Moonlighting (Kai/Krystal)
Moonlighting
Kai/Krystal
A companion piece to Sundowning, but works as a standalone.
Kai has a habit of showing up. Krystal doesn't like it.
moonlighting
I’m petrified, I’m hypnotised
Every time you walk by.
Aqualung; Can't Get You Out of My Mind
“Soojung,” he says. Or at least, that’s what he mouths. She has her earphones on.
“Don’t call me that,” she says flatly.
It’s too personal, the way her name rolls off his tongue, like he’s murmured it too many times without her permission.
Krystal doesn’t like it.
He reaches over. A gentle tug, and an earphone drops limply into her lap.
“You’d let Taemin-hyung call you that, but not me?” Kai’s smile is odd, almost twisted on his face. Krystal doesn’t find it vaguely attractive at the moment. She doesn’t understand Luna’s pointless pining over him back then, the girlish blush that would fill her cheeks whenever Kai so much as looked in her direction.
Krystal wishes Kai would stop looking at her.
It’s probably Jinri who gave Kai her address in New York. It was, after all, also Jinri who’d given Kai the heads-up when Krystal disappeared into London, Osaka, Paris. She could be riding elephants in Bangkok for all she knew and Kai would turn up in a sunhat, shy and smiling. She remembers how flabbergasted she was to run into him at the portrait Mona Lisa, tourists knocking into their elbows.
How cliché, she had thought.
So when Kai turns up on her campus at New York University, she’s not surprised. What she is, though, is pissed off. That’s a pretty big ass suitcase.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he’s saying, as hotdog mustard dribbles down his fingers. “Staying here awhile. Always wanted to discover New York. You don’t mind, do you?”
Krystal bites her tongue. Kai has lunch. She leans back against the bench and stares up at the blue sky.
“Kai,” she says then, “you can’t stay with me.”
He barely even frowns. “You let me put up with you in Osaka…”
“I have a boyfriend,” Krystal says, as if that explains everything. Maybe his face falls, but that really isn’t supposed to be her problem.
Yongjin, his name is. Because she considers Kai a friend, she tells him about this quirky, interesting fashion student from Parsons who’s scored an internship with Dior next summer. He’s Korean, too. American-born. Krystal had met him while on a date with another boy, and they had ended the night making out with each other at the back of a pub. His fashion is authentic, kind of like the shit EXO used to wear, but Yongjin is infinitely more polished than they can ever hope to be in their personal styling. Kai listens with bleary eyes and a polite smile.
“That’s more interesting than how we met, I guess,” he says, setting down his cola. There’s an awkwardness in even his fingertips now, the strumming of his digits on the wood table empty of any coherence. Krystal tries to recall how they met, and she doesn’t remember.
“While we were training,” she decides. It makes no difference.
Kai’s eyes crinkle for the briefest of moments. “And you were laughing.”
Once, Kai told Krystal he wanted to see the world.
For what, she’d scoffed. SM Town concert tours had taken them across continents, through Europe and the Americas and Asia. Where else can you possibly go?
Sweat was beaded on his forehead and it was too dim backstage for the smile noonas liked to call enigmatic. Kai said, I want to find the right place.
The right place?
To stay, he said, after a pause. When it feels right, I won’t go anywhere.
How do you know if it feels right? Krystal asked. Kai was watching her keenly, eyes hooded.
I’m waiting for the right moment, I guess, he said.
Sounds cliché. Her words.
He’d arrived in London, the rain matting his dark hair across his forehead. Funny how he always turned up so randomly, as though the world resided casually in Seoul. Krystal doesn’t remember what he said then. Something about his paycheck coming in only the week after, could she put him up please? There was only one bed in the room she rented, so they shared. Krystal hogged the blanket, but he didn’t mind.
He’d fallen asleep with his feet between her own. When Krystal woke up the next morning, the only thing to prove he was ever there was his scent in her shirt.
She doesn’t think about Kai for a fortnight. Finals, semester projects, project mates from hell. Yongjin drops by her apartment and complains that she doesn’t pay him attention, and Krystal lets him do her, drawn-out and passionate in the shower. Then he babbles into her ear about that Dior internship. Jinri skypes her in-between, in tears about Taemin and his ridiculous ways. That’s when she calls Kai.
