xiv.
When Eri told Anya about Mirio, there under the magnolia tree, she'd initially been overwhelmed by a dazzling sense of relief – perhaps because to say it had made it real, to have shared the secret made it feel a little less dirty; or perhaps it was because Anya hadn't warned her off. Indeed, she'd sighed mournfully, and had kissed the top of Eri's head with a full, brooding mouth. "He sounds like very gentle man," she'd said. "You like him very much, I can tell." But she hadn't told Eri to stop. And she hadn't told Eri it was bad. And if Anya didn't disagree, then Eri wouldn't either.
It was in the hours that followed, however, that the terror set in. Relief gave way to a smoldering in her ribcage, and a flapping in her skull. What if Anya told Chrono? She would, wouldn't she? Because nothing was ever safe if it didn't stay hidden in Eri's heart.
She'd gasped for oxygen all through her dreams in the night, and had hidden herself in the bathroom for as long as she could possibly manage the next morning. She hadn't looked at Chrono, petrified. She had stayed as far away from Kai as he'd allow, ashamed and disgusted. She'd been so stupid. She'd known one wrong move would make everything come crumbling. And she'd never see blue sky again. And she'd never see Mirio again. And Kai would probably break so many of her bones and so well that even he wouldn't be able to put her back together.
But nothing came. Neither Chrono nor Kai had looked at her, spoke to her, treated her any differently.
And when Kai disappeared to a last-minute meeting a few nights later, when Chrono told Eri to go to bed because Kai would only be back in the morning, every one of her anxieties had spilled into a glowing, quivering, inexplicable euphoria. Anya was right, of course - she, Eri, liked Mirio very much. She wanted to see him very much. So she'd gone and she'd done it.
The rest of the week was history, engraved onto Eri's lips and skin and somewhere deep inside of her. Something deep inside of her, which until now had been curled away and very, very quiet.
She'd thought about it constantly since getting home the previous night.
She thought about it now, picking out apples at the market. Chrono was carrying the basket, already filled with dark leaves and vegetables which had never looked so unappetizing. He chose tomatoes from their box, next to the radishes and in front of the potatoes. He always chose the tomatoes – and maybe it was because Anya loved tomatoes, and ate them like they were delicacies. Did he think of her? Did he pretend he was choosing them for her?
For reasons she couldn't decide upon, Eri blushed.
Chrono bought her taiyaki when they were finished shopping, and they sat at the usual table by the dock to eat. The dough tasted blander than usual. The sweetness was not as sweet as usual.
"You've been very quiet today," Chrono said, sounding strange. Stranger than usual.
Eri shrugged.
"Are you missing Anya?"
"I always miss her."
Chrono hummed.
He'd probably missed her every day for… how long had Anya said it had been? Eight years. And how many days were there in eight years? How many nights? Eri had never been all that good at math – no matter how the Russians had tried to teach her – but still she tried to work it out, hoping numbers would dilute the idea of Chrono and Anya having held, touched, said each other's names however many times over eight years. More than that, Eri hoped it would dilute the thought of how Mirio's hand had felt down where even Kai's hand very rarely went.
She shivered, and Chrono noticed, raising his eyebrows, clearing his throat as though to speak but then saying nothing.
Both of them chewed awkwardly through their taiyaki until there was nothing left. Their baskets waited to be taken home. Seagulls flapped over head in gangly, clumsy patterns, and Eri looked over the blanket-ruffled water of the dock. There were tapping fingers atop the table, and fidgeting hands, and more throat-clearing. They could have left. They should have, Kai would probably be waiting for them.
But Chrono made no move to move, and so neither did Eri.
"I've been wanting to talk to you, Eri-chan," he said eventually, soft. "Anya… thinks it would be a good idea…"
"What?"
"She told me…" He paused and pursed his lips into a thin line, mask hanging about his neck limply. "She told me you know."
"Oh." Eri felt her face drop. Growing pale. Growing horrified. "Oh."
"I know you probably–"
"What did she say? Exactly?"
