Episode 23: That Kiss, Seen by Her.

Morning. Standing in front of the mirror.

I smooth over my lips the faintly tinted lip balm she’d pressed into my hands, half by force, with a “use this.”
Then, as the finishing touch, I aim the small atomiser toward my ankle. One spritz.
A cloying sweet musk rose softly from my feet.
…The same smell as Hiyori.

One month since I was coerced into the Yuri Friends game with that video held over me.
This cloyingly sweet little ritual had settled, completely, into my morning routine.

The day that video was taken.
My school life, which should have become the worst imaginable from that point on.

But it had rolled in a slightly different direction from what I’d expected.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Morning, committee chair. What pages is today’s quiz covering?”
“Morning. Let me think — from page forty-two.”
“Thanks! You’re a lifesaver, Yamami-mama.”
“…Would you please stop calling me that!”

The morning classroom.
Classmates who wouldn’t have thought to speak to me before now come over quite naturally, folding a greeting into their question.
When I answer, she waves a hand and drifts back to her own seat.

“Hey~, Mama-pi! We haven’t studied at all! Use your telekinesis to sort us out, committee chair!”
“Airi… I don’t have that kind of power. Look, there’s still time — just review this part at least.”
“Honestly, you’re a goddess. Mama-pi, we said it the other day too, but you’re really good at explaining things.”

Hiyori’s group — Airi and the others — had completely dropped any pretence of distance and were treating me with easy familiarity.
The wall of the strict, unapproachable discipline committee chair had been dismantled, without my noticing, by the fact that Hiyori had (on the surface) been tamed.

I felt a gaze and looked up. A little distance away, Hiyori was resting her cheek on her hand, watching me.
Our eyes met, and she smiled her usual bright, slightly amused smile.

…Being held over a video and forced into all of this against my will.
That worst-imaginable fact hadn’t changed by so much as a hair.

And yet — the ordinary days of idle conversation with people around me, which I’d never had before.
Somehow, for the girl who had always been alone, that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Mm — ah — chu, phah—!”

In the discipline room with the evening sun slanting through, we were on the sofa, layered together.

“…Hah — Hiyo, ri—!”
“There, there, don’t hold your breath. You’ll die.”
“You’re the one — forcing it—!”

I was pinned on my back on the narrow sofa, Hiyori draped over me with her full weight.
She kept sealing off the oxygen I tried to draw in, so my breathing couldn’t keep up.

Hiyori lifted her lips and smiled her unkind smile.
Chu — the sound of membranes parting rang out in the quiet room.

Then her face came close again.

(…ah, no good. Again—)

Just as her lips were about to meet mine, I sensed the ghost of a quiet laugh from Hiyori.

“Mm — hh — Hiyo, ri—”

Told myself I was only here because of the blackmail.
That I was just being played with.
And yet.

The relentless kisses kept stealing my oxygen, and my thoughts turned white and murky—

CLATTER.

“Yamami-senpai! You were still here? I have the printouts for next week’s patrol roster—”

A bright voice, and with it, a rush of cold corridor air flooded into the discipline room, which had been thick with sweet musk and heat.

“…Huh?”

Standing in the doorway was Sasaki Saki — the first-year discipline committee member who looked up to me.

And what her gaze landed on was:
The discipline committee chair, pinned to the sofa, uniform in disarray, lips being devoured.

“Ah…”

My body had gone rigid, as though paralysed.
The sheaf of printouts Sasaki-san was holding slipped from her hands without resistance.
The pure white paper scattered across the floor, and only the sound of it rang out, absurdly loud.

“Y-Yamami-senpai…?”

A trembling voice.
The colour of her face — the devastation of someone who has witnessed something they cannot unsee.

Of course.
To her, I was the discipline committee chair.

And there I was, tangled up in the discipline room with an ash-grey-haired girl who embodied every school rule violation — the pierced ears, the dyed hair — in a state that left nothing to the imagination.

(S-she saw us—!)

Someone, tell me this isn’t real.
If this is a dream, let me wake up.
My heart was pounding fit to burst, cold sweat breaking all over me at once.

But Hiyori, far from being startled, kept her lips pressed to mine — and only turned her eyes, slowly, toward the doorway.
After meeting Sasaki-san’s gaze, she deliberately made a wet, clinging sound as she drew her face away.

“Oh dear. …We’ve been seen.”

Hiyori turned to face the petrified Sasaki-san in the doorway, entirely unbothered.

“Um, Sasaki-chan, right? Bad timing. We were in the middle of some guidance.”
“G-guidance—?!”

Sasaki-san’s face flooded crimson as she looked back and forth between me and Hiyori.
What possible angle of the preceding events could be framed as guidance?
Hiyori’s blouse was slightly open, my face was burning red, my lips were wet with saliva.

“There’s no such thing as that kind of guidance—!”
“There is. …Right, Maya?”

Hiyori peered into my face and deliberately breathed into my ear.
My shoulders jumped.
With a mind gone completely blank, I could only open and close my mouth like a goldfish, wordless.

“A — um… S-Sasaki-san, this is, that is…”

I had to deny it.
Had to say it was a misunderstanding.
But my throat seized and the words wouldn’t come.

“U-um — I — I’m so sorry to have interrupted—!!”

Sasaki-san cried out in a voice close to tears, and fled at a flat sprint, leaving the scattered printouts where they lay.
The sound of her indoor shoes slapping the corridor receded further and further away.

Silence returned to the discipline room.
Printouts strewn across the floor.
I lay on the sofa exactly as I was, staring up at the ceiling as if my soul had vacated the premises.

“…It’s over.”

Me as the conscientious honour student.
My position as discipline committee chair. The safe place I’d built for myself.

I’d believed that once the video was deleted, everything would go back to how it was.
That was why I’d gone along with even this — demands that made no sense, that weren’t fair.

And yet.

Before I could even get the video deleted.
The ordinary days I’d built up had crumbled away like a sandcastle after all.

“Ahaha! She absolutely sprinted out of here!”

In stark contrast to my despair, Hiyori was laughing her breezy laugh.
She wiped the saliva glistening carelessly at the corner of my mouth with the pad of her thumb, then licked her own fingertip with a slow, deliberate air.

“So. What are you going to do, Maya?”

Hiyori’s bright, amused eyes peered into my despair.

“…Are you going to go crying to that girl that you were being ‘forced to kiss against your will because of a video’?”
“…!”
“Or should I help you come up with some kind of excuse?”