Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
“Guile.” Leon repeated the name slowly, tasting it like something bitter. “What kind of name is Guile?”
“It’s...a nickname.” She was committed now. No going back. “He was American. Air Force.” The character details were coming back to her from all those stress-relief gaming sessions, tumbling out before she could stop them. “Very, um. Tall. Muscular. He had this...” She gestured vaguely at her head. “Flat-top haircut. Very military. And he always wore his dog tags, even when he wasn’t in uniform.”
Why was she still talking?
Why couldn’t she stop talking?
Leonidas’s jaw had gone tight. “Air Force.”
“Yes.”
“And how did you meet this...Guile?”
“Through friends. Mutual friends. It was very casual.”
“How casual?”
“Just...you know.” She could feel sweat prickling at the back of her neck. “Casual.”
“Did he touch you?”
“Leon—”
“Did he kiss you?”
“Can we please just—”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t remember!”
“You don’t remember if a man kissed you.”
“It was a long time ago!”
“And yet you remember his dog tags.”
Her face was burning. This was a disaster. This was an absolute disaster, and she had no one to blame but herself and her panicking brain that had somehow decided Street Fighter characters were a good cover story.
“There was also...Ken,” she heard herself say.
What was she doing?
WHAT WAS SHE DOING?
Something dark flickered in Leon’s expression. “There was more than one.”
“He was...different.” She couldn’t stop. The words kept coming like a train with no brakes. “Japanese-American. Also blond, but longer hair, kind of...” She made a flowing gesture that she immediately regretted. “He was really into martial arts. Trained all the time. Had his own dojo, actually. Always wore this red...training outfit.”
“A red training outfit.”
“It’s a martial arts thing!”
“You seem to remember quite a lot about this Ken.”
