Divine Milking System-Chapter 62 | Six Inches From Heaven

The grass was wet against the back of my neck and I didn’t care even a little bit.

7:38 AM. My lungs were filing a formal complaint with my brain, my legs had submitted a joint resignation letter, and somewhere in the distance Misato was making one of her clones do burpees just to prove a point.

I stared at the sky. Blue. Really blue. California always looked fake.

I liked the Misato who tolerated me better. That Misato was manageable. That Misato looked at me like a mild inconvenience she’d learned to work around, like a piece of furniture slightly in the wrong place.

This Misato, the one who had apparently decided I was a project worth investing in, was going to kill me. Not accidentally. Not through negligence. She was going to look me directly in the eyes while my cardiovascular system staged a full revolt and say "one more set" with complete sincerity.

I closed my eyes.

Forty-five minutes to shower, dress, and physically relocate myself to a classroom. That’s it. That’s the whole challenge. Any functioning human being should be capable of that.

My legs disagreed.

The morning smelled like ocean and grass and the specific flavor of suffering that Misato had apparently bottled and distributed across the entire east field.

A shadow fell over my face.

I opened one eye.

Oh.

Oh, there is a God and He is a comedian, and He has absolutely terrible taste in punchlines.

Misato was squatting beside me, because of course she was, forearms resting on her knees, looking down at me with that specific expression she reserved for situations where she genuinely couldn’t tell if I was being lazy or if something had gone clinically wrong. Her lime green hair caught the morning light like a neon sign advertising every bad decision I’d made since moving to California.

The black biker shorts were approximately six inches from my face. Not seven. Not eight. Six. The sports bra was doing the Lord’s work and I was at the scene of the miracle.

She smelled incredible. That was the genuine insult of it. Something clean and sharp cutting through the sweat, citrus and cedar and the very specific scent of a person whose body had been working correctly for its entire natural life. My cardiovascular system had just staged a complete mutiny and she smelled like a five-star hotel lobby.

I had one sincere prayer in that moment. It was simple. If there was any justice in the universe for men who suffered greatly and asked for little, a slight breeze would knock her forward.

Please.

What a way to go out. Honestly. The obituary writes itself. Hunter candidate, eighteen, taken suddenly, no stated regrets, no survivors, no complaints. Misato Ayame would probably not even feel bad about it. She’d just make another clone and finish her cooldown routine.

No breeze came. God was busy elsewhere.

"Monroe." Her voice was dry as the California summer burning above us. "You’re staring."

"I’m unconscious," I said. "You’re hallucinating."

"Get up. You have class in under an hour."

"Yeah." I didn’t move. "I’m going."

"You’re horizontal."

"I’m going horizontally." 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She grabbed my wrist and pulled, and Misato strong-arming me off the ground with zero visible effort was deeply humbling. I got my feet under me before she did all the work, because I had at least that much dignity left.

Naomi was standing about ten feet away, already cleaned up, her braid redone, gym bag hanging from one shoulder like she hadn’t just spent the last hour getting worked into the ground.

She smiled when she saw me vertical.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thank you."

"I meant it kindly."

"I know."

Misato was already halfway across the courtyard, voice carrying back to us as she shouted something at Jordan about shadow stability drills and his complete lack of standards. Jordan said something back, too quiet for me to catch, and one of Misato’s clones dissolved right next to him with a sound like a rubber band snapping at full stretch. Jordan flinched hard enough to take himself completely off his feet. He sat there on the grass for a moment, looking like he was reconsidering his entire relationship with early mornings.

I started walking before my body had fully agreed to cooperate.

Naomi fell into step beside me immediately, close enough that our arms made contact every few strides. The morning light picked up the shell necklace at her collarbone, the pale pink of it catching and holding. She smelled like the soap from my bathroom, which produced something genuinely complicated somewhere in the middle of my chest that I was going to examine carefully later. Much later. Possibly never.

"She’s going to be brutal for the entire semester," Naomi said.

"She was brutally accurate about our rankings, though. I’m respecting the commitment."

"You did well today."

"I collapsed on the grass."

"After finishing." She nudged my arm slightly. "That counts."

I let that sit for a second. The campus was waking up around us, students crossing between buildings in clusters, a couple of Ruby kids jogging past in matching gear, the ocean visible between buildings in long flat strips of blue.

"You feeling okay?" I asked, keeping my voice low enough that it was just for her.

Naomi’s cheeks went pink, not quite matching the stripes in her hair but making a solid attempt. She kept her focus ahead on the path, then seemed to decide studying the middle distance was interesting enough to hold her there.

"The buff is still going," she said. "I feel really good, actually. Really good."

"Good."

A few steps passed. Someone on a bicycle cut across the path ahead of us and she tracked it longer than necessary.

"Jace."

"Yeah."

"Don’t look at me like that in front of Misato again. I won’t be able to control myself."

I thought about pointing out that I’d been looking at Misato, not her, at that particular moment, but I had enough survival instinct left to keep that information private.

"Deal," I said.