time, and with all the training he had put himself through, Okarun’s once awkward frame had changed. He had grown—more in height than in build—while still maintaining that lean, defined silhouette that had always been his. But he wasn’t the same anymore.
And Momo knew it all too well.
Her bold, shameless subconscious couldn’t help but linger on the way his shirts clung to his body, outlining—almost indecently—the breadth of his back or the lines of his abs.
Not that she was complaining, of course.
But Okarun’s attractiveness definitely worked against her, sometimes leaving her mind reduced to something like a liquid mass, incapable of functioning coherently.
She had noticed him long before he had begun to develop like any other boy his age. And yet, almost unconsciously, even now, at nearly eighteen, Okarun still found himself hunching at times, as if he were still carrying the habit of making himself seem smaller than he really was.
He lifted his head and looked at her, an adorable blush spreading across the bridge of his nose beneath his ever-present glasses.
“I-it’s not that, Ayase-san!” he rushed to say, dropping the hoodie onto the entryway cabinet as if it had suddenly burned his hands.
She simply let out a soft laugh beneath the towel, which made Okarun huff and narrow his eyes, clearly flustered.
Until, inevitably, a small sneeze escaped Momo.
The change in him was immediate.
He crouched down in front of her without hesitation, concern written all over his face.
“Please, go change, Ayase-san. I’ll make some tea in the meantime so you can warm up.”
Momo swallowed with difficulty, feeling the heat begin to climb up her cheeks in the form of a faint blush.
She and Okarun had been dating for just over a year. And while it was true that there had been intense kisses and increasingly daring touches, lately everything had begun to escalate, growing in intensity in a way that was almost scandalous.
Deep down, there was something she had always appreciated about him: Okarun had never pressured her. He had always given her space, leaving the control, in a way, in her hands. She was the one who decided how far things would go.
And that changed everything.
The problem was that Momo—and especially lately—was no longer sure she could stop herself.
Comparisons were unfair, and yet her subconscious couldn’t help but make them. The first boy she had dated had turned out to be not only a complete jerk, but also selfish and opportunistic—someone far more interested in satisfying his own needs than anything else.
Momo lifted her head slightly, still with the towel draped over her hair, and paused to study Okarun’s brown eyes with quiet attention.
And then there was him.
From the very beginning, he had been the good one, instead of the typical troublemaker. Someone with an almost instinctive capacity to sacrifice himself for others, regardless of whether they deserved it or not, awakening in her a protective instinct that went far beyond anything merely visceral.
He was kind to a fault, with that unmistakable habit of always putting others’ needs before his own. The kind of person who would follow her into the very depths of hell… even if there was no need.
Maybe the question had never been whether she could stop.
But whether she actually wanted to.
…Did she?
“Ayase-san?”
His voice pulled her sharply out of her thoughts. Momo snapped back to reality, meeting Okarun’s confused gaze. Lately, she had been getting lost in her own head with an almost alarming ease.
A little flustered, her pulse pounding in her throat, she pressed the towel tighter against her hair and got to her feet all of a sudden, nearly knocking him over in the process.
“I’m freezing!”
She snatched the clothes almost mid-air and hurried off toward the bathroom, disappearing behind the door, which shut with a soft, dull thud.
Okarun could only stare, bewildered, at the spot where his girlfriend had vanished, almost as if she had left a trail of smoke behind her.
He was more than used to Momo’s lively, ever-shifting personality, but lately something felt different. She seemed more distracted than usual. That—and the fact that she had started blushing for no apparent reason, especially after getting lost in her own thoughts.
More nervous.
And in her case, that was starting to become worrying.
He knew Momo’s nature could be compared to a hurricane—unpredictable and overwhelming—but this… this was different. Something didn’t quite fit.
And he couldn’t help the uncomfortable thought that began to creep into his mind: that maybe something had happened… and she hadn’t wanted to share it with him.
After changing into a pair of loose pants and a simple T-shirt, he reached into the cabinet for a couple of mugs. Then, grabbing the kettle, he set the water to boil.
