Episode 7: [Yuri Friends] An Embrace, and a Smell.

I extended my arms stiffly and looped them around her slender waist.

Contact.
Thud — our bodies touched.
I held my breath to hide the sound of my heart, and endured it for a few seconds.

“There. That’s fine.”

I tried to pull away immediately.
But.

“…Excuse me?”

Hiyori’s voice was startlingly flat.
I looked down to find her gazing up at me with undisguised exasperation.

“Maya? That’s not what a hug is.”
“What… but I held you.”
“Completely wrong. No feeling in it at all. You just stuck yourself to me. …Are you a robot or something?”

An unexpected torrent of criticism.
She pursed her lips in dissatisfaction and let out an elaborately theatrical sigh.

“Hopeless. …The discipline committee chair seems to be a bit short on experience? I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“Wh… how it’s d—?!”

She grabbed my arms and yanked me in hard.
With a force that bore no comparison to anything before, I was shut inside Hiyori’s chest.

“…! Mm…!”

In that instant, every thought in my head detonated into white.
She’s close, and she’s warm!
The degree of contact is — completely different!

There was supposed to be a barrier — a blouse between us — and yet what came through it was an overwhelming, almost violent softness.

“Hey, Maya. You’re too tense. Like I’m hugging a piece of iron. …You really are a robot.”

Her quiet laughter reached my ear.
Frustrating, but I couldn’t find a single word.
Hiyori’s small body was like a well-made cushion — it simply yielded, pliant and giving.
Slender shoulders.
But the warmth of the body beneath them pressed on me with a rawness that drove home, mercilessly, that we were the same — two girls.

“A hug is about… doing it like this. Making sure of every part of the other person.”

The whispered breath at my ear grazed my eardrum directly.
Hiyori’s hand began to move slowly up my back.
Tracing each of my vertebrae as though counting them, unhurried and soft.

“Come on, Maya, hug me back properly.”
“Properly…?! Um, first I put my hands on your back…?”

Not knowing what “properly” meant, my hands lost their purpose entirely and drifted across her back like fish with nowhere to go.
Trying her shoulders, tracing the centre of her back…

“Hey, Maya… that tickles.”
“Oh, sorry… but I can’t find the right place…”

The more I panicked, the less I knew where to put my hands.
In the end I fled to the only place that felt safe — the curve of her slender waist.
Here must be right.
Thinking that, I pulled her narrow waist firmly toward me — and at that moment.

“Mm… ah—”

Hiyori let out a small, unguarded sound, threaded with heat.
Her body, which had been so composed a moment ago, stiffened for just an instant — and then, as though melting, let its full weight lean into me.

The fragility of something that might snap easily if held too hard, and yet — the vivid, yielding give that pushed back the tighter I held, clinging close.
The gap between our bodies vanished entirely with the pull.

Through our pressed-together chests, Hiyori’s heartbeat reached me directly.

Thump. Thump.

A deep, steady resonance that shook the core of my body — nothing like my own thin, fluttering pulse.
That regular rhythm overlapped with my heartbeat, and merged with it, until at some point I could no longer tell which was whose.

Pressed together like that, Hiyori tilted her head with a puzzled look and rubbed her face against my chest.

“…Hey. Maya, are you the type that looks smaller with clothes on?”
“What, out of nowhere…”
“Because… your chest is actually pretty big? It’s really pressing against me…”

My heart nearly exploded.
But she didn’t stop. The hand she had around my back slid slowly toward my side, tracing up along the line of my bra.

“And here, the fullness of it… wow. I guess when you’re committee chair, you’re an honours student in development too, huh?”
“Wh—! What are you, some creepy old man…! Stop it, don’t touch me there…!”

I twisted desperately to get free, but with my back held firm I had nowhere to go.

“It’s fine. Maya’s the best. You look delicious.”
“Delicious…?”
“…And. You smell so good.”

At my ear, Hiyori’s breath came hot, with a wet, close quality.
I buried my face in her shoulder to hide from it.
From her ash-grey hair, from her nape, that cloyingly sweet musk seeped into my lungs with a damp warmth.

“You’re the one who made me wear the perfume, so obviously I—”
“No. That’s not it.”

Hiyori’s hand moved over my back again, slow and fond, with that same languid, deliberate caress.

“It’s like seasoning meat with herbs. Even if the meat itself is good, if it doesn’t smell right, it doesn’t make your mouth water, you know? …Same thing here. I seasoned Maya — the finest possible ingredient — with my scent, so she’d be even more delicious.”
“…What a revolting analogy.”
“Is it revolting? I think it’s incredibly appetising.”

Hiyori’s fingertip traced a slow line up my spine.
Like something selecting where to make the first cut.

“I think I might… really love this smell.”

Hiyori pressed her nose to my neck.

“Maya’s alone. Sweet, and soft, and just slightly damp — a girl’s smell.”

And then, deep, deep.
She drew a long breath in from my neck, filling her lungs completely.