Monday streams always had a particular rhythm to them.

The audience came in already tired from the weekend ending and needed something easy and warm to settle into. I gave them that. Talked about my Saturday, the park, the rides, the food, kept it light and general and did not mention that any of it had been a date because that was not something I was allowed to bring into this space. Lumi♡Live’s personal life existed behind a very specific wall and it stayed there.

I also sampled the new Soul Beauty products. Two items from the upcoming launch. A liquid eyeliner with a precision tip that actually delivered on its claims and a lip liner in three shades. I gave honest reactions because the audience could always tell the difference between honest enthusiasm and manufactured excitement and honest converted better.

By the time the stream ended I was tired in the good way. The kind that came from doing something well rather than from doing too much.

I made my smoothie. A vegetable cleanse blend I had been doing every Monday for two years. It tasted exactly like it sounded and I drank it anyway.

My phone lit up on the desk.

Ethan.

Watched your stream. Fantastic job as always. Are we still on for dinner tonight?

I typed back immediately.

Yes sure.

I’ll pick you up at six.

I put the phone down, picked it back up and called Tengu.

He answered on the second ring

" Did you find Malcolm yet " I asked immediately

"Himari. A hello would be nice."

"Hello Tengu San," I said. "Do you have anything on Malcolm?"

"Not what I meant , but I’ll take it." I heard him shift slightly. "He’s good. Very good. No credit card activity in the past two weeks. No cell phone records we can pull."

"He’s using a burner," I said.

" certainly. No digital footprint worth following.

"No physical trail we’ve been able to establish. The man knows how to disappear."

I sat with that for a moment.

Then something surfaced. Old. Specific. The kind of memory that sits so quietly in the back of your mind that you forget it exists until something pulls it forward.

College.

A bench outside the arts building near the fountain. Felix and I had just come from a lecture on symbolism in contemporary art and were halfway through lunch when his phone rang.

My brother, I gotta take this.

He had turned slightly away from me on the bench and answered.

I hadn’t tried to listen. I was eating, looking at the fountain, thinking about the lecture. But the bench was small and I still caught the end of it.

Say hi to Rhonda for me.

He had hung up and turned back toward me.

That was my brother. He went out of town with his girlfriend. Rhonda. They went to Vanity Square.

That sounds romantic, I had said.

Maybe we could go someday, Felix had replied.

I’d like that, I had said.

"Rhonda!" I said out loud.

"What?" Tengu asked.

"He has a girlfriend. Or had one. Her name is Rhonda." I sat forward slightly. "Felix told me his brother was planning to propose to her. So she might be Rhonda Stein by now."

A pause.

"Rhonda Stein," Tengu repeated. "That’s not much. There could be millions of people with that name across platforms alone."

"I know. I’m sorry. It’s all I have."

"Don’t apologize," he said. "I’ll put my people on it. You’ll have every Rhonda Stein we can locate by tomorrow."

"Thank you."

"Get some rest, Himari."

He ended the call.

I set the phone down and leaned back against the chair.

Tengu was a piece of shit . Had been since the first time I met him in Mizuhara sitting across from my grandfather with the ease of a man who had never once in his adult life worried about a room.

He said things most people kept sealed inside their heads and seemed to genuinely enjoy the reactions he got from it.

He was exhausting.

But he worked fast. That was the important part.

If Rhonda was findable, he would find her. And if she led to Malcolm then this problem still had a solution .

I needed that. Especially now. Especially with the way things are now.

I got up to get ready for six o’clock.

I heard the horn from my room.

I checked the mirror one more time, adjusted the collar of my top, decided against changing my earrings and went downstairs.

Ethan was leaning against the passenger side of the car with one hand in his pocket. He waved when he saw me coming out.

Jeans. White t-shirt.

Something about the simplicity of it was genuinely unfair. There was no effort in it and he still looked like that.

"Hi," he said, opening the door for me.

"Hi."

I got in and he closed the door before walking around to the driver’s side.

I had assumed dinner meant a restaurant. Somewhere elegant. Somewhere with tablecloths and low lighting. So when he pulled up outside a building with a neon bowling pin glowing above the entrance, I sat there for a second trying to recalibrate.

A bowling alley.

He looked over at me.

"You okay?"

"I’ve never been to a bowling alley before," I admitted.

He stared at me.

"Never?"

"Never."

He got out of the car still looking mildly offended on behalf of bowling alleys everywhere.

We traded our shoes for rental ones at the counter and found a lane near the middle of the alley. Far enough from the entrance to feel settled and close enough to the food area that ordering was easy. Music played overhead beneath the constant sound of pins crashing and people reacting to near misses and lucky strikes.

Ethan went to get drinks.

"What do you want?" he called back.

"Iced tea is fine."

He came back balancing both cups in one hand and not long after that a server slid menus onto the table. Ethan had recommended the pizza so I was gonna try that .

