Episode Eighty-Three: If It’s Just a Little While, I’ll Wait
“Thank you for the lunch break.”
“Welcome back. That was fast — you could’ve taken your time.”
Saying that, Yui-san lifted her eyes from the PC monitor. She’d apparently kept working the whole time I was out at lunch — had she eaten already? Glancing at the trash can beside her desk, I spotted a convenience store bag.
“Yui-san, I keep telling you — you really do need to take proper breaks. Overworking isn’t good for your health.”
Worried about my girlfriend’s tendency to push herself too hard, I said it, cautioning her, and turned back toward my own desk to put my wallet away in my bag — when a loud scrape sounded, and I turned back, startled.
“Kanata.”
Looking up, I found Yui-san standing right in front of me, having risen abruptly and closed the distance. Her fine brows drawn tight, she looked down at me with an expression like she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
“Y-yes. What’s wrong?”
“This isn’t yours, is it. Mitsuya-san’s…?”
“Eh?”
Following her gaze, I understood — she meant the jacket I was wearing.
“Ah, yes. That’s right…”
Before I could finish, her hand shot out toward me. Suddenly grabbing my collar, trying to pull the jacket off me, I flinched back, startled.
“Wh-what are you doing? It was cold today, so Mitsuya-san lent it to me…”
“If you’re cold, I’ll lend you mine. Take it off, right now.”
“Eh? But if I wear your jacket, Yui-san, the sleeves will be way too long…”
“Doesn’t matter if they’re too long.”
Watching her expression cloud over, fast, I caught myself. This was serious displeasure. I stopped resisting.
Fighting back against Yui-san once she’s like this isn’t the smart move. I’ve learned, more than once, the hard way, since we started dating.
Yui-san’s possessive. That’s a side of her I only discovered after we became a couple.
She never restricts me, always puts my feelings first — but the moment she catches even a hint of another man getting close to me, she notices instantly and eliminates it, fast. Like a wolf guarding its territory, ears always pricked, alert, watching everything around her.
If I carelessly wander outside the boundaries of that territory, before I know it, I get grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged straight back inside.
There’s a line I’m not allowed to cross. And sometimes I misjudge exactly where that line sits, and every time, Yui-san “educates” me — “that’s not allowed.”
Teaching my body faster than words can manage, she holds me almost like discipline, and the moment gentle Yui-san flips into that wolf — for someone as inexperienced as me, it’s still, honestly, a lot to handle.
Just being looked at with those glinting eyes, sensing the fierce love hidden behind them, is enough to make my heart tremble.
I’m hopelessly weak to her, when she’s like this.
*
Stripping Mitsuya-san’s jacket off me, still visibly annoyed, Yui-san hung it on the coat rack and grabbed her own jacket instead. Looking resentfully into my eyes, she pursed her lips.
“…Kanata. Wearing other people’s clothes is off-limits. Nobody but me. Understood?”
Obediently letting her put on that jacket, its sleeves a little too long, I thought it over. It’s true — if Yui-san lent her clothes to someone else, I’d feel awful about it too.
Only now realizing I’d done something Yui-san hated, I reflected, thoughtless of me.
“…I’m sorry.”
Apologizing plainly, Yui-san pulled my body into a tight embrace. A reconciliation hug — good, let’s win her mood back quickly, while it’s still salvageable. Just as I moved to wrap my arms around her back, Yui-san grabbed my shoulders and abruptly put distance between us.
My body, suddenly pushed away, swayed, off balance.
“Wa—”
A startled sound escaped me before I could stop it. Anxious I’d done something else to upset her, I looked up, and her expression had gone visibly harder.
“Um, Yui-san…?”
Being refused a hug — that had never once happened before. What do I do, is she really that angry? How do I get her to forgive me?
Flustered, uncertain, a crease deepened between Yui-san’s brows.
“…This isn’t your scent.”
“Eh?”
Ah, right. It was a cramped private room, and I remembered the cigarette smoke had filled the whole space. That must have transferred onto the jacket.
“It might have picked up Mitsuya-san’s cigarette smell. Does that bother you, Yui-san?”
Flustered, apologizing, I tried to take the jacket off, but Yui-san’s hand stopped me.
“…You’re cold, aren’t you. Keep it on.”