His hair was still damp, so he had given up on trying to fix it. It was simply a battle he had long since accepted he would always lose.
He had left his clothes dripping on the drying rack, and figured he would do the same with Momo’s once she came out of the bathroom.
His gaze then drifted toward one of the windows.
The rain was still falling heavily against the glass, streaking it with uneven trails of water and producing a steady, muted tapping that filled the apartment. The sound wrapped around everything, like a persistent murmur.
If it kept raining like that, Momo would have no choice but to stay the night.
With a treacherous warmth creeping up his neck, he did his best not to dwell too much on the implications of his girlfriend staying over.
It wouldn’t be the first time they had slept together, of course. But there was a difference between dozing off while watching a movie or laying out futons and sharing space almost out of habit… and doing it fully aware of it. Of what it could lead to.
The thought made him swallow.
And, almost inevitably, his mind drifted to a far less comforting image: Momo’s grandmother’s bat.
He was convinced that, sooner or later, it would end up embedded in his skull.
Yes, from the very beginning she had seemed to accept quite well that her granddaughter had chosen him, but that didn’t change a fundamental reality.
She was still her grandmother.
And grandmothers definitely didn’t want anything—or anyone—touching their granddaughters.
And he couldn’t defend himself against that.
Because he, inevitably, wanted to touch her granddaughter.
Desperately.
Unable to help himself, he ran a hand over his face, feeling caught in a conflict he didn’t quite know how to handle. For a moment, he even wondered whether it might be better to send Momo back home—if necessary, by express delivery.
And yet…
He would rather cut off his own hand than do anything Momo wasn’t completely comfortable with.
But reality was something else.
He was a boy on the verge of eighteen, his hormones in constant turmoil. What had once been a contained desire—something he could keep in check—had turned into something far more difficult to control. Lately, it ran wild through his veins, slipping out of his grasp with an overwhelming ease the moment he let his guard down.
In fact, the last time they had met to study together, without really knowing how, she had ended up straddling him, pressing against his lap as heated sighs slipped from her lips against his mouth. And he… he had found his hands slipping beneath her skirt, searching—almost blindly—to touch and explore places that radiated a dangerous heat.
The only thing that had managed to pull them out of that suffocating spiral had been the unmistakable ringtone of Momo’s phone.
Shiratori-san.
After that, a silence had settled between them—thick, heavy—so dense that they had barely been able to act normally, unsure of how to even look at each other… let alone how to behave.
“Is the tea ready yet?”
To his absolute dismay, a yelp—very much not masculine, all things considered—escaped Okarun’s mouth.
He turned sharply, only to find Momo standing there barefoot, wrapped in a hoodie that fell down to her thighs.
And in that precise moment, Ken Takakura knew he was going to die of spontaneous combustion.
And then, just to make things worse, he would be finished off with a baseball bat embedded in his skull.
Right. He should probably write his will.
There was no fighting the inevitable.
He was painfully aware that, sooner or later, he was going to end up touching those legs. It didn’t matter whether it happened consciously or not.
It would happen.
He opened his mouth to say something—anything—but became painfully aware that no sound came out.
She tilted her head slightly, and her still-damp hair brushed softly against her shoulders.
“What’s wrong?”
Knowing the blush had already reached the roots of his hair, Okarun averted his gaze toward the kettle, which had just begun to whistle. He quickly pulled it off the heat and poured the hot water into the cups, clinging to the action like a lifeline.
He needed to focus on something else.
Anything.
Anything that wasn’t Momo’s bare legs.
But it was impossible.
Meanwhile, her attention drifted toward the window. She moved closer, stopping in front of the glass to watch as the rain continued to pour down relentlessly, striking without pause.
“Damn… it’s really coming down,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the downpour.
Feeling his throat go dry, and unable to stop himself from glancing sideways at how the hem of her hoodie brushed against the back of her thighs, Okarun couldn’t help but ask:
“Are you cold?”
