Chapter 7: Shadows Beyond the Stage

The way the moonlight filtered through the trees seemed oddly artificial to Sei as they neared the building. It was almost like there was a huge spotlight in the sky that was shining towards them, highlighting some spectacle for the world to see. Their bodies cast strange silhouettes on the concrete facade, and for a brief moment Sei felt like they were putting on a shadow play.

Except, they had no audience. They hadn't seen anybody else for awhile now, and the pathways all around them were entirely empty. An intense sensation of privacy hovered between them; the kind of uncomfortable solitude that whispered wicked ideas into her mind.

Alice's hand was now clasped to Sei's. Sei wasn't sure when that had happened, but it had felt natural once she had realized it. She gave her palm a squeeze as they walked towards the back of the building.

"I know this place," Alice murmured softly. "This is the auditorium, isn't it?"

"Bingo," Sei said, glancing over her shoulder to find that Alice was giving her a curious look.

"I remember doing the play here for the school festival a few years ago," Alice said. "Isn't the entrance back that way?"

"The front doors are always locked at this hour, of course, unless the drama club has a late practice."

"Oh, then why are we—?"

Sei merely grinned.

Flanked by twin rows of bushes, a small sidewalk splintered off from the main path and ran down the back of the auditorium. At the very end—Sei could see it clearly now that they had turned the corner—there was a small gray door with a metal handle.

Their feet crunched against fallen leaves as Sei pulled Alice down the narrow little path. It was out of the way, so it wasn't unusual for club members to forget to sweep the area, and Sei had spent many lunch periods hiding back there, watching the wind blow debris around aimlessly. She could vaguely remember having brought one or two underclassmen there, too, when the occasion arose that they needed to do something unobserved.

I guess this would be one such occasion, she thought to herself.

When they got to the door, she could see Alice staring at her out of the corner of her eye. She reached out and jiggled the doorknob without even a moment of hesitation, and she couldn't help but smile at the panicked look that immediately spread across Alice's face.

"Sei-san, what on Earth are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sei replied mockingly. "Breaking and entering, of course."

It took her a few seconds—she hadn't done this in years and she was out of practice—but when she lifted the handle and turned it just the right way, the flimsy lock on the doorknob popped open.

"Gotcha!" Sei whispered to herself. She had wondered if they would have replaced the handle by now, but fate was on her side and they hadn't. Since no one else seemed to know that it was broken, apparently no one had bothered to fix it.

"Sei-san, are you sure we should be…?"

The rusty hinges creaked and the bottom edge of the door gave an uncomfortable scraping noise when Sei pushed it open. As a small cloud of dust hit them in the face, Sei half expected to see a colony of spiders and a couple of bats flying out next.

"Christ, has no one opened this since the last time I came in or what?" She had to struggle with the door a little to get it to open all the way, but once she did, she gestured for Alice to go ahead in front of her. "Ladies first," she said.

They both stared into the dark void of a hallway that lay before them. None of the lights were on, so all they could see were the edges of the walls a few meters in front of them, illuminated by the moonlight.

"Ha, no way," Alice told her. "This looks like the beginning of every horror movie I've ever seen."

Sei laughed. "Relax, I've been in here a million times. It's fine once you grope around for the light switch." When Alice didn't move, Sei rolled her eyes and took a step forward. "Fine, will you follow me to Hell, then? Even if you won't lead the way?"

Alice followed. The moment they set foot inside the building, a wall of stale, damp air hit Sei in the face. As she pushed deeper into the corridor, she held onto Alice with one hand and reached around for the lights with the other.

"Close the door," she whispered over her shoulder. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves."

"What?" Alice's voice came out like a stifled whimper. "What if we get trapped in here?"

"If you don't stop being such a 'fraidy cat, then I'll take you to the girls' bathroom and introduce you to Hanako-san instead," Sei grumbled back at her.

After a moment, Sei heard the door creaking again, and the small sliver of light that had shined their way began to grow smaller, until it disappeared with a wink. A final thud sealed them inside. The hallway fell into pitch darkness, and as her other senses naturally heightened, Sei thought that she could hear Alice's heart pounding—or maybe it was her own.

That feeling of aloneness—of absolute privacy—returned suddenly. It filled Sei with the burning desire to do something wrong. She turned sharply and felt for Alice in the dark. She pushed Alice against the wall and crashed their mouths together.

