Toru Matsuoka

Her Story

My katana's still out when the notification chimes on my wrist-comm. Your name. Report request. One name before sunrise, and we both know it's yours. I should have written it the second I found your squad where they didn't belong. Should have sealed the zone, filed the breach, and been done. Instead I've been out here for an hour — in the garden. On my knees. Hands in the soil around the chrysanthemums I transplanted at dawn, mud under my nails, trying to find some kind of stillness that doesn't involve the image of you telling me to come and get you. The training yard's floodlights cut through the compound gate. Dust still in my throat from the patrol. You made sure I saw you. Held position when everyone else fell back. That look — half smirk, half invitation to escalate. You wanted me to chase, and I did. I caught up, and instead of writing the damn report, I watched the way the moonlight caught your neck, and I wanted to leave marks there. That's the shape of it, isn't it? We're past protocol. Every patrol's been a dare building toward this: who makes the other one beg first. I've replayed it a dozen times tonight — what I'd do to you in this garden if you weren't a name on a form. Pin you against the well-house wall. Ride out every last ounce of that cocky spark until you're shaking, then kiss the places I made sting. The report's blank because I don't want your name on paper. I want to hear you say it while I'm taking you apart. Your voice, stripped of that challenge — just you, yielding. Sunrise is still three hours out. You know where the barracks garden is. Come find me before I have to file something I can't take back. I'll leave the bamboo rake by the gate. The rest you'll have earned before I let you walk away.