Episode 1: Harbouring Desire. Hoping, If I’m Lucky, That You Will Too
She eats well, sleeps well, laughs well.
That’s Houu-chan at school — a girl of seventeen, guileless and lovely, with a face that turns heads.
Top grades. The best female athlete in the school. Blessed with friends, too; on her drowsy days, people gather around her at break time like they’re drawn to her by gravity. I’d watched that scene play out from my corner of the classroom, more times than I could count.
Houu-chan, so like a dog.
Whenever I watch her, a feeling surfaces that I’m always trying to name.
Dog. Pet. Something floats up vaguely in the associations that follow from those words. Which is to say — I want to tame Houu-chan. As a pet. Is that what this is?
Once, some time ago, I cupped her cheeks in both hands and kneaded them, squished them, played with them to my heart’s content. The way she smiled that niheehe smile. The way she covered my hands with both of hers and wheedled for more.
‘~~~!!’\
Whatever feeling that stirred in me, it was real.
Home from school. My room.
“Welcome back~”
A girl there to greet me.
“………”
I drop my bag on the floor and cup her cheeks in both hands.
“Wha’s wong (what’s wrong)?”
She places her own hands over mine.
Savouring the warmth, I ask.
“Did you run here?”
“Mm.”
“To come and meet me?”
“………Mm.”
“……I see.”
I let my hands slide from her cheeks, and they travel onwards to her throat.
Kyuu, just a little.
The pressure there for a single moment, then released, scattered like mist.
I whisper close to her ear.
“Did that startle you?”
She smiled.
“Niheehe.”
Watching that smile of hers, so dog-like in its friendliness, I feel the flush of excitement drain out of me all at once.
I’d rather she didn’t bring that school-face into my room.
“Stop smiling like that in here. We promised.”
My voice came out lower and sharper than I could help. Hearing it, she quietly let the smile drop. A blank face. The light went out of her eyes.
She twirled a strand of her short brown bob around one finger and pursed her lips, looking bored.
“It’s like a reflex. I can’t just switch it off that easily. Keeping them separate is hard.”
“But you came to my room because smiling like that had become unbearable, didn’t you, Houu-chan? Have you already forgotten?”
“………Sorry.”
“Okay. As long as you understand, that’s all I need.”
I remove my hand from her throat and lower it.
Then I raise my right hand again and stroke her head.
I think of the promise we made.
That day, what I saw for the first time was her despair.
Houu-chan had always come to speak to me at school, too, among others; and sleeping inside those radiant, shining eyes of hers was a vast darkness smouldering at the root of her heart.
I happened to be the one who encountered her when she was drowning in that darkness. The beginning of our relationship was nothing more than coincidence.
But I’m glad it was me she happened to find.
Because………
I’m fairly certain no one else in the world could guide Houu-chan right.
I stop stroking her head.
“Houu-chan, your head’s warm.”
“I ran, didn’t I. Piping hot.”
“And a little damp.”
“That’s sweat. ……I don’t smell, do I?”
The tone of someone who couldn’t care less about anything; but the words themselves wrapped in a nuance that said I’m worried, I’m anxious.
“………”
I return her question with silence.
“Wait, seriously. Do I smell?”
“Shut up.”
“That’s mean.”
I let the hand that had rested on her head slide, just as before, and use my fingertips to wipe the sweat trailing down her cheek.
“You can turn the air conditioning on if you’re hot, you know.”
“Oh, really. Maybe I will next time, then. It’s spring and it’s already like summer out there.”
With the same right hand that wiped her sweat, I press my thumb into her left cheek and knead it, muni muni.
Houu-chan fixes me with a look of mounting suspicion and bewilderment.
The pattern’s obvious by now; you must know where this is going.
I let a smile escape.
Quietly.
A soft ufufu, lifting the corners of my mouth.
“Houu-chan, you smell sweaty.”
“Hey!? I’m a lady, you know?”
“There are only ladies here.”
“Some things are embarrassing to say out loud, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
I burst out laughing.
And then.
The thumb that had been kneading her cheek launches its advance into her mouth.
“Uahhh~”
She lets out a languid sound of protest, but that’s the extent of her resistance to my eccentricities.
I place my thumb gently on her tongue.
A reflex, maybe. Her tongue twitches and coils around it.
I pull my thumb out.
A thread of Houu-chan’s saliva connects to my thumb.
“That’s dirty,” she says, and takes a white handkerchief with a ribbon on it from the pocket of her uniform skirt.
Without a word from me, she wipes away her own saliva from my thumb.
Those eyes, devoid of their light, look up at me.
I put my thumb back in, she’d gone to the trouble of wiping it, but in it goes again.
Again and again.
Pull it out, put it in.
Pull it out, slide it in.
By the time I’d repeated this enough times to lose count, her cheeks had taken on a deep rose colour.
Her breathing, slightly rougher.
From the discomfort?
Or was it the act itself, my finger, the situation of being handled at will by a girl the same age — had that excited her?
Her eyes were wet.
Those dark, lightless eyes, the eyes that harboured that despair, brimming with tears; and at the sight of it, a shudder runs through me.
After who knows how many times, her white handkerchief — thoroughly soaked now — wiped my thumb again. Then, in the same motion, her trembling hands were laid over mine.
Trembling, trembling.
Houu-chan shook her head slowly, side to side.
“Noo~♡”
I smile.
With a smile on my face, I sweep away the hands she’d placed on mine and bring my right hand back to her cheek.
Houu-chan, seated with her legs to one side.
Me, looking down at her from where I kneel.
Her fringe is stuck to her sweaty forehead.
Ah, she’s beautiful.
Right now, you are so beautiful.
I lean in close.
Receiving her hazy, unfocused gaze, I smile and run my tongue along her lips.
Our faces had drawn near enough that I could touch her lips simply by extending my tongue.
I keep my eyes on hers.
Getting darker, and darker.
“Come on, stick your tongue out.”
“Ahh~”
“Good girl.”
She looks like she’s lost track of what she’s doing anymore.
What’s being done to her.
That’s the face you’re making.
Melting, eyes swimming with tears.
You’ve loved this, Houu-chan, ever since that day.
A promise.
An agreement made between two parties. A rule. Terms.
Houu-chan will tell me no lies, will show me only her true self, and will depend on me.
I will simply make Houu-chan depend on me. The means by which I do so are unrestricted.
There are other clauses to the promise, many of them………
And so, under that promise that belongs to the two of us alone, I bestow on her again today, as her master desires, a kiss meant to drag her deeper.
The relationship that began on that day.
Each other’s master.
Each other’s dog.
A faithful, devoted dog, for the sake of fulfilling the other’s wishes.
And I, on the pretext of making Houu-chan depend on me.
If I’m lucky, I want her to hate me.
Kisses too.
Sex too.
Her first time and my first time.
Both of them given and taken and piled up between us.
But I will absolutely not love her. Not ever.
I may hold interest, but I will not hold affection.
I, who have yet to experience even a first love, do not know what “like” means, and have no desire to learn.
I only want to fall.
Yes.
I want to fall, and I want to make her fall with me.
If I were allowed to give this feeling a name, in a world where there are no objective opinions, where everything turns on subjectivity alone:
Mischief. Curiosity. An extension of play.
In a game where the winner is whoever enjoys it most, if in the end she strikes me, then surely I will.
Be glad?
Be angry?
Or will I cry?
The thought of what I myself will be like, on the other side of her hatred, thrills me; I can’t wait.
That single, simple thrill running through me, I wrap myself in my duvet tonight, turning over the warmth of having touched her, and the sensation of it, until I’ve soothed my own burning feelings into quiet.