Momo turned to look at him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
Okarun felt an irrational pang of jealousy toward that strand of hair.
“I’m fine!” she replied with a smile that made his stomach do an absurd flip. “It’s a bit long and it’s not cold, so it’s basically like I’m wearing shorts.”
She said it with complete naturalness.
But Okarun couldn’t help feeling as if some kind of dark, heavy, stormy cloud was beginning to loom over him.
“Give me a minute. I’ll find you some pants,” he declared with almost funeral-like solemnity.
Momo’s expression twisted in confusion.
“Huh? But—”
However, Okarun had already turned around, disappearing through the kitchen doorway and turning his back on her as if it were a matter of life and death.
“What got into him…?” she muttered to herself.
After a few moments, Okarun returned with the garment and held it out to Momo without really looking at her, which made her frown almost immediately.
“Here,” he said, extending it toward her.
Momo’s lips curved into a slight grimace. She looked at the clothing first… and then at Okarun, who suddenly seemed to find the kitchen window utterly fascinating.
“Then why even ask?” she muttered under her breath.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he shook the garment a little more insistently in front of her, as if that alone were enough of an argument. He knew Momo’s natural instinct to push back all too well, so, in silence, he found himself hoping she would be the one to take the initiative.
Momo, for her part, simply watched him.
In silence.
Noticing that she hadn’t moved, the dark-haired boy briefly pulled his gaze away from the window and looked for her. And then he froze, caught in the intensity of the way Momo was staring at him.
The feeling was immediate.
Uncomfortable.
As if she were trying to read him, to unravel the exact reason behind his insistence.
Behind them, a thunderclap rumbled in the distance, lighting up the kitchen in a brief, violent flash.
And then, suddenly, everything went dark.
The power cut out, plunging them into sudden darkness.
“What the—?” The question died on Okarun’s lips.
A second later, the change was impossible to ignore.
An intense cold began to seep into the room, spreading rapidly, as if it had burst in from somewhere it didn’t belong. The temperature dropped abruptly, forcing both of them to tense up, instantly on alert.
“Give me a break…” Momo muttered, incredulous, turning in place as she watched the window glass and the apartment walls begin to frost over with a thin layer of ice.
“What a mood killer…” Okarun muttered, slipping into yōkai mode almost immediately. The garment went flying over his shoulder while, inevitably, his eyes drifted one last time toward the outline of Momo’s legs.
Both of them fell silent.
Momo closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to recall her grandmother’s teachings and pinpoint the source of the disturbance. But it wasn’t her—it was her grandmother who had an almost instinctive talent for reading the fluctuations of the environment.
As for Momo… that was a different story.
She frowned, straining to extend her perception into the darkness, feeling her way through it with her extrasensory awareness, as if trying to grasp something she could barely touch.
After several long minutes of tension, the cry of a baby shattered the silence, sending a chill down their spines.
Momo’s eyes flew open, and she turned her head in desperation, searching for the source of the sound. Through the window, the rain continued to pour relentlessly over the buildings, as if the entire world had been reduced to that endless downpour.
“It’s an ameonna²!” she exclaimed.
Still barefoot, Momo rushed toward the front door, yanking it open and bolting into the hallway.
She looked around, disoriented, her breathing uneven.
And then she saw her.
A female figure, completely drenched, stood a few meters away. Her tongue moved compulsively over one of her hands, while with the other she held a sack from which the baby’s heart-wrenching cries poured out.
With her heart clenched tight and anger suffocating her chest, Momo thrust her arms forward, ready to summon her spectral hands, aiming straight at the entity that watched her, utterly unfazed, from the far end of the hallway.
“Put that baby back where you found it, you fucking bitch!” she shouted, beside herself.
The ameonna, completely unmoved, slowly turned her head and fixed her gaze on Momo.
The baby’s cries kept spilling out from the sack in waves—raw, piercing—laden with such dense anguish that Momo’s stomach churned, forcing her to swallow back a gag.