The kiss landed a bit off-center. They both adjusted, though, and Alice responded with an enthusiasm that Sei hadn't expected. She reached up and threw her arms around Sei's neck, bringing her closer, opening her mouth to Sei in eager invitation.

Weeks of pent-up tension exploded all at once. Sei offered a messy kiss, deepening it as she felt Alice leaning further into her, until their bodies were pressed hard against each other. Their heavy breaths echoed through the empty corridor.

"I thought for sure...you'd put up at least a bit of a fight," Sei muttered against Alice's mouth. Her tone was a teasing one. She could feel Alice mirroring her smile. "I have to admit I'm a little disappointed."

"Fight?" Alice asked, then kissed her once more. It was a quick, inexperienced kiss, but it left Sei's lips seething nonetheless. "Why would I want to fight?"

"Mmm, you're much too obvious, Alice. Hide what you want from me a little. Pretend you don't want it. Don't make it too easy for me, or I'll take everything all at once." She let her hands slip down to the back of Alice's hips and then pulled her in roughly, until the bottom half of their bodies were thrust tightly together.

Alice gasped. Sei could feel her again—warm, pulsing, but a bit firmer than what she was used to. She didn't pull back this time, though; she grabbed Alice by the back of the neck and pulled her up for another burning kiss.

Sei was starting to rotate her hips unconsciously and their kissing had grown increasingly sloppy—and then she felt the palms of Alice's hands press against her shoulders. Alice groaned and pushed her away.

"Ah, ready to fight now?" Sei teased. She heaved a few loud breaths. She hadn't realized how much oxygen she had deprived herself of until she noticed that she was actually a touch dizzy. Nonetheless, she leaned back in for another kiss, and Alice's hands reached out yet again to gently push her back.

Sei could have easily overpowered her resistance. Instead, though, she gave her a puzzled look that Alice wouldn't have been able to see in the dark. "You okay?" she asked. She tried to ignore the now insistent throbbing in the southernmost regions of her body.

"Yeah, but if you keep doing that, I…," Alice began, her tone clearly one of embarrassment.

Sei took a step closer to Alice again, until she could feel the girl's breath on her face. "If I keep doing...what?"

She heard Alice's body sliding against the wall, her limbs shifting around frantically. "If you do that, I'll...I…." There was a brief clack of what sounded like plastic. "Oh, I think I found the light switch!"

"Hm?"

An audible click echoed through the otherwise silent hallway. Overhead, a warm electric buzzing sound was the first evidence of life. Then, less than a second later, the fluorescent lights flickered on overhead—first with a brownish, off-yellow glow, and then finally as a bath of white light that flooded through the corridor.

Sei found herself staring up at the ceiling momentarily in surprise, but before long she looked back down at Alice.

The girl must have noticed Sei's much too serious look because she was smiling at her sheepishly. "Uh, hi," Alice said, lifting a hand and waving vaguely.

It was like the mood had disappeared with the darkness. The florescent lighting bounced off the bland white walls and tiled floor, making the place look more like a hospital than the endless maze that it seemed to be before.

Sei scratched her head. "Huh. Um, okay," she said, looking around, as if she had just woken up from a dream.

Besides a few cobwebs near the lights, the place looked surprisingly clean, and it was otherwise exactly as she had remembered it. Sei turned to face away from where they had come in, looking down the hallway at the small wooden door near the end. "C'mon," she said, tipping her head in that direction. "There's something I wanted to show you."

Alice picked up her school bag—which she had dropped once again at some point—and followed with a meekness that contrasted her earlier bold groping.

"Why are you still carrying around all that baggage?" Sei asked her.

She shrugged. "I thought we were going to study tonight."

"You should know better than that by now, Alice."

Just as Sei had recalled, the old door at the end of the hall was a little hard to open. With a few tugs, it came loose, though, and before long they were presented with a wooden staircase that led up to a landing. It was only a few steps up, but beyond the landing, there was more darkness.

"I'll go first," Sei said this time, before Alice could protest. She hopped quickly up the steps, a hundred creaky sounds reverberating through the space as the floorboards settled under her weight. She heard Alice quickly following behind her.

This time, she didn't conveniently forget where the light switch was. When they got to the top of the landing, she slapped her hand on the familiar spot and the lights came on instantly. These were incandescent, so they gave the room a soft warm glow instead of the artificial intensity of the hallway. With a flick of the switch right next to it, she was able to shroud the hallway back into a state of darkness.

