My Scumbag System Chapter 751: I’m Not Burying You

She stopped.

"Don’t have to what," I said.

Her thumbs pressed into the space over my heart.

"You don’t have to become a door," she said.

Then her eyes filled and she got furious about it, blinking hard and shaking her head like she could throw the tears out through the sides, and I did the only useful thing I’ve ever learned how to do, which was shut up and let her hold on.

She held on for a while.

When she pulled back she wiped her face with the sleeve of her cardigan, sniffed once, and wrote something in the notebook with a hand that shook enough to make the letters lean.

"You have to eat again at one," she said.

"I ate at six thirty."

"You have thirty four primary channels burning calories doing construction. You need four thousand a day minimum and you’re getting maybe twenty five hundred." She snapped the notebook closed. "I did the math. Don’t argue with the math."

"I wasn’t going to argue with the math."

"You were absolutely going to argue with the math."

Natalia’s voice, from the stairs. She came down in the same shirt of mine and leaned on the banister with her arms folded and the Ring throwing faint blue across the wallpaper.

Emi’s ears went red.

"He was," Emi agreed, small.

"He always does." Natalia came the rest of the way. "One o’clock. I’ll cook."

"I can cook."

"You cook cinnamon rolls and you cook them at five in the morning to have something to do with your hands, which is not the same as cooking." Natalia said it without any heat at all, and then, quieter, "Sit with him. I’ve got the kitchen."

Emi looked at her.

Something passed between them that I couldn’t read, and I’ve spent seven months learning to read every single person in this house, so that was rare enough to notice.

"Okay," Emi said.

Natalia went to the kitchen.

And Emi, without asking, tucked herself into my side and put her cheek on my shoulder and stayed there, and did not say another word for forty minutes, and her aura sat over my ribs the whole time like a hand on a bruise.

Skylar cornered me at noon on the back porch.

I’d gone out for air and she was already there, sitting on the railing with one foot braced against a post, wearing a black cropped tank and cutoff shorts and a clove cigarette she’d stopped pretending she was going to light. Indigo hair with the pink streaks, still damp, curling at the ends. Violet eyes half lidded and absolutely awake.

"Braxton knows," she said.

I didn’t turn from the railing. Just listened. Waited for the rest of it, because there was always a rest with Skylar—she never opened with the actual information.

"Braxton knows something," I said.

"Braxton knows enough." She rolled the unlit cigarette between two fingers, slow and deliberate, a nervous habit she’d never admit to having. "He came by while you were asleep. Stood in the kitchen for six minutes not asking anybody anything. Didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t acknowledge the tension. Just stood there like a piece of furniture that smokes. Drank Emi’s coffee straight from the pot—didn’t even get a mug—said the word ’Friday’ out loud like it was a hobby he’d picked up, like he was testing how the syllables tasted, and then he left. Didn’t wait for a response. Didn’t need one."

"That’s not knowing," I said. "That’s fishing."

"He fishes with dynamite, Satori." She flicked the cigarette into the yard with a sharp, irritated motion. Watched it arc through the air and land somewhere in the overgrown grass. "You’re going to have to give him something before he decides to give somebody else something. That’s how it works with him. He collects debts and he cashes them in when you’re least prepared for it."

"Sunday first," I said.

"Sunday first," she agreed, quiet. Certain.

Then she slid off the railing in one smooth, fluid motion, landing on the porch boards without a sound.

Skylar Amane is five foot three. I know this because she informs people of it as a threat, usually right before she does something violent or says something that cuts deeper than a blade. She stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could smell the faint mix of blackberry and vanilla clinging to her skin, the ghost of clove smoke in her hair. She had to tilt her chin up to hold my eyes and she did it anyway, the way she always did, like the height difference between us was a rumor someone had started and she refused to dignify with acknowledgment.

"In the basement," she said.

"Don’t."

"You wanted it."

I didn’t answer. Didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t make it worse.

"You wanted it," she said again, softer this time, and there was something raw in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. "And I watched your face while you wanted it. I’ve spent my whole life around men who wanted things that badly, Satori. My dad wanted a stadium full of people screaming his name every night for twenty years. His lead guitarist wanted a needle more than he wanted to wake up in the morning. His manager wanted the money and got it—got all of it—and still threw himself off a hotel balcony in Kyoshu three months later because it wasn’t enough."

Her hand came up, slow and deliberate, and flattened against my chest. Right over the node. Right where everyone kept putting their hands today, like they could feel the sick, wrong weight of it through my ribs.

"I’ve buried three of them," she said. "I’m not burying you."

"Bubblegum."

"Don’t." Her jaw set, a muscle jumping near her ear. Her fingers curled slightly, nails catching on the fabric of my hoodie. "Don’t do the nickname. Not right now. I’m trying to say something real and you’re going to deflect with that stupid, condescending pet name because you don’t know how to let people care about you."

So I didn’t.

I just stood there and let her hold me in place with nothing but her palm and her eyes.

She stayed like that for a long moment, her hand pressed against my sternum, her gaze locked on my mouth like she was memorizing the shape of it. I watched her make the decision in real time. Saw the exact second she stopped fighting herself. Saw the shift in her expression from anger to resignation to something that looked uncomfortably close to need.

Then she grabbed the front of my hoodie in both fists and yanked me down hard enough that I had to brace a hand on the railing to keep from stumbling forward.

The kiss wasn’t gentle.

It was teeth and pressure and the Nectar going off between us like a struck match, and she made a sound into my mouth that she would deny under oath, and her nails dug into the back of my neck hard enough to sting. She kissed me like she was proving something. To me, maybe. Probably to herself.

When she broke off she was breathing hard and her lips were swollen and she looked genuinely angry about all of it.

"That’s for Friday," she said.

"What’s Friday get me on Sunday."

"Sunday you get nothing, because your mother will be there and I have a shred of dignity left." She stepped back. Fixed her hair with two fast motions. "Also I’m coming to Sunday."

"You’re not invited."

"I’m inviting myself. Emi’s invited, Kuzmina’s invited, the president of the country is invited. If I’m not there somebody’s going to say something clever and nobody at that table is qualified to handle it except me."