He seemed to struggle with the words. It was peculiar, seeing him look so uncomfortable. "I know you probably have some questions. You weren't supposed to find out, and Anya tells me you haven't told anyone." He meant Overhaul, but couldn't say his name in public. "Not that you can't, of course. It's not a secret." Oh, wasn't it? "But I'll answer whatever you might want to ask, Eri-chan. It's perfectly… normal… for you to have questions."
Chrono didn't squirm over things. If anything, Chrono was even less queasy than Kai was. So for him to look so uneasy was odd, maybe a little upsetting but not really. If nothing else, and if Eri was being honest with herself, it brought with it a sneaking sense of thrill.
"I don't have questions," she said.
And Chrono looked relieved. "Alright. That's quite alright too."
"But…"
"But?"
The something deep inside of Eri roused itself, and she thought again of Mirio. Of how good it had felt for him to touch her, and so wrong in some very right way: wrong in its not-so-wrongness, the best kind of wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That must have been how Chrono and Anya felt; that must have been why they'd clung onto each other so desperately, like two vines around a tree.
Blushing deeper now, Eri shrank into her scarf. "Actually, there is something." When Chrono didn't reply, she took it as an opening to press onwards despite how her stomach curdled. "Is it, umm, supposed to make you feel good? Or, I mean, can women like it too? You know…" Sheepishly, she lowered her voice, "…it."
Chrono spluttered, and the two of them stared as though they'd just stabbed each other. And now? Now what do we do? Indeed, Eri realised the absurdity of talking to Chrono like this. Even being her primary source of knowledge on the world, he'd never been the one to teach her about these kinds of things. Because what did he know about talking to a girl about her body, especially when that body had never been hers to understand? Eri had always accepted knowing only what books showed her, and what Anya told her, and what Kai did to her.
But now she needed someone to answer her questions, and for the something deep inside of her to make some sense.
"I meant questions about Anya and me," Chrono said eventually.
Eri knew that. But Anya had already told her everything she wanted to know – which, admittedly, was not much (flashing back to Chrono's bum was hilarious and hideous enough as it was) – and now she only had questions entirely her own. Despite how heat throbbed to life in her cheeks, Eri looked at Chrono dead-on. "Is it supposed to feel good though?"
Chrono rubbed his nape, and pulled a face that made it look like he was trying not to pull a face. "Yes. It should feel good."
"For a woman too?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Do I look like a woman to you, Eri?"
Swallowing a mouthful of salty air, Eri gaped. He didn't look mad but he didn't look particularly happy either, slightly red and thin-eyed as he tugged his mask back into place. And Eri didn't want to be the reason Chrono was unhappy. The heat receded from her cheeks, and she was about to apologise before the thought even occurred to her that she should – or maybe not, since Mirio had pointed out she apologised too much.
However, Chrono spoke first. "Come. Let's go home. I'll see if I can, uh, explain."
After unpacking the groceries onto the kitchen counter, Eri rushed to shower. Kai had locked himself in his study, maybe asleep, maybe half-asleep, so she didn't need to greet him. She didn't need to wear nice clothes for him either, since he'd probably be too tired to care about her whenever he emerged. So after scrubbing herself clean and massaging disinfectant into her skin, she threw on her pajamas even though it was hardly the middle of the day. Big, puffy pants to hide the way her legs were shaking. A sweater, because their house was always freezing cold, and because she wanted to preserve as much as possible the warm niggle low in her stomach.
And then off she scurried to Chrono's study in too much of a hurry, bare feet tapping across the floor quick and greedy.
He was already at his desk, and had candied nuts in a bowl on the table. He was skittishly quick in closing his laptop when she knocked at the door. A seat from the dining room had been pulled up next to him; he made an awkward gesture for Eri to sit, and offered her a mug of green tea. He had a coffee for himself, dark and steaming in one of the porcelain mugs – Eri could smell it, a strange and sharp undertone unusual for coffee.
"Are you comfortable?"
"Yes."
"Is your tea too hot?"
"No."
"Okay, well." He tapped his fingers across the desk, looking too somber. "Well – when a man and a woman are attracted to each other, sometimes they might want to show it by–"
Eri pouted, was shocked to find herself crinkling her nose at him. "No, Kurono-san, I know what it is."