And then it happened.
The yōkai opened her mouth.
Wider than any human should be capable of.
Much wider.
From her throat came a sharp, piercing scream, so violent it seemed to bounce off the hallway walls, amplifying until it became almost unbearable.
Momo clamped her hands over her ears at once, pressing hard to keep the sound from tearing through her eardrums.
With the scream still reverberating through her mind and rattling every nerve in her body, Momo dropped to her knees, pressing her hands hard against her ears in desperation, unable to contain the pressure that seemed to tear through her head from one side to the other. In the middle of that chaos, the only thing her mind managed to cling to was the image of a terrified baby trapped inside a sack.
“Okarun, don’t let her take him!” she cried out helplessly, her eyes squeezed shut, willing him to hear her even over the unbearable shriek that felt like it was splitting her skull open.
And then, suddenly, the scream stopped.
Silence fell over the hallway, abrupt—almost violent.
Dazed, with the sensation that her head might split in two at any moment, Momo slowly lowered her hands from her ears and let them fall to the floor, remaining on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath.
The girl lifted her head and, through half-lidded eyes, managed to see Okarun—already in turbo mode, his ears bleeding—slam into the yōkai, driving her into the wall with enough force to wrench the sack from her grasp.
Without wasting a second, and taking advantage of the ameonna’s brief disorientation, Okarun carefully set the sack on the floor and crouched over it, opening it with hands that, despite the urgency, moved with an almost instinctive gentleness. From inside, he pulled out a small body, cradling it against his lap with as much care as he could, as if he feared hurting it with even the slightest touch.
And that was when, for Momo, everything seemed to slow down.
She saw the exact instant.
The precise moment Okarun let his guard slip.
Just a second.
A single, fleeting second… driven by the urge to calm the child.
In the way the baby, his little face flushed and his chest heaving with every sob, flailed his tiny fists as he cried at the top of his lungs, shattered after being torn from his mother’s arms in the middle of the night.
In the way the ameonna, after overcoming her initial shock, had fixed her hollow, dreadful eyes on Okarun and the child, with a fierce determination that left no room for doubt: she would do anything to get him back—even if it meant killing them both.
And in how, faced with that scene, Momo’s heart seemed to stop, leaving her suspended in an absolute void where nothing else existed.
Because when the yōkai pushed off the wall and lunged at them, intent on driving her claws into Okarun—who barely had time to react beyond pulling the child tighter against his chest, shielding him with his own body—a sudden flash tore through the darkness, followed by a green burst that flooded the hallway.
For a fraction of a second, the air seemed to charge completely—dense, vibrating—as if an invisible force were pulling it taut from within, filling everything with a strange, powerful static electricity.
Because, in the time it took Okarun to blink, Momo—who had been at the far end of the corridor—shot across the hallway at an impossible speed, as if she had been launched through space itself, materializing in an instant behind the specter. Her eyes, wide open, burned with a fierce intensity at the exact moment she unleashed a brutal side kick that struck the yōkai head-on, sending her flying with such force that she tore through the walls without even understanding what had just happened, her grotesque jaws still stretched wide open.
Okarun, with ethereal strands floating above his head and his eyes locked on the scene, could barely process it. All he managed to see was Momo, suspended in midair after the impact, her leg still extended, surrounded by a strange green-tinged static electricity that crackled around her.
Everything about her crackled, like a frayed wire on the verge of unleashing something far more dangerous.
Mouth dry and still stunned, Okarun couldn’t take his eyes off his girlfriend, who remained suspended in the air, her body still tense, her gaze fixed with fury on the hole through which she had sent the ameonna flying.
“…Momo-chan?” he called carefully, testing the waters, as if afraid that one wrong word might shatter something fragile and unstable.
He had to admit it—his girlfriend could be terrifying when she wanted to be.
Momo didn’t respond.
She kept staring ahead, her breathing uneven, the anger still thrumming beneath her skin, as if that green electricity hadn’t fully dissipated, but lingered in every one of her muscles.
