Prologue: Hey, You’re Not Gonna Do Anything? And We’re Even Sharing a Bed.
“Hey — you’re not, like, against girls, are you?”
Her hand slipped through the gap in the futon and grazed the cuff of my sleeve.
Those fingers. Careful, somehow. Syrup-slow.
— This is bad.
My head was thick with fog, like I was trying to think through gauze.
We’d been sitting on a park bench just a little while ago,
and now, somehow, I was lying beside her, barely breathing.
An unfamiliar ceiling. The colour of the rug, the smell of the pillow, the direction of the aircon — all of it wrong.
Not my room — this was Riwa-san’s room.
I turned my head to the right, and the fog began to lift.
Riwa-san, lying beside me, was smiling in the dim light.
She was supposed to be drunk, but her eyes looked like they understood everything.
My skin went warm, slowly.
Her shoulder was too close. Soap and fabric softener and something else — her — mixing together in my nose.
I caught my breath before I meant to. Something in my chest pulled tight.
And then, lower — a faint heat gathering somewhere beneath my ribs.
“Hey, Mio-chan. You’re really not gonna do anything?”
Her voice like she was joking. But the words were straight.
My throat moved on its own.
Some part of my body was going numb, in slow waves.
Nothing had ever felt like this.
I looked away. In the corner of the room, the air purifier hummed steadily.
I had alcohol in me, but I didn’t feel drunk.
Was my face hot because of the wine?
No.
It was this — whatever this was.
The back of my head still felt fuzzy, but my skin was awake. Hypersensitive.
The rustle of the duvet. Riwa-san breathing. The aircon.
Every little sound was sharp, vivid — each one brushing gently against somewhere inside my chest.
— At work, she never says things like this.
Always bright, always talking, but competent when it counts.
That not-quite-normal quality of hers had been snagging at me for a while.
“…It’s not like that,” I said.
Even as I said it, I didn’t know what I was denying. The situation? Her? Or — myself?
“Hmm.”
That was all Riwa-san said. She didn’t push.
But the warmth where we touched didn’t move.
The heat seeping through the blanket between us felt heavier than it should have.
— Why didn’t I just go home?
I missed the last train, that was all, wasn’t it?
Because she said she wanted me to walk her back?
Was that really all it was?
I don’t know.
Honestly, I’m not sure I want to know.
“Hey…”
Her voice again — but this time, nothing followed.
Her hand lifted, softly, away from my cuff.
The quiet sound of the duvet settling.
In all that stillness, only the ticking of the clock rang out, absurdly loud.
— Why am I even here, again?
I can’t remember.
But one thing I know for certain, right now:
Tonight, I am closer to a girl — to what it means to be a girl — than I have ever been in my life.