"Don't give me cheek, Eri. I'm getting to your question. I have to build context first."
"Sorry."
She sat back in her chair – a farcical attempt to make herself comfortable while her face continued to burn and Chrono spoke flatly, too factually, giving her unnecessary rundowns of biology (which books already did well enough themselves) and dry explanations of what-went-where (which books also did well enough, and which made Eri nauseous). But long-suffering as she was, she sat through his 'context'. Maybe he was still confusing her with a little girl. It was possible that now, he was trying to make up for what he'd never taught Eri as a teenager. Was it always this weird, being taught? Anya had never made it so weird. Kai never made it so weird – painful, yes, but not weird.
It only got worse. Weirder and so much worse. Chrono drew up pictures on his laptop, the type one would see in doctors' rooms – unappetizing and all shades of red, somehow plastic looking – and Eri smacked her hands to her face in a delighted horror. "I don't need to see! I don't need to see!"
"This is just an illustration," Chrono said emphatically. "It'll help if you can visualize it. Don't make it weird! This isn't supposed to be weird, it's normal, it's biological. Stop blushing so much, Eri!"
"You stop blushing, Kurono-san!"
"It's just the light."
"You are," Eri giggled thinly. "You're blushing!"
He made a grudging noise, and glanced skeptically at the picture from a women's health website – 'Your Friend, the Clitoris' it was labeled. Like the title of a children's book. "It might be easier if Overhaul – Kai – explained this to you," he said quietly. Though surely he realised the preposterousness of that. The embarrassed smile on Eri's face dropped, and Chrono continued, "He'd at least be able to help–"
Eri shook her head. "I don't want him to."
"He wouldn't mind."
"No."
A sigh. Chrono leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Look, Eri, I think a lot of how much a woman likes it has to do with how much she likes the person she's doing it with. And if you're wondering about these sorts of things, it must mean you're at least starting to like him, right?"
"I don't understand."
"Like I said – when a man and a woman are attracted to each other, they want to get close. What I meant is that they want to feel good, and they want to make each other feel good. Is that how you feel about Kai?"
Not in the slightest. But Eri couldn't exactly tell Chrono that, now could she?
"You're scared of him, which is also understandable… But you're very important to him, and he thinks about these things too."
Well. Yuck. "Oh. Oh, okay."
Chrono cracked an odd smile. "So in that case, wouldn't you prefer to ask him about these things?"
Blinking once, blinking twice, feeling like a small animal caught in the headlights of her own horniness (also a word the books explained well, and Eri could only assume that was the something deep inside of her) she shook her head once again. "No, thank you. I'd still like you to explain."
"But Eri–"
"Please, Kurono-san. I'd like you to explain."
As was Chrono's way, he relented – albeit with a certain groaning, eye-rolling, thin-lipped resistance – and pointed out to Eri all the important parts of female genitalia. At least according to his own knowledge and what the women's health websites said, with all their friendly headings and less-friendly pictures. There was no shortage of disclaimers from Chrono either. But just a reminder, every woman probably likes different things, so you (and Kai) have to figure out what you (and Kai) enjoy. Okay, Eri? God, please tell me you understood that.
Step-by-step instructions. Explanations of why the female orgasm (so it was real) was such an elusive thing. Subtle suggestions on how to broach the subject with Kai, to which Eri would simply nod politely and then pose very different questions very quickly because she would much rather think about Mirio. And every time Chrono seemed to think it was over, circling his teacher-voice into a breathless, relieved denouement, Eri would start up something new about something she'd read, or something she'd heard the Russian women talking about, or whether all of this would really work for her since her body didn't have all its 'normal' parts.
For once, Chrono didn't really know what to say to that.
All of this and more in the space of an hour; and when Kai appeared like a phantom in the doorway – "Why are you two whispering like this?" – Chrono made a sound as though he was having a seizure, and almost punched his laptop through the screen.
A/N: Not going to lie, I think this was one of the weirdest things I've ever written. XD
On a similar vein... A warning - next chapter, rating will be changing to M. Thankie! Follow, favourite and review. xx