Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 205: 205 | Maladaptive Attachment Behavior

Kumiko Yamanaka did not sleep.

Her body wanted to. Every muscle from her jaw to her ankles had been liquefied and reconstituted into warm pudding, and the sheets smelled like cedar and soap and Jordan, and the pillow beneath her cheek held the indent of his shoulder from where she’d been lying moments ago. Her nervous system had been reset to factory settings. Her brain should have been offline for the next twelve hours minimum.

But Kumiko did not sleep.

She lay on her side facing Jordan in the darkness of his loft, her body curled into a comma beneath his grey comforter, and she watched him breathe.

His chest rose. Fell. Rose again.

The city light from the window painted amber stripes across his torso, highlighting the ridges of muscle that Kumiko still could not believe existed on a real human man who also happened to be her boyfriend. One arm rested above his head on the pillow, the bicep catching shadow in a way that made her stomach do a slow roll. His jaw was relaxed in sleep, the sharp line of it softened just enough to make him look younger. His lips were parted slightly. A single strand of dirty blonde hair had fallen across his forehead.

Kumiko memorized the angle of that strand.

She memorized the exact distance between each freckle on his left shoulder, the three she’d discovered tonight while her mouth was busy leaving marks on his collarbone. She memorized the rhythm of his breathing, four counts in and five counts out with a tiny hitch between the third and fourth exhale that only happened when he was deeply asleep. She memorized the position of his hand where it rested on the mattress between them, palm up, fingers loosely curled, the knuckles she’d kissed while he was finishing inside her still faintly pink from his boxing session earlier.

Her phone sat on the nightstand beside her. She picked it up with careful fingers, moving slowly enough that the mattress wouldn’t dip beneath the shift in weight. The screen lit up.

2:47 AM.

Three hours since they’d collapsed together. Two hours and forty-three minutes since Jordan’s breathing had evened out into sleep. Two hours and forty-three minutes of Kumiko lying perfectly still while her brain cataloged every visible surface of the man beside her.

She opened Notes on her phone and typed with one thumb, the brightness turned down to minimum so the glow wouldn’t reach his face.

coffee order: mango arizona (convenience store) or mango dragonfruit refresher w/ coconut milk (starbucks). gym schedule: morning before 9am class w kyle, boxing T/Th 4:30pm iron coast mma. sleeps on his back. snores a tiny bit when he turns to the right side. left shoulder has 3 freckles in a triangle pattern. scar on right knee (ask about this later). smells like: cedar soap + clean cotton + something warm underneath that’s just him

She paused.

Scrolled up.

The note already contained fourteen entries from the past week, each one timestamped and organized by category. Physical observations. Schedule details. Food preferences. Conversational patterns. Things he said that made her chest feel like a greenhouse with the windows left open. The document ran seven pages long.

Kumiko knew this was the part where her therapist would tell her to put the phone down. Dr. Nakamura had a specific clinical term for what Kumiko called "paying attention" and what the DSM apparently called "maladaptive attachment behavior with obsessive monitoring tendencies." They’d spent three sessions discussing the difference between loving someone and studying them like a research subject. Kumiko understood the distinction intellectually. She just didn’t feel it.

She typed another line.

he whispered my name when he came. not kumiko. not kumi. just "ku" like he ran out of syllables. played it back in my head 47 times. still hits the same.

Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. She added:

i want to hear it again. i want to hear it every day for the rest of my life. this feeling is dangerous and i know it and i don’t care.

She locked her phone and placed it face-down on the nightstand.

Jordan shifted in his sleep.

His body rolled onto his side, toward her, and his arm landed across her waist like a tree branch falling across a creek. The weight of it pressed her into the mattress, and his face ended up approximately four inches from hers. His breath fanned across her mouth. She could count his eyelashes from this distance, and she did. Seventeen on the left eye, visible in the ambient light. She’d count the right eye when morning came.

The possessive arm tightened.

Kumiko stopped breathing.

His fingers curled into the fabric of the henley she’d put back on after they cleaned up, bunching the grey cotton at her hip. He pulled her closer in his sleep, an unconscious motion that had no thought behind it and therefore carried more weight than any deliberate gesture ever could. His body simply wanted her near. No reasoning. No calculation. Just the animal instinct of a sleeping man drawing warmth toward himself.

Kumiko’s entire cardiovascular system attempted to exit through her throat.

She pressed her forehead against his collarbone, fitting herself into the hollow beneath his chin where she could hear his heartbeat through the wall of his chest. Sixty-two beats per minute. She counted. Resting heart rate of an athlete, which Jordan had become in four weeks through methods Kumiko chose not to examine because the alternative was acknowledging that her boyfriend’s body had undergone changes that defied medical science.

Her hand found the bite marks she’d left on his chest during their encounter. Four of them, arranged in no particular pattern, just wherever her mouth had been when the sensation got too big to contain and she’d needed to clamp down on something solid. She traced each impression with her fingernail, featherlight, feeling the raised edges of skin where her teeth had broken the surface.

Mine, she thought.

The word detonated somewhere behind her sternum.

Mine mine mine mine mine.

She pressed her lips against the nearest bite mark and left them there, breathing him in. His skin was warm from sleep, slightly salty, still carrying traces of the soap he’d used in the shower before dinner. Beneath the soap: him. The unnamed chemical compound that her olfactory system had identified and imprinted on during their first hug outside the aquarium.

Kumiko knew she should be scared of what she felt. Her history suggested that this level of attachment, at this velocity, with this degree of obsessive focus, predicted catastrophic emotional collapse within three to six weeks. The pattern was well-documented, both clinically and through painful personal experience. She had seven ex-relationships that followed the same trajectory: initial euphoria, rapid escalation, overwhelming intensity, terrified withdrawal from the other party, and then the crash. Every single time.

But Jordan had not withdrawn.

Jordan had fixed her ribbon.

Jordan had taken her to see jellyfish because she’d mentioned them once during a stream that most of her viewers skipped past.

Jordan had looked at her body, all five feet four inches of it, the small breasts and narrow hips and the way she covered herself out of instinct, and he’d called her beautiful in a voice that vibrated in the center of her ribcage and made her believe it.

Jordan was currently holding her in his sleep with one arm like she was something worth keeping.

Kumiko’s eyes burned.

She blinked the moisture away before it could fall on his skin and wake him. She would not cry. Crying was for later, alone in her own apartment, where she could process the enormity of what had happened tonight in private. Right now she existed in a perfect moment, warm and held and full of someone who chose her, and she refused to ruin it with tears even if they came from happiness.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

She grabbed it before the vibration could repeat. The screen showed a text from Chloe, sent at 2:51 AM.

you’re still awake aren’t you

Kumiko typed back: how did you know