Alice looked over her shoulder, a bit uneasy.

"Stop looking so spooked. If we don't turn them off for now, someone might see the light between the cracks of the outside door and notice that we're here," Sei said, pulling Alice into the new space that they had found themselves in.

The room smelled like paint and musty old clothes. It really gave Sei a nostalgic feeling; a few memories from her third year at Lillian Academy floated back into her mind.

"Are we...backstage?" Alice asked, stepping into the room and looking around. She closed the wooden door gently behind her.

"Yes," Sei said. "We're in a dressing room. Take off your shoes." She walked up to one of the many clothing racks and reached out to take hold of the sleeve of a familiar outfit. It was one of the princely royal ball costumes that the understudies had worn during Cinderella nearly four years before. She was surprised to see that it was still there. I guess it makes sense to recycle such expensive costumes, she thought to herself.

She looked over at Alice and saw that the girl had dutifully sat down on the floor and was neatly removing her sneakers. "What about you, Sei-san?" she said, her tone a bit accusatory.

Sei looked down at her feet and saw that she had tracked in a few of the crinkly leaves from outside, and she was already halfway into the room. She shrugged and wiggled her feet out of her outdoor shoes, then kicked them aside.

"Kashiwagi-san was right about you," Alice said.

"Kashiwagi's feet may not be as dirty as mine, but that doesn't mean the rest of him is clean," Sei replied.

Alice smirked at her. She stood up carefully, following Sei's movements with her eyes, her gaze seemingly scanning the array of costumes. Sei noticed that her eyes stopped at a section filled with elegant fairytale-style dresses.

"Wasn't there something that you wanted to show me?" Alice asked.

Sei nodded, then she promptly dove in between one of the racks and buried herself between two thick velvet overcoats. The smell of mothballs made her cough and the fuzz tickled her ears uncomfortably, but she could almost reach the back wall when she stretched an arm out towards it.

"Sei-san?" Alice's bewildered voice rang out.

It's around here somewhere, Sei thought, feeling for the box that she knew had been flush against the wall. Before long, as she groped blindly behind the clothes rack, she realized that it was no longer where she had remembered. Of course, some things have to have changed, right? she thought. Even in an eternal place like Lillian Girl's Academy.

Just as she was about to give up, though, her hand grazed a piece of cardboard. Or maybe I spoke too soon.

"It's a miracle!" she declared as she pulled the box out from behind the rack. "Not exactly where I remember, but close enough. Looks like someone's rummaged in here, too." She dropped the box onto the floor and starting digging through it with no hesitation, as if it were her own sock drawer. Even after all of those years, she had never lost that sense of familiarity with Lillian Academy—maybe she was a little too familiar, in fact.

"Ah-ha!" Sei said, just as she found herself grasping the eternal black fabric between her fingers. It felt rougher than she remembered.

Alice had come to stand close to her. "What, what is it?" She was peering into the box as well. A small bug suddenly crawled out as Sei continued to disturb the contents, and it made Alice jump and let out a sharp yelp.

Sei laughed. "Hope that little guy hasn't been chewing any holes in this. You gotta respect tradition!" Then she jerked the dress sharply out of the box, a dozen other small objects sliding off the fabric and clattering together to the bottom. A cloud of dust billowed out and both she and Alice fell into a duet of coughing fits for a few seconds.

After they recovered, Sei rose to her feet, holding the outfit up with the tips of her fingers, looking at it with a nostalgic smile.

"Is that…?" Alice began to ask.

"Yes, indeed," Sei said to her. "This is the official Lillian Academy school uniform—and just your size, I think."

"Wha—what?" Alice seemed taken aback. She pulled away slightly and immediately started shaking her head. "I can't put that on. What if somebody sees?"

Sei rolled her eyes. "We're alone in this dressing room. Who's going to see you?" She gave the dress a few thrusts, like an old throw rug, letting some of the residual fuzz and dust bunnies fly off. "It's a little old—I remember a first year left it in here when we were doing Cinderella and never came back for it—but it's still in pretty good condition and it should suit you just fine. She was around your height." Sei held up the dress in front of Alice and Alice's eyes seemed to finally wander along the creases and pleats of the uniform with growing interest.

"You...really think it'll be okay?" she asked. Her eyes appeared to shift with some inner conflict.

