Episode 34: What a Spectacular Case of Crossed Signals — That’s Just Too Convenient!
I was shocked.
I’d spent years pining after my childhood friend, finally got to date her, and now — I thought she’d just told me she wanted to have sex with me.
…No wait, she absolutely did just say that!!
Even as I threw that full-force retort at myself internally, the heat in my face had long since blown past boiling point.
“Wh…?”
“Because…”
Through the gap in the hands still covering her face, Makina peeked at me with eyes flushed red.
“Whenever I touch you, Yotsuka, I keep thinking it. I want to get closer. I want to touch you more. More, more… I couldn’t make it stop.”
“That’s… same for me, though.”
“No, I’m definitely thinking about it in a completely different direction than you are.”
“Different direction…?”
“Just kissing, just touching — it stopped being enough. I started thinking about what comes after that. I hated feeling like such an indecent person.”
I-indecent, she says…
Who could’ve possibly predicted a word with that much destructive power coming out of Makina’s mouth.
“So I kept my distance. Because I was completely sure that if I touched you, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.”
—”Kept my distance” was far too light a phrase for how desperate that sounded.
How much had she been fighting something inside herself this whole time, Makina?
“Even just holding hands, once, was already too much. The instant our fingers touched, I knew — I knew better than anyone — that I wouldn’t be able to hold back. So I couldn’t even hold your hand.”
“…That’s why you were avoiding me…?”
“Yes.”
“Not because you started hating me, or something like that…?”
“Not even close. If anything, I liked you too much, and it was driving me crazy…”
The wall clock in the living room reads 11:55 PM.
Five minutes left until the date changes.
What is that?!
What the hell is that, that makes zero sense, ZERO sense at all!!
“Q-quit messing with me!!!!”
The thread of tension inside me snapped clean, and I practically launched off the sofa, shouting out every bit of anxiety I’d been bottling up.
“Do you have any idea what I was going through?! New term barely starts and I’m convinced you’ve completely cooled off on me, walking around every day looking like a zombie about to die?! I even remembered accidentally eating your pudding last month and spiraled into a full-blown self-blame loop over it!!”
“Wait, pudding…?”
“Yes! And you’re telling me THAT’S the reason you were avoiding me?!”
11:56 PM.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s the reason’?! I was thinking plenty too, okay?! Like, maybe Yotsuka doesn’t want to go that far yet! I was desperately worried you’d think I was being pathetic if I was the only one thinking about it that much!”
“I was worried too! That maybe you were just forcing yourself to match my pace, or that you’d cooled off on me! If anything, I— I wanted to, y’know, go pretty far with you too?! You should’ve just said something, idiot!!”
“I-idiot?! But we’re still high schoolers, we’re still kids…!”
11:57 PM.
“What kid?! …Wait, hold on. Was that what you were secretly looking up on your phone that time? ‘High schoolers… too fast’? Were you asking some advice forum whether it’s too early for a high schooler to want to do that stuff with her girlfriend?!”
“Y-you really did see that, huh…”
11:58 PM.
The air in the living room got hotter and hotter as the shouting match raged on.
Screaming our real feelings at each other, faces completely red — we’d never once done that since we started dating.
“And another thing — you’re the one who started sleeping together in the first place, so why’d you just slink back to your own room?! I was lonely!”
“That’s, um… because I was thinking about you, Yotsuka, and, um, handling it myself…”
“Don’t just calmly go handle it by yourself while I’m over here not even able to eat properly!!”
“Wai— hey, Yotsuka, your voice is so loud…?! I couldn’t help it, or I really would’ve jumped you right then!”
“Bring it on! Go ahead and jump me!”
11:59 PM.
The heat from the shouting match drained out all at once, leaving a strangely awkward silence behind.
Only the sound of the clock’s second hand reached my ears, unnaturally clear.
“Haah… haah. So, what was it you wanted to talk about, Makina…?”
Having thrown out everything I wanted to say, the blood suddenly drained from my head, and a little bit of calm returned.
In the awkward silence, we both kept catching our breath, shoulders heaving.
“Ah, um, that. Well, I’ve basically already said it.”
Makina’s eyes drifted awkwardly, and then she let a small murmur slip out.
“This is my first time dating anyone, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, and it was so hard… I mean, if you hated me, Yotsuka, I don’t think I could go on living…”
“There’s no way I’d hate you…”
“But, but!”
Makina, who’d been looking down, suddenly snapped her head up.
Like she’d just landed on the answer to a test question she’d been agonizing over for days, her eyes lit up bright.
“I figured it out. Once we’re not kids anymore, once we’re adults — it’s fine. It’s allowed.”
“Adults… you mean…”
“Right, so…”
Makina nodded, deep and firm, her voice fading toward nothing but carrying a hidden, unshakeable resolve.
“M-Makina—”
“We’re almost adults now. So… it’s fine now, isn’t it?”
“Eh—”
My vision tilted, spun.
By the time I registered it, my back had already sunk deep into the sofa cushion.
With a heavy thump, a warm, supple weight came down over my body.
“Hyah— wha…?!”
I reflexively tried to move my wrists to get away, but they were seized without mercy and pinned above my head.
Where does that much strength come from in such thin fingers? — I couldn’t budge an inch.
On top of that, Makina’s smooth thigh slid between my legs, and I was completely, totally immobilized.
Through the skin of my captured wrists, Makina’s unnaturally high body heat and the hard, frantic pounding of her heartbeat came through directly.
“Wait, hold on, Makina…! This is…!”
“Not waiting.”
Looking down at me, Makina’s face was unbelievably close.
Her long black hair curtained off my whole field of vision, and her sweet scent and hot breath filled my nose, my lungs, my mind, without mercy.
“You’re too cute, Yotsuka, I’ve been going crazy this whole time. I want to touch you, I want all of you, I want to make you mine and only mine… I’ve been thinking about it, every day, every night. …So, let’s continue from where we left off that day, okay?”
For a second, I felt like the air in the room went completely, dead still.
Tick. Tock.
In the living room, only the sound of the wall clock’s second hand echoed, unnaturally loud.
—Click.
Right then, the phone on the table chimed, announcing the date had changed, with perfect timing.
The screen lit up bright, and at the same moment, a message notification arrived from our parents in Hokkaido.
“Happy birthday! To both of you! We’ll be back on the morning flight today!”
April 17th.
Our eighteenth birthday.
In name and in fact, the very first second we became “adults.”
“Ma— Makina…”
Playfully, Makina traces my lips with a slender fingertip, humming as she does.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”
A year ago, at that seat in the family restaurant by the station, we’d harmonized on that exact melody, celebrating our seventeenth birthday together. That same, special tune.
But her voice now was nothing like it had been back then — lower, sweeter, burning with heat.
“Happy birthday, dear us…”
*
“Happy birthday to you.”
*
“Happy eighteenth birthday, Yotsuka.”
*
“And happy birthday to me too, I guess.”
The moment the song ended, her lips came down on mine — deeper, hotter, with none of the restraint of any kiss before it.