Episode 44: Comparing Our Answers.

Like a receding tide, the ragged breathing slowly settled.
The cold winter air of the discipline room cooled our heat-flushed skin, little by little.
But drifting through the narrow room still: a faintly grown-up sweet smell, and the suffocating warmth of two people.

Scrambling to gather my blouse from the floor and clutch it to my chest, curled up on the sofa with my knees drawn in, I became acutely aware that my face was blazing hot enough to combust.

“Ahh — honestly! It’s cold, and I’m — mortified—”
“…Ahem.”

An abrupt, pointed cough.
I looked sideways to find Maya, half-undressed, watching me with an unnervingly serious expression.

“…I’m going to set the record straight.”
“Sorry?”
“Last month, Hiyori told me ‘it’s over.’ She deleted the video and said she was setting me free.”
“Ah — yeah. …Hang on a second. Why have you suddenly switched into discipline committee chair mode?!”
“I’m talking right now.”
“No — wait! Setting the record straight — you’re the one who threw me onto the sofa and jumped on me just now — so who exactly is doing the talking here?!”
“…Yes. I forced it. Getting even.”
“WHAT?!”

She’d been crying her eyes out just moments ago, clinging on and begging please don’t leave.
And the second she heard my real feelings, this is what happened.
Faced with a justification this outrageously unreasonable, I had no choice but to shut my mouth.

“Hiyori forced it on me first with a video, didn’t she. So — getting even.”

Maya ignored my reaction and gripped the edge of the sofa tight.

“So. Since you just cried and told me you ‘loved me’ — that means the ‘I’m satisfied, so it’s over’ — that was a lie, right?”
“Ugh—”

Right. Not satisfied. Not satisfied at all, and never could be.
A flat-out lie, in full flight from myself.

“…Hiyori, you idiot.”
“What?”
“Idiot. Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.”

Eyes welling up, Maya started thumping my shoulder, one soft blow after another.

“You spent all that time blackmailing me and doing whatever you liked — and now you’re trying to act like a good person?!”
“That’s — well — I’m sorry… about that.”
“Hiyori suddenly deleting the video and turning good and pushing me away — I thought you’d got bored of me and thrown me out, and everything just went completely dark—”

Flustered, I wrapped my arm around the back of Maya, who was still thumping me.

“I mean — I was the one who was blackmailing you? If you’d been set free, normally you’d be relieved, wouldn’t you? Thrown out, you say—”

Even as she grumbled, I felt Maya’s skin trembling faintly.

“Besides — Maya was falling apart, teachers were saying things — I was terrified I’d broken you, that it was my fault—”

When I let that out, voice cracking and eyes spilling over too, Maya averted her gaze with a slightly sheepish look and dropped her chin.

“That, um — that wasn’t actually your fault — I mean, it was your fault — but—”

And Maya started muttering something under her breath, lips pushed out.

“I couldn’t work out whether what was between me and Hiyori was okay to leave as just a game. Because shouldn’t you do these things properly only after you’re going out… I kept going around and around on that, and then I just couldn’t study at all—”

“…WHAT?!”

I couldn’t follow this.
The deterioration of the girl I’d spent weeks terrified I’d broken — the real cause, it turned out, was—
Whether it was okay to be doing all this before they were officially going out — that was it? Just the maddeningly earnest love-sickness of an absurdly serious discipline committee chair agonising over the correct order of things?!

“Yuri Friends… being with Hiyori… it had become really, really comfortable.”
“What…?”
“I mean, you were threatening me with a video so I was bracing myself for anything — but it was just kisses, and being stuck to me all the time, and walking home together, and opening your mouth for tamagoyaki going say aah, and going to find stickers together.”
“Oh—?!”
“Even though you forced me into it, what Hiyori kept wanting from me turned out to be — all of it, basically things that lovers do.”

Maya’s sweet voice grabbed the softest place at the very centre of my chest and refused to let go.

“I’d never done anything like that before. And when I thought — I’m wanted — you were strangely adorable, I couldn’t help it, and I thought maybe, with Hiyori it would be fine… So having that end was, really, really unbearable.”
“Maya, you felt that much—”
“Also, so — why did you take that video and blackmail me in the first place? You could have just confessed normally.”
“…WHAT?! No, no, no, no! If I’d confessed normally last year with something like ‘I like you, please go out with me’ — Yamami-mama would definitely have turned me down flat!!”

I yelled it half-desperately, and a short silence fell between us.
Maya’s eyes drifted sideways with a look of mild guilt, and she murmured small.