"'Course. I brought you here because there are tons of costumes for you to try on, and I figured you liked that sort of thing, especially now that you don't get much of a chance to wear what you want. But I also know that what you really wanted to wear was this." She offered the dress to Alice, but the girl didn't take it just yet.

"It's not a costume, though," Alice said, reaching out tentatively, running her fingers along the back of the sailor collar. Her hand came to rest on Sei's knuckles. "It's a uniform."

Sei shrugged. "Same difference. We were all playing a role back then. If we didn't have roles to play, then we'd be walking around naked, wouldn't we?" Sei pressed the uniform against Alice's chest and winked at her. "Throw this on first, though. We can worry about the naked stuff later."

Alice's face lit up with a furious blush, but she finally took the uniform and held it against her body. Her eyes started darting around the room excitedly. "Where can I change?"

"Here." Sei opened her arms to indicate the whole space. "This is a dressing room, after all."

Alice took a step towards a corner of the room, but then hesitated when she seemed to notice that Sei was following her movements. "If I change over here, are you going to look?"

"Yes, of course I'll look," Sei said without an ounce of shame. Why would I not look? she thought.

"Oh…," Alice mumbled. She appeared to have been taken off guard by Sei's frankness and at first she simply stood there, her gaze moving around the room. Finally, she pulled a rack of thick clothes away from the wall and started to slip behind it. "If I change back here, do you promise not to look?"

"Sure," Sei answered immediately. She grinned at Alice.

Alice's tiny frame was still partially visible behind the rack, and her large eyes peered back at Sei with expectation. "Are you lying right now?"

"Yes, that's right. I'm lying," Sei answered again. Why would I not be lying? she thought to herself.

This time it was Alice who rolled her eyes. She ducked behind the rack until her whole body disappeared, and Sei let out an exaggerated huff.

"You can't hide from me forever," she said jokingly. Still, she stayed put and didn't try to crane her neck to catch a glimpse. Instead, she listened to the sounds of rustling clothes and she looked down towards the bottom of the rack when she noticed that Alice had dropped her jeans. She could barely see the girl's ankles peaking out of her socks as she stepped out of her trouser legs.

It struck her that this was only the second time she had seen any part of Alice's bare legs; besides the first night they had met, Alice had covered herself up in male clothes and very little of her skin had been apparent. As Sei trained her eyes on what little she could see, she noticed that the girl's skin was smooth, her legs seeming rather pale even in the soft light, and she wondered momentarily if Alice was naturally this hairless, or if she shaved herself.

There are a lot of things I don't know about her body, come to think of it, Sei thought. She realized that whenever she had imagined Alice naked before, she had pictured the form of a typical girl. Alice did have a very feminine shape to her, but of course there would be a few things missing underneath her clothes—and a few things that were extra.

Sei scratched the back of her head and tried to remember what she had learned in anatomy class. Some images came to mind, but even then, those were only drawings or photographs, and rather clinical at that. They seemed wholly unrelated to the warm flesh and bright smile of the girl who was standing naked behind a clothes rack, only meters away.

Even more than before, Sei was tempted to look. It was more than innocent curiosity, she knew. Her intentions were a mix of lustful fascination, a touch of confusion, and the intense need to simply know what she was getting herself into.

I like a good mystery, she thought, but even mysteries have to be resolved eventually.

Without thinking, she reached out and pushed her hand between two of the coats that hung between her and Alice. Her other hand soon joined and she stood there for a moment, her arms flexed with tension, ready to push the two barriers apart, if not for a sudden rush of hesitation.

"Alice," she said. "I'm going to look now." But Alice had already stopped moving abruptly, had already seemed to notice Sei's encroaching presence.

Sei waited. She would give Alice a chance to back away, to cover herself up. If it wasn't what she really wanted, then she didn't want to make the girl expose herself. For a few moments, no movement came—and then, she heard the sound of something light hitting the ground. Sei looked down and caught sight of the fluttering pleats of the official Lillian Academy uniform as it fell into a heap on the wooden panels of the floor.

She heard a ragged breath escaping Alice's mouth from the other side. Sei nodded to herself and, with permission now granted, began to slowly pull the two rows of costumes apart. A small opening emerged. She could see a brief flash of some skin at first, but little else.

Then, a sudden burst of energy seemed to jolt through her bones. Sei jerked her arms to either side, as if she were opening a pair of curtains to greet the beautiful spring morning outside her window, as if she were an exhibitionist ripping open a trench coat and lecherously waiting for a reaction. The metal hangers on the rack squeaked in angry unison as they slid across the rods.