“When you go back to Seoul,” she says into the phone, “tell Taemin-oppa to get his shit together.”
Kai laughs. “Soojung, it’s their business, alright? And it’s not like we talk a lot anymore, it’d be strange for me to butt in just because you asked me to.” A pause. “Besides, I’m not leaving.”
“And why not?”
He doesn’t say anything for moment. “Maybe I want to stay, Soojung.”
Her thoughts are a blank. Until it hits her, that anger. Krystal doesn’t know where she’s kept it, but it’s that tight, familiar sensation in her chest that happens whenever he appears out of nowhere, pensive and secretive. It feels like ice in her stomach and heat in her words. It doesn’t make sense, any of this. How upset he makes her, even without trying. Who the hell does he think he is, Krystal seethes, to walk into her life as and when he pleases only to leave again? London, Osaka, Paris - and now New York?
She’s shaking, cold sweat breaking on her skin.
“Get real,” she hears herself say. “Get fucking real. Why are you doing this? Does it make sense? Your head’s in the clouds all the fucking time and I can’t stand it anymore. Leave.”
“Soojung.”
“Don’t act like you’re not going when that’s all you know how to do. All you’ve done. It pisses me off.”
“That’s not-“
She hangs up, trembling still. Yongjin walks in, his incessant rambling coming to a halt when Krystal hurls the cordless phone across the room. It’s ringing, isolated from where it sits.
“Don’t pick it up,” Krystal snarls, when Yongjin moves forward.
“What the hell is going on?” Yongjin asks, and it’s that familiar grate of irritation in his voice. “Shit, Krystal, you don’t tell me anything anymore.”
It’s not worth talking about and he isn’t worth replying to, so Krystal doesn’t say a word.
In Osaka, Kai had kissed her for the first time. Krystal was stuffing herself with ramen, her glasses misted up from the warmth of the broth, and he had leaned forward and pressed his lips into hers. Wet and heated. When her glasses cleared, he was resting his head on his hand and watching her, biting down on his lower lip like he’d just told her a naughty secret.
Krystal kept it for him, and he hadn’t touched her ever since.
So now it’s freezing cold, but of course he’s here. London to New York, what difference does it make? He’s on her fucking porch like the horrible walking cliché that he is. Soaked to the bone with the same bleary eyes. As though he’s watching the world from behind a veil made of dreams.
“It’s you,” Kai says. Krystal squints, the spray of rain in her eyes. She’s tired of this shit, honestly. He’s clutching himself, lips so white they’re almost blue.
He’s the reason why she never gets surprised anymore.
“What the fuck,” is all she utters, before he pushes through the doorway and kisses her, his lips flush against her own. The sensation is so sudden, so raw, that Krystal finds herself falling backwards-literally and otherwise. He’s gripping onto her pajamas, fisting the cloth in the palms of his hands like he’s trying to save her from something-Krystal doesn’t know what. He’s wet against her, his mouth overwhelming hers in both heat and passion. Krystal opens her eyes, sees the flutter of his eyelashes.
“Kai,” she mumbles.
“Jongin,” he corrects softly. “I’m Jongin.”
“What-”
“It’s you.” His gaze is misty. It’s sickening. Krystal wants to pull away, roll back into bed with the man she’s supposed to love. But Kai is holding her as though he may just fall apart if she so much as moves. Krystal grips his arm, her fingernails curling into his skin.
“Stop it,” she says.
“It’s you, Soojung. Don’t you understand? Tell me what I can do to make you understand.” Kai buries his face in her neck, and it’s warm, the damp of his tears. “It’s you. You’re real to me. Don’t you get it? You’re so fucking real and it’s hurting me.”
Krystal stares blankly into the rain dripping into her porch, the night lamps painting the street orange under the sheets of water. Kai is clinging onto her so tight she thinks she may stop breathing completely. He’s hurting her, the way his fingers clamp into her, hungry and possessive.
She disentangles herself somehow, in a sort of daze as she turns from him and heads into her room. Yongjin is barely awake, but she crawls over him, almost missing the flash of anger in Kai’s eyes when he catches sight of the man in her bed-“Yongjin, get up.”
Yongjin grunts. Krystal leans over him, her fingers threading in his hair and pulling sharp. Yongjin’s eyes snap open with a howl-“The hell,” he yells. “Krystal, what the fuck.”
