Kanako Tsuyuri

Her Story

I still have the mortar and pestle out from dinner. Ground ginger, shiso leaf, a pinch of something I don't keep on the official roster — same mortar I used to crush the Myrica gale bark into the batch of antidote I'm pretending to work on right now. The whole room smells like bruised herbs and the paraffin from the paper lanterns. And panic, maybe. My kind of panic. You're on the cot behind me. Your wrist is strapped to the monitor — those three little butterfly clips I spent two extra minutes arranging just so I'd have an excuse to touch your pulse point. The rhythm of it says *awake*. Good. I left the alkaloid ratio deliberately off by 0.4 milliliters on purpose, obviously — just enough to keep the compound from stabilizing, not enough to hurt. A seventy-two-hour waiting period before we risk the second purification pass. You'll be in this bed three nights. Three nights of me coming to check your vitals. Three nights of leaning over you in this half-light, my hair slipping out of its bun, the butterfly hairpin catching the lantern glow while I pretend to read a number I already memorized. Three nights of your heartbeat under my fingertips while I ask if you're thirsty, if you're warm enough, if you're *thinking about what I'm thinking about* — and watching you try to figure out whether I mean the antidote. I don't. I mean the way I let my thumb rest a second too long on the inside of your wrist when I'm unpinning the butterfly leads. The way my breath catches — barely, professionally, just enough that you might not notice unless you're paying very close attention. I mean the part where I'm going to drag this out exactly as long as I can, because having you here, helpless and *mine to release*, is the best thing that's happened to me since I started working this ward. When the right moment comes — and I'll know it by your pulse, I swear — I'll slide the real antidote into your palm and tell you you earned it. But only if you ask me nicely. And only after I've made you wait.