The Second Coupling
The air inside the second partner Dracore grew feverishly hot. Thick body scent mingled with damp heat, and the trapped breaths spread throughout the cockpit like a living haze. Luna’s pilot suit clung to her skin as if soaked in sweat, and above it, the mechanical hum of the control yoke descending echoed slowly, like a stifled heartbeat. I quietly stared at Luna’s back.
She knelt before the pilot seat, spine elongated in a long, graceful line, steadying her breathing. The motion of brushing her silver hair over one shoulder carried no tension at all. Instead, there was a calm that suggested she had been waiting for this intimate closeness. Click.
The instant the tip of the control yoke locked perfectly into her socket, a small, restrained shiver ran down Luna’s shoulders. Without turning her head, she spoke in a low voice.
“Yuto, are you ready? You can grab me now.”
“Yeah.”
But before I took hold of the yoke, I decided to ask something that had been bothering me.
“…Sakuragi. You said that at the academy, you were suppressing your synchronization rate, right?”
Luna showed no reaction to my question. Not a single movement of her body, not even a tremor in her shoulders. It was as if she hadn’t heard me—or had heard and chosen to ignore it. Even the slight angle of her tilted head remained frozen. She was completely silent.
“Sakuragi? Can you hear me?”
I called again, but there was still no response. That very lack of reaction felt sharper than any blunt reply could have been. The silence cut deeper.
“Luna.”
Only when I finally used her real name did she react. She puffed out her cheeks and glanced back at me, her expression filled with suppressed emotion.
“So you finally call me by my name? I told you last time—call me by my name.”
“…I know, but…”
I gave a bitter smile and continued.
“It’s just that Yuzuki keeps popping into my head. At some point, calling you by your last name started feeling more natural.”
“But Yuzuki isn’t even here right now, is she?”
I couldn’t argue with that. I fell silent.
“If you’re going to couple with me, you have to call me by my name from now on. No exceptions.”
“…Alright. I’ll try.”
“Hmmm… Try? That’s not the answer I wanted to hear.”
Luna narrowed her eyes and stared at me intently. Her gaze was playful and relaxed on the surface, but somewhere deeper, she was drawing a very clear line. After a brief silence, she turned her eyes forward again and spoke slowly.
“Anyway, to answer your question… If I get too deeply entangled with someone, the kids get hurt. That’s why I was suppressing it.”
“Because of your emotional transference issue?”
“That’s right. Did you hear it from Father?”
“…More or less.”
In truth, the scene I had seen in the anime was burned vividly into my mind. Luna’s coupling was special. The extreme hatred and rage she harbored toward the Outers transferred directly to her partner the deeper the synchronization became. It wasn’t quite the same as simply sharing emotions. It was more like one-sided pressure.
That was why Father had opposed coupling with Luna from the very beginning. Her emotional transference was too strong. Too dangerous.
And now, I had to steel myself to accept that danger with my entire body.
Given Luna’s obvious interest in me, and the researchers who wanted data, coupling with her had always been inevitable. Besides, this was an emergency. In that case, I might as well enjoy it.
It might have been arrogance, but after accumulating more coupling experience, there was one thing I could be confident about: I was not the kind of person who would easily surrender control of a coupling.
“Starting now.”
“Mm.”
I took one short, deep breath. Then I exhaled slowly, as if releasing the tension that had filled my lungs, and reached out my hand. The moment my palms touched the two control yokes, a faint electric current seemed to seep into me. Luna’s body heat, her heartbeat, even the tiny breaths she swallowed down—all of it flowed straight into me.
It wasn’t mere contact. It felt like a thin neural net spreading beneath the skin had touched my own nerves and fused with them. Our heartbeats overlapped. Body temperatures flickered. The air inside the cockpit grew thick with shared sensation.
Synchronization Rate: 12%.
Every time my fingertips adjusted the yoke, Luna’s breathing changed—growing longer, deeper. A strange tremor, impossible to tell if it was tension or stimulation, flowed from her shoulders.
Synchronization Rate: 26%.
