Episode One: A Person Named Ichinose Yui
The red mark on her shoulder, peeking out from the collar of her T-shirt, stood out sharply against her pale skin.
It took me only a few seconds to realize the mark was someone’s teeth.
I crept up behind the sofa where Yui-san sat, absorbed in the movie playing on the big screen, and peered at the mark over the back of the couch.
Ouch. That looked like it hurt. It hadn’t been there yesterday, when she’d left the house — I was fairly sure.
Which meant it was from last night. Because Yui-san hadn’t come home last night.
Sex that felt so good you wanted to bite. What was that even like?
I could try to imagine her with someone, but my imagination could only take me so far. All I really had was the fact laid bare in front of me: that last night, in someone’s arms, teeth had sunk into that white shoulder hard enough to leave a mark.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Huh?”
I poked the red, swollen mark with a fingertip, and she immediately clapped a hand over it.
“…It hurts, so don’t touch it.”
Her brows drew together, just faintly annoyed. Her long black hair slid off her shoulder as she turned to give me a reproachful look, and I met her fine-boned face head-on.
“Well, it’s really swollen. It’s pretty noticeable, you know.”
“It’ll be gone in a couple of days.”
“Looks painful. You’re awfully calm about it.”
“It’s not like I’m bleeding. No point getting mad over every little thing. Though it hurt enough that there might not be a next time.”
She said it with a mischievous little laugh.
Yui-san was a woman who liked women — what people call a lesbian.
But the woman who’d presumably left that bite mark wasn’t her girlfriend.
It hadn’t taken me a month of living with her to figure that out.
On the nights Yui-san didn’t come home, she was always crashing at some woman’s place, and by the time she came back at dawn, the perfume she’d been wearing when she left was gone.
At first I thought she had a boyfriend — that she was staying out because she couldn’t exactly bring a guy home now that I’d suddenly moved in with her. That’s what I assumed, right up until I saw her kissing a woman at a drinking thing billed as a “department mixer.”
Part of it was that she never hid being gay. But she was also something of a campus celebrity — the senior with a reputation for playing the field with women.
“You’re going to get stabbed one of these days, seriously.”
“Oh, come on, enough about me. Come here, let’s watch the movie together.”
Always like this. Whenever a conversation got too close to something real, she’d find some clever way to dodge it.
She beckoned me over with a little wave, and when I came around the sofa and settled in beside her, she tossed a blanket over my lap without missing a beat — the kind of smooth, practiced gesture that told you exactly how used to women she was.
She picked up the remote from the coffee table and paused the movie.
“Huh? I thought we were watching this.”
“Yeah, you pick something you want to watch. I’ll go make us something to drink.”
She handed me the remote. Never mind that we were halfway through — Yui-san hummed to herself, apparently unbothered about missing the rest of the story, and wandered off to the kitchen.
This house had a proper surround system and a projector, the kind you’d see on display in an electronics store — and in a place this big, this sterile, for someone living alone, it was the one thing that actually felt like it reflected something Yui-san liked.
That she loved movies was one of the few things I actually knew about her.
Beyond that, I really didn’t know much.
A third-year at the same university — two years above me. Left-handed.
Preferred coffee to tea. Her drink of choice was a highball.
She didn’t cook, but she could keep house, and the place was spare and tidy, without a single unnecessary thing in it.
The reason she lived alone in a proper detached house like this, in the middle of Tokyo, was that she was the daughter of one of Japan’s more prominent conglomerate families.
Her father was the current company president — and, as it happened, an old university friend of my own father’s.
That connection was how I’d ended up living here in the first place.
Even running through everything I could think of, that was still all I really knew about her.
The clink of a mug set down on the table in front of me snapped me back to the present — hot milk.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.”
I brought the mug to my lips, and the faint scent and sweetness of honey spread through my mouth.
Back in March, when I’d first moved in — freshly returned to Japan alone from my family in England, here for university — she’d made me hot milk like this every single night.
Back then she’d just seemed like a kind, dependable older sister type.
I really hadn’t imagined, not for a second, that she was also gay, and that her whole approach to romance was completely broken. I thought about that as I glanced sideways at her.
“Decided what you want to watch?”
“…That dog one.”
I pointed at the dog on the dimly lit screen. I had a feeling this wasn’t really Yui-san’s kind of thing.
Two months into living here, I’d come to understand — in my bones — just how soft she was on the women around her. Any little selfish request, and she’d go along with it, every time.
“You like dogs? Sure, let’s watch this one today.”
Yui-san took the remote back and hit play.
At the same time, I tugged the blanket up a little, up to my shoulders.
“What’s wrong, are you cold?”
She noticed and pulled me in by the shoulder. The warmth where our bodies pressed together felt good. Skin-to-skin warmth had a way of chasing off loneliness.
If it were her girlfriend sitting here instead of me, I bet she’d be even gentler than this.
Except, by her own account, she didn’t believe in having girlfriends — she just wasn’t the type. Such a waste. Someone this beautiful, of course she’d never run out of people interested in her.