“Get out,” Krystal says curtly. She rolls off of him, tossing Yongjin his scattered clothing. “And shut the door on your way out. Your asscrack is showing. Keep the umbrella on the porch, I don’t care.”
He looks at her in disbelief. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Krystal tosses him his socks, and Yongjin gives her the finger before throwing Kai a dirty look. A flash of green umbrella and he’s gone, the main door slamming hard behind him.
The silence that follows feels uncomfortable. Almost. Krystal falls on her back, a sigh escaping her as she sinks into the mattress. “I’m so tired,” she mumbles.
“Soojung,” Kai says quietly. Krystal opens her eyes, watches Kai stand at the foot of the bed with his mussed up hair and wet clothes and she’s just sick of him, sick of fighting him and his impossible feelings for her. She’s just tired, period.
“Sleep, please,” she says at last, closing her eyes.
She hears him shuffle about the room, the plop of wet clothes, joined by the metal of his belt hitting the floor. She hears him approach the bed, his knee sending a creak through the mattress before he crawls under the covers beside her, an arm pulling her flush to his body. His hands are roaming under her pajamas, past her thigh and up her flat stomach, grazing over her breast.
“Soojung,” he whispers, “Soojung.”
“If you don’t fucking go to sleep in the next minute,” she threatens, but then his mouth is over hers, the damp of his skin raising goose bumps on the heat of her own. It feels like that secret they shared in Osaka. The warmth against her back in London. His gaze on her when all other eyes were on the Mona Lisa. He’s all wrapped around her now, pinning her into the mattress as he breathes into her mouth.
“Be mine,” he mumbles between kisses. “Please, please, please.”
“No.”
“I love you.” There’s an odd prickling in the back of her eyes, making her blink as he stares into her, gaze heavy-lidded and resigned. “Soojung. I don’t care if you hate me. But don’t leave me behind. Please.”
“You’re the one leaving all the time,” Krystal mumbles, but his face is blurring and she’s not sure why the tears are escaping her now, leaving trails on the side of her face. “I just can’t deal with this.”
“You say I’m cliché,” Kai says, and he’s even smiling a little as he thumbs the corner of her eyes. “But you, Jung Soojung, are a liar. A goddamn liar.”
Krystal doesn’t say anything. Kai leans in, a kiss pressed into her jawline.
“You like clichés,” he whispers into her neck.
“I don’t.”
Kai doesn’t say anything more, only pulls her close. Krystal falls asleep with his breath in her ear, the rain shuttering out the world.
She’s making breakfast-well, brunch-when Kai appears from the bedroom and sits down at the table, lips swollen and Luna’s idea of beautiful. He’d kissed her awake, long before she opened her eyes. It was then she let herself think about it, having Kai inside her, all over her. It consumes, and Krystal lets it go because the thought leaves her breathless, toes curled and hollow where her heart sits. He’s still watching her when she turns to look at him, sausages in the pan.
“You were laughing,” Kai says, breaking the silence.
“What?”
That smile. “The first time I saw you.” Krystal sets down the plates, and Kai stands, the chair sounding painfully against the floor. “You were on your tip toes. BoA-noona’s track was playing and you were going to start warm-ups with Songqian-noona. And you were laughing because I had walked into the wall.”
“The wall of clouds.” The memory returns in flashes. Kai’s strange expression as the other boy trainees filed out of the room, his eyes fixed on her before he plowed into the wall. It bubbles in her chest, the same amusement. “You know what I thought? That you must be one of those uncool idiots who could never debut.”
“Idiot?”
“You had your head in the clouds even then.”
“Since I saw your face. Cliché, isn’t it.”
He’s contagious, the way he’s shaking, his laughter now in sync with hers. It’s frightening how he seems to engulf her from behind, his body so close she may just disappear into him and forget where she begins and where he ends.
She’s aching all over because she can't get enough.
“What?” he whispers, gentle against her ear.
“I said,” Krystal says, and the fright blooming in her chest dims briefly as Kai wraps his arms over her, a kiss buried in her hair-“you're holding me too tight.”
“Sorry,” Kai murmurs, and she cranes her neck to meet his pensive gaze. The same bleary eyes and mussed up hair. Krystal is sick of it, of how sure he is and how small and afraid she is in comparison.
She fiddles with the hem of her shirt; Kai laces his fingers into hers and keeps her still.