“Haa… It really is fast… This kind of sudden spike in synchronization rate… I’ve never experienced it before…”
Luna’s voice, laced with a moan, spread through the cockpit. Listening to her, I gripped the yoke tighter. At that moment, a powerful pressure shot down my spine and pierced straight into my heart. It felt as if her senses had been compressed and were flowing into me like an electric current.
Synchronization Rate: 43%.
Our breaths grew hotter. The yoke in my palms was no longer just a control device. It was as if Luna’s body had been layered over mine—her heat, her pulse, the tension in her muscles—all transmitted in real time.
But the flow of sensation was completely different from my previous experiences. With Yuzuki, I had held the reins. I could lead naturally, as if guiding her with a string. But with Luna, it was the opposite. The moment I tried to take the reins, it felt like my hand was being sucked in the other direction.
…So this is why they all broke.
Only now did I understand why the pilots who had coupled with Luna had collapsed so easily. Just as Yuzuki had been swayed by my emotions, others had been swallowed by Luna’s. Hatred. Rage. All-encompassing hostility toward the Outers. Her will was too clear, too sharp. It felt less like emotion and more like a unilateral command—an overwhelming pressure.
My entire body felt as though it were being eroded by the sensations rushing in from all directions. I desperately fought to hold onto my center. Yet even in the midst of that struggle, our synchronization rate continued to climb without hesitation.
56%. 64%. 78%…
The gauge shot toward its peak. The moment it broke past 80, a black wave of Luna’s emotions crashed into my mind like a tidal surge. Having truly crossed the threshold, the emotional transference had begun.
But it wasn’t simple transference. Luna’s emotions clung to my consciousness like living creatures, trying to control me.
Fight. Kill. Destroy. Erase every last Outer.
The emotions pouring from deep inside her struck my ears like whispers. And at that exact moment, one clear point in my mind resurfaced.
Thanks to it, I finally understood why I had felt such pleasure during my coupling with Yuzuki. It was the pleasure of the one who held dominance. Watching the other person’s emotions and body respond to my consciousness, flowing exactly as I willed—it had intoxicated me without my realizing it. In a way, it was a form of dominance lust.
If Yuzuki had known, she would have glared at me and called me a pervert.
But right now, I faced even that distorted desire without turning away. At the same time, the emotions that had stained my mind began to slowly fade. It wasn’t that I had forcibly pushed them out. It was simply that I had reclaimed my center.
And so the synchronization rate began to draw a descending curve. The gauge that had soared so sharply now slid down as if losing balance on a slope. The reason was clear.
At the center where our consciousnesses intersected, we weren’t accepting or acknowledging each other’s domains—we were invading them. Luna was trying to dye my consciousness with her own. I, in turn, was pushing back that intrusion and trying to drag her down beneath me.
Who stands on top?
Who dominates within this space?
Words were no longer necessary. Luna was trying to subdue me. She tightened around me with her emotions and instincts, attempting to claim this coupling as her own. Her senses were persistent and violent at the same time.
In contrast, I held on, facing her head-on. I slipped through the gaps in the surging heat and impulses, trying to reach her core instead. The pressure of our fierce tug-of-war over coupling dominance filled the cockpit. Even breathing became difficult.
Our body temperatures, pulses, and breaths overlapped perfectly, achieving a precise ‘equilibrium’ at the peak of sensation. Neither of us could fully rise above the other. Neither of us could be completely broken.
This was no longer a simple coupling. It was a clash of emotions and senses. A collision of primal dominance instincts, each trying to drag the other down.
Finally, unable to endure the suffocating stalemate any longer, I spoke in a low voice.
“…Luna. Ease up a little. At this rate, the synchronization rate won’t go any higher.”
“Then just accept it. You’re the one who keeps rejecting me, Yuto.”
Her tone was mischievous, but there was clear sincerity mixed in. The sight was both amusing and dizzying, so I let out a quiet laugh.
So this is the only way she knows how to couple.
I realized it instinctively. As long as I refused to break, Luna would never willingly yield the center.
