They laid in bed afterwards, Kagura holding Ayumu against her. Feeling Kagura's skin against her own somehow made Ayumu feel the most safe she'd ever felt, maybe paradoxically, since they were both completely naked. But feeling her heartbeat against her back, her arms around her waist, her legs gently tangled with her own, was a sort of intimacy she'd never felt before, and hopefully would many more times.
"You were so good, baby," Kagura cooed.
"Even though I cried halfway through?"
Kagura giggled. "Especially then. It's okay to cry. I do it too. A lot."
They continued nuzzling each other, making soft, happy sounds, until Ayumu decided to talk about something. "I was never very good in school."
"Yeah? Me neither."
"I bounced around a lot. Really wherever my parents could convince the administration to take me."
"And not because you were a problem child, I assume," Kagura said, not liking where this was going.
"Yeah. My grades were really, really bad. They knew something was wrong with me. They just didn't know what. And you know how they see kids like me."
"You mean disabled?" Kagura suggested. Immediately, she regretted it. She felt Ayumu tense up.
"Yeah. Guess I should own it, huh?"
"So when did they figure out you were autistic?"
Ayumu relaxed a little bit. "Shortly before we moved here, actually. They hoped Tokyo would be a fresh start. I studied like hell for the entrance exam, and it was actually really easy for me. Dunno why." She paused. "They...they started hurting me pretty early." Another pause. "Well, not deliberately hurting me, they love me, see, it's just-"
"I'm gonna stop you right there, love," her lover said. "They hurt you. They are hurting you." Ayumu's breathing shuddered, like she was trying hard not to cry, but all that came out was a very soft "you have no idea". Kagura's heart sank.
"You can tell me anything, Ayumu. I promise. You're safe with me."
Ayumu rolled over to face Kagura. "I never had a friend before I came here," she said. "I had a lot of trouble making 'em, you see. But even the people I got close to...my parents would say I wasn't allowed to see them. Or they had to come to our house. And being under the watch of my parents, well, it made a lot of things super awkward, so eventually those friends would stop seeing me. It was a huge step for them to let me go on summer trips with Chiyo, and especially go out with you."
"Yeah, I bet. Geez, that's...that's really messed up, Ayumu."
"I hit puberty at 12 and they didn't really know how to react to it. I got the bog-standard education everyone else gets, but shortly afterward they started taping me up. They said it was for my protection, to keep lustful men away from me."
"And they've done that ever since?"
"Yeah. Every day, I'm in so much pain, it hurts to breathe so much."
"Well, I'm gonna talk to 'em. They're gonna stop doing that to you, if I have anything to say about it."
"No! No, please don't, they'll, they'll stop me from ever seeing you again. They hate being told what to do, especially when it comes to me. They've cut off family for that before."
"I think they'll be different this time. Especially when they see how much I love you." That sounded a lot braver in Kagura's head than it sounded, and it didn't seem to comfort Ayumu much. Her eyes were still full of fear.
"You don't want to go back home, do you?"
Ayumu gently shook her head, then started to cry. "Oh, baby, come here," Kagura murmured, holding Ayumu against her chest. "I'll love you, no matter what. And I will talk to your parents. I'm not gonna let you confront scary people when you're scared yourself."
That only made Ayumu cry more as she buried her face into her chest, holding onto Kagura for dear life. "I love you, I love you, I love you so much," she kept repeating.
"For now," Kagura said, "we should get some sleep. It's late, and we have school tomorrow, right?"
"Mhmm," Ayumu said gently.
"Come here, baby. I'll keep you safe."
And slowly, they fell asleep, Ayumu tucking her head under Kagura's chin, Kagura's arm lazily holding Ayumu to her.
When they got to school the next morning, it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened between the two of them the night before.
"I see someone went on a date last night," Tomo announced loudly as Kagura walked in the room, pointing to the giant hickey just barely visible above her uniform collar.
"Get bent," Kagura responded.
