Suddenly on a Leash (1)

Chapter twenty two

My heart was pounding mercilessly in my chest and I stared back at him disquietly; lord only knew what expression I held on my faceー but Sora looked amused. I stuttered for a long moment before a sentence came out. "Wh... Wh... Why did you...?!"
I couldn't fathom why he had done this...
He'd kissed me...! Why? Why had he done that?
He'd done it before, but this time was different... This wasn't a contract. It was out of the blue. For nothing. What? Had he just felt like it? It was so unexpected, so unprecedented...
But it wasn't just that...
It felt different.
I could feel something different in him.
What was going on...? I couldn't manage to collect my thoughts as I stared at him expectantly.
After a moment, he opened his mouth, but his answer wasn't accompanied with eye contact. "It was to clear your mind..."
His response felt emptyー I didn't buy it.
"... Sora," I spoke firmer. "... Why did you kiss me?"
I demanded to know.
But he said nothing.
I grimaced, pausing before speaking again. "... You can't... You can't just do that...!" I vented. "You can't just kiss a girl for nothing...! Not when you don't even...!"
I was beginning to grow angry at him, angry at the kiss. Why had he done such a thing? For nothing....? A kiss was supposed to mean something!
And the way it felt, I couldn't understand the feelings he held behind it... And that frustrated me.
"You can't do that!" I raised my voice, and felt tears sting the corners of my eyes. My thoughts, my stomach, my feelingsー everything was in knots. "Why would you...?"
I looked at him once again, practically begging him to answer, but still, his mouth remained shut. Frustration built up within me, and I raised a hand, a clenched fist, ready to hit him in the chest. I had barely swung down before his own hand shot up, catching my wrist sharply, effortlessly. The back of my throat felt tight, and my face was stiff. "Why...??"

"... Why does it upset you?"

His question upset me, but his face suggested that he really couldn't understand it. I tried to swallow, biting back the ugly, frustrated cry that tried to escape me.
".... You can't do that to a girl..." My voice was low and quiet, but with no less intensity than before. "Maybe a kiss means something different to you... But to me, I..." I paused, my body going limp and losing its will to fight him. "... I want someone to kiss me and feel something..."
There was a long, painful silence that stretched on for what felt like centuries, until finally, Sora loosened his grip on my wrist, lowering it slowly. I looked up into his face for answers, but his gaze was locked with the ground. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet I suspected that maybe I'd misheard him...
"... And if I did feel something?"
My heart almost stopped beating. If he... What...?
Had I heard correctly...? Surely he didn't say..
"... If... If you... Had...?" My voice was hoarse, caked in the obvious disbelief I was now taking on in place of frustration.
He looked away in another directionー anywhere but at me. "... If I had... There wouldn't be a problem, correct?"
What was he saying...? He couldn't mean what I thought he meant...
I was all jumbled up inside, I couldn't manage to grasp what he was saying, let alone reply. So, deciding I had no response to offer, Sora only turned and left me there, alone with my thoughts.
The most unsafe place he could've left me.