Episode 43: We Reach for Each Other.
Gchu. The wet sound of fingers drawn from the honey-soaked depths broke the stillness.
Released, the strength gone from my limbs, I lay with my legs sprawled open, twitching in small spasms, nothing left but breathing from my shoulders.
“Haah, haah, ah— Ma… ya—”
Through a field of vision clouded white with the aftermath, Maya stared at her own fingertips, gleaming with honey, eyes soft and heavy.
“Hey — don’t — look—”
Chu, churu—
Slowly, Maya took her long fingers into her own mouth, and sucked and drew the clinging honey from them.
A sticky, viscous sound resonating at the back of her throat.
“…Not nearly — this isn’t nearly enough — Hiyori—!”
Eyes like a starving animal, Maya groaned low, staring at the honey spilling from inside me.
Her gaze shot through the lower half of me, sprawled open in the aftermath — and then.
“Wait — Ma, ya—?”
Without a word, Maya sank her face deep between my open legs.
“Maya—!”
Her nose met the soft place.
Like a beast sinking its teeth into its prey, Maya’s tongue raked mercilessly up the most defenceless part of me.
“There — no — that’s— dirty—!”
Chu, juru. A rough, wet sound, feeding a hunger.
But it stopped suddenly.
Maya lifted her face, breath ragged and urgent, and looked up at me as though pleading.
“Haah— haah— Hiyori—”
Lips trembling, wet and shining with honey, Maya gripped the hem of my uniform skirt with white-knuckled force.
“More — I’ll make Hiyori feel so much more — so—”
Large drops spilled from those wide eyes, one after another.
“So please don’t go — don’t leave me behind—!”
Crying out loud, Maya clung to my body the way someone drowning clutches a lifeline.
Not a trace of the discipline committee chair left in her anywhere.
She looked like just one clumsy girl, starving for warmth, terrified of being abandoned.
“Maya — I’m sorry — I’m so sorry — I—”
The focus of my vision blurred and ran.
Every excuse I’d been constructing in my head, every small, tidy guilt I’d been trying to set down — all of it melting into something liquid in the face of this heat.
“I’m the worst — I deleted the video, tried to end it all clean like that, running away—”
“Hiyori—”
“I kept thinking in my head that I had to end it — but all through the winter break I could only think about Maya — I never knew not being able to touch Maya would hurt this much—!”
Tears spilled and spilled.
I wrapped my arms around Maya’s back too, and dug my fingers into her hot skin as though clinging to it.
“I thought if I let you go, Maya would feel relieved. I thought — I wrecked Maya, and she’d never want to look at my face again — despise me — so I pushed you away first—!”
All of it. Just self-protection.
I terrorised Maya, robbed her of her future, and then, when that reality closed in, tried to run from it myself — a pathetic, irredeemable coward.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry — I’m selfish and weak and hopeless — but honestly, I always wanted to keep touching you — I didn’t want to let go of any of it, your smell, your warmth—!”
“Hiyori—”
“I thought I was going to lose my mind — I thought I’d broken Maya — but I never wanted to give her to anyone else—!”
I pressed my face, wrecked with tears and worse, against Maya’s chest.
Cool-looking, not caring, not embarrassing myself — none of it mattered anymore.
All that was left was a single terror: if I let go of this hand, this time it would really and truly be over. That fear alone kept my voice shaking and shaking on its own.
“I love you — Maya, I love you — I love you so much—!”
“…………”
“I’m sorry for being this awful — but I love you, I love you — I never want anyone else to touch you, look only at me — I’m sorry, I love you — Maya, I love you—!”
Everything I’d been holding back broke and flooded out all at once, and I just kept screaming, pathetically, nothing but my shameful possessiveness and the truth of it.
And then — the arms Maya had around my back shifted, softly.
“…………”
Maya said nothing.
She who had been crying out, clinging on — I realised at some point she had stopped making sound.
In its place, as though drinking down every last drop of my ugly, heavy truth, she was listening — quietly, absolutely still.
“— Gh—!”
The next instant, I was crushed in an embrace so fierce I thought my ribs would cave.
Breath-stopping in its force.
But it was an embrace that said without question: this was always mine, I swear never to let it go again.
No words needed.
Having heard every last pathetic truth of mine, and having arrived at her heart’s certainty that it was all right to continue — the aching, fierce strength of it told me so.
My tear-wet cheek pressed against her, and then a deep, breathtaking kiss was pressed down onto me.
The saltiness of tears and the mingling of each other’s warmth ran together.
We had hit our limit.
Tangled together, we tore off what remained of our uniforms with rough, ungraceful hands.
In the discipline room that should have been cold — we were wrapped in a heat that scorched the skin.
What came after, honestly, I barely remember — my mind had gone entirely white.
Only the old sofa in the discipline room, groaning its dull protest on and on.
The warmth of our mingled smells and each other’s breath against us. That’s all.
Only — the certainty that the two of us, who had been supposed to end, were now bound together so deeply that we could never be untangled. That much I’m sure of.