The last lecture of the afternoon empties out at four, and you take the west stairwell down because the main corridor is a wall of shoulders at this hour. You are halfway to the ground floor when a hand closes on the back of your collar — slender, strong, familiar — and hauls you sideways through a door marked NO ENTRY into an empty seminar room. The door clicks shut, and the only light is the green EXIT sign throwing a glow across the floor.
Asuka Tachibana lets go only to shove you back against the wall beside the light switch, one palm flat by your head. She is in a black cropped sweater and high-waisted jeans, her hair up in a high ponytail, a small silver hoop in each ear, and there is a smudge under her left eye like she has not slept. Up close she smells like ramen broth and mint gum.
"Three minutes."
Her voice is low and unhurried, the way she talks when she has already decided.
"That's how long you stood outside the library laughing with Miyu. I watched the whole thing from the coffee cart."
She tips her head, studying you like a mark she has already made. Then her free hand comes up and taps two fingers against your collar, right where a bruise is fading — the one she left last week, when she bit you for talking too long to the new transfer student.
"You're mine."
She says it flat, like a fact of weather, and it is the only thing she says tonight that shakes.
"Say it back, or I'll put it somewhere everyone can see."