You don't know how you got here, and that should have been your first clue. There's an unfamiliar warmth to this space, even though you don't know where you are; the details haven't grounded themselves in your mind yet, and when they do, you find yourself balking: you're in a classroom.
You wrestle with this information, but whatever conclusion you hope to catch is too fleeting to get a hold of precisely. It's just, it's just weird. You lift a hand to hold your hair, feeling lightheaded, and your eyes trail from your clammy palm to your wrist, to your arm and down and down and you realize just then that you are nude, too. You don't feel ashamed of this, only vaguely disoriented, but the classroom is empty, at least. You have a difficult time conceptualizing that it is actually odd to be butt naked in a classroom, but you settle yourself down on a desk and
that's when you see her
in clothes a little too loose, the skirt a length shorter than you think is quite right
and you are focusing on that skirt because
that gentle smile at your peripheral attention, it aches in you someplace you've no name for
(you are running low on your "answers," genius boy)
She stands in the doorway, watching you fondly, and you wonder how long she's been there. Your face grows hot—you're aware that nudity intrusive to the delicate eyes of girlhood is a cause for reproach and worse, and you're not too confident about your whelpish, scrawny stick-bundle of a body. Your knees draw up and in close— pitiful, knobby, colorless things. She reassures you with a smile, and the familiarity of it smarts you to words.
Well, one word.
"Ayano," you mutter, breathless, shrill, and shamed, and at that the feeling of wrongness crystallizes within you, becomes keen and sharp on your senses, and you think you might get a hold on the elusive details in your godforsaken haze of a brain but it slips away like sea at the shores—like breath deep from your lungs—like a curve on a fickle mouth—
Ayano's mouth lacks caprice and indecision, you remember. She always smiles. It's her eyes that give away—gave away—the fakes and the falses, in crybaby tears or timeless subtleties. Right, it's her eyes, it's her eyes. Dark brown, almost black; your classmates said they were beautiful once and they didn't know the half of it.
When you raise your gaze to meet her at last, your smile unraveling across your face like a jagged, reluctant mistake, you can see her eyes, and you're startled despite the smile, the tacit shhh, it's okay, because her eyes are the color of corrections, the color of ink slashes and one-hundred-percents she'd only seen on your desk. You remember her saying in earnest: you look good in this color! and given your current circumstances, you have reason to believe that your face is, in fact, edging on the very same shade.
Her lips seem redder, too, fuller, and she lifts her scarf in one airy heft and lets it fall over your shoulders and you hate yourself acutely in that moment. You think you are perfectly undeserving and you lift a hand to give it back, you place your fingers on the worn and well-loved fabric and the motion dies right there; you go very still, because Ayano is touching your knee with a soft, insistent push to the right, with the intent to part your guard. Her smile is borderline flirtatious now, and you squeak, leaning back until your head hits the window with a thud. Behind you, there's nothing, but in your panic you don't fixate on this mystery for a second. To your front, Ayano has one hand soft on your inner knee and the other is loosening the ribbon of her uniform.
Your eyes widen and your mouth opens and all is soundless but the rustle of fabric. Ayano lifts up the hem of her shirt, having a little trouble with one hand, but laughs at herself for it, and you hate it, you hate the sound of self-deprecation so casual on her lips, but at least she takes her fingers from your leg 'cause they had started to trail down and paralyze you further. She strips her shirt off slowly, and your sights stick to her shoulders, bare when she rolls them back with an easy sensuality, and she pulls the sleeves off and down and she has no cover anymore. You do, you think, you could cover your eyes.
But you don't. You gawk, you ungainly idiot. Her body is curvy, unflawed in hue, in shape, even in the way the light falls over her. Her hair sways when she straightens up again, she tucks a lock away behind her ear, offering you an unobstructed view of her collarbone, her bra, the rise of her breast. Your mouth is all at once too wet and too warm to form words. She's still smiling, shyly, bashfully, like a blushing bride, and you reach out a hand with all the hesitance in the world before touching the side of her face. You're surprised that your touch lands. "Ayano," you say, once you've swallowed your shock and your, the harsher, involuntary feelings that find origin in your groin—your legs, you draw them in still tighter— "What are you doing?"