Maybe, to her, narrowing it down to just one person was the actual waste.
I didn’t understand what it was like to fall for a woman. I’d never even tried to imagine it.
The hand around my shoulder drifted up, gently stroking my hair, playing idly with the ends.
Probably this was just something she did naturally, with anyone — and that was exactly why so many women fell for her.
“…Yui-san, how are you so popular when you’re this unfaithful?”
She laughed. Ahaha. Honestly, I’d long since figured out why she was popular.
I just couldn’t help wanting to needle her about it — about the fact that she was constitutionally incapable of settling on one person.
“Who knows, right? What is it people like about me?”
I’d meant it as a jab, but she just smiled it off, easy and unbothered, and that only left me more confused.
Was that normal? Sleeping with someone you weren’t even dating?
Was that just what being a college student was like?
“Do you have a boyfriend, Kanata?”
The question caught me off guard — it felt so out of nowhere that I turned to stare at her. I hadn’t stayed out overnight once since moving in. I’d figured she must have noticed.
“No. I mean, you can tell just from watching how I live, can’t you…”
“Huh. You’re good at being spoiled, so I figured maybe — long distance, or something.”
“…I did, back home. But he cheated, and then he dumped me.”
Even thinking about it now, something behind my ribs gave a sharp little twinge. I had no lingering feelings for him, none at all, but he’d left a wound that cut pretty deep.
That whole mess was actually part of why I’d chosen to go to university in Japan — though I still didn’t have the nerve to complain about it to anyone.
“Cheated on you? Sounds like breaking up was the right call.”
“Says the woman who cheats on everyone.”
I couldn’t help laughing as I pointed it out. Yui-san, of all people, sleeping with all these different women.
“For me it’s not cheating. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I don’t get the difference. Is there really nobody in this world who can just… love one person, faithfully, straight through?”
Good thing I’d picked a warm, fuzzy animal movie for tonight. It was soothing something frayed in me.
Dogs really were the best — loving their owners so straightforwardly, without complication. Wanting that kind of devotion for myself — was that just me being greedy?
Not that I wanted a girlfriend who acted like a dog or anything.
“You’re cute, Kanata, I bet you’d have a boyfriend again in no time.”
“You don’t actually think I’m cute… I’m not even your type, you’ve said as much.”
“…Did I say that?”
“Something close to it. Back when I first moved in.”
I still remembered the words Yui-san had used, apologetic, brows drawn down, gently explaining herself to me after I’d panicked upon learning she was gay.
Don’t worry — it’s not like I’ll make a move on any woman regardless. Sorry for not telling you sooner.
I knew she’d said it to put me at ease. But it also meant, plainly, that I wasn’t someone she’d consider.
Which was fine. I wasn’t gay, and I was going to be living in Yui-san’s house for the rest of my time at university, so it was better this way, without any of that complicating things.
I knew all that. And still — somehow, it didn’t quite sit right with me.
“Right around when you first moved in, huh. You were like a cat that wasn’t used to people yet.”
The comment came so out of nowhere that a question mark all but appeared over my head.
“A cat?”
“It took you two whole months before you’d even let me touch you. You were so on guard at first.”
“…I’m just cold right now, that’s all this is.”
“Should I turn the AC up higher, then?”
Her dark eyes held mine, and I didn’t know how to answer, my gaze skittering away.
I knew I should pull back. But some part of me, undeniably, didn’t want to let go of this warmth.
I knew exactly what this was. Homesickness. Loneliness.
“…You’re kind of mean, Yui-san.”
“You think?”
“Not even realizing it is the worst part…”
“Sorry, sorry. I’m just teasing. I’m happy you’ve gotten this comfortable with me.”
Her fingers tickled at my throat, and once I realized she was messing with me, I peeled her hand off and glared at her — and she just laughed.
She was like a cloud. Impossible to get a grip on, drifting along, and you’d look away for a second and she’d be gone somewhere else.
But I’d been thoroughly won over by that sweet, comforting hot milk, comfortable enough to lean against the shoulder pressed to mine — and right now, if I was honest, I was rather enjoying a night like this.
Just as I was settling into that small, quiet moment of relaxation, Yui-san’s phone rang on the coffee table, breaking the spell.
A woman’s name I didn’t recognize. Yui-san glanced at it and immediately tapped it to silence.
“Are you sure? Not going to answer?”
“Mm, nah, it’s fine for now. I’ll call back later if I feel like it.”
She said it with total disinterest and flipped the phone face-down, which for some reason annoyed me enough that I wanted a little payback for earlier — wanted to needle her, just a bit.
“Is that the one who bit you?”
“Who knows. Forgot already.”
Liar, I thought, and pinched the arm still wrapped around my shoulder.
A May night. The start of a college life away from home, full of uncertainty.
Meeting Yui-san — kind, and mean, and a liar — was where it all began.
At the time, I believed, without a shred of doubt, that these ordinary, easy days would just go on like this until graduation.