"Chipper as ever, I see. And just who did you mack with last nigh-" Suddenly, someone else caught her attention. Caught everyone's attention.
Ayumu didn't notice everyone staring at her as she sat at her desk and prepared for the day as she usually did. Chiyo leaned back and said quietly, "You look really pretty today, Osaka!"
"Thanks, Chiyo."
"Woah, when did Osaka get hot?" Tomo said, and Ayumu ignored the giggles. She wasn't going to give her the attention she wanted today. This was a new Ayumu, and New Ayumu wasn't going to engage with her bullies.
This strategy lasted exactly fifteen minutes.
"Osaka, can you translate this sentence on the board for us?" Yukari asked. She looked at the sentence. Seemed simple enough. She got up, and wrote, 'Jane goes to the store.'
"No, Osaka, but close. Past tense, remember? Jane went to the store. Sit down, please."
Dammit! she thought. I should've known that! She slunk back to her desk, dejected. And from the right side of the room came a familiar, extremely unwarranted voice.
"Idiot."
Ayumu brought her hand to her desk with the force of God. SLAM. Yukari stopped talking, and everyone looked at Ayumu as she slowly turned to Tomo, who was, maybe for the first time, suddenly uncomfortable with the spotlight on her.
"I've just about had enough of you, Takino-san," Ayumu snarled. "Who the ever-loving hell do you think you are!?" Tomo gulped, her heart pounding.
"I've had it with the both of y'all!" Ayumu yelled as she pointed at Tomo and Yomi, and this wasn't how she normally spoke when she was frustrated. She was actually yelling. "You," she started, pointing at Yomi, "Why do you pick on people smaller than you? Does it feel good? Give you a sense of superiority to pick on the retard, or enable your friends to do it for you? You fucking COWARD! Sitting by as your friends beat up on me, never considering how I feel, joining in when you feel like it because you think it's fun, you think it's funny. You don't even treat me like a person half the fucking time! I know snakes with more gumption than you to stick up for what's right, and call out what's wrong!" She left Yomi, who was white as a sheet, and pointed a finger at Tomo, who felt like a bazooka was trained on her.
"And you," Ayumu said, deadly quiet, "You're the reason I wanted to quit this school after a year. You're the reason I hated waking up in the morning. You're the reason I have to go every day by this STUPID GODDAMN NAME! You didn't even give a damn human nickname, you just called me fucking Osaka. Never asked if I wanted it, you just did it. Well, I'm Ayumu Kasuga, and I won't take your bullying for one more God-given second! Playing tricks on me, calling me names, pretending to go on a date with me and thinking nothing of it. Every day it's 'baka', 'baka', 'baka'. Well, you're the goddamned 'baka' here, you belly-crawling bitch!"
Her heart was pounding. She felt like she'd just killed a wild animal, and the blood was still on her hands, and it felt good, it felt good to stand up and yell, it felt good to yell back at people who'd been nothing but mean to her for two-plus years. As the adrenaline subsided, she noticed the shocked face on her English teacher.
"Apologies, Tanizaki-sensei," she said, bowing, and returning in her notebook to make a note of past tense usage.
"Riiiiiiight," Yukari began, still rather startled. "Well, as we saw in the example earlier, past tense can be rather tricky to notice. Jane 'goes', but if she 'goes' in the past, she 'went'..."
As the lecture continued, Ayumu looked back in her peripheral vision at the pair she'd just berated. Yomi was stoically focused on the lesson, but it was clear Ayumu's words had shaken her to her core. Tomo was hiding her emotions extremely ineffectively, short of breaking into a sob in the middle of class, her notebook dotted with tears.
Part of Ayumu felt bad about it. She hated yelling. She hated making people feel bad. She hated seeing people sad. But she also hated being made fun of. She hated being picked on, and it was at that point in reasoning that her sympathy all but vanished. They'd deserved it, for all they'd done to her. If they were truly sorry, they'd be different. So she turned her focus again to the front of the class, and pushed those thoughts out of her mind for the time being.
