Final Episode: Just Because We’re Doing It Together Doesn’t Mean You Can Film It?!

Two stations from our school.
Seventh floor of an apartment block behind the station.

Thwap. The sound of a reference book closing echoed through the room.

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.
Right in front of me, the cover of a textbook opening and closing. A regular, meaningless noise.

Ahh… I can’t concentrate.
It was entirely the fault of the girl beside me, melting into the desk like a slime.

“Ughhh, I’m done… Maya, I can’t anymore. My brain is dying.”

Hiyori looked up at me resentfully from where she was sprawled face-down on the textbook.

“You’ve barely made any progress, have you, Hiyori.”
“Because I don’t actually need to do all of it — just learn the patterns and it’s fine…”

Under the desk, Hiyori’s foot bumped against my ankle. Clunk.
That sweetly wheedling little gesture made me let out a small sigh.

“Don’t get complacent or you’ll fail. You said you want to go to the same university as me, didn’t you? Then get your hand moving.”
“Also, Maya — you went and properly pulled your grades back up and got your recommendation sorted in the end. Isn’t that honestly insane? Like cheat-level.”
“Well, that’s because the biggest source of concern went away.”

I said it with deliberate blandness, and Hiyori rubbed her cheek against the desk and looked up at me with those upward-tilted eyes.

“Then — a little reward candy from your cute cute source of concern of a girlfriend, please~”
“Huh, a reward?! You’ve barely started! …Oh, fine. Do you want to eat the cake then?”

As if she’d known from the start I’d give in, she lifted the corner of her mouth without a trace of guilt.

“Obviously. I want cake. Mama, you’re the best. Honestly an actual mother.”
“…I’ve told you to stop calling me Mama.”
“Yeah yeah.”

Humming cheerfully to herself, Hiyori stood up and headed for the kitchen.
She was back in a moment, setting two plates of cake on the low table, tilting her head with deliberate innocence — checking with a little fufu laugh to see exactly where my gaze was landing.

“Hey, Maya.”
“What?”
“Are we not going to do it today?”

Hiyori undid the top button of her school blouse and loosened the collar with pointed show.
A white collarbone peeking through. An open, slovenly neckline, defenceless.

“Look, entrance exams are coming up, and I said today was going to be studying only, so—”
“Another little reward candy for your cute cute girlfriend… maybe?”
“…Haah, let’s just eat the cake first.”

◇◆◇◆◇

On the low table: half-eaten cake.
A strawberry shortcake for me, chocolate cake for Hiyori.

She had been dying over her textbooks until moments ago, and now was pressed snugly against my left side. Leaning back together against the bed behind us, side by side.
This closeness was our normal now.

“Also, the new discipline committee chair’s morning uniform check is way too strict, isn’t she?”
“I thought I was about that strict myself.”
“No, she’s on a completely different level! Did you properly brief her on what’s reasonable? Well, I’m planning to somehow slip through to graduation, but.”

Hiyori laughed her soft fufufu laugh, the freshly re-dyed ash-grey strands of her hair swaying.

“That’s definitely Sasaki-chan going out of her way to spite me.”
“I don’t know. She seems to have thrown herself into being committee chair too, and…”
“Also, she’s got way too many adoring underclassmen. That’s basically a queen, a female monarch!”
“I-I wouldn’t go quite that far, but… probably… popular, would be the word for that situation.”

We chatted about nothing in particular while finishing off the cake.

The last strawberry and cream and a little sponge, saved to the end.
I gathered them onto the fork for the final mouthful and put them in my mouth — and at that moment I noticed Hiyori beside me, staring at me fixedly.

“I wanted a taste too, you know. Couldn’t you give me just one bite?”

Well, it wasn’t as though she’d offered me any of hers either, I thought, and felt a small flash of stubbornness.

So I turned the last of the cake over on my tongue, slowly, two or three more times.
The sweet-tart strawberry and fresh cream, mixed with plenty of my saliva and worked into a warm, melted mass.

“Mm… here, open up.”

My voice came out muffled around the warm mouthful. I opened my lips, just slightly.

Our exhaled breaths crossed.
Hiyori didn’t hesitate — she cupped my face in both hands.
The warmth of her fingertips seeped through where they touched.
Slowly her face drew close, and with a soft hafu, my lips were sealed.

A warm, living tongue slipped in.
Pushed back by her weight, my back sank into the bed, and I pushed what was tangled on my tongue flow, with a wet sound, slowly up into her mouth from below.
The sound of her throat working carried through the quiet room, startlingly vivid.

“…Is it good?”

I drew my lips away and asked, steadying my sweet, uneven breath.
Hiyori looked down at me with melting eyes and smiled, face flushed.

“Mm, it’s good.”

Hiyori moved to straddle over me on the sheets.
The sweet musk that had always wrapped around us drifted down with her body heat, filling my field of vision.
When Hiyori’s fingers reached for the buttons of my school blouse —

I picked up my phone from where it had been lying on the sheets and aimed the lens at Hiyori’s face.

“…Seriously?”
“Seriously. Have to document it properly.”
“Today too?!”
“Hmm… I’m still kind of hurt about being blackmailed and filmed without my knowing, you know~?”
“You film me every single day though…”

Covering her face with one hand and grumbling, Hiyori made no move to get off me.
I held the camera in my right hand and with my left I caught her wrist, drawing it away slowly.

“Move your hand. …Come on, look properly at the camera.”

Through the lens, Hiyori — still straddling me — was completely disarmed, looking down at me with glistening eyes.

“…………”

Hiyori resigned herself and wound her arms around my neck, bringing her face to my ear, and whispered in a voice thick with sweet heat.

“…Hey, Maya… today, can I — touch you more — is it okay?”
“You know what.”
“?”
“Before, you used to just go ahead and do whatever you wanted. Hearing you ask like this — I might actually laugh.”
“—…! Don’t laugh! That’s just — that’s how it should be!”

Satisfied with the sight of her puffing up indignantly, I propped my phone against the pillow.

“Sorry, sorry.”

As I said it, the left hand that had been holding her wrist guided her slowly toward the warm place between my thighs.

“Go ahead, Hiyori. Touch me — as much as you like.”

The camera — kept rolling.

◇◆◇◆◇

Wrapped every time in the musk smell and our mingled hot breath, I find myself thinking.

Hiyori’s favourite films. How she spends her days off.
The sort of things normal couples come to know gradually, over time — we still barely know any of it about each other.
And yet, having skipped every step we should have taken, the wrecked, undone faces that couldn’t be shown to anyone — those we know well. Both of us.

It’s probably not normal.
It’s definitely strange, I think.

But I can’t manage without Hiyori, and when we’re not touching I feel like I might lose my mind.
The sweet, clingy way she reaches for me in my arms. This feeling I have for her, that I can only call love. All of it — real.

When I think of it that way, it might not be any different from what ordinary couples call a simple, ordinary I love you.

…Well.

There’s no point overthinking it.

Because this — for all its worst-possible beginning — is where we ended up. The best, most perfect happy ending.

No wait — correction.
It hasn’t ended. It won’t end.

Because we’ve only just begun.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Hey, Maya — you’re, like, super sensitive, aren’t you? Look — all this, every bit of it came out of you.”
“It d-didn’t — …! I’m just still not used to it…!”
“Still not used to it?! What’s that supposed to mean?! Ahaha, Maya, you liar.”

(Who was the liar here, I’d like to know…!)

〈The End〉