Chapter Three: “The Clod of Earth Dreams of Snow” — Part Sixteen
Satisfied with that, Kai brushed the tip of my toe with her lips repeatedly, almost as though swearing an oath. With every touch, her breathing steepened, her rhythm faltering. There was no atmosphere of declaring it a joke; she truly intended to go through with it.
Brushing aside the hair spilling over her downturned face to expose her mouth, her gesture evoked something in me so tight it pained my chest.
A quick glance revealed at least three elements capable of driving my head completely mad, so in all likelihood, my mind had already lost its sanity. A kneeling middle school girl, the peek of a tongue, a swaying skirt.
The ringing in my ears and the pounding headache intensified as if in protest.
Just moments ago we had been poking at a slice of cake together, wrapped in a gentle, warm atmosphere, so why had things turned out like this?
And then, Kai’s mouth, her tongue, slid smoothly.
A shuddering chill surged up my spine and along both arms, engulfing me in an instant.
She was licking it. She had it in her mouth.
Kai, a girl wearing a middle school uniform, was blissfully licking all around my big toe. The sticky, wet sound born between her lips and my toe rushed into my ears, so thick with overripe indulgence it felt almost rotten. Far beyond mere embarrassment, I couldn’t stay still on the bed, my body twisting helplessly.
“Ngh… ah!”
Slick and heavy, Kai’s small mouth crept forward, trying to swallow my big toe whole, forcing a small cry from my throat. She wrapped the base of my toe with her tongue, thoroughly savouring the underside with a slick, rough sensation that made my hips lift from the mattress time and again. Enduring it without writhing was an utter impossibility.
My eyes met Kai’s as she looked up at me while holding my toe between her lips, sending a sudden tremor through my frame. Only now did panic set in - the realisation that I was committing something utterly monstrous. It was far too late.
With a middle school student.
In a hotel.
I was letting her lick my toes.
Not a single element of this situation was without fault.
What was more, this hotel was the very place where my husband and I had held our wedding.
In a place so steeped in precious memories, I was letting a middle school girl lick my foot.
“Ready to be done? Can we stop now?”
Kai ignored my weak protest entirely and didn’t let up. Face flushed, breathing hard, she seemed completely absorbed in what she was doing. The hot, heavy breaths she exhaled to catch her air traced across my skin, tickling me further. Seeing that desperate, urgent expression on Kai’s face made something coil tight within my chest.
When both of us fell silent, only the faint hum of the air purifier and the wet sounds of Kai’s mouth dominated the room, pressing heavily on my mind as if my brain were submerged underwater. Why did I feel so backed into a corner every time I saw her impatiently push back the hair damp with sweat and clinging to her forehead? Why did the motion of her slender throat swallowing make me almost forget to breathe?
The inside of Kai’s mouth was passionate, utterly divorced from her usual cold demeanour. What on earth was I saying? And yet, it truly was hot. A sensation of melting away, of loss, as though the toe being licked was dissolving into nothing. When Kai reached the limit of her breath and pulled her mouth away, a wave of relief washed over me upon confirming that my toe was still intact, albeit coated in saliva. But even that relief was swiftly swallowed back up by her.
Kai relished my foot in a forward-leaning, almost four-legged posture, her skirt swaying as though unable to conceal her excitement. And because the area covered by her skirt was squirming in tight, delicate motions, as if rubbing against something within, a burning heat rushed beneath my eyes.
“Are you staring at my bottom?”
“Wha— what?!”
Kai, who was now tasting my foot with her tongue slipped between my middle toe and ring toe, looked up at me with her cheeks flushed red.
“You were staring so intensely, eyes practically bloodshot.”
“They are not bloodshot. That’s a lie. I just happened to be looking down and it was, coincidally, in my line of sight…”
“If it was in your line of sight, that just means you were looking, doesn’t it.”
Unable to think of a counterargument to Kai, who kept licking each toe as if to soak them soft, I averted my eyes.
“I told you before, don’t say ridiculous things…”
The protest came out weaker than the last time I’d said something similar, further gone, it was closer to a desperate struggle to erect a paper-thin barrier. This time I knew it, and I knew Kai could see straight through it too, which is exactly why it sounded like an excuse. I really had been looking at Kai’s swaying… but that was only because of the angle, anyone looking down would end up looking the same place. An ordinary reaction, nothing more. Kai was just choosing to read far more into it than was there, in a way clearly designed to fluster me.
“And here I thought ‘erotic oba-san’ was half a joke…”
“Be quiet.”
She casually parried my firm words with the flick of her tongue. It was I who was being silenced by the warmth of her enveloping tongue. Kai teasingly gave her skirt a deliberate shake, and I promptly turned my face away in blatant embarrassment.
“Stop making such… unseemly gestures…”
The tongue currently making unseemly sounds flicked through the air like a lizard’s.
“You could flip up my skirt if you wanted to look. …Just the skirt, though.”
“…Stop saying ridiculous things and just, finish, and let me go.”
My throat felt blocked, like something enormous lodged there, making it hard to even speak. And yet some part of me was frightened of what I might actually say if that block ever came loose. Watching Kai lost in what she was doing, I found myself, for one disturbing moment, comparing it to my husband in his younger days, absorbed entirely in me, and shook the thought off at once. Something was wrong with me, projecting such raw emotion onto Kai…
Don’t think about that. Not now, of all moments, the image of myself in a wedding dress.
…But then, what else was actually happening here, between Kai and me, if not something in that same register?
On my right foot, there was no longer any spot left untouched by Kai’s tongue. Her breathing grew rougher still, her breath hitching occasionally as if stifling a groan. There was no other way to describe what was written on her face than lust.
Undeniably, this excited her. Licking someone’s foot, genuinely aroused her.
And something in her half-lidded, melted expression threatened to pull the same feeling out of me, as I looked down at her.
My own excitement was, unmistakably, being drawn up to meet hers.
But.
Something else was building too, a frustration that refused to resolve into anything, refused to break.
Kai’s tongue, Kai’s flushed face, Kai’s ragged breath, and no way to receive any of it except through my foot.
On and on.
Something tangled, unresolved, taking root somewhere deep inside me, thread over thread.
Blurred, wavering, somewhere beyond her broken, uneven breathing.
Not enough.