Episode 12: [Yuri Friends] Every Day? That Kind of Kiss?! Every Day?!

“…H-hello?”
“Oh, Maya? Still awake~?”

What came through the speaker was Hiyori’s voice — the same as always, breezy and sweet.

“Oh, were you about to sleep?”
“…I was. What is it, out of the blue.”
“Sorry for calling so late. It’s just — I couldn’t figure out the range for the maths homework. Could you tell me?”
“…Maths?”
“Yeah. What we got today. You’d be done with it already, right, Maya?”

I deflated.
I’d been bracing myself for something like “So what are you wearing right now?” — borderline harassment.

What I could hear was the sound of notebook pages turning, the click of a mechanical pencil.
…She’s actually genuinely just doing homework?

“…Okay, just a moment.”

Rustle. I opened the notebook on my desk.

“Up to question four on page thirty-two of the textbook. …Actually, Hiyori — you’re not in any clubs or working part-time, are you? Why haven’t you done it by this hour?”
“Because when I get home I’ve got videos to watch, nails to do, loads of things — please stop lecturing me~”

On the other end of the line came the sound of Hiyori stifling a yawn, muttering something like “god, what a pain.”

“…Oh, have you seen this TikTok drama?”

A URL with an unfamiliar title arrived as she said it.

“I haven’t. I don’t watch dramas.”
“What! It’s the best part! The main character runs into her ex and it’s a complete disaster — “

For several minutes after that, Hiyori talked on without pause, weaving together her thoughts on the drama and gossip about boys in their class.

Empty, inconsequential — completely ordinary high-school-girl conversation.

I murmured responses and shifted to lean back against the headboard.

(This is… normal.)

All that bracing for nothing.

Say what you like about her — at heart she was just an ordinary, cheerful girl.
Things between us at school had ended up like this, but take one step back and we could talk like this, like normal friends…

Maybe when she said Yuri Friends, what she was really after was simply a new friend.
I’d completely let my guard down, and was reaching to switch the phone to my other hand — when it happened.

“— and then the kiss scene was absolutely insane—”

The word burst into the conversation without warning, and my fingers twitched.

“…What?”
“In the rain, like a forceful stolen kiss kind of thing. The actor’s breathing was almost audible — lip sounds, over and over, just going…”

Hiyori’s tone dropped softly.
Different from the bright, chatty voice of a moment ago.
Even filtered through a speaker, it had the same sweet, adhesive quality as when she’d whispered in my ear in the discipline room.

“It was just like us today.”
“…!”

My heart gave a horrible lurch.
She’d lulled me into dropping my guard, and now there was a knife at my throat.

“Hey, Maya. …What do your lips feel like right now?”

Through the phone.
And yet her voice stroked across my eardrums as though she were lying right beside me, whispering.

“Th-they don’t feel like anything! They’re just a bit swollen… I mean — that’s not what I—!”

Too late.
The shock had made me report the damage myself.
On the other end of the line, a soft, pleasure-filled laugh.

“Ahaha. So they are swollen? …Hey, you just touched them, didn’t you.”
“I did not!”
“Liar. You’re easy to read, Maya. …I can picture it so clearly. In bed, face all red, tracing the lips I pecked at, with your finger.”
“…!!”

She’d hit the mark.
Without knowing it, my fingertips had found their way back to my lips, still warm and throbbing.
The accuracy of it was uncanny, like a surveillance camera had been watching me — I yanked the duvet over my head.

“I’m going to sleep! If there’s nothing else, I’m hanging up!”
“Oh, wait, wait. One last ‘homework assignment.’”

The finger about to end the call stilled.
Reacting to the word homework was, sadly, the reflex of a model student.

“…What. I told you the range, so solve it yourself.”
“No, not that kind.”

A breathy, sweet voice whispered in a tone that seemed to resonate directly through the skull.

“Lip balm. …Before you sleep, and when you wake up in the morning. Put plenty on.”
“…What?”
“Your lips got a little dry and chapped from the heat partway through today~”

Chapped…?!
I moisturise properly every day, and besides — after sucking on them that much, that’s your feedback?!

“So from tomorrow, make sure you take care of them properly, okay? …So I can eat them again.”
“Eat — ?!”
“If they’re all chapped again… it’ll make me so sad that deleting the video might slip further away~”

She left me with no response to give, and laughed her sweet laugh.

“Ahhh. Getting to savour Maya’s lips every day as much as I want, starting tomorrow… I genuinely cannot wait♡ Right then, goodnight, Maya.”

Click.

The call ended, one-sidedly.

Beep… beep… beep…

Nothing but a flat, mechanical tone remained in the silent room.
I lowered the phone from my ear. The screen glowed coldly: Call duration: 12:04.

“What, honestly…!”

I flung the phone aside and buried my face in the pillow.

Eat.

The destructive force of that single word was too much — the heat in my body wouldn’t subside.

Tomorrow it would happen again.

That kiss.

Every day…?

…

…………

“Aagh, fine…! I’ll put it on, alright. I’ll put it on!”

I dragged myself upright and pulled the lip balm from the bedside drawer.

Plenty. As instructed.
The slick, oily texture glided over sensitive, swollen, heat-flushed skin.

Mmph. The moment I pressed my lips together to work it in —
The soft, yielding feel of my own lips against each other brought back, with vivid immediacy, the real texture of her tongue.

“…Ugh.”

Awful.
If only that had never happened, none of this would be…

No — this was all Hiyori’s fault for bringing that manga to school in the first place…

It’s not my fault…

In the end.
Tonight again, I was hexed by Hiyori’s voice and her homework assignment, and couldn’t sleep a single wink.

Ahh…

At this rate, sleep deprivation might kill me before the video ever gets shared…