Episode 34: I Am Being Painted Over by Hiyori.
From the day I crossed that decisive line in Hiyori’s room.
My ordinary life was swallowed whole by a heavy, suffocating heat.
◇◆◇◆◇
Lunchtime in the classroom.
Airi, who had been chatting with the group gathered around my desk, glanced at Hiyori’s hand and called out in surprise.
“Oh — Hiyori, did you take off your gel nails?”
“Yeah, just felt like it. Cut them short.”
“Seriously? That’s unusual. You were always so particular about them.”
Still talking with Airi, Hiyori — who had been standing behind my chair — rested her chin on my shoulder from behind, as natural as breathing.
“…!”
Short nails, trimmed clean, cherry-blossom pink.
Those fingertips traced slowly up my collarbone through my blouse, clinging and deliberate.
“Short nails are better, I thought. More comfortable.”
“Hiyori, what did you say?”
“Ha, nothing, nothing~”
Hiyori laughed and pulled me tight against her, like something precious she couldn’t bear to let go of.
(—!)
The sensation from last night flashed back directly into the back of my brain, vivid with heat.
Just that — only that — and I felt myself beginning to dampen, a dizziness threatening to take hold.
Everyone around us was living a normal school life.
Only I, with a single touch from Hiyori, was losing the ability to breathe.
◇◆◇◆◇
And after school.
The discipline room again, dim and empty of anyone else.
“Mm— ah, Hiyori, don’t— school, we’re at school—”
“School? So what? …I can’t stand being apart from Maya for even a second.”
Hiyori pressed herself against my back as I tried to work through committee duties.
My long skirt was pushed up without mercy, and those short fingers slipped inside through the gap in my underwear.
Finding their way with unerring precision, stroking through my depths with a clinging, thorough hunger.
“Mmh—?! Ah, ah—!”
Every time I let a sound escape, Hiyori nuzzled her face against my throat with an expression of aching tenderness.
The extreme tension of someone possibly passing in the corridor outside, and Hiyori’s overwhelming body heat, sent the waves of pleasure cresting higher and higher.
(No, if I make a sound— but Hiyori’s fingers feel too— too good—)
“…Mm, ah, ah— Hiyori— I can’t, I can’t anymore—”
The deepest place inside me sweetly driven into, I clung to the cold desk and came apart in silence, smothering the sound.
My hips convulsing.
Under my uniform, wrecked with myself.
Hiyori folded her arms around me, handling me like something that might break.
“…Maya. I want every part of you to be mine alone.”
My honour-student’s reason was being melted down, each time Hiyori touched me like this, into something liquid and beyond saving.
◇◆◇◆◇
And so the strange days continued, and the season shifted toward winter.
The weekend before end-of-term exams arrived.
“I definitely won’t study on my own, so come teach me.”
Called out by that sweet, wheedling SOS, I had opened a workbook at Hiyori’s desk.
I’d need to study for my own exams too, so doing it together would help me focus.
That was what I’d thought for one weak moment.
What an idiot.
“Ahhh… tired. I’m taking a break.”
A weight settled on my back without warning.
Hiyori, who had been standing behind me, rested her chin lightly on my shoulder and pressed herself against my back.
“Eh, wait.”
“Hm, don’t mind me. Maya just keep studying. I’m just here, feeling Maya’s warmth.”
And then, slow as a tide coming in, Hiyori’s arms wound around my body and slid under the desk.
A hand reached in under the hem of my long skirt, stroking up along my bare thigh.
Then the elastic of my underwear was tugged aside, and her fingers slipped inside.
“Ah— Hiyori, don’t— I’m trying to focus—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Maya just stay right there, keep your eyes on the studying?”
Hiyori’s short fingers pushed the soaked fabric aside and pressed in without hesitation.
“Mmh—?! Ah, ah—!”
“You want me this much… that makes me happy.”
Hiyori curled her fingers inside, driving upward as though asking my deepest place to take everything she was giving.
“Mmh— ah—!”
Every time my hips jerked, the mechanical pencil resting on the notebook skidded helplessly across the page.
A clean page, and across it now, ragged black lines, going nowhere.
“Ha. You’re not writing a single character.”
Not one equation was getting into my head.
Every time I let a sweet sound escape, Hiyori smiled like she’d been given something precious and pushed deeper.
And so my school life and my weekends were all painted over by Hiyori, entirely.
◇◆◇◆◇
And then came the day of the end-of-term exams.
In the hush of the classroom, the only sound was the scratch of pencils moving across paper.
But the answer sheet in front of me was, magnificently, almost entirely blank.
“…Hah—”
Every time I hunched forward in a panic, Hiyori’s sweet musk drifted up from my own uniform.
(Hiyori—)
Just catching that smell triggered something like a conditioned reflex — a sharp ache blooming inside my underwear.
During an exam. At school.
My head was full of nothing but the sensation of those short nails, and the wet sounds.
She has gone so deep inside me, so breathtakingly deep.
And yet what connects us is—
Ding dong, ding dong.
“…!”
The flat, impersonal chime jolted me and my shoulders snapped upward.
I looked down at the sheet in front of me.
Most of it, empty.
…In all my life, this had never happened before. Not once.
All the effort I had piled up as an honour student. The future I had been building toward.
All of it, all of it — stirred through and through, and painted over completely, white as a blank answer sheet.