Chapter 3: A Cruel Interruption
The bedroom was a tomb of shared breath and tangled sheets. Megumi’s back was arched, a pale curve in the dark, her fingers gripping the headboard. Sukuna’s mouth was on her neck, teeth grazing skin, one hand pinning her hip, the other sliding down the plane of her stomach.
His fingers hooked into the black lace, dragging it aside.
A sharp, percussive sound shattered the silence.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
They froze. A seam of yellow light from the hallway cut under the door.
Megumi’s breath hitched, not in pleasure now, but in alarm. Her eyes, wide and dark, locked onto his. Sukuna didn’t move his hand. He kept it there, a claim staked in the warm, damp heat between her legs.
“Sukuna?” Mizuki’s voice, thin and uncertain, filtered through the wood. “Are you… are you still up? I’m so sorry. I forgot my phone. I think it’s on the couch.”
Panic flickered across Megumi’s face, quickly swallowed by a venomous irritation. She mouthed a single, silent word: Ignore it.
Sukuna’s expression hardened, his crimson eyes flat. He leaned closer, his voice a bare scrape of sound against her ear. “Told you she was stupid.”
“Just be quiet,” Megumi whispered back, her body tense beneath him.
“Sukuna?” Mizuki called again. A jingling sound followed. The distinct metallic scrape of a key in the lock.
Their shared, held breath evaporated. Sukuna’s head snapped toward the door. Megumi tried to squirm away, to pull the sheet up, but his grip on her hip tightened, holding her in place. It was too fast, too loud. The door swung inward, flooding the bedroom with a wedge of harsh light from the living room.
Mizuki stood in the doorway, a silhouette. Her eyes, adjusting from the dark hallway, took a second to resolve the scene.
Sukuna was half-propped on his elbow beside Megumi, who was lying on her back. The sheet was tangled at their waists. Sukuna’s other arm was draped across Megumi’s stomach, his hand hidden in the shadowed dip of the covers near her hips. It could have been a casual, sleepy position. Almost.
Megumi stared at the ceiling, her jaw tight.
“Oh,” Mizuki said. The sound was small, a deflated thing. She blinked, her gaze darting from Sukuna’s face to Megumi’s and back. Her own phone was visibly clutched in her hand, a pointless prop. “You’re… in here.”
“No, we’re at the fuckin’ zoo,” Sukuna drawled, his voice thick with forced annoyance. “What does it look like? We were sleeping.”
“With the light on?” Mizuki asked softly, her eyes drifting to the lamp on the nightstand, which was off. The only light was from behind her.
“Megumi gets scared of the dark,” he said, the lie effortless, abrasive. “Like a kid. It’s annoying. You got your phone? Get out.”
Mizuki didn’t move. Her brain, gentle and trained to seek innocent explanations, was scrambling. They were just close. Siblings could be close. Megumi was young, she relied on him. The hand under the covers… it was just resting. It had to be.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she murmured, her voice trembling. She took a step backward, but her feet felt rooted. A detail snagged her attention: Megumi’s lips looked swollen. And Sukuna’s bare shoulder had a faint, red mark that could have been a scratch.
“You’re blocking the light,” Megumi said suddenly, her head turning on the pillow. Her dark blue eyes pinned Mizuki with a cold, defiant stare. There was no embarrassment in it. Only challenge. “Close the door.”
The command, delivered in that flat, territorial tone, broke the spell. Mizuki flinched. “Right. Sorry. Goodnight.”
She pulled the door shut, plunging them back into darkness. The click of the latch was softer this time, hesitant.
They listened to the faint sounds of her retreat: the scuff of her shoes on the laminate, the soft groan of the front door opening and closing. The distant hum of a car engine starting, fading.
The air in the room was electric, charged with the interruption, with the risk.
Sukuna didn’t remove his hand. Instead, he pressed deeper. Megumi gasped, a sharp intake of breath that wasn’t fear anymore. It was something hotter, sharper. The violation had been witnessed, however blindly, and it had ignited them.
“She saw,” Megumi whispered, turning her face into his neck. “She fucking saw us.”
“She didn’t see shit,” Sukuna corrected, his voice rough. He moved his fingers, a deliberate, claiming stroke. “She doesn’t know how to look. She just sees what she wants to see.”
“She’s so fucking oblivious,” Megumi said, but there was a thrill in it now. A vicious pride. Her hips lifted to meet his touch, her earlier tension melting into a liquid urgency. “It was right in front of her.”
“Let her be oblivious.” He shifted, rolling fully on top of her, the sheets falling away. The streetlight from the window caught the hard lines of his back. “This isn’t for her. It’s for us.”
This time, there was no slow build. It was a reclamation. A silent, furious answer to the world outside the door that kept trying to knock. Megumi’s cries were muffled against his skin, her nails carving new marks over the old ones. It was faster, harder, a confession written in gasps and sweat.
Later, spent and slick, they lay in the wreckage. The smell of them, of sex and panic and stale cigarettes, was overpowering.
Megumi traced the fresh scratches on his shoulder. “She’ll be back tomorrow,” she said, no question in her voice.
“Yeah.”
“With coffee. And that sad, hopeful look.” Megumi’s lips curled. “She’ll ask if we slept okay.”
Sukuna lit a new cigarette, the flame a tiny beacon in the dark room. He inhaled, the ember casting a hellish glow on his sharp features. He blew the smoke out in a long, slow stream. “Then we’ll tell her we slept just fine, princess.”
Down on the street, Mizuki sat in her car, the engine off. She stared at the steering wheel, the forgotten phone in her passenger seat. The image kept replaying: the intimacy of their pose, the charged silence, Megumi’s defiant eyes. A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with the cold.
She started the car, turning the heater on high. She would go home. She would shower. She would, by morning, convince herself that the hollow pit in her stomach was just jealousy over a brother and sister who were simply too close. It was easier that way. It was the only way she knew.
Above her, in the flickering dark of the apartment, the cigarette glow pulsed like a steady, unwavering heart.