Smiling, bright, Yui-san said that. But there was nothing in her eyes matching that smile at all — and seeing it, I understood, ah, I’ve really done it now.
Borrowing the jacket itself had probably sat right at the very edge of Yui-san’s “line I’m not allowed to cross.”
But the scent that had transferred onto it seemed to fall completely, entirely, outside it.
It’s not like I don’t think — back in college, Yui-san herself came home more than once or twice carrying some other woman’s perfume — but I decided to keep that thought to myself.
Because honestly, if Yui-san came home right now wearing some other woman’s scent, I think I’d burn with jealousy too.
I’d sulk terribly, get furious, and refuse to forgive her no matter what she said, for a good while.
Unlike me, Yui-san’s the clean, unbothered type — once she “punishes” me, she goes right back to being her usual gentle self afterward.
But I know exactly how troublesome, how relentless that “punishment” actually is, so I’d rather avoid it if at all possible.
At this point, there’s really only one path left — somehow escape until Yui-san’s feelings settle down.
I took a small step back. Good thing today’s Thursday. If today had been Friday, the day I stay at Yui-san’s place — I’m sure it would have been genuinely brutal.
“…Kanata.”
“Y-yes.”
“Come stay over at my place tonight.”
“Eh… ah, but, Yui-san, today’s Thursday, isn’t it…?”
“Is that a problem?”
Watching the jealous flame flickering, unmistakable, in those black eyes I love so much, I caught my breath without meaning to.
Under that steady, unarguable gaze, I raised the white flag.
“…No, it’s not a problem at all…”
I shook my head. Refusing here felt like it would only earn a “then if you can’t stay over, right here, right now” instead, so, careful not to provoke her any further, I forced a smile and accepted. There was nothing else I could do.
＊＊＊
Cutting work off right at the clock, Yui-san half-abducted me straight to the parking lot. Opening the passenger door, urging me in, she smiled, bright, at my slight hesitation.
“Let’s head home quick, Kanata.”
“…Um, Yui-san. Can I ask you something, just to be sure?”
“Mm?”
Before getting into the car, I looked at her, tentative. She held the door open, tilting her head, watching me.
“…Are you still angry?”
Normally Yui-san kisses and hugs me without a second thought, even at the office — and yet, since that incident, she’d kept an unnaturally deliberate distance.
I’d figured the cigarette smell must have faded by now, but… Yui-san’s genuinely skilled at hiding her feelings, so I had no idea how angry she actually still was.
“…I’m not angry.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Then… you won’t do anything?”
Asking cautiously, Yui-san let out a small laugh.
“Hmm, who knows. Can’t promise that.”
Told that, I froze, halfway into the car.
Normally, she’d say “if you don’t want anything, I won’t do anything.” But not this time.
“What’s wrong? Don’t want to come home?”
Asked that, I fell silent. Because I already know exactly what would happen, going to her place…
Yui-san’s being genuinely mean. Knowing full well there’s no such thing as a sheep who willingly walks toward a wolf, knowing it can be eaten.
Looking at her with wavering, anxious eyes, Yui-san smiled, bold.
“…You can decide, Kanata. If you want to go home, go ahead.”
Saying “you can decide,” while clearly having no intention of actually letting me go home. This mean, mean woman is trying to make me choose to walk into her jaws myself.
Normally so kind — the gap between that and this leaves me dizzy.
Even before we became a couple, she’d always had this particular kind of allure. But since becoming girlfriends, I think that tendency’s only gotten stronger.
And the fact that I end up loving even that whole side of her, accepting it anyway — it makes me feel like I’m sinking, endlessly, into some bottomless swamp.
Cheeks flushed, staying silent, I climbed into the car, and Yui-san smiled, satisfied, and closed the passenger door.
Circling around and settling into the driver’s seat, Yui-san took my sulking, lips-pursed hand and pressed a fond kiss to the back of it.
“…Please, don’t be too mean, okay?”
Asking that, at least, as a final request, Yui-san, still with that wolfish ferocity lingering in her eyes, narrowed them and smiled.
＊＊＊
Where we headed was the condo near the office, the one she’d bought for work.
Opening the heavy door, “come in,” she said, pushing my body, half-forceful, into the room, and the moment the lock clicked shut, she bared her teeth.