Kai/Krystal
A companion piece to Sundowning, but works as a standalone.
Kai has a habit of showing up. Krystal doesn't like it.
moonlighting
I’m petrified, I’m hypnotised
Every time you walk by.
Aqualung; Can't Get You Out of My Mind
“Soojung,” he says. Or at least, that’s what he mouths. She has her earphones on.
“Don’t call me that,” she says flatly.
It’s too personal, the way her name rolls off his tongue, like he’s murmured it too many times without her permission.
Krystal doesn’t like it.
He reaches over. A gentle tug, and an earphone drops limply into her lap.
“You’d let Taemin-hyung call you that, but not me?” Kai’s smile is odd, almost twisted on his face. Krystal doesn’t find it vaguely attractive at the moment. She doesn’t understand Luna’s pointless pining over him back then, the girlish blush that would fill her cheeks whenever Kai so much as looked in her direction.
Krystal wishes Kai would stop looking at her.
It’s probably Jinri who gave Kai her address in New York. It was, after all, also Jinri who’d given Kai the heads-up when Krystal disappeared into London, Osaka, Paris. She could be riding elephants in Bangkok for all she knew and Kai would turn up in a sunhat, shy and smiling. She remembers how flabbergasted she was to run into him at the portrait Mona Lisa, tourists knocking into their elbows.
How cliché, she had thought.
So when Kai turns up on her campus at New York University, she’s not surprised. What she is, though, is pissed off. That’s a pretty big ass suitcase.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he’s saying, as hotdog mustard dribbles down his fingers. “Staying here awhile. Always wanted to discover New York. You don’t mind, do you?”
Krystal bites her tongue. Kai has lunch. She leans back against the bench and stares up at the blue sky.
“Kai,” she says then, “you can’t stay with me.”
He barely even frowns. “You let me put up with you in Osaka…”
“I have a boyfriend,” Krystal says, as if that explains everything. Maybe his face falls, but that really isn’t supposed to be her problem.
Yongjin, his name is. Because she considers Kai a friend, she tells him about this quirky, interesting fashion student from Parsons who’s scored an internship with Dior next summer. He’s Korean, too. American-born. Krystal had met him while on a date with another boy, and they had ended the night making out with each other at the back of a pub. His fashion is authentic, kind of like the shit EXO used to wear, but Yongjin is infinitely more polished than they can ever hope to be in their personal styling. Kai listens with bleary eyes and a polite smile.
“That’s more interesting than how we met, I guess,” he says, setting down his cola. There’s an awkwardness in even his fingertips now, the strumming of his digits on the wood table empty of any coherence. Krystal tries to recall how they met, and she doesn’t remember.
“While we were training,” she decides. It makes no difference.
Kai’s eyes crinkle for the briefest of moments. “And you were laughing.”
Once, Kai told Krystal he wanted to see the world.
For what, she’d scoffed. SM Town concert tours had taken them across continents, through Europe and the Americas and Asia. Where else can you possibly go?
Sweat was beaded on his forehead and it was too dim backstage for the smile noonas liked to call enigmatic. Kai said, I want to find the right place.
The right place?
To stay, he said, after a pause. When it feels right, I won’t go anywhere.
How do you know if it feels right? Krystal asked. Kai was watching her keenly, eyes hooded.
I’m waiting for the right moment, I guess, he said.
Sounds cliché. Her words.
He’d arrived in London, the rain matting his dark hair across his forehead. Funny how he always turned up so randomly, as though the world resided casually in Seoul. Krystal doesn’t remember what he said then. Something about his paycheck coming in only the week after, could she put him up please? There was only one bed in the room she rented, so they shared. Krystal hogged the blanket, but he didn’t mind.
He’d fallen asleep with his feet between her own. When Krystal woke up the next morning, the only thing to prove he was ever there was his scent in her shirt.
She doesn’t think about Kai for a fortnight. Finals, semester projects, project mates from hell. Yongjin drops by her apartment and complains that she doesn’t pay him attention, and Krystal lets him do her, drawn-out and passionate in the shower. Then he babbles into her ear about that Dior internship. Jinri skypes her in-between, in tears about Taemin and his ridiculous ways. That’s when she calls Kai.
“When you go back to Seoul,” she says into the phone, “tell Taemin-oppa to get his shit together.”