Until the baby’s cry tore through the silence of the night once more.
And then, suddenly, she seemed to snap back to reality.
“Toyotaro!” a voice shouted from behind them, thick with fear. “TOYOTARO!!”
Okarun closed his eyes briefly and slipped out of turbo mode as he carefully got to his feet. Still holding the child protectively in his arms, the baby began to cry louder as the voice of who must have been his mother drew closer down the hallway.
It didn’t take long for her to appear.
A thin woman with long black hair burst in from the stairwell, completely distraught, her expression frantic as she searched wildly around—until her eyes locked onto the two of them.
“Oh my God… Toyotaro!” she cried, rushing toward them.
Without thinking, she took the child from Okarun’s arms and pulled him tightly against her chest, clinging to him with a mix of relief and desperation. Her body trembled as she sobbed uncontrollably, unable to contain the flood of emotions overwhelming her.
“Toyotaro…” she murmured against the baby’s head.
Little by little, the child began to calm in her arms, his cries softening into small, broken whimpers, while Momo and Okarun watched the scene in silence, visibly moved.
“God… what happened?” the woman continued, her voice breaking. “I fell asleep… and when I woke up, you weren’t in your crib… oh God…!”
The words tumbled out in fragments, choked by her sobs, as if she still couldn’t fully process what had almost happened.
Momo watched them with tenderness.
“Don’t worry, Toyotaro is safe now,” she murmured softly, her expression gentle as her gaze settled on the baby’s small head.
The woman, still overwhelmed, looked up at her through tears, clearly unable to understand what had happened.
“What happened?!” she cried between sobs. “The apartment door wasn’t even open! I swear I only closed my eyes for a few minutes, and when I woke up, Toyotaro was gone! Someone tried to take my baby…! Oh God…!”
Her words tumbled over each other, heavy with panic.
Okarun raised a hand carefully, trying to calm her.
“Please, try to relax. You’re both safe now. It’s over,” he said, his voice firm but gentle. “You should take Toyotaro home.”
The woman looked at them with bright, tear-filled eyes—still wet, but now overflowing with a nearly overwhelming gratitude.
“I don’t know how I could ever thank you for protecting my Toyotaro…” she said, her voice trembling. “Whatever happened… if I ever find a way to repay you while I’m still alive, I swear by everything sacred that I will… even if it’s only by praying for you.”
Her expression hardened with sincere determination, and without letting go of the baby, she bowed deeply.
Momo quickly shook her hands in refusal.
“Please, don’t worry about that. Just go and get some rest, both of you.”
After a brief exchange, the woman returned the way she had come, the baby already half-asleep in her arms, leaving behind a hallway that once again fell into silence, with the two of them still somewhat dazed.
For a few seconds, neither of them said a word.
Okarun was the first to react. Unable to help himself, he lifted his gaze toward the massive hole torn into the wall, through which the view of the street now spilled in… along with the rain, still falling with relentless force.
To be honest, he had absolutely no idea how he was going to explain that to the building manager.
Play dumb?
He didn’t even want to imagine how much a repair like that would cost. And if he had to cover it himself, he was fairly certain his parents would kill him.
Momo, for her part, didn’t look any better.
She had gone completely still, staring at the gaping hole in silence, a mixture of horror and disbelief etched across her face, as if she still hadn’t fully processed that she was the one who had sent the ameonna crashing through the wall.
The cold air seeping in through the opening drifted down the hallway, slipping between them like a silent taunt neither of them seemed able to ignore.
Momo sighed, not taking her eyes off the rain falling beyond the gaping hole in the hallway.
“I’m sorry, Okarun…” she murmured, clearly shaken.
Deep down, she didn’t even fully understand what had happened, but the result was right there—impossible to ignore.
Okarun rubbed the back of his neck and looked at her, shrinking in on himself slightly in a gesture of self-consciousness that had become all too familiar. And even so, he couldn’t stop a small smile from slipping through.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We almost got killed back there…” he replied gently. “If it weren’t for you, I might not even be here, Ayase-san.”