But we didn’t have time to wrestle here. Besides, a high synchronization rate wasn’t always a good thing. Hadn’t I already learned that during the previous game with Luna? If we launched while maintaining such high output from the start, we would be exhausted before even fighting the Outers.
Just as I reached that conclusion internally, the communication channel connected automatically. A calm voice came from the research headquarters.
It was Father’s voice.
“…I’m ready.”
As I answered, I let my gaze sweep across the cockpit. Luna, seated beside me, kept her head lowered, quietly adjusting the control instruments with her fingertips.
“Luna. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
At Luna’s reply, I nodded and responded to the transmission again.
“Requesting launch authorization.”
At the same moment, a heavy thud echoed through the cockpit floor as the outer wall locks disengaged. The hangar platform trembled softly as it began to rise, lifting the massive frame of the Dracore upward.
BOOM—!
A powerful gust of wind rushed in from outside, sweeping through the cockpit. As the upper hangar gate opened, the glittering nightscape of the city appeared, along with the distant flashing lights of a dimensional rift.
I gripped the yoke once more and steadied my breathing. In that instant, the Dracore kicked off the platform and rose to the surface.
As its massive body pushed aside concrete and began to move, I felt two contradictory sensations at once.
It was heavy.
And it was light.
The crushing pressure of the Dracore’s enormous mass fighting against Earth’s gravity bore down on my spine. Yet at the same time, the machine moved with astonishing smoothness and flexibility. There was almost no vibration, and the sensation of acceleration seeped beneath my skin without any discomfort.
The collision of those two opposing feelings left me with a strangely intoxicating pleasure.
And I understood clearly.
Luna and Yuzuki were completely different partners.
Coupling with Yuzuki had been warm. Emotions flowed gently, and even the slightest vibration at the fingertips was shared with a soft, embracing power.
But Luna was the opposite. Instead of embracing me, she tried to devour me. She tightened around my consciousness and swallowed my senses—an erosion that felt closer to predation than synchronization.
…Or perhaps that was just my own arrogant interpretation. From Yuzuki’s perspective, it might have been the reverse. The warmth I had felt might have carried an entirely different weight for her. Not an embrace, but predation. Not gentle synchronization, but a dominance that seized and shook emotions. The sweet sense of unity I had experienced might have been, for her, an inescapable erosion.
“…Don’t think about other women while you’re coupling with me.”
Suddenly, Luna’s voice pierced the cockpit like a playful jab.
“…You noticed?”
“Obviously. At this level of connection, it’s easy to tell when your mind is somewhere else.”
Luna snorted softly and puffed her cheeks out just a little.
“You’re connected with me right now. So focus only on me. Yuzuki isn’t here.”
“……”
Luna’s tone was low and distinct. It carried more weight than simple jealousy. It was understandable that she had noticed I was distracted, but how had she known I was thinking about Yuzuki? Had that been transmitted too?
Before I could organize my thoughts, Luna spoke again.
“…Looks like we’ve arrived.”
The Dracore, which had been gliding swiftly across the ground between buildings, suddenly decelerated and looked forward. We were in a densely packed area of mixed-use buildings not far from the city center—an area where evacuation had been relatively slow.
And beyond our field of vision, just past a twisted alley, the Outer revealed itself.
A massive, asymmetrical entity. A grotesque fusion of metal and organic matter had burrowed into the building walls, while protruding tentacles whipped wildly through the air.
“…The people still haven’t evacuated.”
I swallowed hard. At the edge of my vision, someone on a building rooftop was waving their hands desperately. It was an urgent motion—whether a scream for help or a plea for rescue, I couldn’t tell. Looking closer, I could see people huddled in terror behind broken windows inside the building.
“No time. Let’s go straight in.”
Luna’s voice was remarkably calm. There wasn’t a single tremor in her tone. No anger, no pity. Only the necessary judgment and action.
I responded to her words by gripping the yoke once more. Heat and pulse seeped into my palms. At that moment, the Dracore began accelerating again. Pushing off the road beneath its feet, it charged straight toward the Outer.