She looked.

The girl who looked back at her was shaking with nervous energy. She wasn't entirely nude, but everything was off except for a pair of tiny underwear. Her bony frame was wrapped in milky smooth skin that flowed down from her small shoulders to a soft chest and a narrow ribcage. Her nipples, Sei noticed, were a bit smaller than she was used to seeing, but they did stick out a little—she wasn't as flat as Sei had originally assumed. As she looked further down, shamelessly scanning every centimeter with her eyes, she could see a few of the young woman's ribs and the valley of a few tense muscles around her middle. She wondered if this taut skin would feel the same against her mouth as Alice's sinewy neck had.

Then, she spotted the top of her briefs. For some reason, Sei found that her eyes lingered here the longest. Through the thin white fabric of Alice's underwear, Sei could see the outline of...something. Her brain wasn't sure how to interpret it, how to make it take shape in her mind.

She reached out and hooked her fingers over the edge of the elastic waistband. Alice's skin felt hot against the back of her hand, and Sei slowly began to pull, leaning forward, her body moving closer, her gaze rolling slowly over the edge of that cotton barrier. The first thing she saw was a sparse pattern of hair.

And then Alice slapped her hand away before she could see anything more. The waistband slipped from her fingers with a snap. It seemed to echo throughout the whole room.

Sei jerked, as if broken from a trance. She quickly looked up at Alice, and saw that the girl was heaving, shuddering. She was staring straight at Sei with wide-eyed confusion.

"Why...did you do that?" she asked. "You can see everything else. Just...not that."

Sei looked at her with a bit of surprise, her arm still reaching out, her body in the same posture it had been only a moment before the motion had been cut off. "Okay," Sei said to her quietly.

As she began to lean her weight back and take in Alice's startled face, she couldn't help but feel like there was something obvious that she had stupidly overlooked. The girl looked flustered, embarrassed—but it was more than that. Alice's body had recoiled a little, had settled into what looked like a flinch that hadn't quite worn off. It was almost as if...

Of course, Sei realized suddenly. She doesn't like what she has there. Sei felt like an idiot. It hadn't crossed her mind at all that the girl might have felt uncomfortable with that part of her body in and of itself. She had assumed at first that it had been simple modesty, but now she noticed that Alice had been averting her eyes from her own body.

"Even I don't look...at myself," Alice whispered.

Sei nodded slowly, a few wires connecting in her mind. Years ago, when she had been agonizing over her relationship with Shiori, she had wished to herself that gender hadn't been created by God, because it just seemed to make things so much more complicated. She had actually envied worms at the time for their carefree hermaphroditic existence.

But her issue had been with cultural gender roles. It had seemed so unfair to her that she couldn't have a normal romance with Shiori simply because she was a girl, because it would defy social expectations. When it came to her body, though, she didn't care. She was fine with what she had—in fact, it seemed like such a good fit to her that she had never even questioned it.

Alice was different, though. Sei had had an inkling of it before, but the big picture occurred to her only then: for Alice, it wasn't about clothes, or gender roles, or wearing this costume instead of another one. Alice's body was the costume.

For some reason that she could not yet fully understand, a wave of heat rose to Sei's face and spread into the bottom of her eyes. She felt a pair of small, warm tears escape, but she bit back the rest and quickly looked away before Alice seemed to notice.

"I'm sorry," Sei whispered back to her. It wasn't an apology for anything that she had personally done, though. Rather, it felt like she was apologizing in God's place.

Two hands came to grasp one of her now clenched fists. "It's...it's okay," Alice replied, her voice sounding a bit alarmed. "Really, it's fine. You don't have to be sorry. I've never let anyone...get so close to me before." There was a pause. "Thank you." She had said the last part in such a soft voice that Sei almost hadn't heard. The tone also sounded like she had meant to say something else—a much more intimate phrase—but Sei decided in that instant that there was no way she would entertain such a thought.

When Sei pulled away from her, Alice seemed to notice the uniform at her feet once again. She hastily picked it up, as if she didn't want it to be ruined, and Sei found it a little funny that it was only now that she remembered that she had dropped it.

Sei watched intently as the girl pulled it over her head. She was clumsily wriggling into the uniform—which seemed to fit well enough—and Sei had to suppress both a laugh and the urge to help her put it on. Once her head popped out of the top, it seemed to come easier though. Her arms quickly followed suit through the sleeves, and before long she was smoothing out the skirt with her hands.

