Episode 19: [Yuri Friends] I Want to Know You, Here on My Lap.

During midterm exam week, we had established a rule.
The after-school discipline room.
Set a timer for five minutes.

“Mm… hh…”
“…Phew. …One minute left.”

We held each other, pressing our lips together as though even the pauses for breath were too precious to waste.
That was all. And yet.

“…Hey, Maya. Isn’t there something kind of poetic about this?”
“Hah, hah… what is…?”
“Like — knowing we only have five minutes somehow makes it more intense, you know? Like a long-distance couple clinging together until the very last second before they have to part. Isn’t that a little bit…?”
“…What are you talking about, Hiyori.”

Until the alarm sounded, we pressed our lips together again.

…Like a real pair of lovers.

◇◆◇◆◇

The final day of midterms.
The school, the battle over at last, was wrapped in a peculiar exhaustion — relief and fatigue intertwined.
And after school.
The discipline committee meeting done, I was alone in the discipline room.

“…Hah.”

A sigh escaped me.
Sasaki-san had looked at me with concern and said “your face is very red, Senpai.”
I’d deflected with something about exam-induced fever, but I knew the real cause.

The “five-minute ritual” repeated every day throughout the exam period.
That had been devouring more of my mental resources than the studying itself.

Click.

The door opened, cutting through my thoughts.

“…Good work, Maya.”

Hiyori.
She walked in with her usual air of ownership and lowered herself onto the worn sofa in the corner, languid as always.

“Right then. Exams are over, the committee’s done, so today is the day of liberation.”
“Liberation from what?”
“A reward for a week of hard work. Today, as a special treat — I’ll give you a lap pillow.”

Hiyori patted her own thighs with a light pat, pat.

“Come on, over here~”
“…………”

I resigned myself and, guided by her invitation, nervously rested my head in the lap of Hiyori sitting on the sofa.

Drift.
Her musk scent flooded in.
My field of vision rotated, the world turning upside down.

…She’s close.

Hiyori’s face, gazing down at me from above.
Her silky ash-grey hair fell like a curtain, raining down over me under the pull of gravity.
The evening light through the window filtered through it, each strand glittering like threads of light.

(…beautiful.)

Caught off guard.
I thought it before I could stop myself.
Long lashes.
A well-shaped nose.
That thin-lipped mouth with its good colour — always answering back.

When she was silent like this, she looked just like a French doll.
Hiyori smiling against the backlight — something almost saintly about her, and at the same time something that looked as though it could drive a person out of their mind.

“…Hm? What is it, Maya, staring like that.”
“I-I’m not staring!”
“Fufu. …Maya, you smell nice.”

Hiyori twitched her nose and narrowed her eyes in satisfaction.

“…You know, when we’re both wearing the same perfume, I start to lose track of which scent is whose.”

Her slender fingertip traced gently along the corner of my eye.
That warmth. That soft touch.
And the same musk smell wrapping around both of us — it was dissolving my thoughts, slowly.

(…something might be wrong with me.)

Normally it was only ever taken from me by force.
But lying here quietly, looking up at her from below — wrapped in her sweet scent, the strength going out of my whole body—

“I never get tired of looking at your face, Maya.”
“…Don’t say strange things.”
“I mean it. …Okay, swap!”
“Huh?”

Hiyori sat me up, shifted position, and this time pressed her cheek against my thigh with a contented nuzzle.

“Mmm~! Yes. This is it.”
“Hey, so suddenly!”
“Maya’s thighs are genuinely the best. That fullness — the give of them? The comfort level is on a completely different plane.”
“…Who are you calling full, exactly.”
“I’m complimenting you! Honestly, it fits like one of those cushions that ruins you for normal furniture…”

Hiyori closed her eyes, exhaled “ahhh, paradise…” and went limp.
The weight of her head settled heavily onto my thighs.

…Quiet.

A different kind of time from the “five minutes” of recent weeks. Slower, unhurried.

Ah. Somehow.
Like this — we really do feel like just two friends who get along.

“…Hiyori?”

The exam fatigue must have caught up with her.
In no time at all, Hiyori had fallen asleep. The soft sound of her breathing reached me.

Her unguarded sleeping face.
Long lashes casting their shadow beneath closed lids.
And those cherry-pink lips, slightly parted.

When she was asleep she was this quiet, and — frustrating as it was to admit — this lovely.

It was a moment of weakness, there was no other way to describe it.
Or perhaps the redness of the evening sun had numbed my better judgement.

I reached my hand out, gently.

So as not to wake her.

At a distance where I was barely touching, barely not.

First: the silky flow of ash-grey hair.
I lifted a lock of it between my fingertips, and it caught the light, glittering like threads of light.
The texture was startlingly soft — like fine silk.

(…her hair is beautiful.)

My fingers slid further, this time toward that pale cheek.
I pressed the pad of my index finger against it — a soft poke.
It gave like a marshmallow, sinking in, then when I lifted my finger, slowly returning to shape.
Warm. The body heat of a living person.

“…Mm.”

Hiyori stirred slightly.
I flinched and pulled my hand back.

…Still breathing deeply, her face entirely at ease, Hiyori slept on.

(She’s not waking up, is she?)

That defencelessness stirred something inside me, something I couldn’t name.

I want to mess her up.
This girl who holds a threat over me.

I want to know more of her.
The structure of this beautiful face.
The feel of those thin lips that always tease me.

I reached my hand out again.

This time, more boldly.