Wrapping her arms tight around my body, she buried her face against my neck and breathed deep, as if confirming something.
I don’t even know my own scent anymore. All I could feel was Yui-san’s own beloved perfume and the gentle scent of her hair, and my heart, reflexive, raced.
“…The smell’s still not gone.”
A faintly sulky voice reached me at my ear. I’d been tense this whole time, ever since the car, and the instant that soft voice registered against my eardrum, my whole body trembled, excessive, like my legs might give out.
Lately, I really do think something’s off with me. Belatedly, I found myself understanding, at last, the feelings of those girls back in college — the ones who kept approaching Yui-san, knowing full well she’d never take them seriously, and thinking “that’s fine, even so.”
Maybe this person was simply born under a certain kind of star. A born seducer, gifted from birth with the talent to enchant both a girl’s heart and her body.
I’d always assumed she never inherited that deeply loving, devoted-to-one-person gene from her father. But thinking about it again now, it’s inherited, remarkably, after all.
I can’t help but be grateful, genuinely, that this is who she really is at her core. And I found myself, all over again, deeply thankful for my own values back in college too — that I never had the kind of carelessness that would have let me hand my body over lightly.
If I’d been careless, if she’d only ever seen me as a playmate — I’m certain I’d be living through hell right now instead.
Once you’re caught, there’s no escaping. Yui-san is like a drug. Once you know the softness of these lips, the heat her fingertips give, that sweet voice whispering gentle at your ear — you can’t help but crave it, over and over.
Through the gap in her smooth black hair, I gently stroked her nape. My fingertip brushed against the chain of the necklace I’d given her.
Lifting her face, still visibly displeased, Yui-san pressed her lips to my cheek, then pulled back and, silent, took my hand and led me along.
*
Not to the bedroom, but the changing room, and her nails, done a rich, autumn-appropriate copper, undid the ribbon at my blouse collar and immediately went for the top button.
“Um, Yui-san…!”
I have no intention of resisting being held, at this point — but being stripped bare under such bright lighting is unbearably embarrassing.
Trying to protest, I was pulled in, forceful, my words cut off by her lips sealing mine. With one hand, without even looking, she deftly undid button after button, and I resented, from the bottom of my heart, just how skilled her fingers, so practiced with women’s bodies, actually were.
Once every button was undone, repeated kisses accompanying it the whole time, she slipped the blouse off my arms and tossed it, easy, into the laundry basket.
“Yui-san, um, it’s so bright in here, this is really embarrassing…!”
“You’re still wearing your underwear.”
“That’s not really the issue…”
Kissing me again to silence me, Yui-san deftly undid my skirt’s hook and pulled the zipper down. With a soft rustle, the skirt fell to my feet.
Then Yui-san stripped off her own blouse too, tossing it carelessly to the floor. Pulling her lips away, her pure white, rounded shoulder and the navy blue strap of her underwear came into view, and, unbidden, I looked away.
The hand at my back undid my bra’s hook with a small click, and, suddenly exposed, I scrambled to cover my chest with both arms.
I’m probably flushed red all the way up to my ears right now, but Yui-san just watched me, steady, and smiled.
Her fingertip traced along my hip bone, then reached for my underwear, and I caught that left hand and stopped it.
Looking up, pleading for mercy, those heated eyes pierced straight through me.
“…If you don’t want me undressing you, want to do it yourself? That’s fine too. If it’s just a little while, I’ll wait.”
Gentle in tone, gentle in voice — but nothing about what she was actually saying was gentle at all.
Picking up my skirt from the floor, Yui-san folded it carefully and set it in the basket.
If I undressed myself, would she forgive me? It didn’t look that way at all, not remotely, and my gaze wandered, unbidden.
While I hesitated, Yui-san reached behind her own neck and unclasped the necklace.
Taking off the one I’d given her, carefully, she set it gently atop the skirt she’d taken from me.
What do I do, what’s the right answer here? Undressing myself might be a little less embarrassing than being undressed — but that, too, is still embarrassing, and I hesitated.
Slipping smoothly out of her pantsuit, now down to matching underwear as me, Yui-san studied my wavering eyes, steady — then, “time’s up,” she said, smiling bright, and pushed my shoulder toward the bathroom.