When Alice tried tying the scarf around her neck, Sei reached out this time to help her fix it. Their hands brushed momentarily in a battle of wills, but eventually Sei's insistent groping won out, and she straightened out the girl's tie with a few sharp tugs.

It reminded her a little too much of those times she had flirted with blushing first years at Lillian Academy.

"Well," said Sei, moving back a little to admire her own handiwork. "You look like a Lillian girl if I've ever seen one. Come on out of there and let's take a good look at you."

Alice emerged sheepishly from behind the rack, but once she had stepped into the middle of the room, her face was alight with a wide smile. "I wish I could look in a mirror," she said, gazing down at the pleats of the dress.

Sei took her by the shoulder and led her to the opposite corner of the room, where a narrow full-length mirror in a cheap plastic frame lay propped up against the wall. There were a few smudges here and there on the glass, but when Alice peered into it, this didn't seem to matter. She took in a sharp breath and covered her smiling mouth with her hand.

"Sei-san, it looks great!" she said. She took a step closer to the image of herself and stared for a long moment. "I really do look like a Lillian student."

Sei, who was standing behind her, wrapped her arms around Alice's waist. To Sei's mild relief, Alice didn't resist at all, and instead leaned back to press her body closer. It was strange how well they fit together—Sei's taller, looming form against Alice's dainty frame. There was an irony in this, Sei thought just then, in that they had both been expected by society to inhabit the other's place.

Then soon enough Sei became distracted with the feeling of Alice's warm back against the length of her body, with the distinct smell of Alice's skin. It filled the pit of her stomach—and a place slightly further down from there—with an inexplicable sensation of growing heat.

She stooped down and put her mouth at the juncture of Alice's jaw and neck, right at the point where the girl's pulse was noticeably throbbing. It started out as a soft, chaste kiss, but when she heard Alice gasp, she opened her mouth and started to suck lightly on the skin there.

When Sei began to pull back, Alice turned her head up to look at her. She stared at Sei with a desperate gaze, with a look that seemed hungrier than before. She seemed to be asking Sei for something, but it wasn't totally clear what that was.

Sei immediately took a guess. She kissed Alice on the mouth, deepening it as soon as she felt Alice's lips open in response, and they stood their for a few moments exploring each other, feeling the heat of each other's breaths. Sei let her hands wander to Alice's upper body and smiled when she felt the girl lean into her touch. She caressed her torso, then her chest, feeling every centimeter of skin through the fabric of her dress, never breaking the kiss between them—the kiss that was growing increasingly violent.

But it wasn't enough.

Sei pulled away a little, her mouth still lightly brushing Alice's lips. Her whole body felt like it was burning from the inside out. "I want—I want...," she sighed, unable to put it into words.

Alice seemed to understand nonetheless. She mirrored Sei's helpless expression and looked directly up at her. "I know," she whispered. "Me too. I want it, too."

Yes, Sei thought. But you don't even want me to look. After all, how could she do anything like that if she couldn't even look at her there? Naturally, she could just reverse things and have Alice do all the exploring, but she wasn't into the idea of not reciprocating. Wasn't reciprocating the whole point, anyway? It certainly was Sei's favorite part.

But if she couldn't even look there, even if she wanted to, then…

Another thought came. Sei's hands slid down the front of Alice's body and she felt the girl shudder against her touch. When Sei's fingers hovered dangerously over Alice's lower torso, Alice seemed to unconsciously lean her hips up to meet them.

Sei pressed her face to the girl's neck again. "Alice," she murmured against her skin, "you don't want me to see anything—but what if I only...touch?"

In a movement that seemed to spring from every bone in her body, Alice grabbed Sei's left hand tightly by the wrist. For a moment, Sei worried that she had done something wrong, but then Alice quickly pulled Sei's hand underneath her skirt and pressed Sei's palm hard against the juncture of her legs.

Sei gasped. It was seething with heat. It was beyond the warmth of a human body—it was pulsing with life and she could feel the blood coursing through it, even over the thin underwear that separated her from the raw skin. It was so unlike what she had felt before under any other girl's dress that she was momentarily shocked into a state of extreme discomfort, even as her arousal intensified.

Yet, there was something familiar underneath it all. A sensation of softness underneath the firmness, a trickling moisture that seemed...human. Not male, not female; simply human and nothing more.

