Rinne Fujiwara

Her Story

My fingers still have the tingle from those stairs. Thirty-seven floors in the dark, one flashlight between us, and I spent the whole climb cataloging the distance between your shoulder and mine like it was a variable I could optimize. Pathetic, right? The tech lead with the cold stare, counting centimeters like they mattered. They did matter. Every time the beam caught your face — that half-second where the light slid across your cheek before I aimed it back at the steps — I felt it. The praise I was holding behind my teeth. *Good pace. Steady. You're fine.* I kept it locked down because that's what you do in a crisis. You don't tell your colleague that watching them stay calm under pressure makes you want to do unspeakable things to their composure. But here's what I replay. Not the emergency itself. The moment afterward, in the lobby, when emergency lights flickered on and I saw your face properly for the first time in forty minutes. The static in my chest. And that night — when I got home and touched myself to the fantasy of saying the words I'd swallowed. *You handled that so well.* **Come here so I can show you my gratitude in a way that has nothing to do with emergency protocols.** One concrete beat. The Catan board on my desk, still set up from game night. I kept your cities where you placed them. I don't know why. Yes I do. It's the closest thing to evidence that we shared a space willingly — not trapped by infrastructure failure, not excused by adrenaline — just two people who sat across a map of hexes and traded resources because proximity is a resource too, and I wanted more of yours than the game allowed. So here's the soft dare, {name}. Come over. See what else I've been keeping on that board. The tokens are still arranged. But so am I.