Chapter Four: “The Clod of Earth Longs for Snow” — Part Two
After that person comes to my hotel room, it always ends up like this. Today it’s especially intense.
“Um, you dirty old lady… You’re really… a dirty old lady…”
A mother with kids. A dirty old lady. Imagination and real experience blur together; I press my forehead against the bed. My whole body burns as if it were set on fire, and the sweat makes my bangs a tangled mess. As a substitute, second-rate at best, I suck on my left thumb, trying to recreate the feel of that person’s toes even a little.
“If you take one look and think ‘sexy,’ you can consider that person the best possible match. ‘Sexy’ is the highest form of affection, after all.”
Looking back now, what on earth was that older girl teaching a child under ten? Still, she wasn’t lying. Beautiful. Sexy. I love her. Sexy. Let me borrow your underwear. Sexy. I love her. Sexy. Because of that.
Everything, thought, affection, interest, longing, was connected by the word “sexy.”
The first time I looked up at her, I understood the meaning of “sexy” completely, on a physical level.
As I grew taller, understanding and desire caught up with that feeling, and the brakes stopped working. There isn’t a single night I don’t think about her. There isn’t a single day I don’t dream of being held by her.
When I entered middle school and ended up in the same class as her daughter, I thought it was the first stroke of luck I’d ever had. Her daughter was kind, gentle, and a little clingy. Building a casual friendship wasn’t difficult. She seemed a little like her mother, but I felt nothing for the daughter herself.
Just seeing her makes my heart tremble. That miraculous form exists only in her; nowhere else.
That day, too, I volunteered to deliver school handouts just to create some kind of connection with her. Her house wasn’t close at all. Still, when I said I was going, they casually told me her address, maybe the school was careless. Or maybe I just looked completely harmless.
But that day surprised me. I never expected to actually meet her in person, so I kept staring at a single point, trying not to let my sudden agitation show. She looked into my eyes and froze in shock, which almost made me startled in return. I wondered if she remembered me?
But we’ve never touched on that since, so it must have been a different kind of surprise.
Of course she doesn’t remember, it was just an elementary school sports day, after all.
That encounter can be my origin point. What matters now is whether she’ll trip over me, a roadside stone. Lately I’ve started to hope it’s not entirely impossible.
Having hope, that’s a wonderful thing. Hope is a reliable map that keeps people from getting lost.
I’m aiming, together with the light, for the day she holds me, the day I hold her.
Day by day, the desire to mess her body up completely grows stronger.
The wish to be messed up by her.
Even now, instead of my own hand, I long for her fingers. I want them to crawl over me, touch me, enclose me. I want those fingers, driven by desire, to seek me out.
And I want us to reach the point where we devour each other until we break.
Calm is tasteless. I want a relationship that destroys each other’s values. Every kiss should break something. I want to reach a place where even loss becomes material for pleasure.
The love I seek is the opposite of peace. It’s invasion and violence.
Domination so intense that dyeing the other in my own hue would seem far too lukewarm.
Because I’m a child of the Chitairas.
It’s not that I only know how to attack; it’s that I can’t feel affection unless it’s an attack.
The ideal I picture pushes me forward until my hunched back creaks.
I bite down on my rough breathing and finally stop my fingers. My heart pounds like an alarm bell; I’m exhausted to the point of feeling sick. But I’m not satisfied at all, still wanting more. Once my breathing settles I’ll probably start again, so I pick up the phone without waiting for the urge to subside.
Fortunately, the call connects right away. I wait until I hear the other person’s voice to make sure it’s really them.
“Hello?”
“Um… hello, Nee-san?”
Still, maybe I should have waited a little longer for the afterglow to fade. When I fall silent, my breathing threatens to sound unnatural.
“Wrong~ It’s a relative’s kid. Really. If just being a girl makes it a crime, that’s scary. It’s fine, she’s in middle school.”
On the other end, there seems to be someone nearby; I hear a slightly low girl’s voice mixed in. But only this person could make that joke, It’s okay because she’s only in middle school, sound so convincing.
“Sorry to bother you while you’re busy.”
“I got caught on Christmas Day this time.”
“You couldn’t dodge it with your usual vague answers, have you lost your touch, Nee-san?”
“How’s it going? Having fun every day?”
This person throws small talk, serious topics, crazy questions, and dirty jokes all in the same tone.
And she’s always smiling, no matter what she gains or loses.
“Somehow. Luckily, I haven’t been hit, so…”
Instead of violence, what comes is contact with her.
The fluffy feeling when she lets me rest my head on her lap. A stagnant, unfamiliar state of mind completely different from the usual swirl inside me. A heterogeneous comfort I, raised in the air of the Chitairas, know nothing about.
Today she really came dressed as Santa… I really do love her. She’s so kind. The only kind person on earth to me, huge. Bigger than the earth itself. I love her too much.
Unlike that impulse, the emotion that bubbles up might be something very precious.
In fact, it might be the thing I should understand most of all.
But the violent, surging tsunami washes even those budding feelings away.
“By the way, how’s that person… Amana-whatever-her-name-is? Still enjoying your affair?”
“Yeah, more or less… I only licked her toes so far.”
“How innocent~”
“It’s a real beginner’s experience, for me it’s my first love, after all.”
Has Shio-nee-san ever been in love with someone? She loves high school girls equally, but I can’t imagine her being infatuated with any one specific person. She understands people’s hearts so well that maybe she can only be interested in their bodies.
“For beginners, I recommend the nipple-guessing game next.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. Anyway, about my request, please stop covering the hotel bill here the next time I contact you.”
“Hmm?”
Her tone shifts slightly from the usual calm, carrying a hint of excitement. She seems to sense an “offensive” in my proposal. That reaction makes me think, Ah, she really is a person of the Chitairas too.
She has no connection to peace; that’s her nature.
“I don’t mind, but is this some kind of scheme?”
Answering questions about right and wrong is difficult.
From my perspective, it’s just ordinary thinking and actions aimed at becoming happy.
Unfortunately for her, the other person is a married woman who already has a child, and, ah, that’s sexy too.
So.
For anyone else, it would undoubtedly be the height of wickedness.
“Of course it is. After all, you raised me.”