Chapter 626: Ghost Kiss

"Ah, you guys haven’t gone to sleep? Sleep is good for your body, you know." Benjamin said it with droopy eyes.

Dark circles had somehow already formed under them — faint but visible in the hall light, as if the drain had written itself onto his face in the few minutes since the blade was finished.

His smile was still there. It just sat a little lower than usual.

Katana stood beside him. The corridor went quiet in the particular way a group goes quiet when they have been caught waiting.

She was too excited to truly notice the ideas her party members were forming in the hallway.

Where she stood, she kept fidgeting, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the small motions restless and unconscious.

"Thank you once again, Benjamin, for upholding your promise. I have not felt this great in decades."

The words came out bright and unguarded. There was no filter on them, no awareness of how they might land.

She said them the way a child might thank someone for a gift — openly, honestly, without any thought for what else the words could mean.

Erica and the others flinched as one when they heard her.

The reaction was immediate and collective, like a wave passing through the group.

Their stares locked onto her with sudden, sharp intensity.

Erica’s eyes went wide. Her whole body stiffened, her shoulders drawing up toward her ears. Aria’s brows climbed, disappearing into her hairline, her mouth opening slightly as if she had been about to say something and then forgotten what it was.

Maria’s expression went carefully blank. Sophia’s face, already faintly pink from earlier assumptions, deepened another shade, the color spreading from her cheeks down to her neck.

The weight of those stares confused Katana.

She blinked, glancing between their faces. Her head turned from one to the other, searching each expression for a clue she couldn’t find.

She did not understand why the simple thanks had drawn such a reaction.

Benjamin put a hand on the wall beside the doorframe to steady himself.

Sleep was pulling at him with annoying persistence, a heavy, soft pressure behind his eyes and in the base of his skull.

The corridor light felt too bright, and the floor felt too far away.

Both of them stood at the mouth of her room, the open doorway framing the pink interior behind her and the watching group ahead.

He could feel their eyes on him — all of them, the whole cluster, waiting for something.

Then he turned to Katana.

His hands rose, warm and a little unsteady, and held her cheeks. The contact was firm enough to tilt her face up toward his. Her skin was soft under his palms. The blush was warm against his fingers.

"I’m glad you’re okay with it, Tamar. We will talk more tomorrow." His voice was low, the words slightly blurred by exhaustion.

The name came out without thought, slipping past his lips like something he had said a hundred times before.

"Tamar...?" Katana tilted her head in his palms.

The unfamiliar name caught her completely off guard.

Her brows drew together in quiet question. Her lips parted slightly, forming the shape of the word without making a sound.

Then Benjamin pressed his lips to hers.

The kiss was firm and sharp — brief, decisive, with none of the hesitation that had marked their earlier conversation.

It lasted only a moment.

Before she could react, before her eyes could even fully widen, he was nowhere to be found.

The space in front of her was simply empty. The warmth of his hands and mouth lingered a half-second longer than his body did, ghosting against her skin like an afterimage.

"..." Katana stood stunned.

Her fingers rose slowly to her own blushing face.

They pressed against her cheeks. They found the place where his mouth had been and stayed there, trembling slightly. Her eyes were wide and unfocused.

"My first..." The whisper was almost soundless.

When she finally turned her head to see if anyone had witnessed it, her gaze met the full line of her party members still standing in the corridor.

None of them looked away quickly enough. She caught every single one of them staring.

"Good night, Katana."

"Enjoy your sleep."

Sophia and Sapphire spoke one after the other, their voices carefully even.

They turned and walked past her without looking back.

Sophia’s shoulders were a little tight, her spine straight. Sapphire still wore the faintly bewildered expression of someone processing more information than he had asked for.

"So... you swung that way, huh." Aria’s voice was quieter than usual.

She avoided Katana’s eyes completely, staring at a point on the opposite wall as she spoke.

Then she skipped away with a lightness that did not quite match the stiffness in her posture — the bounce in her step forced, the swing of her arms too deliberate.

"I wish you luck, Katana. Do whatever makes you happy." Maria’s tone was steadier, and almost gentle.

She joined her sister without further comment, the two of them disappearing around the corner together.

Only Erica remained.

Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, fixed on Katana with an intensity that made the air between them feel thinner.

The pout on her mouth was unmistakable — a full, pronounced curve of the lower lip that seemed to take up half her face. Her hands were clenched at her sides.

"No fair." She hissed the words.

They came out sharp and small, like something squeezed through a narrow gap.

Then she turned on her heel and walked away quickly, the pout still firmly in place, the line of her back rigid with something that looked a lot like jealousy.

Her footsteps were fast and uneven on the wooden floor.

"Uhm... It is not what you think...?" Katana said it to herself.

The protest was weak and delayed, spoken to an empty corridor. Her fingers were still touching her lips.

A second later, the full weight of what had just happened hit her all at once.

The heat rushed back into her face. Her whole body went rigid. She bolted into her room and shut the door hard enough that the latch clicked sharply in the quiet hall.

Inside, the pink room felt suddenly too bright and too private.

"What just happened, Fudō?!" She asked the question to her new sword carefully set on the bed.

The blade rested against the deep pink bedspread, gold lines catching the lamp light, the white-and-silver handle looking almost ordinary again.

For a moment she only stared at it. Her chest was rising and falling too fast. Her heart was beating somewhere in her throat.

Then the residual excitement, the leftover heat of the kiss, and the sheer impossibility of the evening collapsed into something younger and less controlled.

She jumped onto the bed.

The mattress dipped under her weight. She hugged the sword tightly to her chest and rolled excitedly.

The motion was pure and unselfconscious, like a teenager who had just been confessed to and could not decide whether to laugh or scream into a pillow.

The plushies at the head of the bed shifted and toppled. One small cat doll fell to the floor with a soft sound.

"Ah, wh-what am I doing?!" The realization struck her mid-roll.

The sword was presumably very dangerous.

Hugging the blade of a legendary weapon was the sort of thing that should have left her bleeding.

So she froze, still curled around Fudō, and waited for the sting that did not come.

There were no cuts on her.

Puzzled, she sat up.

She hesitated, then carefully set the edge of the blade against the pad of one finger and drew her hand slowly downward.

The metal was cold and perfect, but it did not cut her. Not even a thin line of red appeared.

She stared at her unharmed skin, then at the sword. A different kind of caution entered her expression.

Then she stood on the bed, took a half-step back for space, and lightly swung the blade sideways in a short, controlled arc.

The wooden bed frame and the thick mattress split cleanly, with a line tracing towards the ceiling.

There was no resistance. The cut was so sharp and so quiet that the two halves of the mattress simply parted and began to sag inward.

Katana, still holding the follow-through of the swing, lost her balance as the surface under her feet gave way.

She fell forward with a startled sound, landing among the severed bedding and a small avalanche of displaced plushies, still pretty confused.

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The next day, Benjamin woke to the soft, rhythmic sound of someone cleaning.

Dust cloth against wood. The quiet scrape of a shelf being wiped. The faint creak of floorboards under careful footsteps.

When he opened his eyes, the morning light from the single window fell across the guest room in a pale rectangle, and Erica was already moving through it with methodical focus.