Episode 8: Held, and Dizzy.

Hiyori’s breath kept burning against my bare skin, relentlessly hot.

Delicious. Maya’s alone. Her smell.

Being described that way made me feel as though my very existence had been placed on her tongue — as though I’d become something to be consumed.

The moment that thought landed in my mind.

From within the musk that wrapped around her, a different scent drifted toward me.

Not an artificial fragrance — something rawer and sweeter, more animal: the heat of Asahina Hiyori as a living person, like the warmth seeping from skin.
The instant that smell reached the deep part of my brain, all the strength left my body at once, and I let my weight fall helplessly against her shoulder.

“Ah… Hiy, ori… wait…”

I couldn’t put any strength into anything.
Just being held. That was all that was happening.
And yet my head was spinning, my knees were going soft.
Her body heat, that sweet smell — I had the sensation of my very core being melted down, slowly, into something liquid.

Oh no. I’m going to be devoured.

“…! Ah…”

The moment her body suddenly pulled away, the strength went out of my knees entirely.
Unable to hold myself up, I crumpled right in front of her and sank to the floor.

My legs had given out completely. I couldn’t even stand.
I stared blankly at the floor, and above my ear her cool, pleasure-laced voice came raining down.

“Wait, seriously? Just from a hug…?”

Hiyori laughed, quietly and unkindly.
Looking up, she was composedly straightening her own hair.
Not so much as a single disrupted breath.

“This is what I mean by the kind of Yuri Friends game I want. Understand?”
“Ha… hah… I, I understand… but…”
“I mean, normally, a hug doesn’t just make someone’s legs give out, does it?”

Hiyori crouched down and peered with undisguised amusement at my bright-red face from above.

“Could it be that Maya is, like, really sensitive?”
“Th-that’s not… I’m just not used to it…”
“Ahaha, it’s so fun when you react like that!”

She prodded my chin and narrowed her eyes.

“But if a little thing like this leaves you in a heap, can you actually satisfy me? Committee chair?”
“Ngh…!”

I wanted to snap something back.
But my trembling legs were heavy as lead, and wouldn’t lift a single centimetre from the floor.
Like a newborn fawn.

“…Just, wait. I’ll stand up, in a second…”

Hiyori laughed at that, and dropped herself onto the guidance sofa in the corner of the discipline room with a thud.
The slightly worn cushion sank under her weight.
She leaned back deep into it, took out her phone, and began swiping through the screen as though nothing had happened.

“I’ll wait until Maya can stand. Aren’t I generous?”

Generous is the last word I’d use.
She just intended to sit there and enjoy watching me make a pathetic recovery.

◇◆◇◆◇

About forty minutes must have passed.
With Hiyori’s shoulder to lean on, I’d finally made it as far as the station.
At the ticket gate, she let go of my arm.

“Right, I’m taking the train. Get home on your own from here. …Oh, can you still not manage?”
“I-I can walk now!”
“Sure, sure. See you at school tomorrow then. …Bye bye, Maya.”

She waved her hand in the usual languid way and disappeared into the crowd.
I watched her go and immediately collapsed onto a bench in the station plaza, unable to take another step.

“…Hah…”

Exhaustion crashed over me all at once.
One hug. A single hug, and it had wrung every last thing out of me.

Absently, I brought my nose to my own sleeve.
Her sweet smell was still there, soaked thoroughly into the fabric.

“…Awful.”

The word I muttered was at odds with the faint warmth of that hot, tingling sensation still lingering, faintly, somewhere deep in my body.

◇◆◇◆◇

Just as Hiyori had predicted, I was still on the bench, unable to go home.

Buzz. My phone trembled in my bag, a familiar notification chime sounding.
The screen showed a message app notification.

Asahina Hiyori has added you as a friend.

A message arrived immediately after.

You managing to get home okay?
Discipline room again from tomorrow. You’re not going to get that video deleted if your legs keep giving out on you lol

I could picture her face with excruciating clarity — smirking on the other side of the screen.

“…She’s making a fool of me…!”

Frustrating.
But even more than that — the danger felt very, very real.

One hug. That was all it took for my legs to give out, my breath to stop, my mind to go completely blank.

What if this escalated further?
A kiss… or if something beyond that was demanded?

“…I’ll die.”

Physically. My heart will stop.
No — I’ll combust from sheer mortification before it comes to that.
With the feeble mental fortitude and total lack of experience I have right now, I cannot withstand the potent toxin that is “Asahina Hiyori”…!

“Immunity. Right, I need to build up immunity.”

I closed the message app and hit the search bar with trembling fingers.

yuri manga kiss scene how to brace yourself
how to suppress heart rate
how to get used to physical contact

I need to read far more intense scenes and desensitise my brain.
This isn’t an impure motivation.
This is purely an emergency, last-resort measure to ensure my survival from tomorrow onwards!

“Right. Tonight I’m pulling an all-nighter on desensitisation therapy…!”

I opened a digital manga app.
The kind of titles I would have been too embarrassed to look at before — loaded with “high sugar content” — I flung them into the cart one after another, and hit the payment button with the resolve of someone marching to their doom.

…This was preparation for the Yuri Friends game.
The perfect armour, so that nothing Hiyori did tomorrow would shake her.
Not knowing that the opposite was true — that it would only heighten her sensitivity further, by making her overthink every single thing.