Episode 16: [Yuri Friends] I’ll Savour Every Bit of You.

“Hey — were you actually bothered by the indirect kiss at lunch?”
“—?!”

Hiyori took one look at my flustered face and laughed through her nose, clearly delighted.

“Oh, bull’s-eye? You were staring at the chopsticks… weirdo.”
“Weird — well, I mean…”
“We’ve already kissed, you know.”
“Th-that’s…”
“We kiss every single day, and yet somehow a pair of chopsticks is what gets to you?”

She’d hit a sore spot.
It was too logical to argue with.

“You’re oddly innocent in strange places, Maya. Like a middle schooler.”
“I can’t help it! I just… started imagining things…”
“Oh? You were imagining wanting to do it again?”
“…!”
“Anyway. Maya, hold your hand out?”
“…My hand? Like this?”

Some kind of check, maybe.
Wary but obedient, I extended my right hand.
Hiyori took it in both of hers and began examining it with unhurried attention.

“What’s this about, all of a sudden.”
“Nothing much. I was just thinking what nice hands you have. I half expected them to be chapped like your lips were the other time.”
“I use hand cream. And my lips, I’ve been putting on plenty of—”

I bristled and tried to pull my hand back. Hiyori tightened her grip and held on.

“Let me look. …So these are the hands that made that fluffy tamagoyaki.”

Hiyori’s fingertip traced slowly along my palm.

“—!”
“Such domestic hands, Mama-pi♡”
“S-stop calling me Mama… that tickles, let go.”

A shiver ran up my spine.
In the cool autumn discipline room, it was nothing more than a touch — and yet Hiyori’s fingertip burned against me.
I squirmed, and Hiyori’s mouth curved up at the corner.

“…I’m not letting go.”

She loosened one of the hands she’d been holding, just slightly.

Slick.
From the cuff of her cardigan sleeve, her fingers slid into the gaps between my fingers — smooth and unhurried as a snake finding its way in.

“Wh, wait—?!”

My fingers and Hiyori’s laced together, deep to the base.
The so-called lover’s hold.

“Isn’t this… really damp?”
“It is not! That’s your own hand, sweating!”
“It’s not me. …Here, feel.”

Hiyori lifted our joined hands to the level of my face, and with the pad of her thumb began stroking slow circles over the pulse point on the back of my hand.

“Mm, ah—?!”

The sensation of skin against skin felt startlingly raw, like two exposed surfaces touching directly.
She worked at the sensitive webbing between my fingers with a slow, deliberate thoroughness.

“…You’re really warm, you know?”
“Th-that’s not…”
“Your body’s honest, Maya. Just holding hands and you’re already like this?”

Hiyori’s face drew close.
The musk tickled at my nostrils.
Her free hand came up and tilted my chin before I could retreat.

“Be quiet — mm?!”

The lips that had been about to argue were stopped with hers.
Chu.

“…Mm, direct is better than chopsticks after all. Decided. Today—”

Hiyori smiled her slow smile and brought her lips to my ear.

“You gave me a delicious lunch today… so as thanks, I’m going to savour you even more thoroughly than usual.”
“What?!”

Hot breath shook directly against my eardrum.

“Itadakimasu♡”

Her lips found mine again.
But not the usual fond, pecking kisses.
True to her word, Hiyori began to eat my lips in earnest.

“Mm, chu… mm…”
“H-Hiyo—mm?!”

She took my lower lip between hers and bit down lightly with her teeth.

“Mm, ah—!”

The sweet sting of it startled a sound out of me, and Hiyori laughed softly in her throat — then licked over the same spot as though tracing the mark she’d left, and drew my upper lip in.
Mouthing at me, thorough and relentless, as though peeling the skin from a piece of fruit.

In the saliva melting between us, there seemed to be a faint sweet taste.
The sweetness of tamagoyaki — which should have been long gone by now, the tamagoyaki I’d fed her at lunch.
It came back to me, carried on Hiyori’s warmth, into my own mouth.

“Mm — sweet… stop—!”
“I won’t stop. …You’re better than the tamagoyaki, Maya.”

The sensation of her teeth against the soft inner surface of my lip was more vivid than anything.
Wet, indecent sounds rang out in the quiet room.

“…Mm, chu. …Maya, you’ve been putting on lip balm properly. So soft.”
“—!!”

Sweet words and a consuming kiss.

From our laced fingers, inescapable heat.
From her lips, a sweet, relentless current dissolving what remained of my reason.
I had no choice but to flush scarlet and let myself become her dessert.

◇◆◇◆◇

On the way home.
We walked side by side along the road to the station.
Hiyori, in high spirits, kept peering into my face.

“Like, hypothetically — if I said I’d delete the video, would you make me bento every day?”
“…Really?!”

I nearly lurched forward — and caught myself just in time.

“That’s definitely a lie. Don’t get carried away.”

I turned my face away with a huff.
But the image was already burned into my mind: the unguarded smile on her face when she’d eaten the tamagoyaki.
And the heat of that after-school hour, like being adrift in a fever.

“…Well. If I have leftover ingredients, I might make extra sometimes. Occasionally.”
“Yes! Mama-pi, you’re the best.”
“…Look, I keep telling you, please stop calling me that.”

I gripped my bag strap tightly.
Because the warmth of her fingers, laced through mine not long ago, still didn’t feel quite gone.