Episode 41: Asahina Hiyori, Part 3

No matter what I did, I couldn’t walk beside her.

The deeper that longing went, the more manga about girls loving girls accumulated in my room.

At first it was just an impulse.
Late at night, scrolling my phone in bed, an internet ad floated past. A story about a black-haired honour student and a blonde gyaru falling for each other — pretty standard stuff, right?

I remember my finger trembling stupidly before I tapped it.
It wasn’t that… the black-haired girl in the story looked like Yamami, or anything like that. Not exactly.
But the sight of that girl pinning the gyaru down, cheeks flushed, giving her that warmth — I was helplessly, obsessively projecting Yamami’s face over hers.
After that, digital wasn’t enough, and I started hunting down physical copies too.

At night, lock the bedroom door, burrow under the covers, turn pages as quietly as if I were holding my breath.
The smell of fresh ink.
Every line drawn on the page — I’d map Yamami’s composed posture onto it without permission. Those obsidian eyes. Those beautiful lips that scolded me.

“I love you.”
“…Me too.”

Matching the whispered scenes in the book, I’d move my own lips silently.

“…Maya.”

A name I’d never be able to call out loud in real life. Not once, not ever.
On the page, the two of them would meet, fill with warmth, dissolve sweetly into each other.
Everything I wanted desperately — that special — was there, complete.

But close the book and morning would come, and I’d just be another student receiving guidance.
No matter how much I clung to the warmth on the page, the space beside me stayed empty.
That gap was painful, humiliating, lonely enough to make me cry.

Even so, I couldn’t stop reading.
Because imagining a fictional body heat was the only way I knew how to breathe.

Those books buried in the tangle of my sheets were both the graveyard of everything I couldn’t have, and the only thing saving me.

◇◆◇◆◇

But then. That day.
The heat I’d kept hidden at the very bottom of my bag like a good-luck charm slid to the floor at the worst possible moment.

Thwap.
The nasty sound of pages splaying open against the corridor floor rang out in the after-school hall.
I thought my heart would stop.

(Bad — !)

Of all people, Yamami was right there.
She went completely still the moment she saw the cover.

— It was over.

I looked down at her with a rigid face — and then.

“…W-what is this. Bringing something like this to school—”

A trembling voice.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.

She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t exasperated.
Her face had gone completely scarlet, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from that cover of two girls tangled together. Nailed to it.

Something dark and muddy that I’d never felt before lurched inside me.

So this person — makes this face too.
Not labelled as school rule violation the way I always was.
Right now, what her eyes were taking in was only the heat I’d been carrying.

“Hmm? …Hey, Yamami. Don’t tell me you’re actually interested in something like this?”

Without thinking, I’d lifted the corner of my mouth and was leaning in to peer up at her face from below.

In reality, my legs had been trembling with the terror of my secret being exposed.

But more than that — the joy of having drawn out that not just correct, completely defenceless face from her was so overwhelming that I couldn’t help putting on a front.

◇◆◇◆◇

The manga, confiscated on the spot.
That evening, I went to the discipline room to get it back.
…No, that’s not true. It was that I couldn’t forget her flustered face, and I just wanted to tease her again, I think.

But what I saw through the slightly open door went far beyond anything I’d imagined.

“Mm… hh… ah…”

A sweet, liquid sound. A breathless exhale.
Not the usual clean, soap-like smell. Something rawer, more vivid. A hot, suffocating smell.

There, in the discipline room dyed red by the evening sun.
Yamami Maya — correct and beautiful Yamami Maya.
Reading my manga. Hand inside her own skirt. Touching herself.

The trembling sound of a page turning.
The fictional heat I’d imagined every night, close to tears — it was there as a vivid, breathing reality.

My mind went completely white.

Why?
Why is Maya, at school, with my manga —
Doing something like that too?

I’d believed I could never touch her as long as she stayed correct.

But the her right now—

If I had this weakness over her — she’d do exactly as I wanted.
The trembling in my legs had vanished entirely.
In its place, a cold, numbing excitement raced through every part of my body.
My hand was moving on its own.

I took out my phone. Pressed the record button.

Sorry.
I’m sorry, Yamami.

I can’t breathe without you anymore.

I know a lifetime is impossible.

I have no right to dirty your beautiful life forever.

Ha, this is messed up.

It’s a crime.

Getting caught for this — my life is over.

Sorry.

I’m sorry.

But.

Ping.

The flat, mechanical electronic sound became a time-limited chain, binding us together.

“…Oh wow. Yikes. Yamami-mama, that face right now… seriously one for the archives~”

Holding out the recording phone as I moved slowly toward her.

“A-sa-hi-na…?”

Hiding my trembling fingers.

To become the worst kind of criminal — the one who monopolised the space beside her.

◇◆◇◆◇

The third-term opening ceremony.

It was all over now.

Since letting go at the end of second term, we’d gone back to being just classmates.

Just the discipline committee chair and the habitual rule-breaker.

The Yuri Friends game had been a temporary thing — a way to be beside her.

So before I could disorder her life any further, I had to be the one to disappear.

…No. Wanting to disappear was my own selfishness.
I was running away from the fact that I had broken someone.

I changed my perfume too.
As if to flee from the shared smell of our shared sin, I doused myself in some random floral scent.
Going through the motions of not caring, laughing as if nothing had happened.

◇◆◇◆◇

After school.
Students on their way to club activities drifted past the shoe lockers in ones and twos.
I watched Airi and the others off to their part-time jobs, then hurried toward the shoe lockers myself, planning to go home quickly.

And then — from behind, a grip crushing my wrist with enough force to make my bones creak.

“Wha — hey—”

Yanked off-balance, I lurched — and a pair of cold eyes looking down at me crashed into my field of vision.

On that arm: a familiar, ugly armband.
Yamami… Maya.

“Wai-, Yamami—? What are you—”
“…Come with me.”

Without a word in answer, she gripped my wrist like she was trying to crush it and started walking in the opposite direction, dragging me along in silence.
Not caring at all about the curious stares of students we passed, she hauled me through the corridor without a word.

Where she was taking me — was the discipline room. The one I’d spent so many days walking to.