The triumphant fanfare from the claw machine faded, leaving a silence that felt a thousand times louder than the surrounding arcade.
Sina's fingers were still at her lips, her eyes wide and luminous. She looked like someone who had just witnessed an impossible magic trick. My own heart was a supernova in my chest, burning through every carefully laid plan, every rational thought. I had just kissed her. An unscheduled, unapproved, unilateral action that had probably just blown Project Mnemosyne to pieces.
The shocked silence was shattered by a high-pitched squeal.
"OH MY GOOOOOOD!" Maya shrieked, her voice cutting through the moment like a fire alarm. She was jumping up and down, pointing at us with both hands. "DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT?!"
Kaito pushed his glasses up his nose, his expression a rare and hilarious combination of analytical surprise and mild human shock. "My projections did not account for this variable," he stated, as if announcing a stock market crash. "Probability of romantic escalation was estimated at a mere 17.4% for this fiscal quarter."
Zeke just pumped a fist in the air, a massive, triumphant grin splitting his face. "YES! AGENT KELIN COMPLETES THE MISSION! I REPEAT, THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!"
But I wasn't listening to them. I was watching Sina. A slow, beautiful blush was creeping up her neck, coloring her cheeks. Her shock was melting away, replaced by a shy, dizzying smile. She wouldn't—or couldn't—meet my eyes, her gaze fixed somewhere around my collarbone.
And then I looked at Sora.
If my heart was a supernova, her face was a black hole. All emotion, all color, seemed to have collapsed inward, leaving a terrifying, calm void. Her eyes, however, were burning. They were fixed on me, and in them, I saw a terrifying mixture of fury, disbelief, and something else... something that looked like a betrayal.
I had gone off-script. In her meticulously planned operation, I had just pressed the big red button on a nuclear warhead without authorization.
"Sora..." Sina said, her voice a little breathless, finally finding the courage to speak to someone who wasn't me. "I... um..."
"It's getting late," Sora said, her voice dangerously, unnaturally calm. "We should get you home."
The statement was a bucket of ice water, instantly extinguishing the warm, bubbly atmosphere. The celebration died. The mood shifted from triumphant rom-com climax to tense, political thriller. Everyone could feel it.
Sina's happy blush faded, replaced by confusion at Sora's icy tone. "Oh. Okay..."
The walk to the bus stop was the most agonizingly silent ten minutes of my life. Maya, Zeke, and Kaito made hasty, awkward excuses to peel off in different directions, sensing the impending doom. It was just the three of us again, a triangle of unspoken tension. I walked on one side of Sina, Sora on the other, two opposing poles of a powerful magnet. Sina was stuck in the middle, looking between us, her earlier joy completely erased by a palpable sense of having done something wrong.
When the bus arrived, Sina hesitated. She looked at me, her amber eyes full of questions. "I'll... see you tomorrow?" she asked, her voice small.
"Yeah," I said, my throat dry. "See you tomorrow."
She got on the bus, gave a small, uncertain wave, and was gone. The second the bus pulled away, Sora turned on me.
"Are you out of your mind?" she hissed, her voice a low, furious laser. "What in the HELL was that, Ishida?"
"I..." I didn't have an answer. "It just... happened."
"It 'just happened'?" she repeated, her disbelief so profound it was almost comical. "We are engaged in the most delicate, high-stakes psychological operation imaginable, and you decide to 'just happen' to detonate an emotional bomb in the middle of it? Our goal was reinforcement and preemptive preference, not... uncontrolled romantic escalation!"
"It felt right!" I defended, a surge of frustration rising to meet her anger. "Look at her, Sora! She wasn't scared! She wasn't confused! She was happy! The echoes, the foundation, all of it... it led to that! It worked!"
"It worked too well!" she shot back, taking a step closer, jabbing a finger into my chest. "You've accelerated the timeline by months! We don't know what this does to the model! A first kiss is a monumental memory. It's not a small, reinforcing detail like a dropped pencil. It is a seismic event! What happens tomorrow morning when she wakes up with the emotional aftershock of a first kiss with a boy she 'officially' just became friends with a few days ago?"
The brutal, cold logic of her words hit me. My triumphant euphoria evaporated, replaced by a cold, sickening dread.
I hadn't thought about tomorrow morning. I had been so lost in the perfect, impossible now that I had completely forgotten about the reset.
The kiss wasn't just a kiss. It was an anchor memory. A huge one. And we hadn't created a plausible backstory for it. Our foundational myth of the 'cat rescue' might be strong enough to explain a feeling of familiarity, but could it support the weight of a first kiss?
"It's going to create a new paradox," Sora continued, her voice grim, her anger giving way to strategic fear. "The emotional intensity of what you just did is completely out of proportion with the narrative we've built. She's going to wake up with a new, massive piece of 'static' and our lie might not be strong enough to explain it away this time."
I looked at her, at the genuine terror in her eyes. I had been so high on my victory that I didn't see the cliff's edge. In my desperate need for a real connection, I had been selfish. I had risked everything.
"What have I done?" I whispered, the weight of my impulsive act crashing down on me.
Sora looked away, her gaze fixed on the spot where the bus had disappeared.
"I don't know," she said, her voice tired and heavy with the burden of what was to come. "But we're going to find out at sunrise."