"Shintaro," she sighs your name, a breath, a whisper, needy and erotic, and you want to run screaming to drown it out at the same time you want to hear it again and again. "Shintaro," she repeats, both hands on either side of your knees as she leans in, kissing your cheek. This smallest, simplest motion, this sweet contact, leaves you hot and wanting and you wonder what you want for, you can't understand, this damnable summer heat is spreading within you, melting you under your own skin, and it's pleasant. You open your mouth to inhale a passing draft, needing something cold, you're naked but you feel a threat of heat stroke or heart failure—your heart is thrumming erratically, and your mind sounds off with medical terminology, numbers, statistics. But even your thoughts go, fade into that same warm feeling, when Ayano covers your gasping mouth with hers, surer than she's ever been.
You don't know how long you kiss, or if you're even kissing. But it feels good, and when she draws back and you take that desperate breath she only says your name again. It feels good, so good that in a daze devoid of thought you let her part your legs just slightly. She settles her knee on the desk in the space between your thighs, when your legs brush the instant of graceless friction is electric and your breath shudders out, your shoulders tremble and your toes curl. She's so confident as she leans in again with leverage, cupping your face in perfect hands, kind hands, soft hands, supple, warm— you choke, you're choking—
You see her face fall. Even her smile drops, her eyebrows turn and her eyes find a depth outside of sweetness or desire. She thumbs at your cheek as if she doesn't know what else to do, just as hopelessly lost as you've always been. "Shintaro?" she says again, with a much different need, sounding small and scared even though her words are clear. She's speaking. Not whispering. She sounds real again.
"Shintaro, why are you crying?"
You wake up and your face is wet with tears, lukewarm and sitting like dew droplets under your eyes. You swipe at your cheeks, groan, simper, sniffle, loose a score of ugly, pitiful sounds, and pull your blanket over your head—it's cold, your skin is cold, your blood is hot, and your crotch is hotter. Panting, you remember the fact that has you here, pinned in your bed like a preserved bug, and the subsequent reality processes through your mind like a horrific slideshow, bit by painful bit.
- You are a hikikomori. A NEET. A hermit. A strain on society. Scum. Freak. Weakling. You haven't been in a classroom for a year. You haven't left your room once.
- Ayano can't have warm hands. She's dead.
- You just managed to have a wet dream about a dead girl.
Your self-loathing crawls inside of you and comes out your mouth in another breathless sob. You curl up and wish you were dead, too. Supposedly Ayano has put your death wish to rest, but then you go and do something so despicable it's excruciating. You grind your teeth and stir in your staunch hatred, hot as the heat of the sun concentrated in your fucked up little genius brain.
"Master?" Your computer whirrs. The girl inside speaks to you, and you flinch to think you're not alone, alone is the only safe place for someone like you. Her tone isn't snide and you burrow deeper under your blankets; you ignore her, as if she'll go away. She doesn't see your tears—the webcam doesn't reach that far—but she must hear your pained breaths, your sorrowful wittering. Her heart of binary code must be functional enough to not press it. She doesn't. She leaves you alone, and you cursorily note the mercy before turning back in on yourself. All is silent. You're scared to go back to sleep, you pitiful thing. What you saw was a nightmare borne of teenage lusts with no outlet and a longing that can never be sated. Even if she was alive… You don't dwell on if's, but you can see you're no good for her. Certainly, she would have been kind enough—stupid enough—to say yes, if you had known, if you had guts, if you had asked.
And numbly, you think, I would have driven her to suicide sooner.
The irksome, loaded feeling between your legs aches in resistance but fades, lost to your disgust, your anger, your sadness, the dawning of problematic notice. It's the first time you really think that Ayano could be more than what she is. She is already your everything, and it's funny, and it's sad; she's nothing anymore, in reality. Outside of your head, she's dust in the wind and memories of heartbreak, and nothing more, but she's irreplaceable, irreplaceable.
You cry through the remainder of a then sleepless night, you weep until morning breaks.
Tomorrow is no kinder, and you hate it no less.