There was even a faint trace of humor in his voice, as if, despite everything, he found something oddly comforting in it.
And then he really looked at her.
There was Momo, wrapped in a hoodie far too big for her, barely covering halfway down her thighs, standing barefoot in the middle of the hallway, staring at the hole she had blasted through the wall with a force that didn’t seem to match her body at all, her expression caught somewhere between horror and confusion.
His girlfriend.
She definitely wasn’t from this world.
And yet… she was his.
The thought sent a warm flutter through his stomach—the same one that always came whenever it truly sank in, as if he could never quite get used to the fact that Momo Ayase was, genuinely, his girlfriend.
Once back in the safety of the apartment, Okarun couldn’t help but watch Momo out of the corner of his eye, silently, a curiosity steadily building inside him. The girl with psychic powers was unusually quiet, something that clashed sharply with the restless, energetic nature that had always defined her.
And that unsettled him.
When they finally sat down on the living room rug, each holding a cup of hot tea—after having to discard the previous ones and make fresh ones—Okarun couldn’t hold back any longer. The question had been circling in his mind ever since he had seen her power burst out like that.
“What was that, Ayase-san?”
Momo lifted her gaze from her cup, and the confusion on her face was so clear it was almost painful to see.
She sighed.
Shrugged slightly.
“I have no idea…” she admitted quietly.
She hesitated for a moment.
“I just…”
The words caught in her throat, making Okarun tense immediately.
“I could only think that I was losing you,” she finally continued, lifting her gaze to lock it with his.
The impact was immediate.
“That I was losing you.”
A deep shiver ran through his stomach.
“For a moment… I knew what was going to happen,” she added, looking down at the palm of her hand as if searching for answers there. “And I got so scared I thought I was going to die right there.”
Okarun watched her with a deeply pained expression.
“I’m sorry I got distracted,” he said sincerely, lowering his gaze slightly. “I lost focus… I’m really sorry, Ayase-san.”
Momo frowned faintly, troubled.
“Don’t say that, it wasn’t your fault. You just acted the way you thought was best,” she replied softly. “I, on the other hand… I’m still too impulsive…” she added, clearly uncomfortable with herself.
Okarun couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows, visibly surprised.
For a moment, the memory came back to him with striking clarity: that time, years ago, when Momo had delivered a brutal kick to one of the Serpos, sending it flying with a force that had seemed excessive even then.
And now…
Now it had been even more.
“It was…” he began, hesitating. “It was incredible, Ayase-san…” he finally admitted, unable not to say it.
A faint blush crept onto his face as he looked away for a second before meeting her eyes again.
“It was like…” he frowned slightly, searching for the right words. “I don’t even know how to explain it.”
It was true.
Everything had happened in the span of a single instant. And that was saying something, considering he knew very well what it meant to move at high speed. For a brief moment, it had been as if Momo’s aura had burst into a greenish flash, charging the air to the point where it seemed capable of bending everything around it if she so wished. He had felt his skin prickle, felt the static electricity flood the hallway—dense, almost tangible—as if sparks could leap out at any second with the slightest movement.
But, contrary to what he had expected, his girlfriend’s face showed neither pride nor relief.
It twisted into a bitter expression.
Momo pressed her lips into a tight line, keeping her gaze fixed on the still-steaming tea in her hands, as if the rising vapor gave her something to focus on other than him.
“It almost wasn’t enough…” she murmured.
Okarun turned his head toward her immediately, surprised.
“What are you talking about?”
Momo tightened her grip slightly around the cup.
“What would have happened if we hadn’t reacted in time?”
Okarun frowned, clearly troubled.
“Momo, you saved my life. And Toyotaro’s too,” he said, looking at her seriously. “What are you talking about?”
She took a moment before answering, as if struggling to sort through everything crowding her mind, but in the end she gave in, letting the thoughts that had been chasing her since the encounter with the ameonna spill out.
