Chapter 165: After the Face
“Here… drink this.” I set the steaming mug into Keiko’s hands and sat down beside her on the small sofa. The apartment felt too quiet after the noise of the park—the world outside had gone on, but we were both suspended in the moment between what had happened and what would come next.
She wrapped her fingers around the cup as if she could warm herself from the inside out. “Thanks…” she breathed, and took a cautious sip.
I let out a long, slow exhale I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. “That was… really strange,” I said finally, the words flat and small in the room.
Keiko nodded, eyes never leaving the rim of her mug. “Yeah. How could all that happen? How could he—know about us? About… you?” She swallowed, the name strange in the air.
I pointed helplessly at my own face—this face I’d been wearing for months now—and felt the old, absurd shock tighten the muscles in my throat.
“I don’t know. He smiled like he knew everything. Like he’d been watching a movie where he already knew the twist. But we… we didn’t know anything.”
For a moment neither of us spoke. The apartment hummed with the refrigerator and the city noise drifting through the sealed windows, but it all felt very far away.
It had been an exhausting day—a surprisingly bright and fun date that had collapsed into something dangerous and baffling by nightfall. We had been elated and terrified in the space of a few hours.
“Did you think it’s possible,” Keiko asked, looking up at me with sudden bluntness, “that the girl whose body you’re in is… in Ryusei’s body right now?”
A chill slid down my spine. The idea had crossed my mind—this was precisely the kind of awful symmetry my head kept latching on to—but to hear Keiko say it out loud made it worse and, somehow, painfully plausible.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Or maybe there are other people involved—other swaps we don’t know about. Maybe this isn’t just us. There could be more.”
The thought felt like a splinter under my skin. If other people had been switched, if someone else was out there living my life, the problem wasn’t just scary. It was huge.
We fell into a heavier silence, the kind that happens when conjecture runs out of words.
The full-day date we’d planned had been bright and ridiculous, and now the ridiculousness had metastasized into something darker. It was a long day—long in the way that stretched and pulled at you until you had no idea what to feel.
I shifted, trying to find a less helpless posture. “I’m sorry,” I said finally, softer than I intended. “This was supposed to be a happy day. I wanted us to just… be us, even for one day. I’m sorry I ruined that.”
Keiko’s eyes met mine so quickly I almost flinched. “No. Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” She set her cup on the small table but didn’t push it away. “I was happy today. I—” she paused, searching the words, “I was really happy. Thank you.”
The tension in my chest eased a fraction. “Me too,” I said. “It felt… normal for a little while.”
“Yeah.” She let out a little laugh that didn’t reach her eyes, but it was something. “It’s been a long time since we had a day like that.”
That sentence felt like something precious. We’d been living on sharp edges—jobs, responsibilities, keeping the truth hidden from everyone who didn’t need to know. A whole day of sitting side-by-side without another crisis on the horizon had been a rare gift. I wanted to hold onto it.
“Let’s rest,” I suggested. “We need to think clearly tomorrow, make a plan. Right now… let’s sleep.”
Keiko gave a small nod. “Yeah. Rest.”
We stood together and walked to our bedroom. The quiet in that small room felt gentler than the loud chaos of the park and the burning glare of the confrontation. I switched the light to the low lamp and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Keiko,” I said, feeling something like courage collect under my ribs—thin, hopeful courage—“thank you.”
She looked at me, confused, patient. “For what?”
“For believing me. For not doubting me—even when you saw that… that other me out there. That could have been so easy to believe it was over, to think you’d been deceived. But you didn’t.” I tried to keep my voice even. “I know you were scared. I know it was confusing. But you trusted—” I swallowed and kept going, “you trusted that I am who I say I am. That means everything.”
Keiko’s face softened in the way that made my heart lurch. “I—” She closed her eyes, took a breath. “I’ll be honest. When I saw him, I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. For a second I thought…” She stopped and then started again, quieter, “I thought I’d never see you again. That was stupid, right?”
“No.” I reached out and took her hand. It fit the way it always did, warm and solid. “Not stupid. Human.”
She let out a soft sound—part laugh, part sob—and hit my arm lightly, a nervous reflex. “Omg, why are we so serious right now? We’re turning into one of those melodramatic couples.”
I couldn’t help a crooked grin. “It doesn’t really suit me either to say those things.” My grin widened as we both felt the tension break.
We laughed—short, slightly awkward laughs—and then the space between us softened. We leaned into each other and shared a light, simple kiss, the kind that said we were still together in this ridiculous mess. The world outside could be a conspiratorial, impossible place; inside that small bedroom we found a little sanity.
We lay down, fingers intertwined, and for a while the weight of the day dulled at the edges. Sleep came eventually because sleep, mercifully, ignores logic and fear.
---
When we woke the next morning, the problem remained. The man with my old body had said things that felt like threats, and I could not get them out of my head. What did he know? How did he know? Did he simply stumble into my life, or was there a deliberate hand that had set all of this in motion?
Before we rose, Keiko squeezed my hand, eyes serious again. “We can’t just wait,” she said. “We should do something. Not reckless, not alone in the park again. But… something. We need to find out who that man is.”
Her resolve steadied me. “Agreed. First, we make a list. Second, we try to get more information about him—where he came from, how he acts, anything. Third, we find if there are other cases like ours.” I tried to sound rational, a little detective in a bad coat.
She smiled, small and fierce. “Okay. Also—” her smile went soft, “—I want another date. But maybe something less likely to involve men with our faces on buses.”
I snorted into my pillow. “Deal. No buses. No unexpected doppelgängers. Maybe bowling. Low chance of identity theft there.”
She elbowed me lightly. “You’re ridiculous.”
I kissed the top of her head. “And ridiculously glad you stayed.”
She rolled her eyes, but her hand tightened around mine. “Fine. But one condition.”
“Name it.”
“Next time, you don’t pick the skating rink. Ever. My heart can’t handle any more dramatic blood-letting.”
“Fair.” I grinned. “Also, no French ordering unless I do it in a tutorial app first.”
She snorted. “Good.”
---
I sat up on the bed, still in pajamas, sipping the tea she left for me. Watching her rush around while I had the whole day free felt strangely unfair—but also kind of comforting. Even with everything that had happened, life was moving on.
“Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone,” she warned at the door.
I grinned. “I’ll try… but no promises.”
She rolled her eyes, kissed me quickly, and hurried out. I leaned back, the apartment quiet now, and let out a sigh. For the first time in days, I had nothing but time—and a hundred questions still lingering in my head.