The Space Between Us
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 6
Navigating New Territory
The kitchen smelled like home—coffee, toast, her mother’s signature scrambled eggs with cheese. Rin followed Kiko down the stairs, hyperaware of every point where their bodies nearly touched, of the careful distance Kiko maintained that felt both necessary and painful.
Everything had changed upstairs. Everything. And now they had to pretend nothing had.
“There you are!” Her mother looked up from the stove, smiling. “I was about to send David up to drag you out of bed.”
David glanced up from his newspaper. “Figured you girls needed the sleep. Long drive yesterday.”
Rin slid into her usual seat at the kitchen table, and Kiko took the chair across from her—not beside her, like she might have yesterday. The distance felt deliberate, safe. Their eyes met briefly, and Rin saw her own nervous energy reflected back.
“Sleep okay?” her mother asked, setting plates in front of them.
“Great,” Kiko said, maybe too quickly. “Really well.”
“The loft’s comfortable,” Rin added, focusing intently on her eggs.
Her mother and David exchanged one of those parent looks—the kind that said they were pleased their daughters were getting along so well, that the blended family experiment was working. If only they knew.
Rin’s stomach twisted with guilt and fear and something else she couldn’t quite name. This was her mother. David was Kiko’s father. They’d built this family together, and what Rin and Kiko were doing—what they’d admitted to each other upstairs—felt like it could shatter everything.
But it also felt like the most honest thing Rin had ever done.
“What’s the plan for today?” David asked. “We were thinking of driving into town, maybe doing some shopping, getting lunch somewhere nice.”
“Actually,” Kiko said, and Rin heard the careful casualness in her voice, “Rin and I were thinking we might explore campus a bit. Walk around, get coffee. If that’s okay?”
“Of course,” Rin’s mother said. “You two should enjoy your break. Just be back for dinner—I’m making pot roast.”
Relief flooded through Rin. Time alone with Kiko. Time to figure out what they were doing, what this meant, without having to perform normalcy for their parents.
They finished breakfast making small talk about classes and winter break plans, and then escaped upstairs to get ready. Back in the loft, door closed, they looked at each other and simultaneously exhaled.
“That was exhausting,” Kiko said, collapsing onto the bed. “And it was just breakfast.”
“I know.” Rin sat beside her, close but not touching. “I kept thinking they could see it on my face. That everything’s different now.”
“Maybe it shows less than you think.” Kiko turned her head to look at Rin. “We’ve always been close. Always spent time together. Maybe to them it just looks ... the same.”
“Maybe.” But Rin knew it wasn’t the same. Couldn’t be. Not when every time she looked at Kiko now, she wanted to touch her, kiss her, tell her again that she loved her.
She reached out tentatively, tracing her fingers along Kiko’s arm. Kiko shivered, and Rin felt that same electric current from earlier.
“We need to talk about this,” Rin said softly. “About what we’re doing. What we want.”
“I know.” Kiko caught Rin’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “But can we do it somewhere that’s not here? Somewhere that feels like ours, not theirs?”
Rin understood immediately. Here, in her mother’s house, they were daughters. Stepsisters. They needed neutral ground to figure out how to be something else.
“The coffee shop near campus,” Rin suggested. “The one with the quiet back room.”
“Perfect.”
Twenty minutes later, they were walking across the small liberal arts campus where Rin had spent her high school years visiting her mother. It was nearly empty now, most students gone for winter break, and the quiet felt like a gift.
The coffee shop was warm and smelled like cinnamon and espresso. They ordered—Kiko’s usual caramel latte, Rin’s black coffee with too much sugar—and claimed a corner table in the back room, away from the few other customers.
For a moment they just sat, hands wrapped around warm mugs, neither quite sure how to start this conversation.
“So,” Kiko finally said. “We’re in love with each other.”
Rin felt her lips curve despite the seriousness of the moment. “Yeah. We are.”
“And we’re stepsisters.”
“Yeah.”
“And we’re roommates.”
“Also yeah.”
Kiko laughed, but there was an edge of hysteria to it. “God, we’re such a cliché. Every forbidden romance trope wrapped into one.”
“Except it’s not a trope for us,” Rin said quietly. “It’s our life.”
“Right.” Kiko sobered. “So what do we do about it?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? The one Rin had been avoiding thinking about too directly because she didn’t know if there were any good answers.
“What do you want to do?” Rin asked.
“Honestly?” Kiko met her eyes. “I want to be with you. Really with you. Not hiding, not pretending. I want to hold your hand when we walk across campus. I want to kiss you goodnight without worrying who might see. I want—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I want everything.”
Rin’s chest ached with longing and fear in equal measure. “I want that too. But Kiko, the reality is—”
“I know. Our parents. The family. The fact that legally we’re related even if not by blood.” Kiko’s voice was steady but sad. “I know all the reasons this is complicated.”
“Not just complicated. Potentially devastating.” Rin forced herself to voice the fears she’d been suppressing. “If we do this—if we try to be together—and our parents find out, it could destroy the family. Your dad and my mom, they’re happy. Really happy. And we’d be asking them to accept something that most people would find—”
“Wrong,” Kiko finished. “Inappropriate. Fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in heavy silence. Rin thought about her mother’s face at breakfast, the easy happiness there. Thought about David’s gentle humor, the way he’d worked so hard to be a good stepfather to her. They’d blended their families with such care, such intention.
And here Rin and Kiko were, about to blow it all apart.
“But we’re not actually related,” Kiko said, and there was something fierce in her voice now. “We met when we were twelve and thirteen. We didn’t grow up together as kids. Our parents got married and decided we were sisters, but that doesn’t make it true. Not in the way that matters.”
“Legally it does. Socially it does.”
“But not biologically. Not really.” Kiko leaned forward. “Rin, I’m not saying this isn’t complicated as hell. I’m not saying people won’t judge us or that our parents won’t freak out. But I’m also saying that what we feel for each other—that’s real. That’s not something we chose or manufactured. It just is.”
Rin knew she was right. Had known it this morning when she’d finally let herself admit the truth. But knowing it and figuring out what to do about it were two very different things.
“So what’s the alternative?” Kiko pressed. “We pretend this morning didn’t happen? Go back to being just stepsisters, just roommates? Watch each other date other people and act like it doesn’t tear us apart?”
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