"I’ll have the thin crust margherita pizza ," I said. "Mini size."

Ethan ordered the BBQ chicken pizza without even looking at the menu for more than five seconds which somehow felt very in character for him.

The pizzas arrived surprisingly fast and were genuinely good in the specific way food in unexpected places always was.

"This is good," I admitted after the first bite.

"I know," he said with the satisfaction of someone who had been waiting to hear that exact sentence.

"I didn’t expect bowling alley pizza to taste like this."

"I used to come here all the time."

I picked up another slice.

"With an ex perhaps?"

He smiled slightly.

"With my mum."

Something warm moved quietly through me at that.

"How is she?" I asked. "Everything still going well?"

"Really well actually. She gets discharged next weekend."

"Ethan, that’s wonderful."

"Yeah." He exhaled softly. "It really is."

There was a lightness in his face I hadn’t seen before. Like someone who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had only recently been allowed to put it down.

We finished eating while talking about nothing important and somehow everything at the same time. Small things. Random things. The kind of conversation that only happened when being around someone stopped feeling difficult.

Then Ethan stood up and grabbed a bowling ball.

"Come on," he said. "We’re bowling."

"I’m not good at this."

He gave me a look.

"You said that about shooting."

Fair point.

I stood up and followed him to the lane.

He went first.

The approach. The release. The smooth follow through.

Strike.

Every pin dropped cleanly.

He turned back toward me with the satisfaction of someone trying very hard to act casual about being good at something.

I stepped forward and picked up the ball.

It was heavier than I expected.

I stood at the line, looked at the pins and released.

Three pins.

"I did terribly," I said immediately.

"You did good," Ethan replied.

"No. That was humiliating."

"You’ll get it. Here."

He came around behind me.

Then his hands settled over mine.

Everything in my brain stopped working for a second.

He adjusted my grip carefully, repositioning my fingers against the ball with slow deliberate movements and I became painfully aware of how close he was standing behind me. The warmth of him. The steady rise and fall of his breathing.

"Keep your elbow in," he said quietly near my ear. "Don’t force the release. Let the ball do the work."

I was no longer thinking about bowling.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes," I said immediately. Far too quickly.

We moved together.

The approach. The swing. The release.

His hand guided mine through the motion and the ball rolled cleanly down the lane before crashing into the pins.

Strike.

Every single one.

I turned around too fast and found him still standing close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him.

We both paused there for a second.

Slightly breathless.

And not because of bowling.

"See?" he said softly.

"I had help."

"You always had the aim," he said. "You just needed the angle."

That line did something dangerous to my heart.

We bowled for another hour after that.

I improved steadily while Ethan stayed annoyingly consistent. We argued about scoring at one point despite neither of us actually caring who won. Most of the night became less about bowling and more about finding excuses to bump shoulders, steal glances and laugh at absolutely nothing.

By the time we finally walked outside it was raining.

Not light rain either. Proper rain.

We stood at the entrance staring at it.

"Run," Ethan said.

We ran.

Halfway across the car park we ducked under the awning of a closed stall and pressed ourselves beneath it while rain hammered steadily against the canvas overhead. The pavement beyond us gleamed beneath the streetlights, reflections stretching across puddles in broken streaks of gold and white.

"That was fun," I said.

He laughed.

"You sound surprised."

"I’m always surprised when I have fun," I admitted.

He looked at me quietly after that.

The edges of my sleeves were damp from the rain and the cold air underneath the awning settled against my skin quickly. Ethan noticed almost immediately.

Without saying anything he shrugged off his jacket and held it out toward me.

"Here."

"You’ll be cold."

"I’m fine," he said. "Take it."

I took it and slipped it on.

It was warm in a way that felt unfairly intimate. Like carrying around traces of him against my skin.

We stood there listening to the rain and neither of us suggested leaving.

"I’ve been thinking," he said eventually.

"About what?"

"About this." He paused briefly. "About us."

I looked at him.

"I know I already asked you out properly and you said yes. But I wanted to say it clearly anyway." He held my gaze. "I like you, Raina. Not because of the contract , not because of everything that happened. Just you."

The rain continued around us in a steady rhythm.

I looked at him for a long moment. At the steadiness in his expression. The honesty in the way he said things without trying to perform them.

"It was already clear," I said quietly.

"Good."

He was close.

He had been close since we stopped beneath the awning and neither of us had moved away from it.

And I realized then that neither of us intended to.

He leaned in slowly.

Not rushed.

The way he did everything.

And I closed the remaining distance myself because I had already waited long enough.

The kiss was soft at first. Brief.

Then he pulled back slightly and looked at me and I looked at him and suddenly brief didn’t feel remotely enough anymore.

So I kissed him again.

The rain continued falling above the awning.

The city lights shimmered across the wet pavement.

Neither of us noticed any of it.