“Ah — yeah, okay. That’s fair. One hundred percent I would have turned you down.”
“Right?! So I went out of my way to provoke you every day — because I was scared if I didn’t, you wouldn’t look at me — and — don’t make me say weird things!”
“That’s true, if you’d said it in first year I’d have had absolutely no idea what was happening…”

She scratched her head with an awkward little ahaha, looking mildly sheepish.

“But — the result of Hiyori blackmailing me, I think… was good.”

Saying it, she averted her eyes just slightly, ears red to the tips, and continued in an even smaller voice.

“Hiyori’s lips were so soft, and her thighs were smooth, and her fingers, you know — every day reaching such an incredible place—”
“…Hey, that’s just physical!”
“N-no it’s not! It’s not only that! …And besides — Hiyori was in it for that too, wasn’t she! Kissing me everywhere and putting your fingers in—!”
“Ugh—”

When I went speechless, Maya blushed to her ears and then let out a small giggle and pressed against me.
Shoulder to shoulder. The warm afterglow of the heat we’d been losing ourselves in together just moments ago seeped quietly between us.

“…Hiyori.”

Maya tilted her face up just slightly and looked into my eyes from very close.

“I’ll ask one more time. The ‘I love you’ you said just now — was that real?”
“…Yes. I really love you. More than blackmailing you — from long before — I love you.”

My fingertips traced her back, and I held her shoulders just a little tighter.

“Then — from now on, together?”
“…Does that mean you and me going to be a couple?”
“I can’t imagine being away from Hiyori anymore.”

Cheeks flushed, Maya nodded, small.
That face — looking only at me, just an ordinary sweet girl.
I couldn’t take it anymore, and bumped my forehead gently against hers.

“Well — haha… I mean. We went and did basically everything before we even started going out.”
“Whose fault is that.”
“…Honestly, the order of everything between us was completely all over the place.”
“…Idiot.”

Calling me an idiot, Maya closed off my lips.
Sweet, and gentle. A deep kiss where with every tangle of tongue-tips each other’s warmth melted together.

After a small chu sound and the lips parted.
I arranged my expression into something slightly serious and looked back into Maya’s eyes.

“But, you know. …The fact that I filmed Maya and blackmailed her in the worst way — that doesn’t go away. I’m still guilty about that.”
“Hiyori — I don’t need you to worry about that. I already—”
“I’m the one who needs to worry about it.”

I said it plainly, and Maya stared at me, tilted her head slightly, and blinked once.

“Ah… I see. Hiyori wants to be equal with me.”

The voice was sweet and unhesitating.
Maya reached smoothly into the pile of tangled clothes and drew out her own phone.
Without pausing she opened the camera, switched it to video mode, and levelled the lens straight at me.

“Stand up. …Pick up the blazer on the floor and put it on over bare skin.”
“What — hey — wa, what are you—”
“Hiyori said she feels guilty, didn’t she. Then take proper responsibility for breaking me, will you?”

Faced with Maya’s sweet smile, I had no power left to resist.
I stood as told and draped Maya’s blazer — a little too large for me — over bare skin alone.

In the unlit discipline room, under the cold blue-white winter moonlight slanting through.
Through the gap of the blazer, my defenceless chest and thighs were laid bare.

My face might actually catch fire.

Pirr.
A small electronic sound from Maya’s phone, and the red record light blinked on in the corner of the screen.

Through the lens, Maya was looking at me — in nothing but a blazer.

“…Yes. Incredibly cute, Hiyori.”

Phone held steady, Maya murmured in a voice softened with heat.

“Mmm—”

As though fleeing the cold mechanical lens trained on me, I clutched the lapels of the borrowed blazer tight together.

“Fufu. Your face is so red. How does it feel — being on the other side of it?”

Teary-eyed, I looked down and gripped the hem of the blazer tighter still.
Embarrassed enough to die, and yet no words of resistance came.

Worse than that — being looked at by Maya’s dark, clinging gaze like my possession — my heart was clanging so loudly it hurt, and I could feel a slow warmth spreading from somewhere deep in my belly.

…I’m completely done for too.

Maya stopped the recording with a satisfied air and pressed the phone to her chest.

“…Got it. …And I’m never, ever deleting this.”

Never.
Forever, mine alone.
It sounded like that kind of declaration.

But this way, at last, some of my guilt lifts a little.
…It was supposed to.

“So then — Hiyori.”
“…What.”
“Now I’ve completely got Hiyori’s weakness, haven’t I.”

Phone still in hand, Maya traced the collar of the blazer I was wearing with cold fingertips, slowly.

“So — what should we do with this video?”

Maya’s lips drew close to my ear, as though softly nibbling at my earlobe.