Page 85 of Fumiko and the Finicky Nestmate
“Good idea. I’ll get your back. Oh! Your hair!”
And then she was lifting and twisting and pinning with the sticks she’d pocketed earlier.
He told himself it was a practical necessity. Because that’s all this was. To her.
“Fumiko …?” he tried.
“Hmm?” Her hum was light and bright, and her hands moved in careful circles over his back and shoulders.
When her fingers briefly grazed his blaze, he tensed.
“I left this part bare,” she said, moving along to his other shoulder. “Something so beautiful doesn’t need embellishment.”
Unintentional intimacies, every one of them.
Yet they were devastatingly effective.
How did one find the strength to refuse a beacon?
Juuyu made up his mind to ask Argent. Because Juuyu was increasingly certain that he could not—would not—unless ordered to do so.
Fumiko asked, “Why do you like empty rooms?” She couldn’t understand why anyone would find emptiness appealing.
Juuyu, who had remained seated on the beach even after the light faded, glanced her way. “Why do you fill rooms?”
“Vacant spaces are lonely.”
He hummed. “Is that how it is for you? I see.”
“How else could it be?” she ventured, because he must have disagreed. Akira had worked so hard to clear a place for him. Like Juuyu would be traumatized by her accumulated belongings. Yet … as far as she could tell, her things fascinated him. It was contradictory enough to be confusing.
“There is a beauty in vastness.” Juuyu leaned back on his hands, his face tipped toward the sky. “Look at where the stars have perched.”
Is that how he saw it? The stars were roosting? Then again, Zuzu liked to say that the stars bloomed in the sky each night. As if the sky were a bower under which she took shelter.
Fumiko was used to looking at stars. Or for stars. She was far less accustomed to considering the spaces between them. The shift in perspective momentarily took her aback.
Light illuminating the darkness.
Darkness strengthening the light.
“Consider the sea, a fathomless expanse.” Juuyu breathed deeply, blinked slowly. “You live on the verge of so much vastness. Is it not peaceful?”
She could hardly believe it. “You like it here?”
“You are startled?”
“Well, yes. I thought you liked empty rooms.” She was back where they’d started. “Akira was anxious.”
“He is considerate, and he is correct. But he knows my brother’s ways better than he knows mine.” Juuyu dipped his hand into the sand. “In my place, Boon would look to the moon and sing his devotion. Similarly, Sinder would frisk in the surf and dive after fishes. But I see more than the sky and the sea. Though the vastness beckons, I am caught up in minutia. I sit upon the shore, counting every grain of sand.”
Fumiko was horrified. “Should I bring help?”
Juuyu chuckled. “That was an analogy. But it is in my nature to notice, and I am easily caught up. Sometimes by the wrong things. My teammates know to watch for signs of distraction or compulsion.”
“I’m a distraction?”
“A formidable one.”