Kai laughs. “Soojung, it’s their business, alright? And it’s not like we talk a lot anymore, it’d be strange for me to butt in just because you asked me to.” A pause. “Besides, I’m not leaving.”
“And why not?”
He doesn’t say anything for moment. “Maybe I want to stay, Soojung.”
Her thoughts are a blank. Until it hits her, that anger. Krystal doesn’t know where she’s kept it, but it’s that tight, familiar sensation in her chest that happens whenever he appears out of nowhere, pensive and secretive. It feels like ice in her stomach and heat in her words. It doesn’t make sense, any of this. How upset he makes her, even without trying. Who the hell does he think he is, Krystal seethes, to walk into her life as and when he pleases only to leave again? London, Osaka, Paris - and now New York?
She’s shaking, cold sweat breaking on her skin.
“Get real,” she hears herself say. “Get fucking real. Why are you doing this? Does it make sense? Your head’s in the clouds all the fucking time and I can’t stand it anymore. Leave.”
“Soojung.”
“Don’t act like you’re not going when that’s all you know how to do. All you’ve done. It pisses me off.”
“That’s not-“
She hangs up, trembling still. Yongjin walks in, his incessant rambling coming to a halt when Krystal hurls the cordless phone across the room. It’s ringing, isolated from where it sits.
“Don’t pick it up,” Krystal snarls, when Yongjin moves forward.
“What the hell is going on?” Yongjin asks, and it’s that familiar grate of irritation in his voice. “Shit, Krystal, you don’t tell me anything anymore.”
It’s not worth talking about and he isn’t worth replying to, so Krystal doesn’t say a word.
In Osaka, Kai had kissed her for the first time. Krystal was stuffing herself with ramen, her glasses misted up from the warmth of the broth, and he had leaned forward and pressed his lips into hers. Wet and heated. When her glasses cleared, he was resting his head on his hand and watching her, biting down on his lower lip like he’d just told her a naughty secret.
Krystal kept it for him, and he hadn’t touched her ever since.
So now it’s freezing cold, but of course he’s here. London to New York, what difference does it make? He’s on her fucking porch like the horrible walking cliché that he is. Soaked to the bone with the same bleary eyes. As though he’s watching the world from behind a veil made of dreams.
“It’s you,” Kai says. Krystal squints, the spray of rain in her eyes. She’s tired of this shit, honestly. He’s clutching himself, lips so white they’re almost blue.
He’s the reason why she never gets surprised anymore.
“What the fuck,” is all she utters, before he pushes through the doorway and kisses her, his lips flush against her own. The sensation is so sudden, so raw, that Krystal finds herself falling backwards-literally and otherwise. He’s gripping onto her pajamas, fisting the cloth in the palms of his hands like he’s trying to save her from something-Krystal doesn’t know what. He’s wet against her, his mouth overwhelming hers in both heat and passion. Krystal opens her eyes, sees the flutter of his eyelashes.
“Kai,” she mumbles.
“Jongin,” he corrects softly. “I’m Jongin.”
“What-”
“It’s you.” His gaze is misty. It’s sickening. Krystal wants to pull away, roll back into bed with the man she’s supposed to love. But Kai is holding her as though he may just fall apart if she so much as moves. Krystal grips his arm, her fingernails curling into his skin.
“Stop it,” she says.
“It’s you, Soojung. Don’t you understand? Tell me what I can do to make you understand.” Kai buries his face in her neck, and it’s warm, the damp of his tears. “It’s you. You’re real to me. Don’t you get it? You’re so fucking real and it’s hurting me.”
Krystal stares blankly into the rain dripping into her porch, the night lamps painting the street orange under the sheets of water. Kai is clinging onto her so tight she thinks she may stop breathing completely. He’s hurting her, the way his fingers clamp into her, hungry and possessive.
She disentangles herself somehow, in a sort of daze as she turns from him and heads into her room. Yongjin is barely awake, but she crawls over him, almost missing the flash of anger in Kai’s eyes when he catches sight of the man in her bed-“Yongjin, get up.”
Yongjin grunts. Krystal leans over him, her fingers threading in his hair and pulling sharp. Yongjin’s eyes snap open with a howl-“The hell,” he yells. “Krystal, what the fuck.”