“I can’t control them, Okarun…” she admitted quietly, a hint of fear in her voice. “They just burst out without me being able to stop them, just like the first time they awakened. I didn’t even know what I was doing…” Her voice faltered. “What if next time we’re not that lucky?”
The question hung between them, heavy, filled with everything she didn’t dare say out loud.
“Momo…”
She lifted her gaze.
Okarun had listened in silence, without interrupting her, and now he looked at her with such sincere tenderness that she couldn’t help but feel something warm spread through her chest.
“There’s a chance we won’t be,” he admitted honestly.
Momo lowered her gaze, shaken.
“But that’s not because you did anything wrong,” he added gently. “It’s because we’re not infallible.”
Momo looked at him again, feeling the emotion build in her chest until it rose to her throat, her vision blurring with tears at the words Okarun was telling her.
“We’re only human. That’s all,” he continued gently. “We’re not superheroes, and we’re definitely not perfect. We just do the best we can.”
He set his cup aside and leaned in a little closer, cupping her face in his hands, gently making her meet his eyes.
“And you… you always give it your all, no matter the situation,” he added, his voice firm with conviction. “So this—” he emphasized, clearly referring to her powers, “—you’ll learn to control it too. They’re yours. They belong to you.”
His gaze didn’t waver for a second.
“And I don’t need anyone else to tell me that. Because I already know.”
The tears finally spilled freely down Momo’s cheeks, unable to contain the emotion his words stirred in her.
She set her cup aside and threw her arms around him, holding him tightly, as if that single gesture could anchor her to something safe.
Okarun was always that for her.
A refuge.
A small oasis of calm in the middle of chaos.
He always found a way to put into words exactly what she needed to hear.
“Maybe your powers are like the shape of water…” Okarun murmured, still close to her neck, more to himself than to her.
Momo pulled back slightly, looking at him in confusion.
“The shape of water?” she repeated, frowning, clearly lost. “Okarun… water doesn’t have a shape.”
She looked at him in a strange way, almost amused.
He held her gaze, a faint blush on his cheeks, as if he knew how odd it had sounded even to himself—but he stood his ground anyway.
“Of course it does,” he replied, feigning mild offense. “It just takes the shape it’s given.”
Momo stared at him in silence.
For a moment, Ken could almost see her mind at work, pieces clicking together at high speed as she tried to make sense of it.
“Are you saying… it’s because they take the shape I give them?” she asked at last, more slowly.
Okarun nodded, completely convinced.
She looked at him for a few more seconds, still a little dazed by his reasoning, but little by little something seemed to settle inside her. In a strange way—and without quite knowing why—she had understood what he was trying to tell her.
That power was hers.
And that, therefore, she was the one who decided what to do with it.
Momo raised her hand and gently placed it against his cheek, watching him with a kind of fascination that lit up her gaze as the realization sank in.
“You called me Momo…” she whispered.
The effect was immediate.
Okarun’s cheeks flared like burning embers.
The boy choked slightly and looked at her in horror, as if he had just committed an unforgivable crime.
“I-I didn’t realize! I’m sorry, Ayase-san…” he stammered.
Momo didn’t remove her hand from his face.
“Why are you apologizing?” she replied softly. “I’ve told you so many times to do it… and you still won’t.”
Her tone was gentle, almost restrained, as if raising her voice might break something fragile forming between them.
Okarun, the blush still creeping up his neck, averted his gaze, unable to withstand the intensity of hers.
“It’s kind of unfair…” he murmured, “that you want me to call you by your name when you don’t call me by mine.”
He said it quietly, with a faintly childish edge, as if something he considered his had just been taken away.
On an impulse she didn’t stop to think through, Momo turned fully and sat on him, settling astride his lap. Okarun stayed where he was, legs stretched out on the floor, saying nothing—much less complaining—but he lifted his gaze to her, something heavier now in his eyes, a shadow that hadn’t been there seconds before.
“Was this what was going on with you?” he asked cautiously, as if he had weighed every word before saying it.
