Episode 38: I Cannot Forget the Smell.
How long had I been running?
I reached home, slammed the front door, turned the key.
The soft sensation of Sasaki-san’s lips still clung to the surface of mine.
“…Different.”
I rubbed at my lips with the back of my hand, again and again, rough enough to peel the skin.
“All those awful things—!”
“Different—”
That gentle, righteous warmth felt simply, viscerally wrong to me now.
I kicked my coat to the floor and made my way on unsteady legs to the shelf in the corner of the room.
There: the musk atomiser.
Something I was never going to use again. Something I couldn’t use.
And yet my trembling fingers reached for it on their own.
I removed the cap and spritzed it into the air in front of me.
The powdery citrus scent bloomed outward, a beat behind.
It should have been over.
And yet the instant it grazed my nostrils, I felt every cell in my body stand up and sing.
“…Ah.”
I had forgotten.
This smell — it brings the sensation with it. Intact.
“I think I might really love this smell…”
Hiyori’s voice sounded inside my head.
“…Hiyo, ri—”
Tears fell.
Just tears, without stopping.
I collapsed onto the bed.
Buried my face in the pillow and tried desperately to steady my breathing.
But with every breath, that heavy musk seeped into the deep part of my lungs, aching and slow, not stopping.
My chest ached.
My back teeth pressed together with a small sound.
I’ve been telling myself I’ve gone back to normal over and over.
And yet just from smelling it, the deep inside of my body had started generating heat on its own.
(No… I’m going to lose my mind—)
I gripped the sheets and twisted away, trying to escape.
But there was no escaping the heat and thirst rising from inside myself.
Unable to bear it, I slowly reached my trembling hand downward.
Touching my own hot skin through my clothes, I pulled my hand away once.
Then, carefully, slid my fingers inside my soaked underwear.
“Ah— mm—”
Just from smelling the perfume.
Just from remembering that suffocating sensation — it was unbearable.
I stroked, softly, with the pad of my finger, at the place in myself that was hot.
“Look at it. That’s all yours, isn’t it?”
“Mm— ah—”
That voice, smiling sweetly as she looked down at me and ran the video.
Those cold fingertips that had touched every part of me.
Clinging to the memories that were defiling me inside my own head, I slowly sank my fingers into the drenched, wrecked deepest place.
“Mm— ah— Hiyo, ri—”
Only my own fingers. And yet the illusion of being invaded by Hiyori’s forceful fingertips was so complete that tears poured from my eyes, unstoppable.
“I hate this— Hiyori, you idiot—”
Not enough.
Not enough.
This shallow warmth will never fill the emptiness inside me.
Even so, as though pulling memory closer by hand, I stirred through my own depths again and again, quietly, steadily, over and over.
I couldn’t stop.
In the silent room, the sound of the sheets and my own sweet, strangled voice rang out, relentlessly.
“Hiyori— ah— Hiyo, ri—!”
In a room with no one there, a sweet and utterly wretched sound escaped me.
Hot tears fell and fell, soaking into the sheets.
The core of my head buzzed and went numb, and all that came out was shallow, gasping breath, as though there wasn’t enough air.
Every time her face rose in my mind, an unstoppable heat welled from deep in my belly.
The indecent sounds from inside my own body clung to my ears, impossibly loud.
I was desperately trying to copy Hiyori’s rough stroke with my own fingers.
I had reached my limit.
With my free hand I gripped the sheets hard enough to tear them.
Sasaki-san’s kindness hadn’t made me react at all. And yet Hiyori’s ghost alone was taking me apart this easily.
“Mm— ah—!”
Without warning, my vision burst white.
A strong current shot through my whole body from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head, and I lurched, convulsing hard.
Crying softly in the back of my throat, I arched my back to its limit and sank into a miserable, solitary climax.
A long, sweet, lingering numbness.
My feet shaking and shaking.
As the wave receded, only the heat of my own exhaled breath became vivid.
…After a while, only ragged breathing began to sound in the room.
Fingers still wet, I lay on my back on the bed.
Something hot and liquid ran along my fingers and was absorbed into the sheets.
All of it, from inside me.
The body that had been so hot was growing cold rapidly now, clammy with cold sweat.
The ceiling felt far away, and very white.
Still on my back, I wrapped my cold shoulders tight in my own arms, trying to disguise the terrible emptiness of my own body.
◇◆◇◆◇
I once looked up a word.
Stockholm syndrome.
In an abnormal situation — kidnapping, confinement, something like that — the victim comes to feel empathy and dependence toward the captor. Something like that.
She was blackmailing me, and yet somewhere along the way I had grown accustomed to being with her.
Fallen into the illusion that this was normal.
Oh, good, I thought.
Just self-defence. Just a glitch in my brain.
But.
The video is gone now.
Nobody is blackmailing me. And yet — just remembering Hiyori’s smell, I go into heat on my own, and I’m here crying and comforting myself alone… that’s who I am now.
Is it still continuing?
Was it ever that, to begin with?
Being friends.
That it was fun.
That she was kind.
That it felt good.
More than any of that. Much more.
From before. Even before.
“…I’m the worst.”
A horribly hoarse, ugly sound came out.
I knew it, really, from the start.
That day — in the discipline room, the video taken, my lips taken by force —
What flooded my whole mouth was her heavy musk smell.
A shock like the marrow of my brain going numb raced through me.
I thought my breath would stop.
No — I thought: even if my breath stops and I die, that would be fine.
I accepted it because I was being blackmailed and had no choice.
That was what I wanted to tell myself.
That I was a victim, and the real me was a good and proper honour student.
…Not true.
From the day I was kissed.
From that very first second.
I had already been falling — for Hiyori.
Tears fell again.
Without stopping, soaking into the sheets.
Hiyori is gone.
The video I used as an excuse has been deleted, and I’m free.
I was supposed to have returned to a proper, ordinary life.
— Hey, Hiyori.
I’m the only one who can’t go back.