“Get out,” Krystal says curtly. She rolls off of him, tossing Yongjin his scattered clothing. “And shut the door on your way out. Your asscrack is showing. Keep the umbrella on the porch, I don’t care.”
He looks at her in disbelief. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Krystal tosses him his socks, and Yongjin gives her the finger before throwing Kai a dirty look. A flash of green umbrella and he’s gone, the main door slamming hard behind him.
The silence that follows feels uncomfortable. Almost. Krystal falls on her back, a sigh escaping her as she sinks into the mattress. “I’m so tired,” she mumbles.
“Soojung,” Kai says quietly. Krystal opens her eyes, watches Kai stand at the foot of the bed with his mussed up hair and wet clothes and she’s just sick of him, sick of fighting him and his impossible feelings for her. She’s just tired, period.
“Sleep, please,” she says at last, closing her eyes.
She hears him shuffle about the room, the plop of wet clothes, joined by the metal of his belt hitting the floor. She hears him approach the bed, his knee sending a creak through the mattress before he crawls under the covers beside her, an arm pulling her flush to his body. His hands are roaming under her pajamas, past her thigh and up her flat stomach, grazing over her breast.
“Soojung,” he whispers, “Soojung.”
“If you don’t fucking go to sleep in the next minute,” she threatens, but then his mouth is over hers, the damp of his skin raising goose bumps on the heat of her own. It feels like that secret they shared in Osaka. The warmth against her back in London. His gaze on her when all other eyes were on the Mona Lisa. He’s all wrapped around her now, pinning her into the mattress as he breathes into her mouth.
“Be mine,” he mumbles between kisses. “Please, please, please.”
“No.”
“I love you.” There’s an odd prickling in the back of her eyes, making her blink as he stares into her, gaze heavy-lidded and resigned. “Soojung. I don’t care if you hate me. But don’t leave me behind. Please.”
“You’re the one leaving all the time,” Krystal mumbles, but his face is blurring and she’s not sure why the tears are escaping her now, leaving trails on the side of her face. “I just can’t deal with this.”
“You say I’m cliché,” Kai says, and he’s even smiling a little as he thumbs the corner of her eyes. “But you, Jung Soojung, are a liar. A goddamn liar.”
Krystal doesn’t say anything. Kai leans in, a kiss pressed into her jawline.
“You like clichés,” he whispers into her neck.
“I don’t.”
Kai doesn’t say anything more, only pulls her close. Krystal falls asleep with his breath in her ear, the rain shuttering out the world.
She’s making breakfast-well, brunch-when Kai appears from the bedroom and sits down at the table, lips swollen and Luna’s idea of beautiful. He’d kissed her awake, long before she opened her eyes. It was then she let herself think about it, having Kai inside her, all over her. It consumes, and Krystal lets it go because the thought leaves her breathless, toes curled and hollow where her heart sits. He’s still watching her when she turns to look at him, sausages in the pan.
“You were laughing,” Kai says, breaking the silence.
“What?”
That smile. “The first time I saw you.” Krystal sets down the plates, and Kai stands, the chair sounding painfully against the floor. “You were on your tip toes. BoA-noona’s track was playing and you were going to start warm-ups with Songqian-noona. And you were laughing because I had walked into the wall.”
“The wall of clouds.” The memory returns in flashes. Kai’s strange expression as the other boy trainees filed out of the room, his eyes fixed on her before he plowed into the wall. It bubbles in her chest, the same amusement. “You know what I thought? That you must be one of those uncool idiots who could never debut.”
“Idiot?”
“You had your head in the clouds even then.”
“Since I saw your face. Cliché, isn’t it.”
He’s contagious, the way he’s shaking, his laughter now in sync with hers. It’s frightening how he seems to engulf her from behind, his body so close she may just disappear into him and forget where she begins and where he ends.
She’s aching all over because she can't get enough.
“What?” he whispers, gentle against her ear.
“I said,” Krystal says, and the fright blooming in her chest dims briefly as Kai wraps his arms over her, a kiss buried in her hair-“you're holding me too tight.”
“Sorry,” Kai murmurs, and she cranes her neck to meet his pensive gaze. The same bleary eyes and mussed up hair. Krystal is sick of it, of how sure he is and how small and afraid she is in comparison.
She fiddles with the hem of her shirt; Kai laces his fingers into hers and keeps her still.