She recovered after a second. She squeezed and Alice let out a sigh. Sei quickly slipped her right hand underneath to join the other. Moments later, even this wasn't enough, and she slid her hands past the final barrier until there was nothing separating her from Alice's naked skin.

She silenced Alice's groan with a kiss. They stood there for a moment, unmoving, both enjoying the reality of the moment and hovering in a state of uncertainty. Sei wasn't quite sure what to do at first.

She had come this far, though.

Her lips still very much locked with Alice's, she tried something with her hands. When that didn't seem to get a reaction, she tried something else, then touched another place. She slowly explored like this until she felt a small yelp of surprise escape from the girl below her.

All right, now we have something.

She repeated the movement, and a shudder burst through Alice's body.

Sei couldn't help the grin that spread across her face. When she pulled back to look at Alice, the girl's cheeks were furiously red. We definitely have something there. Sei took the embarrassment as a good sign and took Alice's lips with her own once again.

She explored some more, noting Alice's small reactions, and before long they had worked into a rhythm. They were rocking against each other, mouths sliding desperately, Sei's hands buried deeply in the folds of Alice's skirt. She felt the back of Alice's hips knock into her more insistently and she bucked hard in response, clasping Alice's body against her tightly.

They were lost in their movements, in a bubble of warm skin and tongues and teeth. Sei felt herself dissolve for a short moment, felt all of her awareness falling entirely on the small, gasping body that she held in her arms. It was like they both had slipped into a dream together.

Then Alice seemed to start waking up. Sei noticed the tenseness in the girl's body first, before anything—but she ignored it.

"S-Sei-san," Alice whispered, "I'm going to..."

Sei pulled her closer, gave her a messy kiss where her throat met her collar bone.

"Ah! Sei-san, please. Sei-san—"

And so Sei quickened the pace of her caresses, and pressed her face hard against Alice's neck. She felt a rush of energy between them all of a sudden, a flexing of such huge tension that she had to steady her legs to avoid falling forward.

It was only when she moved her head to reach Alice's lips again that she noticed that anything was wrong. Alice wouldn't kiss her.

"Sei-san, please, stop! I'm—"

But it was already happening. Sei only realized after a moment, after she felt the presence of something new down there, something she somehow hadn't considered at all.

It took Sei completely by surprise and she could only look on in awe as Alice turned her head slightly and buried her face in the muscle of Sei's upper chest. Sei felt the rumbling vibrations of the girl's groans, the reluctance of the girl to give in, and finally the shudders that racked the entirety of her body seemingly beyond her conscious control. Sei shuddered in response, that fiery feeling in her core having spread to every part of her.

She wanted nothing more than to grab the girl by the back of the head and press a kiss to her mouth. But when she tried, Alice still wouldn't kiss her.

She wouldn't even look at her.

"What...what's wrong?" Sei asked, throwing Alice a confused glance.

She didn't respond. She reached down and pulled Sei's hands away, stepping forward in one panicked movement. She darted to the side, towards one of the clothes racks. Sei made a move to follow her, but Alice pushed her back with both hands.

Sei stared at her with bewilderment. "Alice?" She tried to catch the girl's gaze, but she still would not look at Sei.

"I...I can't…." Alice's hands were up, palms out, and she was looking at the ground. Sei noticed with some alarm that her eyes were welling up with tears.

"Look," Sei said quickly, "we can talk about this. What happened? Did I do something wrong?"

When she took another step forward, though, this only seemed to spook Alice even further. The girl suddenly turned and rushed towards the wooden door at the end of the room.

"Alice? What are you doing?" Sei's feet thudded against the wooden floor—then the stairwell—as she followed Alice towards the corridor that they had used to come in.

Alice was fast, though, and none of her earlier hesitation seemed to have stayed with her. The pleats of her skirt fluttered as she jumped down the tiny steps and then disappeared into the darkness of the hallway. The quick shuffle of the girl's sock-clad feet echoed through the space. Sei had made it to the bottom of the stairs when she saw a wide blast of moonlight filling the corridor.

The door with the broken handle was open. Alice's silhouette hovered in the frame for a moment, her shape indistinguishable from that of any other Lillian girl in a Lillian costume. She didn't turn to look back at Sei when she stepped out.

"Alice? Alice!" Sei's calls rang out through the hallway.

Then the door slammed shut, and Alice had disappeared.