Kagura, Chiyo, and Sakaki were the only ones to walk home with Ayumu that day.
"That was really brave, what you did, Ayumu, even if it was kinda scary," Chiyo said.
"I hate yelling," Ayumu admitted. "But it just...all came out. I'm sorry if I scared you guys."
"It was scary," Sakaki said. "I've never seen you yell like that before."
"I don't think I ever have."
Sakaki and Chiyo said their goodbyes as they walked towards their neighborhood, leaving the two girlfriends alone.
"I'm proud of you for what you did, I really am," Kagura said slowly. "But please...try not to yell like that again."
"I don't plan on it. It just...all came out at once, y'know?"
"Yeah."
And that was all they said to each other as they walked to Ayumu's house. Ayumu had stood up to her bullies earlier today, and it had taken the wind out of her. Kagura had this handled. After she knocked on the door, Ayumu's parents responded. They smiled when they saw Kagura. "Oh, you must be Kagura!" Ayumu's dad said. But that smile quickly disappeared when they saw what she was holding: twelve long strands of tape and bandages.
"Where did you get those?" Ayumu's mom asked, in a dangerous tone. Kagura didn't respond. Instead, she wadded them up into a tight ball, and shot it like a basketball into a garbage can. Nothing but net. She turned around and said, "Ayumu and I have schoolwork to do." Her arm was protectively around Ayumu's waist. Her parents stood there, looked at each other briefly, and said, "Sure. Come on in."
About two hours later, while pounding through Classical Japanese, Kagura had a thought she just couldn't keep in.
"Y'know," Kagura said, nursing her third cup of tea, "I've been thinking."
"Always dangerous," Ayumu said, "thinking."
Kagura laughed. "I'm probably going to visit my dad this summer, after visiting Chiyo's beach home, assuming that's happening again."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And I was wondering...if you wanted to go with me."
Ayumu stopped practicing kanji and looked at her parents in the other room, who were taking note of every word being said. They smiled at her, and gave her a thumbs-up. Her heart lifted considerably.
"I'd love to."
An hour or so later, Kagura yawned. "Alright, I think we've done all the work there is to do tonight," Kagura said, putting her books in her bag.
"Yeah, I'm getting sleepy," Ayumu responded, yawning.
"Oh, Kagura?" Ayumu's mom called. "Could we speak to you before you leave?"
The two girls gave each other a look. "Sure!" she called back in a voice that her dad called "customer service voice".
"I'm headin' to bed, I'm a lot sleepier than I thought. I don't normally stay up this late," Ayumu said.
"Yeah, sorry about that. Goodnight, sweetie," Kagura said as she gave her a goodnight kiss. She went and sat across from her girlfriend's parents, in what was easily one of the most uncomfortable moments she'd had in quite a while.
"We were very worried about Ayumu having a girlfriend, even though she told us everything about you," her mom began. "But...if you're with her, maybe you can keep her safe?"
Kagura thought very carefully about the words she said, between what she wanted to say and what she should say if she wanted to see Ayumu ever again. She settled on something in between.
"Of course, I love her very much and of course I'm protective of her. But," she added, "your daughter has grown quite considerably. Today, she stood up directly to people who were teasing her. She's become much more confident in asserting her own voice." She paused. "I just thought you should know that."
For people who were allergic to being called out, they took it rather well. They thanked her for visiting and saw her out the door. She looked up to Ayumu's window, and they blew each other a kiss before Ayumu's light turned out.
Laying underneath her soft blanket, holding her bear she'd had since she was an infant, Ayumu thought peacefully about the wonderful people in her life. She had a girlfriend who loved her, and hopefully, her parents saw that. She found herself thankful for these good people.
She ran a hand over her body. For once, she found herself not hating it, and she largely had Kagura to thank for that, for ripping those bandages off and letting the true her shine. Now that she had opened a door, Ayumu was gonna walk right through it, into the bright future beyond.