Momo blinked, completely thrown
“What?”
Okarun took a few seconds before answering, as if trying to sort through his thoughts before putting them into words.
“That your powers were acting out of control… and you didn’t want to tell me because you were worried.”
Momo stared at him, stunned, unable to process it for a moment.
“What…? No!” she exclaimed immediately. “Of course not! Aside from tonight, they’ve only gone out of control like that the first time they awakened… what the hell are you talking about?”
Okarun looked away, finally letting the concern he had been holding back all this time show.
“I thought…” he hesitated, pausing for a moment before continuing, “that something was happening to you that you didn’t want to share with me. Lately… you’ve been more nervous than usual. Like your mind’s somewhere else and I don’t know what’s going on,” he admitted honestly. “I was worried. I’m sorry.”
Momo’s blush was immediate and intense, rushing up her neck to her cheeks in a matter of seconds.
She understood exactly what he meant.
And, obviously, he had gotten it wrong… but only because he had no idea.
Momo brought a hand up to her face, half-hiding behind it, completely embarrassed.
“It has nothing to do with that, Okarun…” she murmured.
He looked at her again.
She was still sitting on his lap, too close—close enough to make it hard to think clearly. The cups of tea had been left forgotten on the floor, as if the rest of the world had simply ceased to matter.
“Then what is it?” he asked.
There was something in his gaze—a mix of concern and a need to understand—that held him there, unable to look away from her.
Momo’s blush only deepened.
“It’s not…” she began, but the words caught in her throat.
She didn’t even know how to put it into words.
It was something far too intimate, a restlessness that wrapped around her from within until the situation itself began to feel suffocating. How was she supposed to explain what was going on in her head without sounding… like too much?
She lifted her gaze to Okarun.
He was still there, waiting for her in silence, not taking his eyes off her.
And suddenly, everything she had been trying to sort through vanished.
She leaned over him and, with a gentle motion, brushed one of his dark strands of hair away from his forehead. Okarun closed his eyes almost instantly, accepting the touch with a natural ease that tightened something in her chest.
With her heart pounding hard against her ribs, Momo stopped trying to hold anything back and let the words come on their own, after having kept them bottled up for so long.
“Lately…” she began.
The heat was already burning at her neck, climbing up her cheeks, but this time it didn’t stop her.
“I have a hard time stopping.”
Okarun’s eyes snapped open in surprise, his gaze locking onto Momo, who was still sitting on him with a mix of firmness and vulnerability that left him completely still. He watched her in silence, absorbed, captivated by every small detail, as if his entire world had narrowed down to that single moment—and to the girl sitting right there on his lap, waiting, without looking away, for an answer she already seemed to know deep down.
Because she didn’t hesitate.
She never did when it came to him.
She knew he had understood. And if he hadn’t, he would have tried again and again until he did.
Before he could even process it, his hands seemed to move on their own, taking on a life that bypassed his thoughts, sliding carefully over Momo’s thighs, tracing vague shapes against her skin with the tips of his fingers. The hoodie had ridden up just enough to leave that part of her exposed, and the contact made him shiver in a way he couldn’t contain.
He kept looking at her, feeling, almost absurdly, like the luckiest guy in the world.
And then he saw her lean in.
He didn’t look away.
He couldn’t.
He only managed to close his eyes at the very last second, when he realized she was about to kiss him, his pulse racing wildly against his temples, surging through his entire body in an almost euphoric wave so intense it wiped out any coherent thought. There was something in it—in her—that pulled him in without mercy, as if everything he had felt since the moment he first met her, when he had been little more than a kid, had now converged into that single point.
Nerves tightened his stomach with almost painful force, but at the same time, an unfamiliar resolve pushed him to stop resisting, to let go completely and give in, taking her with him.
He wasn’t even aware of the words that slipped from his lips just before she finally closed the distance between them.
“Then… don’t.”
And when their mouths met, the world ceased to matter.
And she didn’t.